Google ableton tutorials

Ha I can't believe you actually took time out of your day to post that @davideon. Thanks, for that extremely helpful advice.

I can't believe you're so lazy and ignorant to not read the manual and not to make any effort to learn yourself.

If you you do what I suggested you will find what you need. It's obvious. It's common sense. Its what anyone would do.

Stop relying on others.

Pathetic

Damn dude it's Christmas Eve, no egg nog I'm guessing? You're way to upset over a simple question. If your intelligent by any means you'll understand the meaning of "Work smarter not harder". Rather you agree or not, asking a "common sense" question on a public forum in regards to reading through a 600 page manual, it's actually the exact opposite of ignorant. I obviously stated the fact that I've taken an initiative to learning this daw; however, you my friend, your to "lazy and ignorant" to acknowledge that. If you're not catching the gist by now, then i'll reiterate. Don't make this a drake an meek situation, I'll literally embarrass you so just leave it be.


Moving on, I ask again Serato. What's the best way to make a loop roll in Live and is an external controller for producing actually worth the money?
Thanks in advance for any positive, promotive advice

the ableton manual is an extremely good read and will teach you a lot about music production in general.

I definitely plan on learning it. I've actually dedicated an hour a day to it but since time is a factor and I have gigs coming up I'm trying to make the highest quality edits I can an avoid clipping and distortion. Which might be the same thing, I'm not savvy whatsoever with production at all. Making short edits are fine though it flows well but when it comes to making mashups using loop rolls an eq I hit a brick wall. I just trust members within this community, that's why I asked in the first place @djsoo

Honestly, I prefer using Flip for my short edits and loop rolls live.

The easiest way to loop roll chops in your tracks is to just copy and paste the audio.

the other way is the Beat Repeat plugin, but it takes a bit to wrap your head around it - copy pasting audio is easier.

Hows that working out for you so far?



if times a factor i suggest taking that first piece of advice and looking at the manual and youtube instead of going back and forth here trying to get others to do the work for you

If tie is a factor, go pay for lessons.

Load a track into Ableton, Set your first down beat to 1.1. Make sure to select complex pro as the preferred sound selection on the track in the small box at the bottom left. This is easy with electronic beats for example rap and edm. I would go through and double check those warping markers though as they can fall off a bit.

Once you have in and warped, you can cut and paste parts of the song, example would be cutting a verse out or making a chorus start for club play. If that's all you want to do, this is a quick and easy process. You could spend years learning plugins and the instrument and sampler, simpler functions. Once you mess with it, you will tire of just editing and want more. But you really will have to spend literally hours and hours just doing nothing really to learn the functions......

I've also been studying Ableton for last months, here's my 2 cent advise, specially for clipping and distrotion:

Put a compressor and a limiter on the Master channel before doing any work.

@djRehab Appreciate it man I haven't heard of complex pro yet, that's very beneficial. Makes things way better actually. I've been using a plugin FabFilter for lowering freq. on acapella loops for buildups but sometimes it will flow off beat so that warping tip actually makes sense

@rapha-el yea dude I always make sure everything i have in my audio clips aren't clipping before i apply any plugins to the master. Once the volume is right Ill put the limiter and the plugin ozone 7 for the rms meter on my master an raise the gain similar to the peak rms. I don't really know much about the compressor though, for what Ive learned, compressing an already mastered track is not good at all. But when I export edits, I first used .wav files but when I loaded them in Serato it would recognize it at first but after a few hours it would turn unrecognizable (Turn orange-ish yellow). I changed my exporting to .aiff and the same thing happened. On Serato's Website they say they support wav and aiff but would it be better to just convert these files to a 320 mp3? I don't won't to cause I know it decreases the quality but every file is incompatible with serato in the long run apparently. Is the decrease that bad?

@djSoo I would, I wish I could. Where I'm at though the only place that offers lessons is about 15 K for a course. So see, the way my bank account is set up...

