This article is in response to a Reddit thread on the topic of how to produce original and unique content in Live that doesn’t sound like generic MIDI music. While every artist will eventually forge there own styles of production, here are some thoughts on how I try to make my music unique.
With the abundance of affordable music production tools, making music has never been easier. However, as more of us move towards making music “in the box”, there seems to be an inherent loss of the art of recording. I do not mean to say that people aren’t creating great music purely on computers, nor that there aren’t people out there continuing to make great recorded music. But one can not overlook the rising absence of the recording process in today’s digital production experience.
When you go through the process of recording, you and your work are subject to many variables that are absent from the experience of computer music production; all of which help to shape the sound and feeling of the final product. Everything from the more obvious variables of microphone selection, amplifier settings, and outboard gear, all the way down to the cables and power supplies, have an effect on the tone of your sounds. The reason analogue gear is so great is because it is tangible, it’s your piece of gear. How well have you taken care of it? Is it pristine and clear, or is it old, temperamental and full of character? Anyone can get a copy of Ableton, and there is no way to have a rare and unique version of a digital music software.
Now I’m not here to make an argument in favor of analogue or digital. But, once you understand that every variable in the production process works to create the unique character of your music, you can begin to take a more active roll in cultivating your own unique processes to making digital music. Here are some things that I keep in mind when producing in Live.
Don’t Rely on Presets
Presets are great. Many excellent programers put serious effort into creating those presets and they are excellent for learning how an instrument or an effect works. But you have to keep in mind that presets generally aren’t designed in the context of a given piece of music and so it is easy to see why people have a difficult time making cohesive music comprised primarily of random presets.
Presets are a great starting point. They can help you to find inspiration in a creative lull. But it is important to continue to take steps toward crafting the sound to fit the specific project that you are working on.
Know Your Tools
Excluding newer forms of synthesis such as granular and wave table, strictly analogue (or subtractive) synthesis is inherently simple. You are manipulating raw oscillators which have a wide harmonic spectrum, but produce a very static sound. The timbre and harmonics do not change over time, as they do in real world instruments. This is what makes synthesizers so easily identifiable. With this in mind, it is easy to imagine how, if restricted only to basic synthesis without the use of effects, it will be rather difficult to create rich and interesting sounds. It is this lack of richness that leaves you dissatisfied when scrolling through synth presets in Live.
Take a guitar for instance. Imagine if you were trying to make textural and inventive electronic music, but the only tool you had was a guitar. No pedals. Just clean guitar. It would be really difficult to invent new sounds. It is the same with synthesizers. These basic synth presets are in need of further treatment before the can come alive. In Live suite, there are 18 separate native audio effects that can be used to craft the tone of a sound. Allow me to list them:
Amp / Cabinet
Auto Filter
Chorus
Compressor
Dynamic Tube
EQ8 / EQ3
Erosion
Flanger
Frequency Shifter
Multiband Dynamics
Overdrive
Phaser
Redux
Resonators
Saturator
Vinyl Distortion
Vocoder
EQ, distortion, and amp modeling, all of these effects can be used to help create a new unique sound.
Now each effect by itself, if cranked to 11, is capable of creating extreme departures from the sound of the input signal, but this is not always the most aesthetic way to go, and in some cases, it can even begin to sound generic. For example, everyone knows the sound of Live’s Redux (a bit crusher) cranked to 100%. It is very easily identifiable, and thus becomes generic.
I love listening to bands like Radiohead who continue to put out sounds that keep me guessing. So in an attempt to do the same, I like to use combinations of effects, with subtle settings that add up to create a rich sound. Try pairing together different effects that you don’t usually use together? Experiment with different amount settings for each. Do they sound different when you change the order of the effects in the chain? Doing this experimentation is what leads you to discover your own sound and helps you to have a more active and immersive production process.
Some Practical Examples
Delays
Never use a default delay. The Ping Pong delay is a very signature Ableton sound when used in it’s default setting. To create more interesting sounding delays, I often use tone effects inserted before the delay. Dynamic Tubes, Saturation, Vinyl Distortion all make for interesting candidates. Experiment with multiple effects.
The Swing parameter on Live’s delay is a good tool for making your delays sound more organic. Both the Simple Delay and the Filter Delay have separate swing parameters for each channel, so you can create some really nice sounding delays by setting each one a little differently.
The same goes for reverbs. Distortion, or short time based effects like flanger or chorus can add a nice character to your reverbs. Why not experiment with using Live’s Resonator to add a nice pitched element to your reverb?
Parallel Processing
You can use Audio Effect Racks to split any signal into multiple chains. Using the mixer section of the effects rack, you can treat and effect each chain differently and then blend in the right amount of signal, creating a secondary sound. You can then run this mixed output through an amp modeler to help glue the combined sounds together so that the end result is perceived as a more unified sound.
