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Lessons
Introduction and Overview
05:28 2Ableton Push Sections
12:46 3Sequencing Drums
49:15 4Creating Melodies
09:28 5D-Pad Theory
22:27 6Creating Chords
11:03 7Alternate Voicing
09:24 8Creating Chord Progressions
08:33Lesson Info
Arranging in Push
Let's talk about arranging and push so like kind of putting together a whole track and then also working in the session view as well how that's going to go ah so let's see, I'm gonna delete all of these tracks here we're just going to start from scratch so it to lead so to start with one mini trach and I usually start with well if I don't have a belly idea start with drums if I have a melody idea start there but today we'll start with drums and then we'll just build up from there to kind of see how that goes. Um so as usual will use browse trump rack and see code one of the ones I have let's see this one? All right, so I'm in sixty four and modes I'll take it out of there just remember to know if you're in sixty four not for sure these other ones will light up there's not a notification on the third row here uh let me choose a tempo what's do ninety three just a woodblock right? All right in court again you may notice that I actually hit it late in the loop which kind of puts it early ...
sell this, fix it and put it up in the front so you see also that put it writing as a quarter note because I had my resolution set when I just sequence did it so it made a longer note so if I want to fix that I can just click on it and then change the step find down so turn the record off sequences I just quickly made a cell press select so you have to hear the sound this is the woodblock I made ah would black I just played that in um and those were triplets and then they're like eighth note triplets so show you if I changed eight the eighth note triplet grid what it looks like and as I zoom out it kind of gets more of his umed outfield so you can't necessarily see exactly where the notes are it's kind of like if you look from a really tall building you could tell generally where things are but it's kind of like a zoomed out of you so I played a pattern and here and then I also played if I hit select in the kick drum um you know I have my pattern here it's locked if I go back to the sixteen steps you can see I'm just doing on two and four and since I sequence that in um I can say hey, I really like that hey, I want to kwan ties that or I would like to nudge it I like the way everything else sounds so I'm going to actually go in here and nudge a few of these back and forth so I'm going to two different nudges for the two and four um so you know this is kind of a nice little thing to do and you could do it however you feel like you could have these nights together or nudge them independently or nudged teo the twos or nudge the fours and led to the two and four it's kind of up to you kind of like how the feel is so let me actually play this because you want to kind of you want to hear what you're doing so I hold these two down and I mean that's he's for it a little bit no to these other two and then dropping back over too much if I want to like I can select to these and let's say drop the velocity bring that up see if I can do so you could do ghosts notes as well with the velocity which is nice so when we put one they put two and here so I'll do this one velocity so for that forty swing these a little bit much see you have a lot of variables that you can play with you know I sequenced in drums I also uh manually put them in sequencing and then once you do that you can start nudging knows you can quantas notes um and also you can automate as well so we have the automate on here so let's see uh let's do the wood block and so if you look right now I have selected the actual drum and not the wood blocks if I click on the wood block after I've selected it I get more parameters here and let's see it uh let's fill the tub so let's duplicate or let's double this this loop here so we can do some automation on here so duplicate these two and now I have four so it's the same two again I'm gonna focus on just these two bars and then I will go to, uh, step so I'll just hold this down uh automate actually let me go on the steps that have themselves to these steps and automate and let's say actually this first one let's go down tow one hundred the second one a little bit over two k filter and then let's do like eight r that's why so I have different stepped filters on here if you look on the clip you see that that's in there and I can even step um let's see? I'll step these I'll say transpose three semi tones eight semi tones let's go crazy negative twelve that's cool eso he's got these three changing the filter uh cut off when we have these three changing the transposition so that's like we just saw with the step automation you could apply it to the drums as well um and then if I want to on this last bar I can manually automate aah these so lets the um I don't want to do let's just to filter again and so I'll turn this on if I play all these together I want to go to the coach jerome and add more kicks thing some son the first one to take it off the first thing let's go to the second bar so the first part will be simple and I'll build up uh so let's go note and I'll go and set this to sixteenth is good and I'm going to step over the length of this long kick I'm going to change thie transpose so we make sure select the kick drum and then hold it down switched from notes to automate and then um let's see twelve first let's see ah this is set up right sometimes there I am I transpose is set so there was already I thought I was changing you know I said you change any automation you said it shows up with this bar so in my head I was thinking I had already set automation there because I had done automation on other things if you haven't on automation this little rectangle will show up to let you know that it's actually mapped to something outside of itself so I'm in sub kick here on on my laptop and it says transposed as you could see there's a little green