> the beginner’s guide to live
> Step by step 2. Making a beat on a MIDI track (continued)
If you can’t see Kick 909 in the list of
7 drum sounds in the MIDI Editor, scroll
the list by dragging it. Kick 909 is at the
bottom and our four beats have been
recorded, although, unless you happen to
8 We could do this automatically with
be a robot, their timing won’t be perfect.
Let’s look at a couple of other ways to
10 add more notes. Double-click the Clap
909 row on beats 1.2 and 1.4. If you make
a mistake, double-click a note to delete it.
To have a listen to what we’ve got so far,
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press the Spacebar or click the Play
button. You’ll notice our sequence just
plays once. To loop it, drag over the bar
with the MIDI clip on it on the MIDI track,
and press Ctrl/Cmd+L. (Audio: Claps.wav)
Changes in volume are another way to
13 add a funky human touch to
programmed beats. Re-activate Snap to
Grid with Ctrl/Cmd+4, and add another
Kick 909 on the last 16th-note of the bar.
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(Audio: Extra kick.wav)
12 / ABLETON LIVE: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE 2015
Now let’s fix the timing of the notes.
some quantisation, but for the moment,
let’s do it manually. To adjust the timing of
a note, simply drag it left or right. Drag the
9 is ‘sticky’, making it easy to snap notes
four kicks so that they line up with 1, 1.2,
1.3 and 1.4 on the timeline at the top of the
MIDI Editor.
Now when you play the beat back, it
will loop. We no longer need the
metronome, so click the Metronome
button again to turn it off. Click the Draw
Mode Switch (Pencil) button at the top
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right-hand corner of the interface. Click
the Hihat Open 909 row on 1.1.3, 1.2.3,
1.3.3 and 1.4.3. (Audio: Open hats.wav)
Deactivate the Draw Mode Switch
button by clicking it or pressing Ctrl/
Cmd+B. This allows us to edit the Velocity
of each note, which determines how hard
the it ‘hits’. Drag the new Kick 909 note’s
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Velocity in the MIDI Velocity Editor, and a
value will appear above it. Set it to about
34. (Audio: Ghost kick.wav)
You’ll notice that the MIDI Editor’s grid
accurately to the beat. It’s likely your notes
will be of varying lengths, but we can
make them uniform by dragging their
right-hand edges to set their lengths.
Make each note an eighth of a bar long, as
shown above. (Audio: Uniform kicks.wav)
We’ve now got the basics of a house
beat, but it’s pretty simple and rigid.
Let’s add a little swing. Press Ctrl/Cmd+4
to turn Live’s Snap to Grid mode off. This
allows us to add notes between the lines
of the grid. Add a single note on the Hihat
Closed 909 row just before the last
32nd-note of the first beat, as shown
above. This subtle change adds groove to
our previously plodding beat. (Audio:
Closed hat.wav)
Other MIDI parameters can be used to
affect how the part plays back. Click
the Show/Hide Envelopes Box (E) button
at the bottom left-hand corner of the Clip
View. Double-click the envelope on the
right to add a breakpoint. Create a couple
of breakpoints and drag them around to
create a ramp. On playback, you’ll hear
that the pitch of the beat follows the
envelope we’ve just created. (Audio:
Pitched beat.wav)