The Lazy Guide to Ableton Live: Part 1 The Template

Factor
Live is obviously excellent at looping clips thats what its built on, after all but its all too
easy to get bogged down in rigid looping hell. Fortunately, its almost as easy not to.
MusicTech has an easy guide to creative clip use and how to get creative fast! In this first
part we look at templates

We did argue over whether to call this The Lazy Persons Guide To Live, as we thought it could be
a little too demeaning. But, lets face it, using a DAW is basically using technology as a shortcut, so
all of us who use DAWs are either lazy, or and we certainly prefer this option using technology
to realise our creative dreams more quickly. Yes, thats good well stick to that!
So the crux of this tutorial is that the main problem with technology and DAWs is that its very easy
to fall in to some bad habits. You might, for example, just use the features available in a non-
creative way and end up with something quite tedious.
Live suffers especially from this, largely down to its central selling point of being able to play loops
in time, so that everything sounds pretty good, very quickly. This is both its main draw but also a
feature which might make you think: Sounds okay, lets just run with that
We want more than okay! The beauty of Live is the not-so-hidden depths that you can explore to
take these looped ideas onwards and upwards. A few tweaks here and there and you suddenly
introduce a dynamic to your tune that gives it life. Add a bit of variation to your clips, either by
changing the notes within them, the sounds they trigger, or their start and end points and you
suddenly have a lot more variation and creativity going on.
And you know what the best bit of all of this is? Its pretty easy to accomplish! Its why weve
labelled this with a Beginner tag although if we were betting people, wed guess that there are
people who consider themselves intermediate and expert users who choose not to use some of these
shortcuts as they might not be considered clever or they dont know about them. Either way, we
feel that all users should give this workshop a spin and were sure that everyone will discover, or
rediscover, at least one choice short cut

The Template Factor

The first feature well cover is less about creative looping and arranging, but more about making
sure you have a good base to start with and covers how to set up a Default Set or Template.
We cant recommend having one enough. When we started experimenting with loading in a
standard Set when starting a new project, we were a little sceptical. 10 tracks later, 10 times more
than wed have previously produced in the same time period, we were hooked.
The idea is that you start with a favourite set of instruments, effects, and even audio, each time you
start to compose. Youll end up moving between clips and scenes faster and putting tunes together
faster.
You might think that having the same set of sounds to start with is limiting, but actually setting
constraints sometimes enhances creativity. We can certainly tell you that our 10 tracks dont sound
anywhere near as similar to each other as you might think. Another way to look at it is that your
Default Set is your scratch pad for melodies. You can return to the ingredients later once you have
some basic ideas, change sounds, change percussion loops, change everything just use the Default
Set to capture the vibe!

The Template Factor Step-by-Step

1:Whenever you start a new Set in Live you could, of course, hit Cmnd>N and start from scratch.
Its a nice empty project that you have to start from scratch with, and looks like a lot of effort to
fill
2: Instead, load up a project that you have been working on, and are happy with the range of sounds
and effects already loaded in. With tweaking you could make this the new Default new file that
loads.
3: If you havent got one that you are happy with, simply load in one and build it up from scratch.
Put your favourite instruments on different channels, line up effects, even load in some clip
melodies if you like
4: You could even load in a selection of beats, maybe some 4/4 beats if youre a house musician so
you know youve always got something reliable to underpin your new project.
5: When youre happy that you have all of your favourite instruments, effects and audio clips loaded
in, click Lives Preferences/File Folder tab and the Save Current Set As Default. It will now load
in whenever you start a new project.
6: Make sure to Save Your Live Set As something new at this point, otherwise your Default File
may be altered as you explore new tangents and ideas with this notepad way of working.

The Lazy Guide to Ableton Live: Part 2 The Virtual

Keyboard
In the second of our Lazy Guide to Live series we take a look at the virtual keyboard
Unless you own Push or Push 2 in which case, lucky you youll probably be using Live with an
external keyboard. Well, as good as they are, at a very early stage of your notepad composition
process, we reckon that Lives Computer MIDI Keyboard option takes some beating it does the
job of auditioning and recording and, again, lets you jump from clip to clip quicker.
It also takes Live use back to its early days of laptop-only composition. As good as Live is at
breaking out of a software-only environment with Push which seems to be something of a theme
these days what it was really good at offering in those early days was a laptop only way of
putting ideas together, which gave it a huge amount of appeal. You engage the computer keyboard
either by clicking the keyboard icon top right or hitting Shft>Cmnd>K. Play notes using your
computers A and Q rows and use Z and X to shift octaves up and down.
In order to record these, make sure you have Record Enable clicked at the top of the track. Youll
also need to select the Computer Keyboard as a MIDI IN. When you record your notes youll find
that its a fabulous and mobile way of breaking quickly out of rigid loops the clips grow as you
record and you can jam ideas over existing clips.

