Rhythmism.com

In the thirteenth class, I learned a variety of techniques in Ableton Live for randomizing, tweaking and mangling the existing parts in my upcoming song. We covered Noise & Extreme LFP settings, Sample Offset, Grain Delay, and Resampling.


This images displays a finite length, discrete time realization of a white noise process generated from a computer.


I am particularly interested in Noise, and want to use it in my track. Jon taught me that ‘white noise’ is one of the original sound effects (an audio signal that contains all audible frequencies at equal volume). By using Ableton Live's Analog instrument, I will be able to produce noise from either one of the oscillators, or I could use it as a stand-alone noise generator.

Jon comically told the class that what we have done up to this point was ‘mere child’s play’, now we are going to get into some of the tricks that master producers have up their sleeves.



For example, Jon demonstrated how to use the sample offset envelope to reorder the playback of a looped clip to go in either time direction according the envelope’s set grid. What was a normal looped clip, can now sound more like a sound effect by creating a loop that jumps back and forth in time.

My homework was to make at least two sound effects by using the techniques in class and apply them to my track.



Dan Giove - DubSpot Founder

In class fourteen, Jon taught us how to get out of the repetition rut; because Ableton Live is a loop based program, we looked at different techniques to make our song less repetitious through beat repeat, unlinked envelopes, random, and automating send effects.

Electronic dance music seams like constant movement because they use variation to set up the next bar on major cycles, to achieve that you can use beat repeat – a specialized delay unit used to create additional rhythmic interest (think FatBoy Slim). Beat repeat is not just for beats; I will be able use it to add variation to any instrument.

A great tip I learned today was to ‘record as I work’, I can always cut out what I do not like and edit what you do like.


Random device with Impulse

Another great way to generate variations (delicate or aggressive) is with the Random device, it randomizes the pitch of incoming MIDI notes to the parameters of choice, chance, scale, and sign. This very interesting effect can generate a constantly changing rhythm the more times it cycles through the loop.

Before the next class, Jon wants our track to flow for a few minutes in the arrangement view, for the reason that our next class we focus on the use of E.Q, compression, and routing to set up our track for the final mix.