How To Create Easy Chords With MIDI Effects Using Ableton Live 11 | Music Radar - video Dailymotion

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How to make a track in Ableton Live 11 Lite: creating easy chords with MIDI effects

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00:00Hi everyone, welcome back to this video series on getting started with Ableton Live Lite.

00:05So in the last video, I showed you how to add a bassline to the beat.

00:08Now we're going to add some more musical elements and continue building up the layers

00:12of the track.

00:13In this video, I'll be adding some chords using two different sounds, making use of

00:17Live's fantastic MIDI effects and also recording in a melodic part from a hardware synth.

00:23Things are getting serious, let's get into it.

00:26So because we want to add some more parts, we need to create some more MIDI tracks and

00:29you can see we've already used up two of our MIDI tracks already.

00:32So what we can do is just create some more.

00:34So we just go up to here, create and insert MIDI track.

00:39We can also do that with shift command T as well.

00:43So there we go, we've got two new MIDI tracks.

00:46So I want to look for a piano sound now.

00:47So first I'm going to click on the arm recording button on this channel here and we're going

00:52to use the search function.

00:54It's a really really useful feature of the browser.

00:56So if we're in the sounds category and we click on here and then type in piano, you

01:03can see that any presets that have piano in the title will come up here.

01:07So let's go to piano and keys and let's try this grand piano sound.

01:14Double click on it to load it into the track, there we go.

01:23Now the bass line I played went like this.

01:29Okay so the key signature of this track is A minor and it's just all the white notes.

01:35Very very simple.

01:37Now I want to play some chords and a chord is defined as when you play more than one

01:41note at the same time.

01:43One of the simplest chords is a triad and this is often called a stack of thirds.

01:47So we have the first note, the root note, we go up a third and then a fifth.

01:54So this is A minor.

02:01Now what's brilliant about Live is there's actually a MIDI device that can do that for

02:05us without having to play the notes.

02:07So it's really good if you're not that familiar with playing the keyboard.

02:10Let's go over to the MIDI effects category here and go on to chord and I'm just going

02:16to click on this triangle here to bring up some of the presets and the one that I'm

02:21going to choose is this one, it's called house for the go and all I have to do is just double

02:26click on it and it will load it up for me just before the piano device.

02:30So if I now play the keyboard, it's playing those chords for me, fantastic.

02:40And you also might be able to hear that the volume of the chords is changing and that's

02:46because the keyboard I'm playing is velocity sensitive.

02:50So if I play very softly, it's quiet and if I play very hard, it's much louder, kind of

02:54what you'd expect from a real piano.

02:57But for this style of music, I'd rather that it was more of a constant volume.

03:00So again, there's another MIDI effect we can use for that and it's called velocity.

03:04I'm just going to scroll down and we're going to select this one, fix 127, so let's double

03:08click on it.

03:12So whatever velocity I play on the keyboard, it's always going to be the same volume.

03:16Now I can hear that's already a bit loud, so I'm just going to take the volume down.

03:22So let's try jamming something onto this third scene here.

03:30Okay, we can use capture again, I quite like that first riff that I played.

03:44It's captured it all but it's just looped that last bar, so let's just drag the loop

03:48brace back here and see what that sounds like.

03:58Okay so let's quantize it, again going up here, quantize, we could just do command U

04:04and let's not forget to apply that groove as well.

04:15Okay great, so that's really working for that kind of more funky section there.

04:19Now I'd quite like to find some chords that are maybe a bit more mellow and for that often

04:22pad sounds are really good.

04:25So this time I'm going to go up to the first scene and let's go over to this MIDI track

04:31and let's look for a pad sound.

04:33So I'm going to go over to the sounds again and there's actually a sound category for

04:38that called pad.

04:40So let's just listen to some of those, oh that's really nice and that sounds like it's

04:49actually got a chord kind of built into it, maybe a chord device which is really good.

04:53So let's drag that over and again I'm going to bring the volume level a little bit down.

05:03So what we have here on the left hand side of this device are things called macro variations

05:08and you can see these are actually preset chords, that's a major, minor, major 7th,

05:14minor 7th or even no chord at all.

05:18So this is one of my favorite chords, it's a minor 9.

05:25So let's just try playing that with the first scene here.

05:36Okay so as you can see that's quite tricky to play but I've actually created my own chord

05:41device preset and I want to quickly show you how I created it.

05:45So I'm just going to go to the user library here and if you just go to presets and MIDI

05:50effect rack you'll see it's here, skis minor 9.

05:53So let's just go over here and I'm just going to double click on that, now you have to make

05:58sure that no chord is selected on the pad device but now if I play this.

06:09So let's have a quick look at my effects rack, I've set the chord device here so these are

06:13the settings for the semitones, I'm also pitching it down two semitones so I can just play the

06:20appropriate key and I've also added a velocity device here, not fixed at 127 like the other

06:26velocity preset but it's got a lower limit of 86 and I'm just going to adjust the filter

06:31cutoff on this pad to make it sound a little bit more mellow.

06:41And let's just try recording something in, I'm going to record it in manually this time

06:45so we've still got our counting as one bar, there we go, you can see it's recorded it

07:03in nicely, let's quantize it and one great feature I wanted to show is the fold function

07:13as this will focus the clip by only showing the notes you've recorded or programmed in.

07:20So let's supply the groove again to that and let's duplicate that down to the second scene.

07:34Just playing through the scenes.

07:43Okay so now we've got the chord parts in, I want to record a melody and for this I want

07:48to use one of my hardware synths, my Korg Minilogue.

07:52So up until now we've just been using MIDI tracks, now we're going to use an audio track.

07:56So I'm going to click on this track here, click on Arm Recording and what we need to

08:01do is to select where we want the audio to come from.

08:04So if we go back to the preferences here, this is where you can set which inputs are

08:10active depending on which sound card you're using.

08:13So click on Input Configuration and I'm going to be using these inputs here.

08:21Okay so now I can select input 14 which is where my Minilogue is coming in and let's

08:28just play something now and you can see we have an input.

08:37So let's record this on the first scene here and we'll just record it into this clip and

08:42then we can kind of jam something down and then edit it afterwards.

09:06Okay I quite like that part so let's just put auto on now and let's just solo it so

09:10we can listen back to it.

09:20Now another great thing about Ableton Live is the fact that you can quantise audio in

09:25the same way that you can quantise MIDI and you can see in this clip there are these little

09:30kind of white marks and these are called Pseudo Warp Markers and what it's done is identified

09:37the transients which mean the peaks in the audio signal and it's added a marker there.

09:43Now what we can do is we select all so do Command A and then Command U to quantise.

09:53It's then quantised it all to the setting we had which was 16ths and even better than

10:00that we can now apply the groove and let's play it.

10:09Now this is called warping and with warping there are some different settings according

10:13to the type of audio that you're trying to warp.

10:15Now the default setting I've got here is beats but this isn't a beat this is a melodic part

10:20so I would suggest selecting the complex mode just to get a better quality.

10:26So let's just play it now.

10:37Great really happy with that I'm just going to duplicate that part down there.

10:51Okay great so the track is really taking shape now.

10:54We actually have two distinct sections.

10:56In the next video I'm going to show you how to use a device in Live called Simpler to

11:00play a vocal sample.

How To Create Easy Chords With MIDI Effects Using Ableton Live 11 | Music Radar

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