Ableton Live 11 Tutorial | FREE COURSE | Ableton Live 11 Beginner Tutorial

Hi there it's Tomas George and welcome to  this Ableton Live 11 beginners tutorial   in this video we're going to show everything  you need to know to get started making music   we take you through many essentials of Ableton  Live such as the main interface of the software   using the session and arrangement views recording  and editing MIDI and audio creating music with   clips quantizing arranging your ideas exporting  your song out of the software and many other   tricks and tips to speed up your workflow this  video is a follow-along guide so you can practice   the techniques we teach you while creating your  first song so by the end of this video you should   have the skills so you can begin to make music  in ableton live i've also added chapters to this   video so feel free to skip forward at any point  if you want to move on to the next topic you can   access these chapters via the youtube scribble bar  and you can view the timestamps for these chapters   in the video description this video is a condensed  line version of the first section of our complete   course which covers many more advanced aspects  of music production in Ableton Live if you're   interested then you can access our complete course  via the link in the description below this video   okay so before we start creating a song i'm going  to cover the very basics of this software to cater   for complete beginners hi there and welcome to  this video where i'm going to go over the very   basics of how ableton live works so you can have  some understanding of the workflow before we begin   to create music we'll cover everything in a lot  more detail later on but I just want to give you a   quick overview of the interface and the workflow  of ableton live so you can understand how this   software works one thing to note though the first  part of this video is aimed at complete beginners   so if you've used any previous versions  of ableton live then I recommend skipping   forward to 21 minutes and 42 seconds where we  cover ableton live in more detail so this is   what ableton live should look like when you  open up a new session or set as it's called   one thing i'll mention first is that ableton live  has a hint panel down here and it's called the   info view and you can show and hide this info view  with this small triangle down here in the bottom   left so this is a very useful feature that i  recommend you keep open if you're a beginner   when you hover your cursor over something in  ableton live this info box will give you a brief   description of this feature or area for example  if i move my mouse over some items in ableton live   you can see here we have a brief description  about these so this is useful if you ever get   stuck so i do just recommend leaving this  open whilst you're learning the software   okay so i'm going to go over the interface first  so you've got a rough idea of what you're looking   at as you can see ableton live is split into a  number of different areas and each of these have   different uses in the music production process  so the first area i want to talk about now is   the browser the browser is this area here on the  left hand side and if you cannot see the browser   then you need to click on this small arrow in the  top left and this will open and close the browser   so the browser is used to access all of your  instruments sounds and effects these can be things   such as software instrument presets for example  a bass synth or keyboard sound to use on a MIDI   track we also have audio samples for example drum  loops or melodies which we can use on audio tracks   there's also plugins and effects to use  when mixing such as reverb delay or EQ   so these can be loaded onto different tracks in  Ableton Live so the browser helps make ableton   live really quick and easy to use as you  can access files and plugins very quickly   i've just opened up another ableton live set  to help run through how this software works   so there are two main views in ableton live  the session view and the arrangement view   right now we're looking at the session view  if you're not currently looking at the same   view as me then you can swap between the  two views by pressing the tab button on   your computer's keyboard or by pressing one of  these little buttons over here in the top right   i'm going to focus on the session view first which  is this area here here we can see our different   tracks listed across the session view each one of  these columns is a different track for example we   have a track for the base for the drums the guitar  and so on and so forth we actually have both MIDI   and audio tracks which are slightly different but  they are both used to create musical parts simply   put midi is used to digitally write in or record  musical information which is then turned into   audio using a software instrument audio tracks  are slightly different they are used to playback   audio samples for example drum loops guitar bass  or recorded vocals on each track you'll notice   that we have a number of these little rectangles  and these are clip slots so we create clips which   hold midi or audio information and these can  be used to store your different musical ideas   clips can then be played back to jam out different  ideas to help you build a song so you can loop   clips or play them back at different times to  help you come up with musical arrangements so to   play back a clip simply press on a little play  icon on the clip let me just show you this now   you can pause the clips playing  back by pressing the spacebar   or stop them by pressing the stop button on  the track you can start and stop clips at   different times during playback to start  structuring your ideas you can also play   multiple clips at once by pressing the scene  play button over here so instead of just playing   one individual clip it will play all of the  clips in the same row or seen as it's called   so you can stop all clips with a stoppable  clips button down here or just pause them with   the spacebar so playing back clips in the session  view is a really intuitive way of creating music   but you can then use the arrangement  view to stretch these ideas into a song   so now if i swap over to the arrangement  view with this little icon in the top right   you'll be able to see the more traditional  timeline now you'll notice our tracks are no   longer listed across the top of the page they're  flipped and they're down the right hand side   so in the session view all of our tracks are  listed vertically whereas in the arrangement   view the tracks are flipped and they are listed  horizontally if you've ever used other digital   audio workstations in the past such as logic pro  or pro tools you'll notice they look more similar   to this view along the top of the arrangement  view we have our timeline measured in bars   and at the bottom we have our timeline  measured in minutes and seconds   as you can see here we have a number of  clips already arranged on the timeline   i'll just play this back you can do so  with the play icon at the top of the screen   however if your tracks are grayed out you'll need  to press the back to arrangement button which is   the small orange button over here and this will  allow you to play back in the arrangement view you can pause playback with either the  spacebar or the stop icon up here at the top   you can move the position of the  playhead by clicking in the arrangement   or you can instantly start playback by  clicking on the scrub area at the top here so when you're in the arrangement view  you organize your clips into a specific   order on the timeline to structure a song  this is different to the session view where   the clips can be played back or looped in any  order so the session view holds your musical   ideas whereas the arrangement view is used  to structure your different ideas into a song   so the general workflow i'd recommend in ableton  live is that you come up with most of your   musical ideas in the session view and then you  structure them into a song in the arrangement view   one thing to note you don't have to  use a session view in ableton live   just like many other digital audio workstations  you can simply come up with all of your ideas   in the arrangement view if you like however  in my opinion if you don't use the session   view then you're really missing out  on the best features of ableton live   don't worry if you're a little confused at the  moment we're going to be going over all of this   again in more detail in future lectures i just  wanted you to get familiar with the workflow first   okay so that's the end of this video i hope  now you're starting to understand how ableton   live works but again we're going to cover this  in a lot more detail later on in this course   so thanks for watching and i'll see you in the  next one hi there and welcome to this video where   we're going to continue looking at the basics of  Ableton Live 11. so we've shown you the session   view and arrangement view and now we're going to  have a look at creating clips firstly let's create   an audio clip you can record audio directly  into a clip but to keep things simple for now   I'm going to choose a sample from the browser so  let's go over to the browser and choose a sample   so here we have samples and this is where audio  files are stored in the browser we can listen   to the different samples that are available by  clicking with the mouse once or scrolling down   with the arrow keys on the keyboard to stop the  audition playing back just press the space bar   I want to choose a shaker sample though so I'm  going to type in shaker in the search up here   now once you find a sample that you like  all you have to do is drag the sample   over to an audio track and drop it into an empty  clip slot and this will create an audio clip let's now have a look at the clip view  to access it just double click on a clip   and the clip view is this area down here  in here we can see the audio waveform of   the clip that's been selected okay let's  now find another audio clip in the browser   i'm going to now type in the word bouncy  beat as I know the sample that i want to use   okay i'm going to select this drum loop  and let's drag it over onto an empty clip   slot onto the other audio track okay so now we  have a couple of clips let's now play them back   I'm just going to turn these  down as they were quite loud   okay so now let's create another type of clip  and this time we're going to use a midi track   when working with midi we need to do things a  little differently so what i'm going to do is   double click on an empty clip slot on the midi  track this will open up the midi note editor in   the clip view at the bottom here the midi note  editor is where we can write in and edit midi   midi allows us to write musical information  to be played back by Ableton Live   you can record in midi using either a midi device  or your computer keyboard but we'll be going over   this in detail later on in this course okay  i'm just going to quickly draw in a chord   i'll do so by double clicking  to draw in some notes   i'm just going to drag to resize  these so the one bar in length   okay so now let's try and play back this midi  clip i'll press the play button on this clip notice how we cannot actually hear anything  while the clip is being played back   this is because midi tracks need an instrument to  create sound so i'll just quickly show you how to   load an instrument onto a midi track to do so go  over to your browser and then find an instrument   so let's click on instruments here in the browser  notice how we don't see anything at the moment   and that's because our search is still active  so i'm just going to hit this x in the search   bar at the top to reset the search okay  so here we have our different instruments   we can look at the different preset sounds that  are available for each instrument by clicking on   the small triangle next to each instrument see  here we have a number of different instrument   sounds i'm just going to use simpler as this  is available on all editions of ableton live   just like with audio you can audition sounds by  clicking once or scrolling down with arrow keys   once you've found the sound that you like  you can simply click and drag the instrument   onto your midi track at the bottom here you'll  notice now that we see a different window this   is called the device view the device view shows us  the instrument that's loaded onto our midi track   here we can make changes to how our instrument  sounds you can swap between the device view   and the clip view with this tab at the bottom  here this allows you to jump between the midi   note editor and the instrument that is loaded  on the track when i play this clip back once   again you'll notice we will now be able to hear  the midi information that we previously wrote in   this is because this midi track now has  an instrument loaded onto it audio tracks   simply play audio samples so they don't need an  instrument right so let's create another midi   clip on this track now so i'll double click on an  empty clip slot and now in the midi note editor   i'm going to draw in a few notes so same again  i'm going to double click to draw in some notes then select these notes and  extend them to the one bar   okay so now we've got a few clips let's play back  some of them start making a rough arrangement so as you can see there it's really quick  and easy to start building up a song idea   using the clips in the session view right  so now let's add a bass part to this groove   so i'm going to look in the browser again and  find another sound let's use a simpler instrument   again and this time i'm going to open up the base  folder i'm going to use this one here called bass let's drag this over to midi track one  let's now double click on an empty clip   slot to create a new clip and to open up the  midi note editor let's now write in a note i'm just going to move this clip  down now to the third clip slot   right let's play these parts back i'll  start off by playing about this first scene right now i've got a few different tracks and  we've come up with a very basic arrangement   now i'll show you how to get  this into the arrangement view   so all we have to do is click on this arrangement  record button at the top here and then start   playing back our clips before you press record  i'd recommend pressing the stop or clips button   now when we hit record we should have a one  by counting and we'll be able to record our   ideas into the arrangement view so let's hit  record and record this into the arrangement view my so once you've finished playing the  arrangement just press the space bar   now if we go back to the arrangement view we'll  be able to see the clips that we just recorded   to listen back to what you recorded make  sure you press the back to arrangement button   which is this orange button here so as  you can see there we can start editing   and building upon these ideas to turn them into  a song hi there and welcome to this video where   i'm going to show you the basics of some of the  track controls so if you ever want to listen to   one track on its own then you can press the solo  button on the track let me just show you now you can adjust the volume of a track by  clicking and dragging this slider left or right you can adjust the panning of a track so how  far left or right it