Ableton Live 12

During the studio lecture sessions prior to Easter, we covered a lot of the functionality regarding clip recording and manipulation in Ableton Live. 

The lectures, together with tutorials have been an invaluable resource to refer back to when working on the planning of my performance.

Ableton Live is packed with functionality, but for my performance, I will be focusing on the components that we have studied in our lectures plus a few additional features such as Amp Sims.

The following video explains the process of recording clips in Ableton Live

(343 Labs, 2020)

Clip Recording

The concept of clip recording in Ableton live is different to anything that I have worked with in other DAW's. I would liken the process more to a looper pedal than a DAW, almost using Ableton as a sophisticated looper pedal.

This of course opens up endless possibilities, as a looper pedal is generally restricted to 3 loops at most and Ableton allows the user to expand this.

Quantizing

Once the loop is recored it is possible to quantize it by selecting the clip and running the quantize function. This will split the clip based on the transients. This enables the clip to be manipulated so that it is in time.

Clip Manipulation

Clips can be manipulated in a number of ways

• Chopping
• Offsetting
• Applying audio effects
• Split to new MIDI
• Pitch manipulation

Follow Actions

Follow actions allow the user to control process flow from one clip to another. For each clip, the follow action allows the user to configure what clip it will play next based on a number of parameters:

• Stop
• Play Again
• Previous
• Next
• First
• Last
• Any
• Other
• Jump

The user can also configure the probability percentage of each action. This means, that with a number of clips the performance will constantly vary providing more listener interest.

Audio FX

A wide range of audio effects can be applied to each clip, for example

• Delay
• Reverb
• Beat Repeater

The audio effect parameters can be controlled by the MIDI controller during a performance.

There are also Amp Sims that can be applied to each track which I have preset prior to my performance.

Dummy Clips

Clips on a scene can be routed to a "Dummy clips" scene that can contain a number of clips which each have their own audio effects applied. Follow actions can be used on these dummy clips as well to control the musical signal flow.

In addition to this, it is possible to apply automation envelopes to each dummy clip so that the effect applied to each clip can be modified automatically during the time it is playing.