square and it's mapped actually out to my actual drum rack you have to go to my drum rack too change this uh pitch here because already mapped out so I'll start this again and so select the second step and then I'll I'm actually make this longer because now it's kind of making a tone so hold it down notes could we do four steps turn it off for a second saw ghosts sub and I've got a mme get the first one automating one semi tones six semi tones tens mean tones and I've made a couple of changes so it actually has disabled it so let's see yes there we go so he's hit shift and automation too put the automation back on now it's like kick dramas making a pitch so I did that I guess I just hold it hold down the step that I want goto automate automate each step as I go through and since it's playing as you could see over the course of four sixteenth have for pitches that I could put in there and if I wanted to it could go even lower but it sounds great like this like man his head was really riddick um so if I want to sequence the four of these together I can just select all four again and so then you have sequence b it's only four measures but it's at least interesting enough to draw people in for you know, possibly the whole length of the song just by automation doing manual automation and doing step automation as well um anybody have any questions about that? Not about that specifically there's a question about whether or not you can change the track monitor settings in auto and off inside of push is that possible so out of the box no, I will um I go verse and things that kind of extend push in a second but one of the ones I'm going to talk about, uh probably a little bit mohr not in depth and now but just a little bit more is ah p x t live it's made by native control that's controlled with kate and they make they add a bunch of different features some that have now been implemented so if you have live nine point two which I recommend you downloading and you have a push well, even if you don't have a push nine point two is really nice it has laden sea compensation um nine point one added do a monitor um and there's a couple other things in nine point two I'm not thinking off the top of my head, but um it adds a lot more functionality, push and some of stuff that he had in there like from like nine point oh has now been implemented in the push but still things like like like you were saying changing the monitor in and out uh is available through that so you could do that all on there um and you can go to his website and check that out any other questions people good thing forget cool. All right, so you know that's how I could do a drumbeat and you know, the next thing I would do is let's say um have a lot of low into here or so maybe not a baseline souls to add track and let's look for something melodic here and I'll go in the instrument uh I don't think of pointed this out but as you go through I think I said this without it being up but you see I'm in places and I can go over my user library and then presets and then it goes instruments but then there's nothing there you kind of like I don't have a list you see there's a little arrow that lets you know there's more over you press the end and then you can go down into other instruments so let's see what I haven't here ah the roland j p x all right let's do this one so this is an instrument that I made were using uh max alive device called the dub machines it's replicates the space echo and the core ge stage echo and but adds a lot of characterises to it so it's really nice but I ran a sound through it um and then processed it as a sense so so that's what came out us so let's see so press browse to make the brows go away let's play the beat that's good and what I just did was, um using the deep ad I knew kind of where I could go and then one progression I kind of like is messing around just with a square so so you know if you stay within a square you have some nice things there because you're doing one two, four five are you going and so you just changed the combinations in the paths and you know you can come up with something so oh record that we make sure interment automation off don't need that fixed length off as well and so I press record and start so I just tried to see if I can go somewhere else with it I want that great um so you just press uh record to stop it and if I want to I know that probably the first four bars were good, right? I can go into clip and then just trim it up maybe the eight were but we'll just go do for so you don't have to I feel this I see this little thing a lot of my students they'll do something good at the beginning aren't good at a certain point and then they'll do something where I was like I was trying to take a chance to do something different and then I messed up so I'm just going to delete the whole clip you don't have to do that just find the what I say yu recording you find the gold nuggets and you mind those and you know no one's going to sit there and go hey, did you play eight bars a good stuff and then to barnes and like really jacked up stuff they just on lee here the four bar so don't worry about that s so I'll press play now, so I have this section right here s o I have a nice little beat of a little melody here um let's I added the dub machines once let me dio had track and I'm gonna go teo roland here so I've actually found this online. It's ah rolling gps eight two picks eight p there was a website they just had like samples of a bunch of old since um because I actually want to buy one but I just bought a scent and my wife would not like me trying to trick her into letting me by another cent so that I went online some of you guys know about, you know you know relationship you like this really important like no it's not that is too cute sea so let's see that was not loaded silo that he's not like yesterday so it's a slow base you have to turn that down I'll go to my device I closed browse went to my device and I turned the volume of this down so start the stop and see if it fits this's up to step aside and do stuff on a whim