appears in the stereo image   and you can double click to go back to  the default you can deactivate a track   by clicking on this orange icon here  and this effectively mutes the track   and you can click once more to reactivate the  track okay so something else to note we can also   access these controls from within the session view  as well so let's go back over to the session view as you can see here on the track  we have our different icons   so we have a volume as a fader  here we have a panning as a dial   and we also have our solo and the activate icons  here whatever changes you make in the session view   will also affect the arrangement view and vice  versa right so that's the very basics of ableton   live we're going to start creating a new song  from scratch in the next section where we'll be   going into a lot more detail of the processes  involved when creating music in ableton live   so this may seem quite complex right now but  i just wanted to give you an overview of how   ableton live works before we actually get  into making music hopefully now you should   have a basic understanding of the workflow of  this software however don't worry if not we're   going to go over all of this again in a lot more  detail in the following videos in this course   in the next part of this video ian alexander will  take over and start making a song from scratch   going over many features and functions of  ableton live to get you started making music   right away this video is just a condensed  version of the first part of our complete   ableton live 11 course in the full course we go  over numerous topics such as songwriting mixing   ableton live instruments and much more to access  our complete course which is over 20 hours long   just check out the link in the description below  this video hi there it's ian alexander here i'm   now going to take you through the steps involved  when creating a song in ableton live i'm going   to go over the basics first so feel free to  skip forwards using the timestamps if you like   so first of all i'm going to show you how to open  up a new set so we can start from scratch so just   go to file and down to new live set you can also  use a shortcut command in n on mac or control and   n on windows okay so this is what a new set  looks like now the first thing i want to do   is set the tempo of my project the tempo is the  speed or beats per minute of the music the genre   of music i'm going to create is trap so i've got  a good idea of the tempo that i'd like to use   different styles and genres of music will often  have different tempos so you don't need to use   the same as me however if you want to follow  along and make the same song then i'd recommend   choosing the same so to change your tempo go up  to the top here where you can see these numbers   this here says 120 so that's 120 beats per minute  to change it you can just click and drag up or   down so if i pull it down we'll be slowing down  the tempo if i increase it we'll be increasing   it you can also click on this box and type in  a number and then hit enter and this will save   it as your tempo now to hear the speed of your  tempo you'll need to turn on the metronome to do   so go to this icon here click on it once and it'll  light up orange now when you press the space bar you can hear the metronome at 300 beats per minute  to stop the metronome press spacebar once again   i'm going to click on this  and bring down the tempo now when i press spacebar again you can hear the tempo is much slower you can  also start and stop playback with the play and   stop buttons here right another way to change  tempo is by using the tap tempo this is a really   handy feature which allows you to click a button  at the speed you would like your song to be at   so for example you can listen to a reference track   and tap in time with it to match the  tempo so if i click on this tap icon here so as you can see there when i was clicking on  this tap tempo icon the tempo of my project has   actually changed so that's two ways to change  the tempo of your project i'm just going to   click here and type in 170 as i mentioned before  that's the tempo that i want to use for my song   and then hit enter so it's not essential that you  change your tempo before you start creating a song   but as i say it does make it a little bit  easier to get vibe for the song you're creating   i'm now going to go over the differences between  audio and midi tracks while i start building up   some parts of this song right first of all let's  look at audio tracks as these ones here so audio   tracks hold audio files these can be pre-recorded  samples or sounds that come with ableton live   or even recordings created by you so all you have  to do is add an audio file to one of these clip   slots and you'll be able to play it back audio is  in some ways more simple than midi as you don't   have to load a software instrument onto the track  as i say you simply just drop the file onto the   track and you'll be able to play it back i'll  quickly show you an example so i'm going to go   over to my browser which is this area here and i'm  going to select samples samples are audio files   now i'm just going to listen to a  couple of these and find one that i like if you want to stop the sample preview hit  the spacebar if you can't actually hear the   preview make sure this little headphone icon  is illuminated you can do so by clicking on it right i'm just going to find an audio loop so i'm  just going to search my browser and type in loop okay that one's fine now all you have to do   is click and drag it over to your audio track  and drop it into one of the empty clip slots   this has now created an audio clip you can play  it back by clicking on this play button here and stop it by pressing the stop button down here   you can also pause the loop  by pressing the space bar you can open up your clip by double clicking  on it and this will open up the sample display   in the clip view which is this area down  here here we can see the audio waveform   what this is is a visual representation of  the audio signal if i play my clip back now you can see the playhead moving along showing how  far through the clip we are right i'm just going   to go into the browser and find another loop this  time i'm going to search for a percussive loop so   i'm looking for a tambourine sound so i go  into the browser and start typing in tambourine okay i'll choose that one i'm just  going to drag this into a new clip   so as you can see you can have multiple  different clips on the same audio track   and these will both play back  the individual audio files one thing you may notice when i  played back the preview in the browser is actually at a different  speed to the clip in our session this is because ableton automatically time  stretches the loops so they fit in time   with your set this is because of something  called warping if your loop is not in time   with your project just open up the clip by  double clicking and in the sample editor   just make sure this warp button is illuminated  if i play it back without warp selected is going to play back at its original tempo right so adding audio clips is as simple as  that once you've loaded a clip onto a track   you can move it around into any other empty  clip slot you can even move clips between   different audio tracks to delete your clips  you can simply select them and press backspace   or right click and select delete so there's  absolutely loads of different samples that   come with ableton live and this can be a  really quick and easy way of making music   something else that you can do in ableton  is record in your own audio clips this is   a very useful feature i'm not going to cover  that just yet as i want to go over midi first   so midi tracks are slightly different to audio  tracks and this because they contain midi   information midi tracks allow you to create music  using virtual instruments you can write in or   record midi information which can be manipulated  or edited at any time in the midi note editor this   information is then played back with a virtual  or software instrument which creates the sound   for example you can use drum kits synthesizers  or any third-party instruments you may have   so an audio file is a pre-recorded sample  which is simply played back on the audio track   midi tracks have software instruments loaded onto  them and sounds are then triggered using midi   so at the moment we've got our audio clip opened  up and we can see the audio file if i double click   on an empty clip slot on a midi track you'll see  here the midi note editor has opened up this is   where we can write in our midi note information  any midi notes that we now draw in will be stored   in this clip so in the midi editor you'll notice  we can see a piano keyboard flipped vertically this is where you can write in musical notes  to be played back by a software instrument   the pitch of the notes is represented vertically  and the timing is represented horizontally   i'm going to go over the midi note editor  in a lot of detail in future lectures   but right now i just want to show you  how to load on a software instrument   i'm just going to create a basic chord with the  notes c e and g i'm going to select them all   by clicking and dragging over them and extend  the length so it's the full length of the bar to play back a midi clip just like an  audio clip you simply press the play button you'll notice there my audio clip also started  playing back at the same time that's because i   hadn't pressed the stop button on the audio track  first now if i play this midi clip once again you'll notice we can't actually hear anything if  you look down here you'll be able to see these   yellow dots illuminating so that's just showing  us that midi signal is being received but you'll   notice we couldn't hear anything that's because a  midi track which has not been assigned a software   instrument will make no sound midi is simply  musical note information and each midi track   needs to convert this information into sound using  a software instrument so this is where we need   to look at the browser once again so i'm going to  go over to the instrument category in the browser   i'm just going to press close because we don't  actually have a tambourine instrument available   to us so we weren't able to see all the options  available to us the list down here is displaying   all the instruments that we have available  in ableton live you may have less instruments   if you're using a basic version of ableton this  version is sweet i'm just going to go over to   simpler because this instrument is available on  all versions of ableton live so to look at the   presets click on the little arrow to open the drop  down box here we can see some different sounds   i'm just going to go to piano and keys and  choose simplest piano since recording this   video ableton live has changed the name of this  instrument preset to grand piano single sample   if you'd like to use the same sound as  me please choose this preset name instead so we can hear the preview  of it being played back there   right so now what i need to do is  click and drag this onto my midi track   this won't actually go in a clip  slot it just needs to be dropped   anywhere onto the track and it will  load this instrument onto the midi track we'll be able to see now this window has opened  up and this is displaying our software instrument   now if i play this clip back once again we can hear there the chord is being played  back so looking back down at this window at   the software instrument this is where we can  make changes to our sound the area that we can   see our software instrument in is called the  device view if you want to swap between the   device view and the midi note editor go down  to the bottom right and click on this tab here   this will open up the midi note editor once again  you can also use the keyboard shortcut shift and   tab to swap between these two views now something  else i'll mention quickly is if we look at our two   different midi tracks now you'll be able to tell  that the one with an instrument loaded onto it   looks different to the one without if i go back to  the device view down here click on my instrument   and press backspace this will delete it watch what  happens to my midi track now you can see there   our meter and dials have disappeared now when i  play the clip back once again we're just seeing   these yellow dots light up and we're not getting  any sound if i put my instrument back on again   you'll see there the meter has  reappeared and when i play the clip   you can hear our chord being played back so just  be aware if your midi track ever looks like this   you won't get any sound so just to clarify  an audio track will always be able to play   back its audio clips whereas a midi track needs a  software instrument audio tracks will always have   the meter and dials displaying down here whatever  sample you load onto your audio track will be   exactly what you hear so if you're a complete  beginner you'll now hopefully understand the   differences between midi and audio i'm now going  to show you how to use the computer midi keyboard   so just like in other digital audio workstations  you don't have to write in midi notes you can also   play them in i'm not going to show you how to  record midi just yet but i want to show you how   you can set up your midi keyboard and the really  handy feature which is the computer midi keyboard   so if you don't have a midi controller you can  actually play in notes using your computer's   qwerty keyboard so all you need to do is click  on this little icon at the top right here   so it's illuminated orange this shows  that your computer midi keyboard is now   activated now what you need to do is select  the track that you'd like to trigger notes on   and then make sure this icon down here which  is the record arm button make sure that is   lit up red just do so by clicking on it now this  track is armed and ready to receive information   so the main keys to worry about the moment is  the middle row of keys on your computer keyboard   so that is a all the way up to l if i  play the letter a on my keyboard now it's playing the note c on my midi keyboard  i'm just going to open up the midi note editor   by double clicking on this clip so you can see  which note we're playing see now we're playing c3   you can change the octave by pressing z or  x to move down or up so if i press z once   and then play the a on my keyboard we're playing c an octave down  press x we go up an octave and we can go back down so with this you  can play chords or notes on your midi track you can toggle the computer midi keyboard on  and off by using the shortcut m on your keyboard   see when i'm pressing m the icon at  the top right is turning off and on so just like a real piano keyboard we have our  row of white notes then we also have the black   notes just above the black notes start from the  letter w next i'm going to show you how to set   up your midi keyboard or midi device so let me  first mention what a midi controller actually is   a midi controller is a hardware device that allows  you to transmit midi notes or midi data some midi   devices also have buttons sliders or dials that  you can control other parameters with for example   pitch bend or modulation right so if you have a  midi keyboard or midi device you'll need to make   sure that it's set up correctly enabled