@Dj M Bezzle
if times a factor i suggest taking that first piece of advice and looking at the manual and youtube instead of going back and forth here trying to get others to do the work for you

It's not having others do the work for me, It's called a public forum that's enticed towards the growth of music production and/or any other correlated activities:
Scratching, Mixing, Djn in clubs, learning serato, etc.
Just be a team player dog don't kick someone's head under water when they're struggling

lynda.com has some great tutorials on so many different programs. They have Ableton live 9, Pro tools and logic etc. The best way is to practice and learn from your mistakes and retry. Rome was not built in a day lol. There are a few great books on how to use the program. There are so many hidden ways to do stuff in that program so you have to find your way through. Always ask questions and avoid the idiotic answers that people give you here.

The ironic contradiction

such bad advice

This is actually pretty bad advice.

+1 your master shouldnt be clipping before you apply ANY plugins to it.


Lately ive been seeing people load a plugin like ozone or waves C4 and not change any settings in the plugin, like its some magical auto process. WTF read the damn book and play with every plugin and learn it somewhat before putting into your track. If you cant explain what the plugin does it doesnt belong in the track.

There are plenty of online schools that offer comprehensive ableton lessons for less than 15k.

Yeah there are, they just focus more on the "production from scratch" side of things rather than making bootlegs and edits. Atleast to my knowledge. If you know of any that are geared towards bootlegging or mashups whatever you want to call it, I'll definitely check it out.

Also does anyone know where to get some decent sample packs for free that are Decent. I'm working on making my own most definitely and I know they build over time, I'm just meaning something basic to start off with.
Examples: bomb drop sample, loading gun sample, white noise build up samples stuff like this

Digitaldjtips has a basic course for Djs that's like $100.

Honestly tho, basic edits are easy. You really should be able to figure shit out in a couple sessions.

I've already figured out basic edits like cut downs and rearranging tracks. I figured out loops and I'm working on learning warping manually now. I'm just trying to figure out how to add samples and to use effects efficiently. I found a few samples to start out with off DMS, a dj record pool Im sure you know what I'm talking about but is there any sources you'd recommend for free samples that are actually good for starting off?

Freesound.org

Just create a new track and drop the sample in wherever you want.

why's that ?
I think this is very good advice while learning the software and plugins. especially if you are not familiar with every sound term. this will help you to protect your grear (speakers, headphones etc).

Protect your gear at the cost of learning bad habits that will ruin your productions

Production ?!? this guy wants to do some mashups and blends.
Obviously, he is not Wiliam Orbit.

Just because he only wants to do blends and mashups dosent make it ok to just do things completely wrong

ill gates has good tutuorials and advice. but really youtube.



if you are this much of a noob, why would you want to make edits to play out after zero experience with any daw or mixing or mastering, etc, et. al.

Would you dj out at a club after a few 1 hr sessions after getting your first dj equipment and having no experience?

audio production isnt brain surgery, but its also not playing an iphone game meant for 8 yr olds either.

Some advice for doing decent-sounding edits in Ableton:

1) Avoid using lossy-encoded audio as source material, especially you're going to be converting your mix to a lossy format for DJ-ing.

2) If you're working from mastered sources that have levels frequently hitting "0" (meaning just about any commercial digital release from the past 20 years) and will be applying any plugins and/or additional production, lower the level of those clips in the warping area by 6dB or more to help prevent levels from going too high. Even just applying a simple EQ to a track mastered aggressively can cause overshoots of several dB.

3) The type of warping you should use depends on the source. A simple drum loop is probably better set to "beats"/"transients". "Complex pro" tends to make drum hits sound duller.

4) If you're seeing "overs" on the master fader during playback of your mix, it's better to lower individual channel faders (or individual clip levels, as described above) rather than lower the master fader.

5) I've gotten in the habit of doing mastering as a separate session...a number of different reasons for that.

Solid advice, thanks. I always touch on the master channel last as well.

When I'm cutting down a transition track though is it better to turn warp off?
Earlier, I was editing TekOne's Edit of Bad Royales' Dabb Remix its like a 130-78 track.
The intro was clean but during the transition it would distort a little but the drop would be clean again. I have no plugins or anything on the intro/transition so that's where Im lost




Hell yeah I'm gonna look into this now @djsoo





You gotta start somewhere, I'm not new to making edits and mashups I've done almost 400 actually, it's just the way I was recording (thru Serato) the quality is terrible. I want my edits to sound right and be legitimate hence the existence of this thread

Maybe. There's plenty of edits/mixes I do without any warping...or with editing tools other than Ableton Live for that matter.

because applying a limiter or compressor on your master before you've even done any mix work is pretty much the opposite of what you want to do.

