Looking for:
A Beginner’s Illustrated Guide To Ableton 10 Live (How To Use It!) – Here is what we cover in this Tutorial:

Play video: Delay.
How to use Ableton Live 10 | Step by Step Tutorial () – Producer Sphere – Also new in Live 10.1:
Ableton Live has two records and plays menus, one for the Arrangement View and one for the Session View. As soon as the Session Record Button has been hit, any notes you play will be recorded into a new clip.
You can enable the metronome from the top-left menu for more accurate note playing and give yourself a count-in as well. Clips are MIDI performances or ideas that are meant to be triggered, looped, and modulated to create unique live performances.
Here is where you can edit the MIDI notes in more detail after recording them. The MIDI notes will show up here on a piano roll, where you can drag them to other notes, lengthen or shorten the notes, edit velocities, or quantize. Quantizing in Ableton is vital for performance fluidity when launching and selecting clips. Still, you are given the option within its parameters to maintain a personal feel, to avoid the music feeling too robotic.
Quick sidebar: you can edit the Grid what note values your bars are divided into—smaller for finer edits, larger note value for broader by right-clicking in the MIDI Note Editor window and selecting your grid value. Once your Grid value is selected, Quantize will move your MIDI notes to the closest beat, fixing any performance tempo errors. This is where you can affect the human element to your beats. A lower amount will still move your MIDI notes to the closest beat but not exactly locked to it, which helps if you need a groove deeper in the pocket, you can maintain that fractional difference while still keeping to the tempo.
You can change the instrument settings in the same area at the bottom of the screen as the MIDI Editor. But the reality is sidechain is a very useful thing to know, and Ableton Live makes it very simple. Clicking it will bring up the extended interface. From here, enable the sidechain button like I have above, and choose your input source e. Once set, configure the controls to shape your sidechain envelope. You should start to hear a ducking effect, especially once the threshold is brought down.
If you want more inspiring tips for Ableton Live, check out of them here. Or if you prefer YouTube tutorials, check out our curated list. Like I said earlier, we used to charge money for this, but now you can grab it for free below:. Missed anything? Learn how to master the fundamentals of electronic music production with the best roadmap for new producers.
Free Masterclass. Aden Russell October 18, Either way, this guide is designed to help you to get beyond the blank DAW:. Discover the tools that expert Ableton producers already know and use in our free Ableton Workflow Bible. Download the eBook for free. Aden Russell. With 10 years of music production experience and some marketing chops, I head up the content here at EDMProd. I also make music under Artsea. Learn the fundamentals of music making — beats, melodies, harmonies, basslines, and song structure — and make music right in your browser.
Get started making music. Learn the fundamentals of synthesis at your own pace with a powerful but easy-to-learn synthesizer that runs in your web browser. Get started making sounds. Play video: Comping.
New in Live Play video: MPE. Play video: Hybrid Reverb. Hybrid Reverb. They often emulate recognizable sounds of famous synthesizers and other instruments. Luckily, Ableton Live 10 comes with some free, built-in, decent-sounding instruments and sounds to play around with. To have a look through these default sounds, navigate to your browser categories left hand panel , and browse the Sounds, Drums or Instruments categories.
Clicking the sounds will give you a preview of the sound. Once you have one you like the sound of, simply drag and drop into the top MIDI track in the arrangement view. This MIDI track is now assigned to your chosen sound. To do this, click and drag within the track display to however long you want the MIDI clip to be. This will transform your selection into a colored MIDI clip which you can now edit.
When the MIDI clip is created, a piano roll will pop up in the detail section at the bottom of the screen. This is where you can create your MIDI patterns. Now you have your created MIDI clip, navigate to the piano roll in the bottom section of the screen. At the moment, the piano roll is probably a little thin to comfortably navigate. You can expand the piano roll area by dragging it up from the top to your preferred size.
Before trying to create any MIDI sequences, make sure the draw button is selected in the top right corner of Ableton. Simply click within the piano roll to create notes, click the note again to delete it, and drag the edge of the note to shorten or lengthen it.
Now is a good point to take some time to play around with the piano roll. Make sure you familiarise yourself with the various categories.
For example, the Sounds category has numerous sub-folders containing synths, pianos, voices, strings and many more sounds. One of the things that makes Ableton Live so unique is the session and arrangement views. To put it simply, these are the two ways Ableton allows you to view and interact with your track. To toggle between the session view and the arrangement view, press the tab button.
Session View: The session view is the default view when you open a new project file, and your audio and MIDI tracks are shown vertically. This view is primarily designed for live sessions and performances, allowing you to build loops in real-time and record over your loops. Arrangement View: The arrangement view gives a horizontal representation of your channels, and will allow you to actual create, arrange and flesh out a full track.
This is the view you will probably spend the majority of your time in. This part of the interface is used for a number of different editing functions. These include editing MIDI patterns in the piano roll, manipulating your audio files or editing sounds and preset parameters. Along the right side of the arrangement view, Ableton starts you off with 2 MIDI tracks and 2 audio tracks. MIDI tracks are where you draw melody or chord patterns that your virtual instruments can then play.
These tracks can easily be deleted by simply clicking on the track name and hitting delete on your keyboard, or right-clicking the track name and clicking the delete option.
How To Use Ableton Live: The Producer’s Guide – EDMProd.
From here, enable the sidechain button like I have above, and choose your input source e.