UPDATE: AbletonOp & EditorsKeys Synth Patch Challenge

By Kendall Clark | | 1 Comment


Greetings,

Thanks to all of you who participated in the AbletonOp and EditorsKeys Synth Patch Challenge. It’s been great hearing from both old and new readers of AbletonOp so thank you for participating.

This last week has been incredibly busy so I regret to inform you that we must push back the announcement of the winners until next week. I have just downloaded all of the submissions and I look forward to seeing and hearing what you all have created.

Thank you for your patience, and thanks for choosing AbletonOp.com.

AbletonOp & EditorsKeys’ Synth Patch Challenge

By Kendall Clark | | 6 Comments



Greetings readers. You may have seen our review of the new EditorsKeys Ableton Keyboard. Well the generous folks at EditorsKeys were kind enough to ship us a few of their new keyboards which will be the prize of our first ever competition.

Synth Patch Competition Guidlines

  1. All patches mus be made with Native Ableton plugins. Any and all Ableton synths and effects are fair game.
  2. You MAY NOT use any Ableton Synth Presets. Synths should be programmed from scratch.
  3. You MAY NOT use any samples that you did not create. Sampler is a powerful tool that we would hate to leave out. But know that it will be very obvious if you just multi sampled a patch from Massive or some other soft synth.
  4. Only 8 Macros. Patches should make use of Racks. We will use the 8 Macros of the Instrument Rack as a challenge limitation. You may by all means use nested racks for more advanced inner-patch control, but racks will be judged in the “closed” state of the outer most rack.

Judging Criteria

We will be judging racks based on creative rack design and performability. Winning racks will be dynamic, have a wide range of sounds, and will be fun to play live. So in essence, we’re looking for maximum tweak-ability, given the 8 macro limitation.

What You Get

  • The 2 best patch creators will receive an EditorsKeys Ableton Keyboard
  • The top 10 patches will be uploaded to AbletonOp for the following Free Sound Friday
  • The best producers might get deals to sell their stuff in the upcoming AbletonOp store!

How To Prep Your File For Submission

  • When you are finished creating your patch, delete any excess tracks so that your project contains only one channel, the one containing the patch submission.
  • Rename the Instrument Rack “Name – AbletonOp Patch Contest”
  • Perform a “Collect All And Save”
  • Close Live and locate the project folder.
  • Rename this project as follows, “Name – AbletonOp Patch Contest”
  • Compress the entire project folder into a .zip file.
  • Email the file or a download link to the file to: abletonop@gmail.com with the subject: “AbletonOp Patch Contest”.
  • BONUS: Link us to samples of you playing the patch on YouTube or SoundCloud! You know the instrument better than us, so show it off for us!

Please include the following information about yourself in the email:

  • Name
  • Origin (City/State/Country)
  • Genre you’re digging on lately
  • How long have you been using Ableton
  • Controller / weapon of choice
  • Why you love AbletonOp.com :)

The entries are due next Wednesday, 16 May. We will accept entries all day Wednesday, start judging them Thursday, and post the results on Friday.

Well I think that about covers it. Good luck, and happy experimenting!

Free Download: Frequencies of Notes Table

By Steven Campbell | | 2 Comments

Notes and frequencies table screenshot

I spent a few minutes putting together data I found on the MTU Physics website into a table. This will be super useful for those of you that want detailed control over your sound spectrums. The table is hosted on Google Docs and you can download and print it from there — it fits on a single 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper.

It includes all Western scale notes in equal tempered tuning based on A4 = 440 Hz and the speed of sound through an air medium being 345 m/s. It’s not guaranteed to work underwater or in space!

If you just want the PDF, download it right over here!

Source

Make a default template for your Ableton productions

By Steven Campbell | | 5 Comments

Sidechain Compression

Warning: Free Live set inside!

I used to use a template for all of my productions, back when I was making house music. It was easy to work with a template because my tracks all had a few predictable elements: a heavy kick drum, a snare + closed hat + open hat drum rack, a percussion rack, a bass synth (which was usually outfitted with the same bass EQ & compression rack), a few pad synths (which came preloaded with optional sidechain compression), and standard delay and reverb sends. In addition, all my tracks were at least at -10 dB, and my master channel had a limiter and Mid-Side EQ that brought everything up to level.

I was thinking about this template the other day, and realized that with a few minor tweaks it could become versatile and work with all of the genres I now like to work with. So I recreated the template and thought I would walk you guys through it. If you just want to download it, skip to the end! Continue reading →

Free Sound Friday: WavX 02

By Kendall Clark | | Leave a comment

It’s Friday and May the Fourth be with you! Also may you complete your quest wielding our newest synth patch, WavX 02. Built upon the same principals as WavX 01, version 2 offers a different flavor of wavetable-y goodness.