in life so  to do this we need to go to preferences on windows   go up to options and choose preferences and on a  mac go over to live and then select preferences   right in your preferences you need to navigate  to the link tempo midi tab here and it should   look something like this i'm not going to  go over everything in detail now i'm just   going to show you what you need to know to use  your midi controller once you're at the screen   make sure your midi controller is plugged in  i'm going to plug mine in now right i've got   an axiom air mini 32 and as you can see it  has automatically recognized it in ableton   so all you need to do is make sure that these  track buttons are selected you may as well select   them all but the most important is the midi in  so that's already sorted now if i go back to   my track and make sure my track is selected record  armed and has a software instrument loaded onto it   then when i place some keys on my  keyboard we should be able to hear   something else to check if you can't hear  anything make sure monitor is set to auto mode okay great that's working straight away now  whenever you select a different midi track   if it has an instrument loaded onto it you'll  be able to hear sounds so i'm going to drag   software instrument onto this other track now it's  selected and record armed if i play some notes so we can control either of the midi tracks right so that was very easy it actually  set it up automatically now i'm just going to   unplug this device and show you how it's set up  in a slightly different way so if we go back to   preferences again so that's options preferences  on windows or live then preferences on a mac now we can see this control surface is  no longer active so i'm just going to   set it back to his default now i'm just  going to plug in my other midi controller this time it's the impact gx61 and this  isn't actually recognized by ableton   see it's not popped up in the control  surface box it's also not listed down here so don't worry if this is the case with your  midi controller you'll still be able to use it   just make sure you've got track selected on in  midi one right once you've got track selected   you should be able to play midi notes back so i'm  just going to close preferences and try it out   make sure my track selected and there we can see our new  midi controller is working   so it's really easy to do this in ableton i just  wanted to go over this quickly early on so you're   all set up i just want to show you one thing  quickly so i'm going to go back to my preferences   if you're a more experienced ableton user and you  have an advanced midi controller i'd recommend   going back to preferences and checking a few more  boxes i won't go over these settings in detail now   but these settings will enable you to utilize more  features of your midi controller you can do things   such as start or stop playback in ableton using  your controller or also map different faders or   dials to parameters within ableton live or even  trigger clips in ableton with buttons on your   controller so you may as well select all of these  buttons here if you have an advanced controller   this will just enable all of its features   okay your midi controller should now be set  up to follow along with the rest of the class   don't worry if you do not have a midi controller  you can always use the computer midi keyboard   and this will allow you to play in notes on your  computer's qwerty keyboard now we've gone over the   essentials and you're all set up let's actually  start creating a song so first of all i'm going   to delete the midi clip that we created on the  piano part as we just don't need it for the song   i'm also going to delete these two audio  tracks as we don't need those at the moment   so to delete a track select it by clicking on the  name at the top and then press backspace you can   also delete a track by right-clicking and going to  delete okay i'm going to add a bass sound to this   track here so i'm going to go to instruments  go to simpler bass and then find a bass sound okay this one seems fine so what i'm going  to do is click and drag it onto this track   you'll notice we already have an instrument there  so when i drag over this new instrument it will   replace it see we've now got the b bass on this  track right i'm just going to create a new clip   by double clicking on an empty clip slot on this  track the midi note editor should then open up   right i'll just quickly go over some of the  features of the midi note editor at the top   we have our timeline so over on the left at  bar number one we have beat one of the first   bar here's beat two here's beat three here's beat  four and we have other beat divisions in between   over on the left we see our keyboard which  is flipped vertically representing our pitch   if you want to hear the pitch of these notes  you just need to activate this headphone icon   here by clicking on it when it is blue if you  click on a note you'll be able to hear the pitch   you can move down to a lower octave  by scrolling on the midi note editor so the most simple way to draw  a note is by double clicking so we can edit our notes in  a variety of different ways   clicking dragging the center of the note allows  us to move it either in time or pitch so to change   the timing of the note clicking drag left or right  and change the pitch click and drag up or down   hovering over the start or end of the note allows  us to change length by clicking and dragging   you can either make it longer or shorter right now i've got this note the full length of  the bar i'm just going to play back this clip   so i'll just click on this  play icon next to the clip you can stop it by clicking on the stop  icon here or pressing the space bar to pause   so when playing it back you'll notice that this  clip is one bar in length and it continues to loop when making music it's common to use four or eight  bar loops so i'm going to change this clip so it's   8 bars in length as i already have an idea of the  bass part i'm going to write to change the length   of your clip you can simply click and drag this  little arrow on the right hand side you can make   it shorter by dragging left or longer by dragging  to the right one thing that's important to note   is be very careful of where your clip ends if it's  too long or too short it will not loop correctly   and your music will get out of time so we need  to drag this over so it ends exactly at bar nine as you can see this might take quite a  while as it doesn't do it very quickly   so a better way to do this is go  over to the left-hand side here   and see where it says length click on this number  and type in the length that you'd like i want it   to be 8 bars long so i'll just type in 8 and  hit enter you can see now our clip is 8 bars   you can adjust the horizontal zoom of  the midi note editor by using the key   commands plus a minus on your keyboard so if i  press plus we'll zoom in a minus will zoom out you can also hover the mouse at the top here  until this magnifying glass icon appears   if you then click and drag up or down it'll  zoom in and zoom out to zoom vertically   hold alt on windows or option on mac and scroll again you can also zoom vertically if you  hover the mouse over to the left hand side here   when the magnifying glass appears  you can click and drag left and right i'm just going to zoom in a tiny bit  more and start drawing in my notes   so the first note i want is an f so  i'm just going to drag this down to f1   the letter on the note dictates the pitch  and the number dictates the octave now   i'm going to click and drag the end of  this note so there's two bars in length   so we want to go to the end of the second  bar right if i play this clip back now we can see there we're slowly  moving through the clip and it's looped back to the start again  right so let's draw in some more notes   this time i'm going to draw in a g so i'm going to  double click here at the start of bar 3 and then   i'll extend this note out so it's again 2 bars in  length now there's a handy feature to speed up the   process of drawing notes you can actually copy  notes so if you click and drag a note it'll move but if you hold down the ctrl key on windows  or the option key on mac while dragging   you'll see here this little plus icon has appeared  now if i let go of the mouse before i release the   option key it has copied the note over now i'm  going to change the pitch of this so it's an a another way to quickly duplicate a note is  right click and select duplicate now we just   have the same note starting where this one ends  so click and drag this up to the right pitch now   okay let's play that back okay great now something else to be aware  of if you ever make a mistake when working   in the midi note editor so for example  if you accidentally duplicated a note   you could just press command z on a mac or  ctrl z on windows to undo your last step if you continue to press ctrl z or  command z it will undo the previous steps if you've pressed undo too many  times you can actually use the redo   function if you want to redo  you can use the key command   shift command z on a mac or shift ctrl z  on windows this will redo the previous step if you already have some music theory  knowledge you can come up with your own parts   however if you're a complete beginner feel free  to copy mine right i'm now going to create another   new part so i'm going to close the midi note  editor by clicking on this arrow in the bottom   right here now i'm going to go into my browser  and choose a new preset for another track so   this time i'm going to access an instrument from  the core library i'm going to use the core library   as this has lots of sounds that are available  in most editions of ableton live to access it   go down to places and click on packs then click  on the drop down box on core library and go down   to racks here i'm going to choose instrument racks  and i'm going to open up this folder here mallets   right i'll just scroll through a couple  of these and see if there's one i like okay that one sounds quite good so what i'm  going to do now is load this onto our other track   another way of loading an instrument onto a track  rather than clicking dragging is select the track   that you'd like to load the instrument onto and  then just double click on the instrument it's   now loaded on this track okay so for this part i  want an arpeggio style part something like this   okay so i'm going to draw this midi in once  again so i'm going to create a new clip by   double clicking on an empty clip slot and now we  can see the midi note editor now we already have   our bass line and something you need to be aware  of when writing music is the key that you're in   for this song to keep things simple i'm going to  be using the key c major this is often considered   the easiest key to understand as it does not use  any sharps or flats which are the black notes on   the keyboard so in c major we only use the white  notes now one feature that's new for ableton live   11 which i really like is a scale feature in the  midi note editor so if we go over to the left here   you can see this box it says scale if you click  on this you can choose the scale that you'd like   to be in here it's already set to c major now  any notes that are in the scale that we want   will be highlighted so as we can see here all  of the white notes have been highlighted blue if i was to change this to a different key  for example g sharp major we can see now   different notes being highlighted  lots of the sharps and flats so this is a really great feature for  beginners which helps you understand   which notes to use one other thing i'll mention  real quickly while we're looking at this feature   is if you click on the scale button up here  it actually removes any notes that are not   in the scale so now we're only seeing the  white notes personally i wouldn't recommend   using this as it's good to have the whole piano  roll open to help you understand where all the   different notes are so i'm going to disable  it for now feel free to use it if you like   but your music theory will improve quicker if  you get used to looking at piano roll like this   if i look at my bass part we can just check to  make sure we're using the correct notes so i'll   activate the scale feature in this clip and there  we can see we've only used these white notes here   okay let's start writing in our new part  so these are the notes i wanted to play as you can see there when it's playing  notes on my keyboard they're lighting up   in the midi note editor this also works  when using the computer midi keyboard   if you don't have a midi controller  so now i know the first note i want   to write in is this f so i'm going  to double click to draw in here the next note i want to draw in is a c i'm going  to draw this in one eighth note away from this f   so the f is the first eighth note of the bar  the second eighth note starts here two sixteenth   notes are the length of one eighth note at the  moment our grid is set sixteenth notes we know   this because there's sixteen beat divisions  in this bar right i'm going to draw the c here the d on beat 2 of the bar i'm  going to draw a g just here right let's hear that back okay great i'm going to  draw in a few more notes now right let's listen to this back okay that sounds fine one thing you may notice  each of these notes are exactly the same volume   so in ableton live you can actually adjust the  velocity of each note the velocity determines   how hard a note is played so with a high  velocity the note will be played very hard   and will therefore be louder with a low velocity  the notes will be played back more quietly so to   adjust velocity we need to go down this little  window here if you can't see it just make sure   this arrow is pointing out to the right and  that this top icon here is illuminated orange now if you hover the mouse  over we'll get this icon   and we can make the velocity  window slightly larger   so these bars here represent the velocity for each  note as we can see they're all exactly the same   now i'm going to adjust velocity for some of  these slightly so we can hear the difference right let's hear that back see it just sounds a little bit more natural  now the notes aren't all being played back at   the exact same velocity little changes like this  can make a big difference to your song so far i've   only shown you how to play back one clip at a time  but we can actually playback both clips at the   same time if we press the play button over on the  right hand side here this is the scene play button   the scene is the row of clips so we can see the  numbers on the side here are numbering each scene   so when i play this back it's going to  play both of these let's have a listen notice when we're playing that back this  part seems to clash with the bass a little   so what i'm going to do is turn this midi  clip into an eight bar clip so we can add   some more notes and vary them slightly so  to do so i'm going to go over to length here   click and then type in eight then when  i hit enter we now have an 8 bar loop now i'm just going to select these six notes here then hold option on a mac or control on windows   and click and drag them over  this will copy all of the notes now let's have a listen back i'm going to  press the master stop button now to stop   all clips so i can listen back  to this clip on