In today's blog we are going to be looking at loop creating in Ableton. There are many ways to approach this and it can often get overwhelming to even know where or how to start. I thought it would be helpful if I showed you my process. Note this tutorial will exclude mixing in any great detail bar some basic eq and sidechaining, as I believe it is a more analytical approach. We solely focus making loops.
Step 1. All about the Rhythm
If you have a specific genre in mind, tempo is a great place to start. Ableton automatically loads up with a tempo of 120 bpm, whilst this is quite common in pop music. I’m looking for something a little slower with a bit more restraint, so let's change it to 102bpm. We can always change the tempo back if we don’t like the feel of the song.
Here are "typical" tempo ranges for a number of common genres:
Dub: 60-90 bpm
Hip-hop: 60-100 bpm
House: 115-130 bpm
Techno/trance: 120-140 bpm
Dubstep: 135-145 bpm
Drum and bass: 160-180 bpm
(Ableton, n.d)
I like to start writing music with the grand piano. For me chords are the basis of a song, “If we think of songwriting as painting,then chords are the colors of your pallet” (Velard, 2016), after which we stack all the layers to add character and texture. In arrangement mode (click tab to switch between session and arrangement), delete all tracks besides the first midi track. Then in the search bar in the left-hand side go to Instruments - instrument rack - piano and keys - grand piano. Click, hold and drag the grandpiano.adg file onto your midi track. Then click on the midi track and drag to highlight (let's say 4 bars), then right click to insert midi.
You’ll notice a piano roll appears at the bottom. You should have something that looks like this.
Click down on your piano roll and press B. This will toggle the pencil, which I prefer to use as if speeds up my workflow.
Creating chords (major/minor) using the piano roll and separate notes
As I assume you’ve written songs/loops/noodles before and are using this as a guide, let's not get too complicated with the music theory and chord progressions. I’ve included a couple of chord charts below as a guide for using chord progressions.
For example, if we were to use D major as our starting chord, we would end up with:
D, Em, F#m, G, A, Bm, C#dim and if we were to apply pop songwriting progression of I, IV, V we would have D, G, A.
If we were to use D minor as our starting chord, we would end up with:
Dm, Edim, F, Gm, Am, Bflat, C and if we again applied pop songwriting progression of I, IV, V we would have Dm, Gm, Am.
Use the above photos as references for whenever you are lacking inspiration. For now, let’s use a minor key chord progression and use D minor (I IV I V I or Dm, Gm, Dm, A, Dm) and then use the firs circle progression Dm, Gm, C, F, Bb, Edim, A, Dm
Use the link below to find the notes of any chords you may not know.
Program a rhythm that you are happy with, changing the chord length as you need. You can use what I did below as an example. Right clicking on the piano roll will allow you the option to change note length e.g. 1/4 or 1/16.
Step 2 – All about that Bass
Click on your piano midi channel (under the title piano) and press command D. This will duplicate the channel. By doing this allows us a template to write our bass lines. For organizations sake, recolour and rename the channel to sub bass. Delete all notes in the midi bar the root note (first note of the chord). Drag the notes down an octave (e.g. from d#2 to d#1) on the keyboard. If we look at the photo I’ve provided below, you can see what frequencies are on each midi note, allowing you to program your instruments in line with their frequency spectrum.
Search for a sub bass sound you find appealing, I chose the boom sub bass. Sub bass frequency range is between 20hz and 60hz (teachmeaudio, 2019), so let’s throw on an EQ eight on the channel and apply a low pass filter, cutting all frequencies past 60hz. After this copy the channel again (renaming to bass) and find an additional bass sound you like (I chose 101 essential bass). Again, apply an EQ to the channel and use a low pass and high pass filter to remove anything below 60hz and above 250hz, most bass signals in modern music tracks lie around the 90-200 Hz area (teachmeaudio, 2019). Feel free to mess with the bass notes to find a grove you like, dividing them into 16ths or 32ths. Afterwards highlight both bass channels and click Command + G to create a new group (named bass).
Step 3 - Layers
Copy your grand piano track again, this is so we can use a preset Ableton pad to add layers to the track. Search through the pads in Ableton until you find one you like. I chose the pizzicato string instrument and strings cello, as it has a nice west coast hip hop feel. Don’t forget to drop the volume of the pad below the piano, pan where necessary and feel free to add as many layers as you see fit
Step 4 - Drums
After layering I like to work on drums (starting with the kick). Create a new midi track then go to drums (which is located underneath categories). Select drum rack and drag onto the channel, this will allow you to program specific samples to notes on the keyboard. Go to drum hits and then kick. Search through the sounds until you find one you like, then drag it into the drum rack onto channel C1, again programing using the piano roll and midi pencil. Once you have something you are happy with, repeat the process again from the snare, hi hat and any other part of the drum kit you like.
Side-chaining
Lastly, we want to make our kick and snare pop, so we will be applying some sidechaining. Sidechaining “is a type of compression where the effect level on one instrument is controlled by the volume level of another instrument” (Masterclass, 2019).Thinkof side chaining as having your bass duck down, whenever the kick or snare come in. This will provide clarity to your mix, remove low end and allow everything to have appropriate space. The slow way to do this would be to apply volume automation to the bass channels, however thanks to Ableton’s compressor we can have this done in a matter of minutes.
Go to your bass group and add a compressor to the channel. Click on the downwards facing arrow in the top left-hand side to expand. Click the sidechain button so its highlight and select audio from the kick. To the right you should see a yellow circle on a graph, by moving the yellow circle you can determine how much volume is lost on the bass when the kick signal is detected and quickly it will release. Adjust to taste and repeat for the snare.
Hope you enjoyed this brief tutorial. Feel free to email me with any questions and don’t forget to subscribe.
References
Ableton. (n.d). Tempo and Genre.Retrieved from Learning music (beta): https://learningmusic.ableton.com/make-beats/tempo-and-genre.html
Masterclass. (2019, April 15). Music 101: What Is Sidechain Compression? Uses, Tips, and Tricks for Sidechaining.Retrieved from Masterclass: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/music-101-what-is-sidechain-compression-uses-tips-and-tricks-for-sidechaining#what-is-compression
McGuire, P. (2018, 1 23). Chord Progressions 101: How to Arrange Chords in Your Songwriting.Retrieved from LANDR: https://blog.landr.com/chord-progressions/
Music Theory Academy. (2019). Chord Progressions.Retrieved from Music Theory Academy: https://www.musictheoryacademy.com/understanding-music/chord-progressions/
teachmeaudio. (2019). Audio Spectrum Explained.Retrieved from Teach Me Audio: https://www.teachmeaudio.com/mixing/techniques/audio-spectrum/
Velard, J. (2016, 12 5). Songwriting Techniques with Chords.Retrieved from Lynda.com: https://www.lynda.com/Sibelius-tutorials/Songwriting-Techniques-Chords/483232-2.html?srchtrk=index%3a1%0alinktypeid%3a2%0aq%3asongwriting+techniques+with+chords%0apage%3a1%0as%3arelevance%0asa%3atrue%0aproducttypeid%3a2
Wolfe, J. (2005 ). Note names, MIDI numbers and frequencies.Retrieved from UNSW: https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/notes.html
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