The Virtual Keyboard Step by Step

1: Lives Computer MIDI Keyboard makes both auditioning and recording a lot more mobile and
faster. Engage it with the icon shown top right, drop-down menu of Shft>Cmnd>K.
2: It turns the Q and A rows of your computers keyboard into a virtual piano keyboard with the A
row taking the white notes; Q the black. Z and X octave down and up respectively.
3: Load up any instrument and youll miraculously be playing its keys, that is if you have the right
track armed, of course. It makes auditioning sounds on clips a dream.
4: But recording is also something that it can take care of, but you may have to select a couple of
quick edits. On the MIDI IN drop down menu select Computer Keyboard.
5: Make sure you Arm Record (top) before playing. Now you can record ideas over your existing
loops, allowing for solos and non-looping parts to be played making your overall song structure less
loop heavy.
6: We found that playing in notes like this and just jamming ideas gave us more of a freedom, to the
point where we left bum notes in or at least those slightly played out of time for a more natural feel.

The Lazy Guide to Ableton Live: Part 3 Creative Clips

You can get creative with clips very quickly and very easily. Firstly, theres the obvious:
copying! Check out more in our guide to creative clips. Check out part 1 and part 2
Copying one clip to another track and listening to it trigger different sounds is one way to fatten up
a bass sound or add extra padding in your upper mids. You are already in the same key, as the
original notes are the same and if you have a templated set up, you will quickly be triggering other
sounds from your favourite synths using your initial clip. Then its very easy to move a few notes
around within a clip and either keep the clip on the same track to provide some melodic variation
over the original track. Another lazy trick is to move a melody clip onto a rhythm track to quickly
get some beats going.
It will be something unusual to start with and perhaps not something youd have come up with just
programming straight beats. This also works the other way around, too. So far, so simple. Copying
clips and throwing different ideas at clips is what Live is all about.
But now, well try a couple of other simple clip variants out to get things moving by using odd-
numbered clip lengths and different start and end points. What Live is really good at doing is
playing four- or eight-bar clips together in a standard dance way, but if you break out of the mould
even a little and have clips cycling around on odd bar lengths, they start to drift away from each
other creating a more random song.
Obviously, this might not be too good for the tightness of dance music, but if you want something a
bit more ambient or random, experiment with clips that stop and start at different timings, or have
very different lengths. They might even have the same note content, but as they are playing at
different times, theyll create different sounds.
In the next parts, well be delving a little deeper to look at the wonders of Follow Actions and Clip
Automation to get really creative.
Creative Clips Step-by-Step

1:Live is all about simple clip editing for variation. It is so easy to do this on a very basic level.
Select a clip, hold down Alt>drag and copy it either to another track or another clip within the same
track.
2: Copying it to another track is particularly good if you have a template arrangement set up (from
two pages back), as you can then trigger more of your favourite sounds with the same MIDI clip.
3: Here, were fattening up our original bass sound from one synth (FM8) with bass sounds from
another (Carbon Electra) just by copying an obvious ploy, but Live makes it so easy to do, why
not?
4: Here, weve done the same thing three times. Weve copied the same pad clip (FM8) to three
string sounds from three instances of the same synth (Oddity) to create an instant string section!
5: Want to create an instant drum groove that is a little but different from the norm? Grab yourself
an original bass-line clip and copy it, but instead of copying it to a melody track copy it to a beats
track.

6: Load in one of Lives many drum kits and drop a melody clip onto it. Some simple note
transposition might be needed, but it will result in beats that work. Try it the other way (from beats
to bass), too!
7: Its also very easy to change a few notes around within a clip and use this as a variation. First,
copy the original clip to the same track (Alt drag) as shown. Double click it to edit the notes
8: Selecting a couple of different notes to change will be enough. A couple of notes on each clip
within a track will make a difference again, its very basic, but worth doing for variation.
9: Make a group of five such varied clips on a track, which well return to for several steps in this
tutorial (and the one opposite). Make sure they each have slightly different notes.
10: Well now look at clip lengths. Live makes it very easy to keep everything rigid and perhaps set
to 4- or 8-bar lengths. Everything locks in nicely, but can sound dull if youre not doing dance.
11: For our five clips on each track, we can set the start and end points differently to shake things up
a bit, which breaks out of the dance-music rigid box. Here, weve set the fourth clip to start and
finish on the second beat.

12: Try this on larger tracks, too. Here, we have two identical string tracks placed on massively
different clip lengths and with different start and end points. They both cycle very differently
resulting in a more ambient feel, even though the notes are lazily the same!