You will be able to purchase the WavX 02 in the AbletonOp web store. Until then, here’s a free sample pack to hold you over.

Thanks for choosing AbletonOp.com

3 ways to make money with Ableton without playing music

By Steven Campbell | | 3 Comments

Where the Magic Happens

AbletonOp isn’t making much money off of our Ableton Live services yet, mostly because we’re new to the scene. But Kendall and I have both been recipients of cash directly because of our knowledge of Ableton Live. Since we’re all producers looking to make it in an enormous ocean of other producers, sometimes it’s necessary to rely on our technical knowledge rather than our music alone to make money.

So, here are four ways to make money relatively quickly just with your knowledge of Ableton. Our audience in general tends to be comprised of experienced Ableton users, so for you guys, turning your skills into cash shouldn’t be hard at all! Continue reading →

photo by: g.p.macklin

HUGE Ableton Productivity Hack: Sibling Mapping

By Steven Campbell | | 14 Comments

Copy value to siblings

This is the biggest timesaver I’ve discovered so far when it comes to making tracks in Live.

Are you ever frustrated when building drum racks, and setting the same value for every sample in the rack? I know I was. I used to have all of my drum samples at 70% velocity, and -18 dB volume. This meant changing two parameters on every sample.

Eventually I found I could just make one sample, set its values, duplicate it (hold down alt and click and drag the sample to another spot), and then drop another sample into that slot — as long as the new sample is dropped onto the waveform, it doesn’t reset the volume & velocity values.

What about effect rack building, when you have several chains of effects in the same rack, and you want to map all of them at the same time? If I were to build a delay rack with multiple types of grain delay in each chain, I would still want to control Dry/Wet of each chain from a single Macro. I can do it manually, by mapping each Grain Delay’s “Dry/Wet” parameter to the same macro, but that takes forever! Continue reading →

Introducing EditorsKeys’ Ableton Live Dedicated Keyboard

By Kendall Clark | | 3 Comments



Editors Keys will be launching a brand new shortcut keyboard for Ableton Live, on April 27th. The company worked with over 100 Ableton Live users and producers worldwide via social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

“It was great to work with real world editors on these new products. These are the people that actually use them as a tool in their own career, so it makes perfect sense to involve them in the design stages. We got some amazing feedback from over 100 users and the design changed a few times along the way.” Said Mark B Brown, company director of Editors Keys.com

The keyboard is an ultra thin design with well-spaced keys making it great for typing and editing. The keyboard has over 70 shortcuts for Ableton Live, helping you to complete your projects faster than ever before. The shortcut keys contain both icon and text displays, helping you to save loads of time compared to going through the menus. They also make your workstation look great in the process.

To learn more visit the Editor’s Keys website.

All the keyboards are Mac and PC compatible and are £59.99 from www.editorskeys.com

Please contact mark.b@editorskeys.com for more info, images or samples

Stay tuned for a chance to win one of 3 EditorsKeys Ableton keyboards from AbletonOp.com in our first producer contest.

Update: Check out the contest!

Fit many synths in one Ableton track with a simple synth bank

By Steven Campbell | | 4 Comments

Tired of A -> B mixing? Ableton Live is so powerful — are you pushing it to its full potential? Are turntablists calling you a cheater for not having to beatmatch? Fear not! Ableton Live was named so for a reason, and we at AbletonOp enjoy pushing it to its limits, especially when it comes to live performance.

Late Night Maths
Creative Commons License photo credit: x2mirko

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a bank of synthesizers using Instrument Rack. The idea is to have multiple synthesizer patches available for live use (with a MIDI keyboard) immediately, from within a single MIDI track. This makes it easy to switch back and forth between patches, just as you’d do on a hardware synth with preset capability. Continue reading →

Free Sound Friday: Smart Arp

By Kendall Clark | | 2 Comments

It’s Friday. 4/20. Do you know where your children are?

Hopefully they’re hard at work brushing up on their Ableton chops. And so to aid you in that process, here is a nice little MIDI Effect Rack that I call the Smart Arp. It utilizes Live’s Chord, Arpeggiator, and Scale devices to let you easily craft arpeggios with a single finger. Just select the root key of the track, the scale that you’d like to play, and play the root note of the chord that you wish to arpeggiate. AbletonOp’s Smart Arp takes care of the rest.

Continue reading →

Video Tutorial: How I create grooves from scratch in Ableton

By Steven Campbell | | 2 Comments

So here’s something I would call an implied tutorial. It’s a video of me making a beat. And that’s it. Just 16 minutes of how I work in Ableton. Hopefully you’ll be able to get some idea of how tracks are really made in Ableton by watching this video.