all right, let's go to another here offered you know device having bad luck with third party instruments let's go up to some playing when in doubt go too like we did before the piano I think I just realized that that is attitude it doesn't second I'll switch it sounds right off the sorts the instrument here, any questions right now I'm switching this out. You know this is good. I think so if this happened, why are you really working on something you just goto what would you do? Um talk a sort of usually like what this happens like oh say prep I I prepped the sound but I think I never checked it against u s house of happens so usually I just try to find another instrument or I try to fix it but since you know you want to sit here and have me like get things one cool thing I'll show you which is a nine point two things like I was just saying at effect and go down to the tuner and load that in so there's a tuner now something a lot of people have been asking for oh yes oh that's flying like a semi hardcore music majors were probably like it's in a it's kind of like an off so yeah, you could do that or just like choosing other notes sos for tuna it's kind of see it's wobbling in and out so yeah either switch the instrument or do something like this like with nine point two you can just tune it. What I used to do is to move against another instrument which I was trying to do really quick but I wasn't getting it so let's see, let me focus on just the first two bars of e court so you practice that a couple of times and make sure you know everything is right um that you're playing in the right spot and then use hit record and then get started just like the floor I tried to start it off, hit it at the wrong time like I was talking earlier sometimes you get kind off on their um and then you could just easily go in change the lights so I have that put in on and if I like that chord progression that's fine if I don't like or if I like the sound that's fine and if not like I said is this many instruments so you can go in and change it however you want um it's really simple go over the thing over here so once I have that in um I could go and let's say work on the second section and what I might want to do for you that second section that had ah a different pattern in the in the little kind of lead line I could actually just duplicate all of this um and re record a new portion for the piano part so I'm on the piano track right now and if I want tio make a new sequence depending on my settings and I'll do it first and I'll show you the settings you could make it to where when you hit new this button right here it will carry everything down for you so if I hit new right now carries everything down and then I can make a new sequence on that piano track but I still have the other tracks if I kind of like the drum uh the drum loop controls you have the ability to kind of like ok I want to listen to two or three years uh bar two to three or three to four I could do the same thing here where it's kind of like I want to carry over the same things and duplicate it and then changed a couple of things so ah this one I can now go I'll go over to that luke part don't go to clip and then I'll just change ah my position too bar when I do one through two so changed the bar three so now it's playing bar three and four so I gotta move these start over so if you turn the loop off you can move the clip start over so now the clip start and loop will be in the exact same place they just turned the loop back on and I like that stop the audio cause when you try to move the loop start and the start position well it's playing it starts jumping around um and yeah it's just easier to do it this way there's not attacking my ear so his press booth have the second part on and if you see there's now two scenes and if I want to navigate back and forth through those scenes I can just hit session so that we've been in note this whole time we had session you'll see that we have these scenes here so I can go back you have the ability for that too making news scene copy things over when you hit new to record a new piece and I'll record one in just a second but you can change the way this new works ah using a modifier by holding down user and then they're screwed uh workflow and you could change it from seeing tow clip what changes to clip and then I I'll go back up to select this clipper here that I was recording in earlier if I hit now knew it will well it'll make a new scene there but so it's just to lead me delete these two we'll go back up to the scene and then I'll say new and then it just goes down to the next one and doesn't carry on any of those clips from the scene because it's is focused on a news clip not a new scene so it will only move down one scene and give you the option of making a clip but disregard the other uh scenes there okay, so I'll go back tio note mode and I'm on the second clip on the second scene so I can play the clips so launch them here also if you need to get around you between the session and note in his hold down session for momentary, let it go and then if you're a session hold down note momentarily let it go theme that last part was going crazy so I'll just like holding court I'll do that so sometimes since you're like looking at this and then you have to listen to another track, you kind of got to remember what you played so if you play like something crazy you kind of like I got a play melies over that so a lot of times it's sometimes easy to do the melody first like we talked about the one for five or do that and then solo off of the off of the melody because then you know, are off of the courts then you have a lot a little bit more freedom so so I have that part in there I could if I wanted to, um go in and kwon ties that and, you know, take out different notes that I want going to the note section and the navigating down like those last couple of notes that kind of clash with the beginning of the melodies seconds to say, I'm just not going to play anything there and just take those notes out so you could do that all on here um, any