Ableton Live Quick Tip: Creating Inspiration With The MIDI Devices
Today’s Ableton tutorial is all about finding or creating inspiration on those days when writer’s block is kicking your ass. Anyone that writes music on a regular basis is going to run into this problem once in a while, but for working professionals, simply choosing not to write isn’t always an option. If you have [...]
Ableton Live Quick Tip – Decluttering Your Arrangement With “Consolidate”
Today’s Ableton Live tutorial is all about keeping your arrange view neat and uncluttered. After moving, splitting, and rearranging clips on the timeline, it can start looking pretty messy. This gets especially bad when you’ve shifted the start point of a clip to overlap either the start or end of a natural loop or phrase. [...]
Dynamic Interference – Join The Sound Design Challenge, Get A Prize!
I’ve been emailing back and forth with Shaun from Dynamic Interference about his new sound design challenge. As far as I can tell, this is the first such challenge that Shaun has offered; it centers around footage of the old Texas Stadium being demolished, and the challenge is of course to add some effective sounds [...]
Ableton Live Quick Tip – Resampling and Sample-Based Workflow
Resampling is an incredibly simple yet powerful technique in digital music production. The idea is straighforward: Record the output of one or multiple tracks into a new, editable audio file. It’s not much different than rendering your composition, except here you’re actually going to incorporate the new file into the current song. I employ this [...]
Ableton Live Quick Tip: Demoing Note Velocity Values
When you’re programming drum lines, one of the easiest and most effective things you can do is add velocity automation. These subtle changes in velocity can take an otherwise bland loop and add a more organic feel. If you combine this with editing your note triggers off the grid, you’ve got a simple recipe for [...]
Ableton Live Quick Tip: The Basics of Parameter Automation
Ableton Live is a simple-looking tool on its face, presenting only the essential functions in an explicit way. However, if you dig a little deeper you’ll find all sorts of clever functionality that can make your music production life a whole lot easier. While these things might not seem that special to people who are [...]
Kris Giampa’s Sound Design For Video Games Blog Up Now
Kris Giampa, sound designer at Blizzard by day and electronic music composer/label owner by night, has started a new blog which focuses on music for video games. Like many people, I am a rabid fan of Blizzard’s past catalogue (when Diablo III comes out, I am officially checking out of life for a week). I’m [...]
Ableton Operator Inspiration From Mark Mosher
Mark Mosher from Modulate This! has been posting up some fun and educational one off experiments with synth patches which are aimed at “one patch performances.” This means that only one instance of a particular synth is used with a healthy bit of automation to play out a complex song or sequence over time. Operator [...]
Ableton Live Quick Tip: Dusting Off the Impulse Device
Remember Impulse? I know there are plenty of people who rightfully swear by it, but there are many more new Live users who purchased the program well after the introduction of the newer stuff like Drum Racks, Sampler, etc., who just haven’t had the time or inclination to dig into the older devices. Impulse has [...]
What We Can Learn From The “Singularity” Sound Design Team
Another great sound designer interview is up courtesy of my friend Miguel at Designing Sound. This time around, he interviews the sound design geniuses behind the game “Singularity,” a moody FPS that I’ve had the pleasure of putting some time into over the last week or so. I’m floored at how much game sound design [...]
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