its own once more okay great that sounds fine now you may  have noticed when i copied those over   it didn't just copy the notes it  also copied the velocity information   so duplicating notes can be quicker than drawing  them in individually as it saves you adjusting   velocity once again right i'm just going to show  you another way that you can copy your notes   so i'm going to press command a on mac or ctrl a  on windows to select all of my notes now i'm going   to press command c or control c on windows now i'm  going to go and click at the top of the bar here   in this gray area to set the marker to this point  now when i press command v on mac or control v   on windows it will paste them to this new  position all right so let's listen back once more now we've got the exact same part once again i'm  just going to change a picture of this note here   so it fits with the bass part a little  better so i'm going to move it up to a g i'm going to paste these  again once more at bar five so i'm going to click on this dark  gray area here to set the marker   and press paste once again which  is command v on a mac or control v   on windows and this time i'm just going to  move that first note once again but up to an a let's go to bar seven and  paste again so i'll click here   and press the command v this time i'm  going to move this first note to a b and now we've got an eight bar loop so  let's listen to this back with the bass   by clicking on the play button on the scene right that sounds much better we've now  got an arpeggiated part in time with our bass okay so now we've written in a couple of musical  parts you should have a basic understanding of   midi now we can move on to some more advanced  features so a huge part of music production is   recording in this video i'm going to show you  how you can record midi into clips so first of   all let's create a new track so i'm going to  go up to create and select insert midi track i'm going to add a new instrument and  this time i want to choose a pad sound   so this is going to be playing back some long  held chords so i'm going to go to pax core library   devices instruments and now  i'm going to choose simpler in here we have some pad sounds   so i'm just going to play a couple of  these back and see which ones are like   okay that one sounds fine so i'm just going to  select the track that i want to load it onto   and double click on the instrument now this instrument is loaded onto this track   now to record in we're going to need  to use the computer midi keyboard   or a midi controller so make sure your computer  midi keyboard is activated by clicking on this   icon up here so it's illuminated or alternatively  make sure your midi controller is set up   right so the first thing we need to do is make  sure we've got the track selected that we'd   like to record onto and make sure it's record  armed so this icon here should be lit up red now if you place some notes  on your computer midi keyboard you should be getting signal alternatively if   you're using a midi keyboard  just double check with this right one thing you may notice on this track we  actually have little circles on the left hand side   so when recording midi into a clip you don't  actually need to create a new clip first   all we've got to do is hit this record  icon and that will record midi information   into a new clip if these are still stop  buttons your track is not record enabled   notice when i hit the record  enable button on the other tracks   these squares turn into circles so that  is the track that is ready to record   when i press this record button we'll  hear the metronome clicking four times   right now i don't want to hear  these two clips being played back   when i hit record so i'm just going to go and  click on the stop all clips button over here okay so now when i hit this record icon we're  going to hear a one bar count in from metronome   and then it'll start recording you'll notice there when the counting  stopped the clip started recording   i didn't actually play anything until after three  bars in so something you'll probably want to do   when recording is activate the metronome so  you can keep in time to turn the metronome on   simply click on this icon here and this will  glow orange the metronome will now continue   while recording one thing to note so if you didn't  have any time before the clip started recording   make sure you go into your metronome settings  by clicking on the little drop down arrow here   we can select different options for the metronome  here we have our count in so you can have none one   bar two bars or four bars we can also change  the sound and the rhythm of the metronome   there's also a handy feature here which  says enable only while recording so this   means you'll only hear the metronome when you're  recording you won't hear it during normal playback   right i'm just going to delete this clip because  i recorded the part in very badly so i'll click   on the clip and press backspace if you do want  to hear your other clips while you're recording   just press play on the scene on the right hand  side and then press the spacebar to stop playback   these clips will now be activated so when i hit  record they will also play this is often vital   when recording okay i'm now going to record in  a chord for eight bars okay let's hit record okay great we can see the notes  here that we've recorded in   one thing to mention if you do make a mistake  when recording you can press command z on a mac or   control z on windows to undo the recording right  so let's look at the midi that we've recorded   first thing you may notice is i haven't actually  played it bang on in time it's not starting   right at the beginning you'll also notice at  the end we've gone past the eight bar mark   so this clip is now too long so if i was to  play this alongside my bass and arpeggio part   as this loop is one bar longer they would not be  looping in sync with each other so i'm just going   to correct the timing of these notes so i'm just  going to click and drag these all to the start   sometimes it's worth zooming in to  make sure you're accurate with this the shortcut to do so is a  plus button on your keyboard i want these notes to all end  right at the end of this bar now what we need to do is change the loop  length so again it's exactly eight bars   this time instead of typing in number i'm  simply going to click and drag this back all right let's play them all back together   okay we've got another eight bar loop which  fits with our other parts so it's the easiest   way to record midi into ableton live i'm  now going to talk through grid settings   so if you open up the midi note  editor by double clicking on a clip then right click on the midi note  editor and go down to this section   here we'll be able to see adaptive grid and  fix grid with a number of different options   at the moment we're using an adaptive  grid setting narrow this is the default   so if you notice as we zoom right in we get finer  increments where we can snap notes to the grid if i zoom back out again we'll see there we have  less and less increments so right now this is the   smallest note i can draw in but if i zoom in on  that i can actually split it up over 16 times so   this can be useful as when you're writing in midi  you can make finer adjustments to note positioning   so we do have other adaptive grid settings and  the amount of note increments there are vary   depending on the zoom once again  right let's look at something else   let's look at fixed grid if i select one  32nd note on the fixed grid no matter   how much resumed we're always going to have the  options to draw in notes in very fine increments if i choose a different one for example half a bar  you can see there we've only got two grid markers   in each bar so if i double click for a note here  it's going to make a note that is half bar in   length now if i show you another example quarter  note then we can draw in four notes in each bar   again it doesn't matter how much we zoom  in that is the finest increment we have you can position notes to be in different points  however it won't snap into the right position like   it would if it was on a finer increment see now we  can have each note snap perfectly to 1 8 of a bar   in this midi clip i could just set  it to four bars or even eight bars   because this is an eight bar clip and each note  is being held the whole time so if i was to double   click to draw a new note in now it will be eight  bars in length if i went over to this arpeggiated   part here you'll see there if we chose fixed  grid on a large amount we just wouldn't be able   to draw the notes in as finely as we need to so  depending what type of part you're writing in will   determine which grid setting you should choose  this is why adaptive grid is often a good option so i hope you now understand how you can  adjust the grid settings in ableton live   i wanted to show you this before i go over  quantizing as it should help you understand how   this feature works a little better the next thing  i'm going to look at is how to correct the timing   of midi notes using quantizing so first of all i'm  going to record in one more new part i quite like   the sound which we had on this track so i'm going  to duplicate it to do so right click on the track   and go over to duplicate you can also use the  shortcut command d on a mac or ctrl d on windows   now this new track will have  the same sound as this last one   i'm just going to delete this clip as i don't  need it okay so we just need to set up the   recording once again so if you're using a midi  controller make sure it's plugged in set up in   your preferences or if you're using the computer  midi keyboard make sure it's activated up here   now select the track that you'd like to record  onto that's this one and i'm going to press   the record arm button now these are turned into  little circles so it should be ready to record   again just make sure monitor is set to auto  now if you place some notes on your keyboard we can hear there that we're ready to record right  i'm just going to go to my metronome settings and   make a little change i feel like i'd rather have  a two bar counting rather than just the single bar   this will give me a bit of time  to get ready to start playing   i'm also going to turn the click  on so we hear it while recording okay i'm just going to record this to the click  and i'm not going to bother having the other   parts playing so i'm going to hit record now and  we should start recording remember this time as   we've chosen two bar counting we're going to  have eight clicks before we start recording okay let's have a look at our midi now  for some reason it's really zoomed out so   i'm just going to zoom in a little  bit by using the magnifying icon now while i show you quantization  i'm going to change my grid setting   so i'm going to right click and go down to fix  grid and i'm going to choose eighth note so   these are the closest notes to what i played as  you can see here i didn't actually get it bang on   on any of these notes other than this  one so let's just listen to that back   it's not terribly out of time but it's not  bang on so what we're going to do now is   quantize these nodes quantizing is a quick way  of correcting mistakes in timing when recording   so to actually quantize these notes i'm  going to select them all by pressing   command a on mac or ctrl a on windows right  click on one of the notes and select quantize   we can see there the notes have now snapped  into position this has worked very well due to   the settings i already have set up i'll show you  these now firstly i'll press undo so these notes   are no longer quantized okay let's right click  on this note again and go to quantize settings   here we can change our settings to make them more  appropriate depending on the part that has been   played so if we go to quantize two we'll see it  says current grid i'll go over that in a moment   beneath this we've got a number of different  quantize options so if i choose one 32nd note for   example these nodes are going to be quantized to  the closest 32nd note so if i press ok once more   it's worked for most of the notes but this note  here hasn't been snapped to the position that i   wanted it let's press undo once again i'll right  click on the note and go to quantize settings   or use the shortcut command shift  and u or ctrl shift u on windows   now if i choose a different  value for example quarter notes   then press ok we'll see here our  notes have jumped quite a long way   this is because they're no longer snapping to  the eighth note that they were meant to be at   so for this melody that's just not  appropriate i've just pressed undo once again   let's go back to our quantize  settings and look at something else   i'm going to select eighth note once  again as i know i want these to snap   to the nearest eighth notes so if i press ok  see there they've snapped to these positions now i'm going to use the shortcut this  time command shift new or ctrl shift new   now if i select end let's see what happens   you'll see there the ends of the notes have been  cut or stretched to the nearest eighth note each   of these notes is now a multiple of an eighth note  so this is two eighth notes exactly so is this   this one's three and this one's three so this  is really handy if you want your notes to be   an exact length i'm just going to press undo  and show you the last setting then i'll press   command shift and u to open up my quantize  settings or ctrl shift u on windows again   now we've got the amount so at 100 is going to  snap exactly to the point that you've set with   the quantize 2 amount if i reduce this however  it won't quantize the notes as aggressively   you can see these three notes here haven't  actually snapped all the way to the beat   this could be useful if you want your quantizing  to be a bit less aggressive and sound more natural   but for this part i want it to be  exact so i'm going to set this to 100 okay the last thing i want to show  you is the current grid setting   if you remember just before we started  quantizing we change the setting to fixed grid   eighth notes if i change this to one bar now  for example and then i quantize these notes just double check we've got current  grades selected then i'll press   ok now each of our notes has been snapped to  the nearest bar and they're all exactly one   bar in length if i press undo and change  grid setting to eighth notes once again then we quantize them they're now snapped to  the eighth notes so this current grid setting is   really useful so i'll generally leave my quantized  settings on current grid this means whenever   i change my grid setting i can have a look see  what's going to be most appropriate for my part   and then i simply hit quantize  and it will snap to this point   now rather than opening up my quantize settings  every time i want to correct the timing of a part   all i have to do is change the grid setting  see what looks like it's going to be most   appropriate for the part and then i can  simply hit command new or control u on windows   and that will quickly quantize it so just clarify  these quantized settings will now be stored so   next time you want to quantize something with the  same settings you can simply press command u or   control u and these settings will be applied so  as i say i generally leave the quantize setting   on