Get your mix sounding decent with some headroom first through EQing, leveling, and individual track compression. Then add the limiter to get a little extra volume. By making your track with it on, you're risking clipping and over compression because you can't tell if things clip.

I'm on a budget for production at the moment so buying another daw such as logic or FL is out of the question but any plugins recommended? I'll invest in something that's beneficial towards progressive ingenuity

An edit of an edit of a remix. Im sure thats totally necessary and sounds great....

stock plugins are fine.

Especially if all you're doing is making edits and mashups

Hell yeah that's what's up

It just comes with style dude, I play tracks to fit my flow. It's 100% necessary
I'm extremely ocd with organizing crates. I mean as in extreme is literally an understatement

.....what does making edits in ableton have to do with crate management?

Think about the definition of crate mgmt. If you have songs in crates that aren't up to par with your standards (time wise) but are great tracks; Making edits in Ableton is vital for crate mgmt.
My perspective of crate mgmt:
Crate Mgmt- Setting Cues, Sticker-tagging, setting loops, finding solo Acapellas/Samples for doubles (Scratching), knowing your playlists/music and having every single song fit my style.

-Just for credibility reasoning, I'm new to production but djing literally pays my bills.
I know what I'm talking about when it comes to spinning

@djsoo

This is my first bootleg, I'm asking because you seem like you really know your shit.
Any feedback? soundcloud.com

Turn your levels down, its distorted.

Make sure each track is playing in the green, no red at all, make sure that the master is also green at all times throughout the entire mix.

Watch this:

Watchwww.youtube.com

^^^^^ watch the whole thing the beginning is techy and you can ignore, bout halfway through it what u wanna watch.

yea I checked it out, I've been using ozone for a free trial for the rms meter.
I tried finding the tt dynamic but all the links I found are bad. Do you know any free rms meters that are accurate?
My edits and mashups are decent now, I'm just working on learning eq, transitions, and effects/build ups

You dont need anything other than whats built into ableton.

voxengo SPAN is free and good.

I'd worry less about RMS and just get things sounding good.

You're just making mashups right now, get too high an RMS with pre-mastered tracks and you're just compressing already compressed audio.

Yeah I get that I just use a rms meter to give me a sort of guideline to set the limiter. I know mastering an already mastered track is bad but I just use the limiter to make it sound louder

Carnage, that you?

Haha yezzir, blowin out eardrums on a nights to night basis @m.b

For mashups with mastered tracks, you rarely want to go more than 2-3 db of gain reduction - and usually just for some rogue peaks.

For sure, I'm not pullin 6dbs on mastered tracks I just set the volume right before it peaks. For transition tracks tho should I leave warping alone? If I cut it off it sounds distorted bad but if I leave it on its still distorted it's some bullshit @djso
With warping, the whole track will sound good except the transition which is 8bars

you can automate your master tempo

no doubt if I'm trying to snag an instrumental or a sample off a track tho and the only way I can get it is thru youtube or some other source with shitty quality, will it sound bad even if I touch up on it? (mp3-128 to .wav) ?
For an example, I found an instrumental of Trap star - young jeezy and I have a kanye acapella loop to lay over it to drop into the hook of the original so a hype party break edit, but the instrumental is 128kbs and the acapella is 320kbs (mp3's) and the original (trap star) is 320.
Will ableton fix the quality or will it just be a bad mix? @So

nope - you can't add quality to something that isn't there.

when I export tracks out of ableton as an .aiff I just upload it to serato and it works and plays just fine but once i close serato the cues I set don't show up. Serato says they support .wav/.aiff but when I tried .wav first it wouldn't recognize it and with .aiff it won't remember cues or comments. I don't want to but do I have to compress down to mp3s?

you could compress to flac or ALAC and get lossless.

It should remember cues with aiffs because it saves the info to the file, but I haven't used an .aif in a while...