In this Ableton Live tutorial (part 1 in the drum loop series) we take a look at programming the core elements of a drum loop and examine important features that influence groove and dynamics.

The tutorial explains how to effectively program velocity, pitch, note positioning and note length in Ableton’s midi editor to alter the feel of a loop. For example, gently nudging an off beat hi hat pattern ahead of the beat can make the loop sound like it has a rushed feel or is playing a little faster. Alternatively pushing the hi hats behind the beat has the opposite effect and gives the loop a more laid back feel. Changing the velocity (linked to volume in Ableton’s Simpler device), pitch and note length of certain hits in a pattern will also effect the groove of a loop and add subtle interest and variations for the listener.

The tutorial also looks at moving sample positions and start points to avoid transient clashes and emphasise rhythm. Transients are usually the loudest part of a drum hit and provide the snap or crack at the beginning of the sound. If several transients play at exactly the same time it will result in a large volume peak and this can be problematic at the mixdown stage. When various sounds play together, especially if they share the same frequency space, one or more of those sounds can be masked from the listener and they become difficult to hear and pick out as the original sound. In order to preserve the clarity of individual sounds in a loop and hence provide distinct sounds to accentuate the rhythm, it can often be advantageous to avoid two sounds playing together at exactly the same time.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you want to learn more about Ableton Live and how to create tracks to a professional and releasable standard, check out our Online Courses

This Ableton tutorial makes use of the Sample Auditioner Rack. You can watch how to make one of these here.

This Ableton tutorial is suitable for all varieties of EDM including deep house, tech house, progressive house, electro house, techno, minimal and trance.

This is an Ableton Live tutorial (part 2 in the drum loop series) that focuses on using the midi files that come as presets in the Ableton groove library.

Dragging and dropping the midi files from the groove pool straight into the session or arrange pages is very easy to do. One thing to watch out for though, is the pitch of the midi notes contained in each groove midi file. They are programmed on the key, C1. If you are using Ableton’s Simpler device, this will play back samples at their default when the key C3 is received. In order to move the notes contained in the groove midi file up by two octaves to C3 so that you can hear sounds in Simpler at their original pitch, highlight all of the notes, hold down shift and press the up arrow on your computer keyboard twice.

The groove files included with Ableton are great for coming up with quick patterns for percussion sounds or hi hats. With the pattern in place, create a loop and use the hot swap button in the sample window of Simpler to try new sounds from the browser.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you want to learn more about Ableton Live and how to create tracks to a professional and releasable standard, check out our Online Courses

This Ableton tutorial makes use of the Sample Auditioner Rack. You can watch how to make one of these here.

This Ableton tutorial is suitable for all varieties of EDM including deep house, tech house, progressive house, electro house, techno, minimal and trance.

In this Ableton Live tutorial (part 3 of the drum loop series) we take a look at using Ableton’s Beat Repeat effect to create glitchy sounds from a random audio loop.

The tutorial starts by explaining how to use the slice to midi function in order to split up an audio loop into slices and then spreads them out across the pads of a drum rack. This allows for individual control over each slice and some interesting possibilities also arise when using the various slice presets that come with Ableton. In this tutorial we stick with a basic preset and use this to roll off the attack portion of each new slice, creating a stuttered feel to the loop. An EQ8 follows the drum rack is used to cut the low end ‘muddy’ frequencies from the loop.

Any loop with stuttered feel is excellent fodder for Ableton’s Beat Repeat effect. Try altering the pitch decay, volume decay and filter settings for interesting repeats. To make the repeats less predictable turn down the chance setting and try introducing some random repeat sizes by turning up the variation control. For glitch effects the gate setting on Beat Repeat works well. This cuts out all of the dry signal and only plays back the repeated sound.

To take the glitch idea one step further the output of the Beat Repeat track can be recorded into a new audio track. This freshly recorded file can then be dragged onto the arrange page for further editing to make sure it fits nicely with the groove of the drum loop. Consolidating theses final edits into a one bar loops makes it easy to drag them around the arrangement as the track progresses.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you want to learn more about Ableton Live and how to create tracks to a professional and releasable standard, check out our Online Courses

This Ableton tutorial makes use of the Sample Auditioner Rack. You can watch how to make one of these here.

This Ableton tutorial is suitable for all varieties of EDM including deep house, tech house, progressive house, electro house, techno, minimal and trance.