current grid then i can simply select  all the notes that i want to quantize   and then use the shortcut command u to  quickly quantize these to that grid setting   great let's have a listen back with a click  and compare the quantized and unquantized notes   so that was quantized and this is unquantized   it all just sounds a bit tidier  once the part is quantized   i'll just press shift command z to redo  so the notes are quantized once again   right i'm just going to listen back to this  part with the rest of the song firstly i'll   turn off my metronome as i don't need it anymore  i just want to quickly draw in one more note here and also if you look at  the velocity this note here   is way lower than the rest so i'm  going to increase this quite a bit okay so this song now has  some decent harmonic ideas   as in we've got a bass part some  chords an arpeggio and a melody   next thing we need to do is add a drum part  and then we can start structuring our song   one thing which i should do now which i should  have done before is save this project it's really   important to just keep saving your project in case  your computer crashes and you lose all your work   so i'm just going to go up to file save  live set as i'm going to name it trapsong   i'm just going to save this  on my desktop then press save   right now project is saved so if it  crashes we're not going to lose anything   so the next thing i want to do  for the song is create a drum part   honestly i'd usually do this earlier on  maybe even before i created the bass part   but i just wanted to show you the basics of  midi before i went into a little more detail   writing drums again some people prefer recording  drums in so they can get a good feel for the track   but i've noticed a lot of beginners do find  it easier to program the drums in first   right so i'm going to create a new track i'm  going to right click on this gray space here   and select insert midi track now i'm going to  go over to my browser go to packs core library   racks drum racks and down under drum machines i'm  going to choose 808 core kit this drum kit should   be available in most editions of ableton  live you don't have to use the same one   but i just quite like the sound of the 808  kit there are a number of different drum   kits you can use which just have different  sounds so feel free to use these if you wish   right so i'm just going to drag  this over onto my midi track okay next i'm going to create a new midi clip so  i'm going to go out to my drum kit double click   and it's created a new clip i'm going to make the  midi note editor a little bigger for the moment   so i'm going to hover my mouse over  here and click and drag upwards   now we've just got a better view so you notice  how the midi note editor looks very similar   when programming in drums as it would to a  harmonic part the main difference however   is we have the different drum sounds  listed on the keyboard on the left here   so this makes it really easy to know where to  program your notes so if you want a bass drum i   know to go down here and draw a note down here you  can audition the sounds by clicking on the keys but again make sure this  headphone icon is illuminated blue   otherwise you won't be able to hear the preview so when i'm programming drums i'd usually start  off with a kick drum then add the snare then the   hi-hats and then other percussion afterwards  so just like writing in other midi parts you   double-click to draw in a midi note but there's  another way to draw in notes which can be very   useful when writing drums and that is using  the draw tool so to access the draw tool   just simply use the keyboard shortcut b so  that's the letter b on your qwerty keyboard   alternatively you go to this icon up here  which will turn the draw tool on and off   again when it's orange it's active so you'll see  instead of a normal cursor we've got this pencil   so all you have to do to draw a  note with this tool is click once   again you can edit the start  and end points of your note but you'll notice if you click on the middle it'll  actually delete your note rather than allowing you   to move it so there are pros and cons of using  this tool and just depends which you prefer   and it's all down to personal preference  whichever you find easier to use   something is really useful about the  draw tool however is you can click and   drag to draw multiple notes in so if i  click and drag on this hi-hat part here you'll see there i've drawn a note  for every increment of the grid   and again to delete you can click and drag this can be particularly useful for hi hats as  you can draw in a hi-hat part really quickly   it's going to stop all of my clips  and play this clip back on its own   see there we've already got a hi-hat part  drawn in let's delete all of those quickly now i'm just going to change the grid  setting so i'm going to right click   and choose different grid setting  this time i'll choose quarter notes   now if i click and drag you'll notice we  have a kick drum on each beat of this bar so depending on what grid setting you have  we'll determine the length of the note that   the draw tool writes in i'm just going  to draw a snare drum in on beats 2 and 4.   i'm going to change my grid to  eighth notes and draw in some hi-hats so as you can see the draw tool in combination  with changing the grid settings is a very quick   way to draw in ideas something else i'll mention  now though if you go back to normal cursor   you'll notice we can click and drag over multiple  midi notes to make a selection when using the draw   tool however you'll not be able to do this as  when you click it will simply draw in a note so just bear this in mind when  working with the draw tool   right i'm just going to delete everything in this  clip i want to create a new drum beat from scratch   i've now gone away and created a new drum  beat if you'd like you can pause this video   and copy this from my screen the grid is set to  eighth notes alternatively you can just create   your own drum beat if you want to see me going  through and creating this drum beat or using   some more features such as record quantization  and midi overdub recording then be sure to   check out the full course which you can access  via the link in the description of this video   we've been looking at midi in a lot of detail  in the past few videos but i just want to show   you a couple more handy features before  we move on to turning ideas into a song   so we're getting close now we have a two bar  drum loop but really i want it to be a four   bar loop so i can add a bit more variation so i  could extend the end of the loop just drag it out   then select all of my notes and copy them  over but there's a quick way of doing this   all you've got to do is go over to  the left hand side of your clip here   and click on duplicate what this is going to do is  duplicate the clip so it's twice the length right   so now we've got a four bar loop the first two  bars are exactly the same as the second two bars   i'm just going to make a little change to the  hi-hats now just so we've got that extra variation   so i'm just going to delete these last five  notes so i'm going to select those ones and   press backspace now i want to draw in some  16th notes here so i'm going to change my   grid so it's on 16th note once again it's going  to double click to draw in a couple of notes i'm just going to bring down the  velocity of this second one very slightly   so i'm going to hold command on a mac or  alt on windows and then click and drag now i'm just going to select  these two notes hold option   on a mac or control on windows and copy them over right for the last two notes i just want two more  eighth notes so i'm going to copy these two notes   over to there so again i'm going to hold option or  control on windows and drag let's hear that back   i just added the symbol in there because i wanted  it every four bars now something else i want to   do is match the kick pattern to our bass part  so in this style of music it's often common   to have the kick and bass part playing the same  rhythm in certain sections of the song so what i'm   going to do is select my kick drum notes so i'll  click on the note on the left hand side and i'll   select all of them then i'm going to press command  c on a mac or ctrl c on windows to copy them all   right now i'm going to open up my base clip here  we can see our different base notes now i'm just   going to press command v or control v on windows  to paste the kick drum pattern into this bass clip one thing you'll notice is it's actually pasted  from bar seven so you may have realized i had a   selection made over here so i'm just going to  press undo now i'm going to click at the very   start of this bar now we know our notes are  going to be pasted at this point you may just   be able to see that white bar see this one here  you can just see that it's right at the start so let's paste those in once more so command v now what i'm going to do is drag our kick pattern  up to the note of f1 because that's where our bass   note should be so i'm going to select all  of these notes and click and drag upwards great now they've overwritten the note  that was there and we've got this pattern   on the base i'll do the same  for the next three notes this time i'm going to hold option on a mac or  control on windows and drag them over to the a   and finally up to the c   right now our kick and bass should be  the same rhythm let's listen to it back so one thing you may notice is a bass part  sounds pretty weird now because the notes   aren't being held so i just need to go in  and extend the length of each of these notes   so i could do this manually and click and drag  individual notes but this will take quite a while   so there's another feature that we can use  and that is legato so what legato will do is   extend each note to the following note so i'm just  going to press command a to select all of my notes   then i'm going to hit this button over here  which says legato see there all of the notes   have now filled out the gaps up until the  next note let's listen to it back once more sounds much better one other thing i just  want to clarify i'll just press undo if i   select individual notes such as these i can use  legato and it will just do it to those notes   if i actually don't have any  notes selected in the clip   and then press legato it'll apply this function  to all of the notes all right great we've now   got a drum beat and it's matching our bass part  nicely so we've got good backbone for the track   right so as you can see we've only got five tracks  so far but we'll be adding some more quite soon   it's probably time that we start organizing  our session otherwise it can become a bit   overwhelming in the future so i'm going  to start renaming my tracks and my clips   to rename a track simply right click then you can  go down to rename i'm just going to call this base   now i'm going to change the name of  this track first of all i'm going to   solo it with this button down here to make  sure i know which part it is and play back so that's my arpeggio part so i'm going  to right click rename this arpeggio   you can do the same for this track  so i'll solo this and play again that's this melody part another way to rename is  simply using the shortcut command r or control r   on windows then you can simply type it in you just  have to make sure the correct track is selected   something else i'm going to do is change the color  of this track because it's the same as my arpeggio   part this will just make things easier to see  so you can right click and then go down to one   of these colors just click on one of these and  that'll change the color of your track you can   also do the same on the clips so i'm going  to right click and choose a different color   i'm going to rename my last two tracks right i'm now going to give  names to my different clips   just help me remember what these parts are  i feel like the idea that i've come up with   feels like a chorus so i'm just  going to rename this clip chorus bass you rename clips in the exact  same way as renaming tracks   i can rename this coolest arpeggio  i'll just call it arp for short now our session is a little bit more organized  so let's start looking at how you can use clips   to arrange your song ideas so clips  can be moved to different clip slots   on the same tracks or even move to different  tracks so if i clicked and dragged this pad clip   i could drag it over to my arpeggio track again  you can drop it in any clip slot that's available   be careful if you drag over another clip slot  as you will delete the clip that's already there   so i'm going to press undo moving clips around  can be a good way to try out different ideas on   different sounds so clips can also be duplicated  sometimes you may want to use a very similar part   in two sections of your song so  that's when duplicating is useful   to do so right click and go to duplicate or use a  shortcut command d on a mac or ctrl d on windows   see now we have two of the exact  same clips on this arpeggio track   another way to duplicate is holding  option on a mac or control on windows   and clicking and dragging to a new clip slot  see there the little plus icon has appeared   i'll just press undo i'm going to start  coming up with a bit of an arrangement   so i've already duplicated my arpeggio  and i'm going to duplicate this melody   right so the idea i've got is to play these two  parts before i play the whole chorus section i'm   just going to order this slightly differently so  i've got my intro section at the top and my chorus   section just below so i'm just going to move  all these other clips down to the second scene i could play this first scene  back with just these two clips   and then play the second  seam back which has the rest   i'll just hit stop quickly first to disengage  all of our clips and then play my first scene okay our set is a little better organized now the  next thing i need to talk about is a quantization   menu as this will determine how your clips are  played back so the quantization menu is this   box over here as you can see it's set to one  bar at the moment this is the default setting   whenever i play a clip or a scene it'll be  triggered on the downbeat of the next bar   so if i play this first scene and  then the second one you'll notice   it'll start playing at the start of the next bar again if i stop all of these and show you  another example i start playing my bass back see there i press play on the  drums part way through a bar   and they started playing at the next  bar again if i were to press the stop   button during playback it'll wait till the  start of the next bar to stop all the clips   see it was flashing there for a moment  now if i go to my global quantization menu   and choose none let's see what happens the clips will start and stop exactly when  you press the start and stop buttons they're   not going to wait until the next bar so if  we were trying to build up an arrangement   such as bringing the drums first then  the bass the pad and the melody it'd   be extremely difficult to get the loops  going together in time with each other see that was all out of time if i was to change  the global quantization menu to a different number   let's try four bars i'll just stop all the  clips once more and start playing these back individually do see whenever i triggered a new  clip it