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Extreme Time Stretching in Ableton

From modifying the groove of a drum loop to producing cool granular artifacts, the ability to time stretch samples is invaluable.  It’s one of Ableton’s most interesting tools for manipulating audio. Today we’ll use Time Stretching to mangle a vocal sample.  In particular, we’ll be working with a sample from Hip Hop Vocals V1. (more…)

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The Reverse Reverb Effect

The Reverse Reverb Effect is when you take the reverb tail of a vocal sample and reverse it.  Doing so, creates a cool rising effect that’s similar to reversing a cymbal crash.  You can use it to spice up your build-ups and breakdowns. Take a listen to the Reverse Reverb Effect in action: reverse reverb […]

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How to Warp Melodic Loops in Beat Repeat

Beat Repeat is a neat processor that comes with Ableton Live.  Essentially, it’s a repeater effect.  It reads an incoming audio signal and can repeat different parts of it in different ways.  While it’s most known for mangling percussive sounds and drum grooves, you can also use it to mangle melodic grooves as well. Today, […]

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How to Resample a Synth Sound in Ableton

Resampling is a technique that’s been around for quite some time.  However, it’s the technological advancements in music making software that have made it more powerful and accessible than ever before.  You can resample your synth sounds for a variety of reasons.  Today, we’ll resample a one shot synth and turn it into a gnarly […]

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How to fatten up your Acoustic Drum Grooves

An acoustic drum groove can easily be fattened up by layering in some synthetic drum samples.  This technique has been used by hip hop producers for ages.  Often times, they would sample an old school breakbeat and then spice it up by layering in their own drum samples. Today, we’ll look at how to fatten […]

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How to Automate a Low Pass Filter in Ableton

Accomplished electronic producers are adept at working with automation.  It can be used in countless ways to spice up a track, so plan on getting familiar with how to get the most out of it. Today, we’ll learn how to automate a low pass filter to spice up a Dubstep intro.  It will be applied […]

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How to Create Space in your Mix – Spectral Mixing

In today’s demonstration, we’ll dive into some of the basics to spectral analysis and how to create space in your mix.  One of the main concerns in any mix is preventing too many sounds from bleeding into each other.   This can easily be maintained through the use of high and low pass filters and some […]

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deadmau5

How to Create a DeadMau5 style Pluck in Ableton

DeadMau5 is considered one of the premiere producers of modern electronic music.  One of his ‘go-to’ sounds is a synthesized pluck.  Listen to any of his hits and you’ll undoubtedly come across it at some point.  The most popular synth for creating this type of sound is probably Sylenth1, but you can easily create it […]

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ableton 3

How to Use Ableton’s Drum Rack

The Drum Rack is a flexible MPC-style sampler for Ableton.  Amongst other things, it’s ideal for housing 1-shot samples and creating drum kits.  You can also input custom effects and processors directly within in the rack itself. Let’s take a look at how to put together a drum kit using samples from Ableton’s library. (more…)

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cool chaser

How to Spice Up a Drum Loop with Beat Repeat

Whether you’re working on an old school hip hop joint or a new tech house jam, Beat Repeat makes spicing up drum loops a breeze.  Just as the name implies, the function of this processor is to grab different bits of an audio signal and repeat it.  You get to specify when, how often, and […]

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