Yes, everyone makes tracks differently, so my process may not exactly match yours. And I’m currently working on a template that I can start off every track with that will take care of the basics, so there’s a bunch of extra steps in this tutorial that can be avoided by using a template.

Most importantly, you can see the final product by downloading the Ableton set for this track, which will give you access to all the sounds and plugins I used to make this production sound good in a relatively short time.

Download the Grooves from Scratch Ableton Live Set

Free Sound Friday: WavX 01 Free Sample Pack

By Kendall Clark | | 2 Comments

Look out, It’s Friday the 13th! Here are some free sample loops made from the AbletonOp WavX 01. The WavX 01 is a multi-sampled instrument that simulates wavetable and granular techniques using evolving samples as the wav content, instead of single cycle wave forms. The instrument uses small loops to sweep through the different sections of the source sample creating a very dynamic and interesting range of textures.

You will be able to purchase the WavX 01 in the AbletonOp web store when it launches.

Ableton Live Hangout on Google+ Tomorrow!

By Steven Campbell | | 3 Comments

We talked about it a while ago, but now we’re going to start doing it! Come hangout with us weekly, 17:00 CST (22:00 UTC) on Thursdays on Google+! It’s going to be awesome & great.

In order to make sure you know when the hangout happens, follow AbletonOp on Twitter or add me on Google+. We’ll be announcing the hangout when it happens on every forum available to us.

Most importantly, spread the word to all Ableton Live producers and DJs you know. It would be most excellent to have a good turnout. And with 576 loyal subscribers, we’re not too worried about that! But still — tell everyone you know! :)

We’re not really sure what we’re going to talk about, and Kendall and I will by no means dominate the conversation. We’re simply here to facilitate it and bring people together. If you have Ableton-related questions to ask, you can get them answered. If you want to bounce some ideas off of the Ableton community, join us! If you think something is impossible in Ableton, come hangout with us and we’ll put together our brains to disprove that at all costs!

Anyway, join us tomorrow for an awesome time. And if you can make it this week, there will always be next week!

I will be updating this post with a link to the hangout tomorrow when it starts. So if you can’t find us on Google+, just check here!

Publish Ableton projects directly to SoundCloud

By Steven Campbell | | Leave a comment

If you’ve downloaded the Live 8.3 update, you’ll notice a new feature. Now you can send your Ableton creations directly to SoundCloud! It’s such an easy process.

  1. If you are using a Mac, you have to have OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or higher.
  2. Go to File → Export Audio/Video and check the “Upload to SoundCloud” option.
  3. From there, you will login or create a new SoundCloud account, and your file will upload. Once in SoundCloud, you can title it, write a description, add a cover photo, add it to groups, etc.

If you have any problems uploading, consult this FAQ page.

Free SoundCloud Pro Account

The other cool thing about this Ableton-SoundCloud partnership is that all users of Live 8 have access to a FREE SoundCloud Pro account. If you’re using Live 8, don’t pass up this opportunity. Claim your free SoundCloud Pro account.

Free Sound Friday: Deep House Starter Kit

By Steven Campbell | | 1 Comment

Deep House Kite Lite Rack

I’ve compiled for you a collection of samples from an upcoming AbletonOp product “Deep House Kit.” Basically, I emulated a bunch of basic sounds I hear in a lot of deep house in Operator, added a few effects of my own, and sampled some chords with them.

This rack of 11 samples will give you what you need to write a bass line or chord progression, and in the right hands, you could make some sexy house music.

Here are the samples included:

Each sample is a specific note or chord, so in order to play it on a synth, drag the sample into a Sampler/Simpler of your choice. I have bundled them all in a drum rack, but I recommend working directly with the “Samples” folder.

Download the Deep House Kit!

Get an AbletonOp Discount at Sonic Faction

By Steven Campbell | | Leave a comment

Sonic Faction

When I reviewed the Sonic Faction “Hatchet” synth a few weeks ago, I realized Sonic Faction had a pretty awesome selection of synths and packs for Ableton Live, and we teamed up to offer you guys a deal.

Enter 04abletonop when buying any Sonic Faction product and receive a 10% discount.

The Sonic Faction library of instruments is pretty awesome, and definitely worth checking out. Everything they offer is fairly affordable, and certainly cheaper than any sort of hardware equivalent. The EvilFish looks particularly fun to play with.

Anyway, hopefully you’ll find some use out of one of their tools! As always, if you make anything, feel free to tag us on Facebook or add your track to our SoundCloud group.