waited until the start   of the next four bar loop so this makes  it a lot easier to add new clips in   and keep them in time with each other  again if i press play on this now   and then hit the stop button our arrangement  won't stop until the end of the four bar loop you can see the stop button was  flashing displaying it had been pressed   and it was going to stop at the  start of the next four bar loop   generally i'd recommend setting the global  quantization to two or four bars as this   gives you a little bit more time to press your  clips so start playing back at the correct point   you can shorten it to one bar if you want as this  way you can bring clips in at different times   however as i say if you're a beginner it can be  easier to do everything in four bar loops there   are a number of different options here so you can  have half bar a quarter of bar an eighth of a bar   etc but it's going to get a lot more difficult  i'd recommend using one of the longer settings   until you're more advanced user i'm just  going to leave it on four bars for the moment   something else i want to mention quickly  is clip lengths so you'll notice all of our   clips loop continuously but if you remember  some of these clips are different lengths   so if we look at the melody part this is  only two bars in length whereas the drums   are four bars and the base is eight bars  i'm just going to play these back quickly i've now paused playback have a  look at the track status display   where you can see these little pie charts i'll  play it back again and have a look at the melody   the pie chart is going around way  quicker than the pad or bass part   notice how the melody pie chart has completed  two rotations in the time the chorus bass part   has completed half a rotation so we can see the  amount of rotations with this figure on the left the figure on the right dictates  the length of the clip in beats   so this melody part is eight  beats and this one is 32 beats   there's eight beats in two bars and there's  32 beats in eight bars i just wanted to go   over that quickly as it can be really useful to  see how far through the rotation your clips are   i've just gone away and added a few more parts  to this song i've added a verse section which   consists of base drums and a guitar part and i've  also changed the intro section so it has some   more variation from the chorus if you'd like  to see all of these stages in more detail be   sure to check out the full course where i take  you through step by step building up this song   again you can find the full course from the  link in the description below this video   i'm now going to go over the steps involved when  setting up for an audio recording so if you have   an audio interface and an xlr microphone you can  set these up to record in ableton live you can   also use a usb microphone or even a built-in  microphone on a computer however i would not   recommend using this last option as the audio  quality will be poor so just to get you going   quickly i'm going to skim over how to get set up  so what we need to do is go into our preferences   so on windows go to options preferences or  on a mac go to live and select preferences   now navigate to the audio tab as this second  tab down here if you currently do not have   an audio device selected you'll only see  these options at the top under audio device   the rest of them may not be here now what we  need to do is choose our audio input device   so this is going to be the input for ableton  live so if you're using an audio interface   and an xlr microphone in here you need to  choose your audio interface as the input   so for example i could choose audient id22 this is  my interface if your interface isn't appearing in   this list go to the audio interface's official  website and download any appropriate drivers   now if you're using a usb microphone it'll  also appear in this audio input device list   at the moment i've usb microphone plugged in  and that's this here blue snowball again if   this isn't showing up you'll need to download the  relevant driver from the manufacturer's website   if you want you can use your computer's  built-in microphone if your computer has   one it should appear in this list if you're using  an audio interface and you have studio monitors   or headphones plugged into the interface  you can choose your audio output device here   you can just have your headphones plugged  straight into your computer but if you're   using an audio interface you may as well select  that as the audio output device in this list   right now i need to leave on telestream audio  capture as this is recording the audio for this   tutorial normally i'll choose my audio interface  which is id22 again if you're using a usb mic   or your built-in microphone or computer choose  built-in output on mac or if you're using windows   choose your appropriate output this could be an  seo device your built-in speakers or a windows   audio device if it was already working fine  don't bother changing this okay so your audio   interface or usb microphone should now be set  up i'm just going to add my input as the id22   okay so that's the bare essentials to set up your  microphone so you can record within ableton live   now we have our microphone set up we're almost  ready to record so let's just get our session   set up firstly add a new audio track so i'm just  going to right click in this blank space here   and select insert audio track now i'm just going  to set up the input if you're using external   interface plug your microphone into input 1 and  turn the gain dial up about halfway if you're   using condenser microphone make sure phantom power  is turned on on your interface there's usually a   button with a plus 48v icon near the input gain  dial that's the phantom power if you want to   record a guitar or an external instrument such as  a synthesizer plug this in instead again if you're   using a usb mic make sure the gain dial is turned  up or if using the built-in mic on your computer   go into your sound settings and make sure the mics  input volume is turned up now i'd recommend using   headphones rather than speakers to avoid getting  any feedback so what you need to do next is record   enable your track you may notice here i'm getting  some movement when i speak that's because my   microphone is plugged into input one i'm actually  going to use a synthesizer for this recording   rather than a microphone just so it's easier to  distinguish between my voice so if you're using   input 2 or another input in your audio interface  just choose it from this drop down box here   now when i play a note on my external  instrument you'll see that's lighting up   okay so now we've got our input set up let's  just hit the record on button down here   notice my monitor is set to off at the moment  but i'm just going to play back a note quickly   and we can see there those grey bars are  indicating this track is receiving signal now what   you need to do is set the input signal for your  microphone so at the moment when i play a note   you can see this meter is reaching around -12  and that's actually quite a good starting point   if i turn it up too much you'll see there it's  reaching the top it's going red and it's clipping   when clipping occurs the audio signal will  distort and damage the quality of your audio   so if at any point your signal is clipping you  need to turn down your microphone's input right   now i'm just playing a note on my synthesizer  and turning down the gain on my audio interface there the loudest point of the signal was  around minus six i'm just going to turn it   down a tiny bit more and sometimes when you're  performing your signal may increase slightly   so i'm just playing a note again and turning  it down a tiny bit more right this should be   fine now i'm going to turn monitor to auto and  we should be able to hear what i'm playing in so the sound you're hearing there is a sound of a  synthesizer being plugged into my audio interface   it is set up in exactly the same way as using  a microphone i've gone into one of the inputs   on my interface and adjusted the input gain  just as i would if i was using a microphone   if i swap this over to input number one you'll  now be able to see signal whenever i'm speaking   i'm going to put that back to input 2 as i  don't want to record my voice at the moment   now if you're recording your voice with microphone  or even another instrument and you don't want to   hear it back in your headphones then just turn  monitor to off it will still record but you   won't actually hear it being played back in your  headphones this is down to personal preference   some people like recording being able to hear  what's going into the computer whereas other   people do not something else i'll mention quickly  now if you've got monitor on auto and you can hear   your voice being played back in your headphones if  there's a slight delay you may need to reduce the   buffer size on your computer so to access that  we need to go back to audio settings once again   so on windows go to options preferences or on  mac go to live preferences now go to the audio   tab you should be able to see this buffer size  so the shorter the buffer size the less latency   you'll have when recording so if i have a shorter  buff size there'll be less of a delay between my   source going into the microphone and also actually  hearing it back through ableton one problem with   doing this if you reduce the buff size too much  it could cause your computer to crash or glitch   so just try out different settings the lower  you go the less latency you'll get the higher   you are the less strain your computer will be  put under however there will be more latency   i'm going to leave mine at 128 for the moment  generally when recording i'd recommend having   the buff size as low as your computer can handle  but when you're mixing you may as well increase   the buff size to its max as it will allow you to  use more plugins right what i'm going to do now   is record in a bass part so i'm going  to make sure my track is record enabled   i'm just going to turn monitor to auto mode  now so you can hear it back while recording   i want to record this part along  with the other clips in the track   i'm going to make sure they're active  by pressing the scene button here and then pausing now when i hit record these will  play along with the recording i'm going to check   what my counting is quickly right we've got one  bar and i don't really need a metronome anymore   as i've got my drum part right let's record okay i recorded in a simple bass part just  doubling the bass that we've already got   let's have a listen back to it okay that sounds fine but the timing is  a little off in the next video i'll look   at quantizing this piece of audio something i  want to do quickly first though is just double   check the length of my loop is correct  here i want it to be 16 bars in length   so let's double check that's exactly 16  so it's the same as our original base part   right as you can see once you're all set up  recording audio is just as easy as recording   midi editing audio is a little more difficult but  we'll start looking at that next i'm not going to   go over audio editing in a lot of detail at the  moment as there is a lot you can do for now i   just want to show you the basics right just to  show you some extreme examples of audio editing   i'm going to record in a different bit of audio so  i'm just going to record in some clicks and claps   i'm going to stop all my clips and  just record this into a new clip   in my audio track i want to use my microphone for  this recording so i'm going to change my input to   the input that my microphone is plugged  into or my interface which is input one   one thing i didn't mention in  the previous video if you can see   input one slash two that's a stereo input so you  can use both inputs one and two at the same time   don't worry about this for the moment as if you've  only got one microphone you'll be recording in   mono recording in mono requires you to use one  input for example input one if you record in   stereo with one microphone you'll only hear the  audio signal coming out of one side so you'll   hear it either in the left or the right depending  on which input your microphone is plugged into   right so i'm going to turn my metronome on  change this to input 1 and then start recording as you can see there it was clipping quite  a lot so i'm just going to try once again   so i'll just press undo to  get rid of that recording okay so i just recorded in some claps  there let's listen to those back right you'll notice they're not  quite in time with the click   now sometimes when you're recording into a clip  you might want to try out a few different ideas   and that's what i did here i was  just changing the rhythm of the clap   i've decided i don't want anything up to this  point here so i can change the length of my clip   so it's starting at bar six now and it's only  three bars in length let's zoom in a little bit right so this is the part that i  want to work on let's hear that back okay it's very out of time with the click  now something i want to show you quickly   see at the moment our clip is starting at  bar six what you can do is actually change   where beat one of bar one is within your clip so  just zoom in to around where you want beat one   so i'm going to right click  and go up to set 1.1.1 here now we can see this is beat one of bar  one anything before are minus numbers   it's going to drag this so my  clip starts at the same point so now i can have a two bar clip starting at bar  one in this situation it wasn't vital but it can   become quite confusing if you're starting a clip  at strange point now something else you can do is   delete any audio before your clip starts all you  have to do is right click in the sample editor and   select crop sample now it's cut out the other  audio and just left us with this shorter clip   let's drag this back so it's two bars in length  as well so now it's ending at the start of bar 3.   