Ableton Live Tutorial: Audio Ins and Outs

Do you need more audio inputs and outputs for your Live rig? Before rushing out to buy
another interface, make sure youre fully exploiting what you already have
(Click images for larger versions)
Sooner or later, we all have a moment when something changes unexpectedly in our studio or live
setup; maybe we borrow a drum machine or synth from a friend, or somebody comes over for a
jam, and suddenly the well-organised rig doesnt quite have enough audio inputs or outputs to go
round.
In the longer term, you can plan to buy another soundcard, or you can use external audio inputs on
your hardware instruments, if they have any, and bodge something together that way. Either way,
right there on the spot, you need something to make it work, and this is where aggregate audio
devices come in, if you have an unused sound card lying around.
Under Mac OS X, we can combine two or more audio interfaces, including the one built into the
computer, so that our favourite music software sees all of the connected physical inputs and outputs
as one virtual device.
This device will be available system-wide for any software, including Ableton live and other
DAWs. In some ways, you might think were not talking about an Ableton Live-specific topic here,
but its incredibly relevant, because Live is at the centre of so many stage and jam rigs. The
understanding of aggregate audio devices fits very neatly into that world, just as you ought to know
how to ReWire different DAWs, how to use MIDI Sync, and so on.
Typically these days, wed be using USB audio interfaces for this. Its the most common form of
connection for audio and MIDI peripherals, although FireWire is still around, and there are a few
Thunderbolt interfaces available, like the Apogee Ensemble, and FireWire interfaces are still around
and FireWire is compatible with Thunderbolt if you have an adaptor. Just to be clear, when I talk
about an audio interface, or a sound card, Im referring to the same thing.
You can combine multiple devices to create the monster aggregate device of your dreams, although
after a certain point, Im not sure whatd happen regarding computer performance and latency I
dont think Ive ever gone further than two interfaces plus built-in audio.
I always make a point of using the mains power adaptors for any interfaces in these setups as well.
The ability to create aggregate audio devices is built into Mac OS X, which is why this entire
tutorial is Mac-only. OS X is very convenient for handling these audio tasks, as well as having deep
MIDI routing capabilities also built in like the ability to configure wireless MIDI networks.
You can use little audio interfaces like the Alesis Core 1, right up to, for example, the RME Fireface
UFX. Live wont recognise a new aggregate audio device until its relaunched, so bear that in mind
if you dont see it listed in Audio Preferences. Talking of which, youll also have to visit
Audio/Input Devices/Configure and Audio/Output Devices/Configure and enable every input and
output that you want to use which is probably all of them! After that, of course, theyll all be
available in in Lives In/Out View.

How you use all those spare connections is up to you; one thing that comes to mind is routing out
and back to external hardware synths and drum machines, especially if youve got something like a
Machinedrum, which has six separate physical outputsthatll plunder your cable stash in double-
quick time.
Same with audio effects you can wire up a hardware reverb, or compressor, and create a
convenient recall by using Lives External Audio Instrument and Effect devices, effectively letting
you include your hardware in chains of presets. By the way, the OS X Audio MIDI Setup utility is
the most important place to view and troubleshoot your audio and MIDI routings, especially as Live
users are so fond of using the IAC Driver to create weird audio setups, like sending MIDI out of
Live and back in again.
A better long-term solution for this is to buy a soundcard with more inputs, and if thats still not
enough, combine it with a mic pre that connects via optical cables. Naturally, youll also have to
make sure your main interface has optical connections, too.
If you take a Focusrite 18i20 for example, and you want to add eight more inputs to it, get a
Focusrite OctoPre and connect them via optical. The 18i20 will appear to Live as usual, without any
special configuration; itll just have more inputs. You can buy long optical cables as well, so the two
units dont have to be physically together. In my studio, I have a five-metre optical cable connecting
a Ferrofish A16, positioned near the hardware synths, to the UFX which is positioned near the
computer.
Aggregate devices arent always the most elegant long-term solutions. But if you have a spare
interface lying around and suddenly you need more, it gets the job done. Under Mac OS X,
creating and managing aggregate devices is about as easy as it gets, and Live has no problem
identifying and using them. Whether youre going to use this on a day-to-day basis or not, its
something to get familiar with in advance of the day when you might need it to get you out of a
hole!

Focus On a Workaround or a Long-Term Plan

Is it worth buying another soundcard just so you can do this? Truthfully, Id say no! I view
aggregate audio devices strictly as a workaround for those situations where youre caught short on
the input front, like when theres a gear failure in the studio, or youre having a jam with a group of
players and there simply arent enough physical inputs to do it properly. If youre looking to expand
on your available inputs long-term, a better option would be to add something that connects to your
existing interface via an optical cable, like Focusrites OctoPre or RMEs OctaMic.

Step by Step Aggregate Audio Devices

1:An aggregate audio device is a name for the connecting and configuring multiple hardware audio
interfaces, so that they appear as one continuous set of inputs and outputs in software.
2:Youll need a Mac running Live, and one or more audio interfaces, to follow our steps. Any
relatively recent version of Mac OS X should do, and Im afraid that, yes, this is Mac-only.

3: This can scale up from small to very big rigs. For starters, lets say you want a simple DJ cueing
setup, which requires two separate stereo outputs, but you only have a basic stereo soundcard.
4:You can combine your Macs headphone output with soundcard output to make a virtual
interface with two stereo outputs, and set them up so one outputs to PA/mixer, the other to your
headphones.

5: Make sure your soundcard is connected as usual probably via USB. You dont want Live open
yet. Go the OS X Utilities folder, which is inside the Applications folder, and open Audio MIDI
Setup.
6: From the Audio Devices window, youll see a panel that lists all recognised interfaces and any
existing aggregate audio devices. Click + to add a new one, and rename it something sensible.