Clicking on the word Length snaps the Loop Brace to fit the Sample Editor window.

Categories: Ableton, Tutorials
2 Comments »

How to split up a mix from vinyl and cut it up to have discrete tracks on a CD in Ableton Live.

1) Record your stereo mix from your turntables/mixer into an audio track in Live. (this lesson assumes you already know how to do this).

2) Double click on the audio file to show it in clip view, below.

3) Likely you don’t want this long file warped, so turn warping off:

Note: If you plan to fix tempo problems and bring in other audio files to embellish your mix, you may want to leave warping on here, but that’s a subject for another lesson.

5) Make sure the start marker starts at the beginning of the file by dragging it to the left.

6) Now we’ll put in some “Arrangement Locators” to tell Live the sections you want to export.

7) Click on the spot you want the first marker (i.e. break between songs). Likely the first one is at the beginning of the arrangement:

8) Now press the set button over on the right hand side of Live’s screen:

Note: You can click on the flag of this marker and press command-r to rename it to the name of the first song if you want.

9) Press command-4 to turn off the grid in Live, as likely your mix doesn’t fall on the grid lines.

10) click on the next spot you’d like to make a ‘split’

11) press the ‘set’ button again to make another arrangement locator.

12) repeat for as many song breaks as you need.

Exporting the individual tracks with no gaps

1) Right click (control click on mac) on the first arrangement locator and select “Loop to next locator:”

2) Click on the Loop bracket:

3) Select “Export Audio/Video in the file menu or press (Shift Command-R):

For CD burning, you’ll want your settings to look like they are here:

(Aiff on mac, Wav on PC, 16 bit, 44100 don’t normalize, triangular dither is best at all times except if you are exporting to 32 bit.

Repeat as necessary between each segment of arrangement locators.

Other tips

You might want to name files with numbers as you go, i.e. “1.Intro.aiff” 2.Firstsong.aiff” so that they show up in order in your finder when you’re done.

Here’s a nice Live 8 preset I put on my master fader for a little multiband compression and limiting:

Jethroe Mastering Chain.adg

Make sure that your mix never goes above 0db if possible, a Limiter is key here.

Categories: Ableton, Tutorials
No Comments »

Warping tracks let’s you easily timestretch tracks for beatmatching, mash ups and sampling in Ableton Live. I find this the fastest way to do it (using Live 8 here) thought I will manually tighten up every 4 bars or so to double check that everything is right.

Drag an audio file (wav, aiff, mp3) into Live, from Live’s browser or directly from iTunes.

Live will attempt to auto-warp the file. If Ableton gets it right, you’re done. If you want to ‘tighten up’ the warping’ or if it just plain didn’t get it right…

2) Double click on the clip…

…to show it in the clip view below:

Then launch the clip (press the triangle). You need to find the ‘one,’ or in this case I’m just looking to warp the file once the drums come in.

For my MP3, I hear the ‘one’ around the -1.2bar. I’ll want to zoom in here, using the magnifying glass above the audio file.

I see the first beat is slightly off. I’m going to double click on the transient above the “one” to create a yellow warp marker (you can double click on a yellow one to remove a warp marker as well).

Right click on that warp marker, and select “Set 1.1.1 here”

This is the hardest thing for any computer autowarping to find. If you guide Ableton to this point, the computer can basically figure out the rest. Now you need to right click again, and select “Warp From Here.”

Live generally gets it right from this point. Let’s turn on the Metronome…

…to hear that the track is warped right. Seems good in this case.

Next let’s turn on the Loop button:

Set the Length to 4 Measures:

And set the position to 1.1.1.

Now we hear a four bar loop. You can click on the word “Length” to snap the view to that loop. Click and drag in the tempo field to change the tempo of your loop.

You may want to play with the warp mode for better sound.

Complex or Complex Pro is good for mixed down songs, Beats is good for drums, and Tones is best for guitar, vocals, piano, etc.

To check the rest of the track and make sure it’s warped right, you want to click on the loop bracket, and using the arrow up and down keys you can hop through the rest of the song and add, adjust or get rid of warp markers.

Categories: Ableton, Tutorials
5 Comments »