Sampling
Live’s audio clip parameters offer another way to manipulate audio in creative ways through the use of the various warp modes. Try printing one note of your synth sound to audio and experiment with different clip settings. Once you’ve found something interesting, consolidate the clip and load the new sound back into a Sampler.
Samplers were initially designed to use multiple samples of a recorded instrument to produce a more realistic sound. But when you use only one sample, the extreme stretching of the time to raise and lower the pitch can have interesting effects on the timbre of the sound in different registers. Try using this alleged shortcoming as a creative tool to explore new sounds.
Re-Think
Any pad type sound can be turned into a rhythmic sound through the use of a Vocoder, Step Filter or rhythmic gating effect. Similarly, and rhythmic sound can be turned into a pad like texture by using high feedback delays, reverbs, and resonator effects. Again, these sounds can be printed to audio and loaded into a sampler for a completely unique sounding textural patch. The possibilities are endless as long as you maintain a drive to explore, experiment, and discover.
I hope this article has inspired you to take on some sonic exploration. Thanks for choosing AbletonOp.com.
Nice article, but I find the title to be a tad bit misleading. I expected to read an article about achieving “more” by using “less”. I recently had an interesting discussion with a friend how some mindblowing works in electronic music where created using very simple setups (i.e. early Squarepusher works) and how limited options may force one into thinking more creative or outside the box. I started using Live instead of a more conventional DAW like Pro Tools for my humble recording needs about a year ago. And while I find the way Live works certainly opened new creative ways for me on how I approach “writing” music (I don’t do much electronic stuff though), I often “feel lost” because it literally offers too much possibilities. As an example to make my point: Until 5 month ago I owned a digital amp processor for my guitar which had around 200 presets. I played it for about 5 years and I was never “happy” the way it sounded and I was constantly tweaking settings. Just because I could. I replaced it with 1W Blackstar amp combo which has about 4 knobs to adjust volume, crunch, reverb and eq. I have never been playing my guitar as much in all the years I had a “world of sounds” as I do now ;-). I think limiting yourself to a certain setup can sometimes help you being more creative. I.e. you could force yourself to only use Lives FM synth for a whole song to create everything including drums and see how far you can take it. Cheers!
Hi there. I’m glad that you have settled on a work flow that is best for you. However, I don’t think that this article is suggesting anything that doesn’t align with what your saying. It is only mean to be a helpful reminder to people who feel ‘stuck’ with flat and boring sounds that there are many different tools in Live that you can use to develop your sounds.
The title: “Lost Art of Recording” is hinting at the absence of the recording process, an art form in and of itself, from the experience of making computer music, and that there is an entire world of decisions and variables in the recording process that just aren’t present when working in the box.
This article misses the point entirely… you can tweak and have interesting fx chains, unique samples, unique synthesis and you can still have an inherently stagnant track……
Whenever I see people make music on youtube particularily in Abe, almost without fail, people will head to their unique drum racks and draw in the same tired old beats….
They will then go to their unique fx chains and manipulate and tweak and draw more and more automation in the vain hope that by somehow adding fx will make their tired midi notes do something radical that hasn’t been done before.
….don’t rely on the computer to make things unique…. make it unique yourself. Play around with interesting chord progressions. Play around with interesting melodies.,….. In short PLAY.
Play and record…..that is the missing link between unique sections and static sections. Use your human hands to hit a keyboard, strum a guitar, hit a pad, use your human voice to come up with interesting melodies.
FX and sound selection are the dessert. What you actually play and record is the main course.
Finally arrangement….. play the arrangement, listen to what feels right……don’t just do something every 4 bars because all other dance songs in the world do it!
Next time you feel like your song is feeling flat, get a general MIDI soundset and PLAY.
I could go on ad infinitum about all this…..before I even touch ableton, I will have an A section a B section and a C section worked out on guitar whatever is lying around.
You had it right when you said “the lost art of recording” you just didn’t really speak about it!
That is how it is done.
I think you’re talking about the art of *writing*, not recording.
That said, I completely agree – I try to compose as much as possible before I even boot up the computer.
(if the cake is stale, all the icing in the world won’t help)
Ha good moderation there dude. What’s your next article gonna be? The lost art of respecting other peoples opinions???
Sorry, we’ve both been super busy, forgot to check the comment queue. :)
I think uniqueness can have many different sources. Sometimes it’s a sample, sometimes it’s an effect, sometimes it’s a chord progression. But whatever you use to make your track unique has to have a human element in it. Even when you “use the computer” to make it unique, you’re still the one using the computer, and thus you’re still “making it unique yourself.”
Eu gostei muito do seu texto, as maquinas podem fazer musica. mas a musica é mais interessante quando fazemos das maquinas uma iextensão de nosso corpo.
I really liked your text, the machines can make music. But the music is more interesting when we make the machines an extension of our body