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Recording MIDI

Lesson 16 from: Ableton Live 9 Fast Start

Isaac Cotec

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Lesson Info

16. Recording MIDI

Next Lesson: Mapping Browser

Lesson Info

Recording MIDI

So let's, talk about recording many we've talked about writing many great um now we could talk about recording, getting it in from a controller, and I'm going to open up the example set with where's it go okay setting up a controller? This is going to be similar to the audio, one where it's going to be dependent on what your controller is and what your settings are. You gonna have to look into it through your own controller, but I'm going to show some basic steps, so setting up a mini controlling life many controllers make it a lot easier to control aspects of life they can make live more of an instrument and just a doss. So instead of clicking with your mouse the whole time, he'll just have something to play with. Um, they're not expensive. Like I was saying earlier in this class, you can find on craigslist for like fifty bucks or this one was one hundred twenty and it's super easy. The basics of setting it up in the controller is using preferences, so we're going to go. You plug in t...

he device, same thing you plug in the middie, uh, clogging the usb to your computer, and then you go into your preferences so let's go to live plug that in we go to preferences options preferences or it's file preferences I think in mac but here we have our midi and on our midi most controllers will show up here as inputs so let's say those were all off this's not going to make a single sound but we have these different settings here which we have to at least have the track and remote I think we have to just have the remote no we have to have the tractor great now we have a controller now output this is input but output is sometimes that controller wants information from mableton like light things and stuff like this one so if I have like a middie I can see it but on some controllers if outputs off you don't see it this is actually control script that's a whole other thing that's dependent on something but if you have like a push you have you go into push here wherever it is uh push and then it will show up through that but in general I would say most mid to cheap size tio two cheap controllers you just go in your input turn it on to the thing that it says it is once you plug it in and you're good to go easy easy is that uh and then once you also have this you will have the ability to do things like maps stuff and we're going to get into that so now I can math with my controller great so that's the preference is plugged in now let's use the device to do something so to using a device the track must be as record arm and then you will see the many signal so let's look at that in life we go teo uh actually just going to skip ahead to this one all right? So I want to record something first of all if I don't have anything armed it's this little button here which in audio was record but in midi it's a little bit different and it is for a theme for the many armed so now that it's armed I can now make sounds great just because like ingredients in doesn't mean I can't record it right I've got to press just like I would with the auto harper reporting I press one of the circles representing record then I can start to record but before I want to make sure I'm doing something is that you start bringing in and once it's here remember it's not audio I can do all sorts of things e can bring in a new no e unedited I can move things around it always is bringing new sections well that is very and then I can't even move that start point great and if you have a controller like this one because these buttons represent able tonight I can always just come in here I think this is polyphonic. Yeah, I can just click that and then I could hit it. It starts playing very, very easy to start recording, so all you have to do is have the arm on hit the record. You can start recording stuff. Uh, yeah, this is pretty easy. There's. This new thing called new, so if I'm reporting something I could present new and it brings it down to the next slot even if there was something here. So I'm playing it knew it brings me to a new slot that's because some controllers, like push have the ability to hit new just so you know, if you ever want to add a new when you can just hit new up there while recording, bring it to a new slots you can start playing. Um the only other important thing I want to show you here is overdub. So I have this let's pick one of these like, I have this e if I wanted to record right now, nothing's really happening over done now what I pressed e it was terribly done example, but if you have a session arm, which means now record in session and you have overdub now, whatever I do plays on top so you can kind of play loops and loops and loops on itself and so on so it added there was many on top so just add and at and at an ad which you might not want so you might want to know that many record maybe overdub is on so it doesn't sound like twelve layers of weight was happening and that's that little plus media overdone one important thing for all you mobile musicians out there is you can use your keyboard and your keyboard this image shows what the keyboard can be used for as a mini control or so if I have something like a kn instruments sampler you might be hard for you to see but basically I'm using a s d e f g all these different keys to just pretend it was a keeper now there is one big issue here there is no velocity sensitivity it's just on off it's just but if you're on the go and you want to just play something real quick you can just use your keyboard but you can change your velocity by sea envy you can change your active by z and x so that way if I'm in here lower lower lower and in velocity quieter I have seen some crazy producers off just their keyboard there sitting there like this guy bobby blast goes by marathon he sits there and he's like controlling the velocity playing different parts going up and down when he's like doing this on the train or whatever in arms blown away and like whoa, whoa, dude e I just have a you know, a keyboard. All right. Super mobile. Yeah. That's setting up on the only