right so that's how you can start tidying up  your recording let's listen back to it now so like midi we can quantize audio just be aware  it's not quite as flexible as quantizing midi   i'm just going to open up this  bass part that we recorded recently   and now i'm going to use the quick quantize option  to quantize my audio so i'm just going to zoom in   a bit here we can see our grid is on an adaptive  setting i'm going to change this to quarter note this way when we quantize it i'll have a better  chance of each these notes starting on the bar right now i'm going to press quick  quantize shortcut which is command u   on a mac or control u on windows we can see  there these notes have all been moved into time   something else you'll notice is these little  orange markers have appeared these are what   we call warp markers these basically points  ableton has assigned whereas notice there is   a transient a transient is a spike in audio so the  transients here are the start of each of our notes   we can actually click and drag these  and move them around if we like   so we could even change the rhythm of this part  let's listen back to it see those notes are all   starting on beat one of each bar i'll just  press undo so we can listen to it unquantized and i'll press redo now so in this situation it's done a really good job  right let's look at the other piece of audio we   recorded now i'm just going to press command you  once again to quit quantize now we'll listen back so the last three notes have been quantized  perfectly in time but this first one hasn't   that's because you may notice  this warp marker isn't actually   in time with this transient i'll  zoom in a bit more so you can see see there the warp marker is at the very start  of this clip and isn't actually on this note so what we can do is actually draw in  transient markers there's a couple ways   of doing so i can right click on this little  gray area here and select insert what marker   now it's added a new warp marker we can delete  them by right-clicking and going up to delete so   now a warp marker is gone alternatively you can  double-click up here and add a new warp marker   one thing to note since i've added that new  warp marker i'll still need to quantize it   and also when adding warp markers  i'd always recommend zooming right in   to make sure the warp marker starts at the point  where the audio crosses this line in the middle   so that is about there i could even delete that  one and move it over very slightly i might draw it   in here so i'm just going to double click if you  double click it'll just draw in one warp marker   whereas if you right click you'll add more  warp markers wherever it thinks it needs them   okay i'm just going to try quantizing again so  i'm going to use keyboard shortcut command u   that one has been quantized correctly but you'll  notice this one still hasn't so i'm just going to   select this warp marker i'm actually going to  click and drag it to the position i would like   see there it snapped back to the start  of the bar let's listen back once more that's perfectly in time with our grid now a  couple more things i want to mention quickly   if you're unable to draw in warp markers you  just need to make sure that this icon here   which says warp is active see when i take that off   all of our warp markers have gone  and this clip will now be out of time   so make sure this is enabled something else you  need to do if you have to click on the warp icon   is make sure you re-engage loop because right  now this clip is no longer going to be looping so the clip will only play through once  sometimes you may want to do this but   right now i don't want to so i'm just going  to select loop now when i play it back again now another thing i'll mention very briefly  is warp mode so ableton will do its best to   try and quantize your audio in the most subtle  way possible but there are a couple of different   settings you can try depending on the type  of audio now when working on percussive parts   you want to have warp mode set to beats this is  the most appropriate setting for when working   with percussive sounds however if i was quantizing  something harmonic for example this bass part if   it starts to sound a bit strange you may want to  try using a different setting for example tones   now i'll just open up the quick help for a moment   if you're ever unsure of what type to  use just hover your mouse over this box   and it will give you a brief description  of the different warp modes it's not always   essential to do this but if you've noticed  your audio starts have some strange artifacts   try out a couple of these different types i'd  recommend looking at beats tones and texture first   something else i'll mention is you  can actually warp any audio file   so if you've chosen a sample from the browser  you can use these warp modes to actually quantize   it so it matches with your project you can  even move notes around change your rhythm   right so that's the very basics of audio editing  and that should be enough to get you started   okay i've just gone away and added a number  of new parts using the skills and techniques   i've already shown you if you'd like to see me  going through and adding in all these new parts   then make sure to check out the full course  we can also download this ableton live set   okay so now we've got our ideas we  need to finally turn them into a song   so we need to do this using the arrangement  view that is this view over here you can   access it by clicking on this button  or by pressing tab on your keyboard some people prefer to just use the arrangement  view to write music this is how many other digital   audio workstations are used however using clips  is a great way of writing music and a big part of   ableton live so generally i'd recommend coming up  with your ideas in the session view then putting   them into the arrangement view so just like in the  session view we can record or edit midi and audio   we just go about in a slightly different way so  the way i'd recommend you get your clips into the   arrangement view is by recording them in this can  save you time allows you to perform your clips in   the order that you'd like them to be in your song  structure so i'll quickly show you how you can   record into the arrangement view first of all have  a look at your global launch quantization menu   i'd recommend choosing one two four or eight  bars i'm going to leave it at four bars for   the moment as this can make it easier to  play back your clips at the right time   now make sure none of your tracks are record  enabled so if any of your tracks have the record   arm button lit up just click on it so it's  disengaged now the last thing we need to do   is hit record so if i hit record now it'll start  recording straight away if you have a count in   it'll go through accounting first but the way i'd  recommend you recording is holding shift and then   clicking on this button so what will happen now  is ableton live will wait until you play your   first clip or scene back and your recording will  commence this means you'll always be able to start   your recording in time with the timeline one thing  to note you don't have to play back your clips or   scenes in any particular order experiment playing  different clips back at different times to come up   with an interesting arrangement right i'm going to  record some of my clips into the arrangement now   everything is set up so all i have  to do now is play a clip or a scene   do okay once you've stopped all your clips stop  recording by pressing the stop button at the top   or the space bar now let's have a look at our  arrangement view as you can see here our clips   have been recorded into the arrangement  view in the order that we played them back   now one thing to note if i try and play this back  now we're not actually going to hear anything   that's because we need to press the back to  arrangement view button so we can see the timeline   cursor moving along the timeline however we're not  hearing anything once you press this button you   should be able to play this arrangement back and  it won't be grayed out anymore let's have a listen okay great we can hear our arrangement so  as you've probably guessed the timeline   is this at the top here we can see  the bar numbers running along the top   and at the bottom down here we can see the time   we can zoom just like in the midi note editor by  hovering over the top to get the magnifying glass   icon then you can click and drag you can also  zoom using keyboard shortcuts plus and minus the tracks are listed down on the side here so  they're just the same as in the session view   but flipped sideways now something to mention   if we go back to the session view  and place some of our clips back   when we go to the arrangement view again you'll  notice that the tracks that were played back   have been grayed out so when  i try and play my arrangement   you'll notice it's just playing  back the clips that were activated   in the session view so again you'll need to  press the back to arrangement view button you can also access this button down here on  the master channel see how it's lit up orange   at the moment once i press it it goes gray and  now we'll be able to play back our arrangement   to play back the arrangement from the  start press the stop button at the top here   if you want to select another place  to play back the arrangement from   simply click somewhere on the timeline now when  i press play it'll start playback from this point   again you can play and pause by using the spacebar   okay so that's my favorite way of getting my ideas  from the session view into the arrangement view   there are a couple more ways that you can do so  which i'll show you shortly the next way i want   to show you is by simply dragging and dropping  clips in so what you can do is simply click and   drag a clip from the session view over into the  arrangement view so just click a clip drag it   over and hover it over the arrangement view icon  you can now drop that clip into the arrangement   you can actually drop it onto any track  so make sure you choose the right track   another very similar way of doing so  is by clicking and holding on a clip   and pressing the tab button so this  just jumps over to the arrangement view   now when i move my mouse i can select  where i'd like to drop the clip you can also do this with multiple  clips so to select multiple clips   click and hold control on windows or command or  mac and select any clips you'd like to copy over   then you can either drag them  over to the icon and drop them in or you do the same by clicking  holding and pressing tab it's going to select all of these  move them down to the correct tracks another quick way to move clips into the  arrangement view so i click on the one you'd like   to move over and press copy so that's command c on  mac or control c on windows then go to arrangement   select where you'd like to paste it just by  clicking on the timeline and press paste so   command v or mac or control v on windows you  can see here the clip has been copied over   another really handy feature is  using the scenes to copy clips over   so if i click and drag a scene over to the  arrangement view when doing so scroll up to   the top instrument so you make sure you copy all  the clips are in the scene and then drop it in   see now it's copied everything that was in that  scene into the arrangement view i was going to   delete all these ones i've just copied over as  i've already got an arrangement here on the left   so that's how to get your  ideas into the arrangement view   now what we need to do is start working on our  song structure in the arrangement there's loads   of stuff i need to teach you about editing in  the arrangement view which i'll look at now   so we've previously looked at the very basics  playing pausing and navigating around the timeline   so just quick reminder you can play and  pause with the space bar or the buttons   at the top here and to choose where you want  to play back your song from click somewhere   on the arrangement and press space hover over the  timeline so this icon appears then when you click playback will start from this point  now something else i want to show you   is a loop feature this is really handy if you  want to listen back to a part of your song   to make edits for example so to select an  area of your track to create a loop just make   a selection for example i can make a selection by  clicking on one of my clips then all i need to do   is press command and l on a mac or control l on  windows now this section will loop over and over to turn the loop off again simply press command  l or control l once again you'll notice how this   loop area is grayed out so i'll just make a small  selection this time i'm going to click and drag on   a blank space of the timeline so now this section  here has been selected i'll press command l and   it's now jumped to this point if i play the track  back now i'll loop this section over and over   but if i press command l once  again it will no longer loop   something else you might want to do is just loop  your whole track if you want to loop the whole   length of your track simply click and drag from  the start to the end or vice versa then once again   command l or control l and now your whole song  will be looped over and over okay next i'm going   to look at moving clips around so right now i'm  not really going to structure a song i'll do that   in a later video i just want to show you a number  of the different features so to move clips just   hover your mouse over the top section of a clip  then when this hand icon appears you can click   and drag the clip see here i can click and drag  it over to the right or move it back to the left   you can also drag clips onto other tracks so  if i wanted to hear this part on the bass track   for example i'll just drag it up to the bass track  now if i solder this track and play back this part   so i'm going to select this clip then press  command l or control l to loop this section so that's the arpeggio part on our bass track  i'll just move it back down to where it was   something else i'll mention quickly if you want to  duplicate a track you can do so by dragging a clip   down to this area at the bottom which says drop  files and devices here so if i was to click and   drag this lead guitar part down to that area  it'll just duplicate the lead guitar track   now we have all the exact same settings  so we've got the same instrument   and if you had any plugins these would also be  loaded on this track so this could be handy if   you want a duplicate of the same track i'm  just going to press undo to get rid of this   right so back to moving clips around if  i click and drag on clips as you can see   they'll move forwards or backwards in time  you'll notice here they're actually jumping   and conforming with the grid increments so  another way to quickly move them is using the   left and right arrow keys again the clip will  jump back and forth on these grid increments   if you want you can move the clip in fine  increments by holding command on a mac or   alt on windows and then using arrow keys see  there it's moving back and forth very slightly   again if you were to move a clip with a mouse if  you hold command on mac or alt on windows it'll   do the same and you'll be able to move the clip in  much finer increments generally i wouldn't really   need to do it in the small increments as i want my  clip to be snapped in time with the grid i'm going   to press undo a few times i'm going to zoom in a  touch again by using the plus key on the keyboard as you can see when i'm zooming in my grid amount  is changing that's because we're on an adaptive   grid setting so if you wanted to jump clips back  and forth in smaller increments you can zoom in   and then when you use the arrow keys it's going  to jump in these fine increments if you want to   do this it's a slightly quicker way you could  actually change the grid setting so here i could   click on one of the fixed grid or adaptive grid  modes let's just choose fixed grid for the moment   and here we're on eighth notes so as a zoom out  we can still see those eighth note increments   a handy shortcut that allows you to change grid  increments quickly is by holding command on a   mac or control on windows and then pressing one or  two right now i'm holding command and pressing two   and we can see there the grid increments are  getting larger so now we're on half nodes   if i was to hold command and then press one  or control and one and we've got much finer   increments on the grid i'm just going to  go back to adaptive grid and choose narrow   so i've shown you how to move individual clips  but if you want to move multiple clips at the   same time it's