Here I was shown how make a drum beat on Ableton. We did this by double clicking on the midi region and then clicking onto the ‘drums’ section. Then I selected the 808 core kit and dragged it down into the midi region I made. I created my 4/4 drum beat by basing off the drum beat Lewis gave us which was a simple rock drum beat, being creative and just practicing around with the drum tab and creating it off that.
Today lesson we used instrument packs, these packs were more professionally recorded and sounded less digitally made because they were recorded in a studio with real instruments. To apply these packs onto a track we had to select, packs, kits(or guitar/bass if your looking for that) and then drag the desired pack sound into a midi channel. To make the drums sound more realistic we then added some groove to our drum kit, this effect would make the drums essentially have a different rhythm or feel and would effect how the drum is played and sounds. We then added a guitar riff for the drum track and I created the riff by key board. I also did the same with the bass. But in future I’m going to plug in an instrument and create my tracks off a recording.
Above I have clicked on to the groove section, and clicked and dragged the groove I want to the tab area. This will apply the groove and change how the drummer plays with the drum beat I made.
Above is where I have the done the same thing with the drums and using downloaded packs but instead used a guitar pack as that’s what I wanted for this part. Here I used the keyboard to create my guitar part but in future I will be using an actual guitar as I’m not used to a keyboard and it hindered my ability to make a good track and my timing.
Here I scrapped my original track on Ableton and recoded it through my guitar instead. I did this because I was struggling to get something decent down playing through the keyboard, so instead I used my guitar skills to mock something better up. Above I made a simple 4/4 drum beat and then recoded over it with my guitar. The song plan is to have some calm bluesy style guitar at the start and then turn into into a heavy metal track with multiple guitar overlays, harmonies.
My inspiration for this track is from the song The pot by TOOL mainly from the 3 minuet mark as it has some unique guitar riffs.
Why do people use Ableton? It’s relatively easy to use, you can basically make anything on there because it has a wide range of tools and programmes and it can also be used for live work too, and its got a well made and stable software that’s still being updated and tested.
Why is Ableton so popular? Ableton has a legacy story to it. Ableton was founded by Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles, the members of a legendary techno duo called Monolake. And so was originally made for techno because back in the 2000’s there wasn’t a music software for techno musician’s. but then it evolved into a music software over the years. People prefer it too because its ui is built so you can access things quick without going through a lot of menus/clicks.
- Technical Proficiency: Because I struggle with Ableton I didn’t use much of Ableton software so it had minimal use to me and took a while to create the track.
- Instrumentation Selection: I used the drums on Ableton to create my drum beat and create the rhythm and groove for my track.
- Mixing and Sound Quality: I would say it wasn’t very balanced at all accept the drums and guitar, bass needed lowering, and certain parts of the guitar sections like the chorus were too loud.
- Synchronisation with Film: I used the split tool a lot to cut out ends of clips to remove noise but also to cut recording so they would time a little better. Same with the ending of my track.
- Effectiveness of Logic Pro X Features: I used the drums to crate my drum track and then for my bass and guitar tones I used Ableton’s amp software to give me a heavy metal tone and increased sustain and gain. I also used a reverb effect for my guitar.
- Workflow and Organization: It was a struggle at the start as I was using the keyboard to play in my guitar parts. But then switched to recording it in and that sped the track process up but was still having timing issues.
- Variety and Dynamics: I think it has a fair amount of diversity from the guitar playing, there’s is a lot of little riffs, chord changes, chord phrasing, you have the short solos that’s between the verse and chorus and in the background. then after the outro you have the long string scratch to end the song. A lot of musical elements were used to divert the song from being plain or boring and enhanced the track.