thing you need to keep in mind is this right here. So if that button up the top is not pressed, I'm hitting s nothing's happening. But if I hit that, then recognizes it because, you know, if you're renaming things or doing other things on your computer, you don't want it to start making music. So you just hit that button toe to turn on. Great. So here's a few things that we've looked at for recording right? First one is global clintonization. We've already talked about that. About how long? Like it'll wait one bar to be on the bar to record as part of your global clintonization. Then we also have let's see number two is right here, down at the bottom, and that is thie record armed button. You have to have that so it looks for your controller three the session record armed button that is up at the top. That is how you can record different movements in session view. And then we also have four, which is the clip record button, which is you click that to record within that clip slot. Five is the clips stop button we've used that before an audio there is a stop button at the bottom right there and then six is the new button which makes a new scene if you want to make a new scene for your many controller uh any questions on midi I'm not specifically on middle we have a question though about so when I'm using drum rack is there a way to change values for all the clips in the drum rack like how it is now I have to change the pitch philosophy low pass filter etcetera manually for every clip in the drum rack which is very tedious um is there any like shift click to select all to change that uh I see so there's a few tricks here okay I can get totally lost in tricks which isn't bad but let's go to let's see uh and e d I think that will work all right so let me see if I can just grab a clip so I'm just dragging a clip in and you'll notice when I do that the clip actually has all the middie information as well as the instrument which is super useful. So now if I play this just so I have a simple example now if I'm in here let's say this kick you want all the kicks to be louder notice how when I clicked here it's selected everything in that row so now I can turn up that whole room turn it down now I don't think that this instrument is very velocity oops is very velocity sensitive it's not so I'm gonna just turn off that loss so now all were up all more down so on and you could do the same thing I select that whole thing I can bring all of them up or down and what was some of the other questions the other parameters uh kitsch velocity low pass filter so pitches just upper down right you can also drag and select all that way there is no button that I know of that select all but just so you know there's this annoying thing where if I scroll down I missed these well if you do this in the velocity area it also does all of them so I usually end up just using all the velocities and then I could sleep and then you can move all velocities up or down or then you can move all the pitch all then upper down I think I have to get out of full yeah and so on it's just using during samples instead of actually like transposing the pitch of each sample yeah ok yeah so if you get out of fold then you can go up and down pitch and then what was the third one? Um low pass filter low pass filter so bf so this gets a little vance I can show you guys some really quick things for those that have been playing with this for a while but let's say I have auto filter uh no like audio effects let's say each you ate I throw it on this kick and have it on this kick and I have this this on here right? Well, if I had that instance on a few of these guys it's really annoying to go in there and change each one right? Well, what you can do is you can right click copy value two siblings and then I'll copy it all others that have that so if I move this right click it has two other siblings to other similar devices in this rack that have this parameter and it changes all of them. So if I change my velocity for instance of this snare right click copy value two siblings it will change all fourteen instruments to that setting a velocity and so on that's a huge time saver is there a way to do that just for maybe three or four of the different pads in the drum rackets all or none because it was only three or four it shouldn't take you long, but if it's sixty four of them in a drum rack it's like I have done that and on that note if you have a drum wreck that say like whether it's like eight pads or sixteen pad, sixteen samples, rather that you have on a drum rack and say you want add reverb to two, or maybe just one of the snare samples, but you don't want the high hats in the kick that's in that trump back to be affected by that. Well, then let's, say, this one that class you want to add a river, I just go to my river dragon into that particular spot now, it's just on that one stuff's getting weird. Um, so yeah, you can put a specific effects on specific ones, or if you put it outside of it, it will do it to all of them. Awesome, yeah, we can get pretty deep in, like, yeah, a lot of this, and I'm giving you a great overview. So then you know where you need to look at all. I need to look at mediating and devices and then, you know, kind of go down that rabbit hole for four years and it's totally worth it. It's a good rabbit hole.

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Ratings and Reviews

Malcolm King
 

Hello, Firstly gotta thank you for your great tutorials, and sharing the knowledge of making music; then I wanna say, I bought the Ableton Live 9 tutorial package, but I didn't heard or better say understand some of Mr. Cotec's words; that's why I wonder would you please send me an English subtitle of his excellent teaching? I will be much grateful for this. Best Regards, Malc

Casey Dart
 

Isaac is the man! He is such a great teacher and you can tell has full control over the information. I already feel like I am many steps above friends who have used ableton for years because of this course setting a foundation for me to learn and experiment. Thank you Isaac and crew!

Claudio Martins
 

Great start course! And Isaac is a super-teacher. Many lessons and great tips. This the first time Im really learned how to handle Ableton!

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