questions before we okay, um so a couple other things to make sure you got here. So I show you how to switch the switch it from clip workflow tio seeing workflow also, there are a couple of things in here you can if you hold down user, you can change the threshold of pads, so the higher up um the hardy if the press lower the the softer issue could press uh then there's different algorithms for how it interprets you're pressing over the velocity scale so right now it's log one so whatever I presses, what comes in and then the algorithms change depending on these and if you look in the manual actually nine one linear would be that I'm on log one which is the default but if you look in the manual they have a push section and they have a list with a graph of what it looks like ah and then over here is the after touch threshold and we'll talk about that when we talk about extending push howto get the after touch toe work uh let's see if there's other things here s so if you want to also um duplicate a scene um you can hold down duplicate also and then just hit the seeing you want to duplicate and I'll just put it right down there um and then if you wantto duplicate just a clip like I'm still in clip workflow s o if I want to just duplicate a clip, you just hit the duplicate um to lead to bleed clips and then just like in live you can press any of these clips you want so I can it works exactly the same the cool thing also about using the scenes and the loop controls with the drums as I'll go over to the trumps here I'm on the second scenes drums and I can just double click to play just the second bar and then so it's only playing that one on and then I don't I don't have to do any more work already made the four bars and if I want um you know if you listen to a lot of songs they'll have, like a progression of drums and then this is sometimes a part where it'll only play like one section so instead of being like, let me think of another drum parts like, oh, I just loop one of these bars so this first one by press session has all four bars on if I go this one it's just losing that so you have the ability with your with your drums to be able to, like kind of start with an idea and then as you go down scenes, maybe shorten that idea down or lengthen it or do whatever you want as you as you build down uh, any questions coming in, everybody feel good about that everything making sense? Uh, since we're talking about arrangement as well in the session um, view here some of the most important things are using the volume of here and being able to monitor all the volumes and tweet them all as well as, um getting to the pans and sins so if you need to pan any of these while they're playing you can do that, um, as well as something we haven't talked about yet, which is very important when you're sequencing, uh, clips and tracks. Is this section right here for solo and mute and then stop. So you now have the ability when you're in session, view press here to just stop that track stopped this track on, then I can get them back, so get him back on track. Uh, mute solo. So actually, on these solo that comes in handy when you're sequencing on and then you have your sends open up the returns ceo moved to be on you could send that all out, um, to your returns as well. S oh, yeah, you get to your clit, like, select a clip and you can get in and change the length and everything. You go to the pans and sins and send those out for volume. Ah, and then see your individual track view. We can also do that in the session view as well. So if you're playing and then you say, man, I really I want to meet these drums. He's turned off munim or I really would like the solo. This just so I can hear the loop here or here myself playing and everything could still play, but you kind of single it out and go ok this sounds good and then come back in and then play it as well so when would that stop uh mute and solo and so when I first got push I was always confused about where I needed to go so like stop solo mute and then these six guys right here that's like and I need to get to my devices and I go yeah device and then I'm like ok so now I need to be able to see all my tracks and like oh yeah track it's like well I need to mute something how do I do that and so sometimes I would be just looking here and I press it on and it would do the opposite it with solo got so it takes some time memorizing like we don't need to do something first before I press one of these states right here because they have the same kind of functionality theyjust different functionality but the same buttons um any questions you got one question from ilya hey did its biljana e how do you know edge attract when it's plain I'm trying to do a live set and sometimes d jane with vinyl and with able to and I still need teo I need to nudge the clip so it sits with the other tracks is that possible oh so that's yeah that's more of a live thing which is cool so you just go into the clip and on in the clip box here. There's actually individual nudge for the clips. Cool. So you can nudge them back and forth. This nige up here is a global nudge back and forth. But you can know to the individual clips so you can keep it in sync with, um, your final ilia. Good did cool. Follow question says you have to map that. Would you map that? Uh, I don't use it much, but, you know, you could map it, so just, uh, control him were command them, and then you can see it's right here, you can map that. And I know the transposition works this way. So if you map the transposition, um, I think it's a transposition, whatever clip you have selected, it will toggle that transports so you don't care what map to just that clip. So I have never done the nuts, so I would I think that it works similarly. So whatever clip you're on, if you map like let's, say e and are like the key of ian are to the left and right nudge, then I believe that whatever clip e one, it'll go nudge back or nudge forward telling the mess with that, yeah, I'll probably text me later, okay, it works cool
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