very easy to do so click  on one of the clips that i'd like to move   then hold shift and select another  clip that you'd like to move   now a selection has been made and i can  move all of these clips at the same time   again this works with mouse or  the arrow keys on your keyboard you can do this with clips  on multiple tracks as well   this time to make a selection i'm going to click  and drag over the clips that i'd like to select   now i want to move these the clips  on all three tracks will move   okay so that's the very basics now let's look at  copying so this works in a similar way to copying   midi notes in the midi note editor my preferred  way of copying is by holding the option key on   the keyboard while dragging so if i was to move  this clip and hold the option key at the same time   or control on windows we'll see that plus icon  appears again just like copying midi notes that   has now been duplicated i'll just press undo  you can also use the copy and paste feature   using command c or ctrl c so i'll press command  c now then click where i'd like to paste my clip   and press command v so that's control v in windows  now this clip has been pasted at this point   so just remember you need to select where on  the timeline you'd like the clips to be pasted   this can also be on other tracks  so i've now selected this pad track   and when i paste this clip is now on this track an even quicker way of doing so is duplicating   so instead of copying and then pasting you  can simply press command d or control d   the clip will be duplicated at the end  of the selection that have been made one thing to note be careful when making  a selection as if i highlight these clips   here and then press duplicate as the selection  ended at this point here when we duplicate them   that's where we pasted so if  i wanted them to be pasted   right at the end make sure your selection ends  at the point you'd like your clip to be pasted   so now if i press command d we've  got it pasted directly after the clip   again you can do this with multiple clips so  i'm going to select all of these clips here   and then press duplicate but notice my selection  ends at this point so this is where we'll be   pasted from so command d or control d and there  we are they've been pasted from this point here   let's just press undo and try that again   this time i'll make sure my selection ends at  the correct point now when i press command d   they've been pasted right at this point at the  start of bar 73. i've just pressed undo again   another handy editing feature i should  talk about is making selections of clips   so as i showed you before if you hover your mouse  over the top section of a clip this hand icon will   appear and you'll be able to move the clip if you  hover the mouse further down and click and drag   you'll see here you actually get a selection  made on your clip this can be useful if you want   to duplicate just one section of a clip so now  when i press command d we'll just duplicate this   end section of the clip if i keep pressing command  d it's going to keep duplicating that same clip   now it's been selected if i click and drag it  you'll see that it's actually separated that   portion of the clip i could do this on this one  here so i've made my selection then i'll hover   my mouse over the top part and click and drag and  now it's separated into another clip if you want   to separate a clip without clicking dragging click  to make a selection this time i won't drag i'll   just click where i'd like to make the cut then  press command and e on a mac or ctrl e on windows   see that clip has now been cut into two again  this works for midi tracks as well as audio   so that's command e to split a clip a great  feature for joining clips together if you've got   a number of clips that you want to consolidate  into one is using the shortcut command j   so i'm going to quickly cut up this chorus  drums here into a number of different clips   so i'm going to press command e make a selection  command e another selection command e and so on   so now here we've actually got a number of  different clips we could tell the different clips   as the name has been repeated at the start of  each clip you can also see the black line showing   they've been cut i'll zoom in so you can see  that a little better see these black lines here if i wanted these clips to be one single clip  again all you have to do is make a selection so   i'm going to select all of the clips i'd like to  join and use the shortcut command j or control j   on windows now they've been consolidated into  one clip i'll just press undo another way you   can access a lot of these features i've spoken  about simply by right-clicking so don't worry if   you ever forget these shortcuts just right click  and you'll be able to see the options available   see here we've got cut copy paste duplicate  and further down here we've got consolidate   so let's just press command j now and they're  joined back together something else you may   have noticed in that drop down box then was  deactivate clip so this is basically a way to   mute clips the shortcut is simply pressing 0 on  your keyboard i'm going to click on it here and   now it says clip deactivated so this clip will  no longer playback audio we'll solo this track   and we can now no longer hear anything i'll  just re-engage it by pressing the shortcut 0 and our drums continue there's a lot  of information to be given in one video   but i just wanted to take you through most of  the different editing features we can use on   audio and midi clips again if you forget  any of the shortcuts for these features   just right click on the clip and these drop down  options will appear as i've seen this it's just   reminded me of one more feature that i wanted to  talk about and that's the loop feature so instead   of duplicating or copying pasting we can just  loop clips so all you've got to do is hover the   mouse over the top corner of one of your clips and  when this bracket icon appears click and drag it   see now this is looping the  clip and extending the length   if i do it at the other end we  can also use this loop feature one thing to note you can actually shorten your  clips as well if you like using this feature   so i could trim it down i'm now going to show you some features that are  specific to audio editing in the arrangement view   first of all let's look at fades and crossfades   so these are something you can use on  audio clips in the arrangement view   they can be used to blend between two audio  clips or they can be used just to remove any   clicks or pops at the end of your audio clip so  if we look at this audio clip we have down here   you may be able to notice when i hover the  mouse over it we get these boxes in each corner   now you may also be able to tell there's a  slight grayed out section at the beginning   and end of the clip this is just showing us that  that's where our fade is so by default fades are   automatically added to audio clips on the timeline  this has just stopped them clicking or popping   right if i play this back we'll be able  to hear this note something gets cut off now if i hover my mouse over this box in the top  corner and click and drag over the audio clip   you'll see there we've changed the length of  the fade now if i play back you could hear there   it was more gradually fading out if you want to  change the shape of the fade you can do so using   this little node in the center so i can have it  very gradually fade and then drop down suddenly or the opposite so you can just click and drag  this around and find a shape that you like now if you want to change the end point of your  fade you can do so using the box in the bottom   corner so if i click and drag on this little  box we can have the fade ending earlier or later   one thing to note this is different to changing  the length of your clip when this bracket icon   has appeared if i were to click and drag  and change the length of the clip now   you can see there the fade was  actually moving with the clip i'll just press undo whereas if i do it with the little box at  the bottom you'll see there the start point   of the fade hasn't actually moved  so depending on what you're doing   having the flexibility to be able to  do both of these can be very useful now if we go to the start of this audio clip   you'll be able to see we have the exact same  options so if you want to increase the length   of the fade click and drag the top box  you can change the shape by using this   node in the center or choose the starting  point your fade with the box at the bottom   i'll just press undo next i just want to show you  how to use a crossfade so i'm just going to cut   this clip into two i'm going to click to make  a selection on my clip and press command in e   or control e on windows and it's cut this clip  into two now i'm going to change the length of it and drag these two parts near to  each other so if we play this back we're jumping suddenly between  the two different notes a crossfade allows you to do this more gradually  a quick way to create a crossfade is select the   clips that you'd like to make a crossfade between  so i'll click on one to make a selection then hold   shift and click on the next clip then if i right  click on the clip i can select create crossfades   on clip edges or you can use the shortcut command  option f on a mac or ctrl alt and f on windows   now this has created a crossfade  it's only a very short crossfade   at the moment you can change the length  of your crossfade just like a normal fade so i'll do a quite long crossfade  this time i'll play this back so we can hear it gradually  blending between the two notes   listen to how different that sounds  to when it's a really short crossfade so these can be really useful if you want  to seamlessly blend between two clips   you can also create a crossfade in a different  way if your clips are right next to each other   like this see here we've got the fade out  and the fade in and the two separate clips   if i click and drag this fade out over to the  next clip that also creates a crossfade this will   only work if the clips right up next to each other  again i can do it the other way by clicking on the   fade in and dragging it back over to the previous  clip also don't forget you can change the shape   of your fade by clicking and dragging on the node  in the center okay so that's a handy editing tip   it's going to press to undo a few times it says  clip goes back to how it was now something else   i want to show you is how to time stretch an audio  clip on the timeline now the first thing you need   to do is open up your sample editor and make sure  warp is selected if it is it'll be lit up orange   now all you have to do is hover your mouse over  the top corner of one of your clips and hold shift now when you click and drag it it'll  actually time stretch the audio   so if i click and drag it all the way over here  this clip will play back at twice the speed so if i press undo you can see there it's time stretched  it and it still sounds pretty good   you may need to play around with a  different warp mode depending on the   type of audio you're working with however for  now that sounded fine again if you wanted to   slow something down just hover over one of the  top corners then click and drag so it's really   handy creative editing feature that you can  use in the arrangement view in ableton live now one final editing feature that you can use  in the arrangement view is reversing audio clips   so i'm just going to shorten this clip once  again i'm going to make it really fast this time right so to reverse an audio clip simply  select the clip that you'd like to reverse   then hit the letter r on your computer keyboard or you can reverse it back again   if you like you can reverse just a small section  of an audio clip so just click and drag over   the lower half of an audio clip then use the  shortcut r and it reverse just this section   you'll see there it's actually cut  this up into two different clips this doesn't sound particularly  interesting on this simple bass note   however if you have recorded a guitar or  a vocal reversing it can sound really good so that was just a few quick audio editing  features that you can use in the arrangement view   in ableton live 11. now i've gone over all  the basic skills you need to create music   i'd like to show you how you can export a  song out of the software so it can be shared   or listened to on other devices so to export  your song you first need to make a selection   of the area that you'd like to export so in the  arrangement view press command in a on a mac   or ctrl a on windows and then set  your loop with ctrl l or command l now one thing you should do  you'll notice that the loop starts   at the very beginning here but it also  ends at the very end of our last clip   if i was to play back the very end of  this song i'll just turn my loop off quickly you'll notice there there was a couple  of seconds where the final note was ringing out   so if we were to end it at this point  here it actually cut off the very end   of your track so just stretch out the end of  the loop so it doesn't cut your song short i'll just play this back  and see if that's far enough okay that's plenty i'm just  going to bring that back one bar   okay now i'm going to make sure  my loop is active once again   and then i'm going to go up to file export  audio video and now this menu will open up   by default this is the settings that you'll  be given so here i'm going to change the file   type so that's a wav file this is just the most  common type of audio file the other thing you   can do is enable mp3 so this way you'll have  a high quality audio file which is the web   file and they can also have the lower quality mp3  file if you wanted a smaller file to send around okay that's it i'd recommend copying  these settings and then press export   now you can give your audio file a name  someone's going to call this trapsong and you can choose where you'd like it to be  saved i'm going to leave it as desktop for now so ableton will take a couple  of minutes to bounce this audio   and once this is done you'll be able to find  the audio file in your selected destination okay so it's as simple as that that's  how to export a song out of able to live   so as we mentioned before this youtube video is  condensed down version of the first part of our   complete ableton live course here we go over  many more topics of music production such as   advanced recording methods mixing  automation using ableton's instruments   warping audio midi effects music  theory songwriting tips and much   more so if you've enjoyed this video and  you'd like to continue learning with us   then make sure to check out the full  course in the link in the description below

Channel: Tomas George

Views: 116,997

Keywords: Ableton Live 11, Ableton Suite, Live 11, Ableton music, music production software, learn Ableton 11, Ableton, Ableton 11, How to use Ableton, How to Ableton Live, Tomas George, Ian Alexander, Digital Music Masters, Make music in Ableton, Abelton, ableton daw software, beginner tutorial ableton, ableton, beginner ableton, free Ableton, free ableton course, Ableton Live Tutorial, Learn Ableton, Make music in Ableton 11, Ableton Live 11 course, Udemy, Ableton Udemy, Ableton 101

Id: JaSK3Q8vyGA

Length: 154min 19sec (9259 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021