Hey friends, in today's lesson, we're going to use
Ableton to create generative and random glitch effects so that we can create
interesting drum patterns and drum rhythms. I've got three different methods that I want to show and the first one is kind of one that
I feel like is my own signature way to do this. What I have is this little drum loop,
check it out goes – Just a hastily made drum pattern. Okay. What I've got underneath of it here…
I've made a bunch of different effect racks. In this first one, each one of them is fed by a Beat Repeat. So, the Beat Repeat is making glitches and let's just listen to the Beat Repeat
as it is without any of these effects on it. The Beat Repeat is set to Mix mode at this point and that means that the repeats, as well
as the original beat, are going to come through. So it sounds like – Right, so that's what's going on there. The way that I do this method is
instead of using Mix, I set the output mode to Gate.
So what that means is that
it's only going to make an output when the Beat Repeat is making a
glitch or making a repeat. Whenever it actually is firing,
that's when it's going to make a sound. Well, why would you want to do this?
Well I'm going to show you that. So, let me turn these effects back on. And all this is is just a Beat Repeat
signal chain that I made into a group. Right? What I can do is I can create an audio track… So here's a new audio track,
and I'm going to grab the output of Drum Loop and I'm just going to record it. Okay.
The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to duplicate this loop – I don't know, this many times – Okay.
So what's going to happen is when I hit record… (I'm in Arrangement View also) All I'm going to be recording is the Gate output of the Beat Repeat being processed by these effects.
And I'm going to make myself some glitch sounds.
So check it out. I'll just turn this off too. That's enough. Okay.
So what I have here now are some elements. These elements are all synced to time.
So if I just turn this effect off, and I just play these two together, check it out – Alright, so I can just call this like wah wah, whatever.
Alright, so now that's a track done. Mute it. Start another one. Okay. I am going to do the same thing…
going to get the drum loop into this new track. Okay. I'm going to now go back to the drum loop,
and I'm just going to close this down… and open the second one.
So this is what the second one sounds like, we've got – I've got a Flanger and a Redux
and I'm using an LFO to change the down sampling rate. It doesn't matter what's actually,
you know, going down.
You can take a Beat Repeat scramble its settings, and then just set it to Gate mode. So, you're only processing with effects the output of the Beat Repeat when it's making an actual repeat right?
So here we go again, we're going to record it. Cool. So now we've got some more stuff.
Mute it. Make a new audio track. This will be… Flangduxxx. Okay. So the next track, same thing,
Drum Loop is the input, record it and we're going to enable our third effect.
Okay. What's this one? What magic is lying in…?
Wait. Okay, so I think this was the… Yeah, this is the Corpus. I just set Corpus on Tube mode.
I've got it set to Gate and I've got an Erosion at the end to
add some of the top end back in. So let's record it. Okay, I've got some sounds there! Sweet.
Now, one more time. This last effect, it doesn't matter what's in it. What matters is the concept.
The concept is grabbing audio and recording it for later use. Okay, muting this track now going to this one. I think that's a vocoder working on it. Okay, so let me just go ahead and
walk you through doing this yourself – making one of your own effects chain.
So I've got a Frequency Shifter. And I think the first thing to do
is instead of putting the Beat Repeat in there, put the effect that you want to try out on the drums, right?
So this is uh… So this is an LFO on a Frequency Shift
or kind of moving the frequency up and down, right? So that's kind of fun, right? We've got this… And so then all I would do is –
after that point – I would go in and grab my Beat Repeat and I would set that before the effect.
And then I'm just going to scramble some of the settings.
I like to put Variation up because what Variation is going to do
is it's going to alter the grid. Meaning that it'll do different styles
of repeats over and over again. And I like to decay the volume a little bit.
It makes for fun effects. Make sure the Chance is all the way up
and then just set it to Gate. Okay, so now we're just going to record
the output of this new effects chain right? Into this… Let's just make a new audio track. The input is Drum Loop. Hit record. Okay, so now we've got that much more to deal with
and remember all of these tracks are in time. So, one of my favourite things to do in Ableton
(and the way that I work with composition) is I like to take these…
and because they're all locked to this grid – they're in time – I can actually just slide these over here,
just get them out of the way.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going
to deal with a shorter section of time. Let's just say we're going to do four reps of this drum beat.
Okay. So the next section that I want to do
is I want to listen here to these sounds. Okay, and I want to find parts of these sounds that I like, right? So let's listen to this first one. So that's kind of a cool like wah-wah kind of effect.
What you want to do is make sure that you're not messing with the automation mode so that when you select this you don't end up accidentally only taking the automation as opposed to the whole thing. So I'm just going to select this area. I'm going to copy it and now I can just kind of paste it somewhere right? Let's try it right here.
Okay, so now I can unmute and I can listen. Oh, I got to turn off my effects here. So now I can just listen to the results.
So what do we get? Maybe this would be better here? Right? And I can take this out…
I'll just select this part and hit backspace so now I got – So there's one edit, okay? I can find another section here.
I'll find another…
That's kind of fun, right? I'll put that right here. Right, so that's right there. Maybe I'll repeat one of these kind of faster ones later on… Somewhere else, kind of later on in the in the track.
So maybe right here. So now I've got that put into the beat.
This is in the section that I'm working on. So now I can mute this track and I'll go to this track.
What's going on in here? I kind of like this this glitch right here, right?
That's fun.
This is now a new element. I copied it and let's just go ahead and find another spot to put this. I think on this snare.
That'll be fun. Right? And maybe the next thing I'll do is I'll duplicate this and lead into another snare drum by just double clicking
on the audio and hitting reverse. So now I've got – Right? All right, so what I'm going to do now is
I'm just going to speed up the video and I'm just going to populate this beat
with some of these glitches.
Okay? Okay, so now I've got all these effects assembled
and I've got them kind of you know, some of them named – trying to keep somewhat organised.
It doesn't really matter that much. At the end of the day it's pretty easy to tell what your
drum beat is and what all your wacky effects are. So this is what it sounds like. Okay. So what's cool about this is these are all
sounds that are generated by the kit itself. So the next step here is, I mean…
Obviously a lot of this isn't mixed and I would
do a lot more there'd be a lot more going on here than just, you know, dragging these clips over here.
There's more editing to be done. You could pitch them you could do granular stuff.
You could stretch them. You can do all kinds of fun things. But what I want to show you is, you know,
I want this to be applicable to your mixes into the things that you're trying to do.
So the next step, what I'll normally do, is I'll create a group. Okay. I'm just going to click on the first glitch track all the way up to the sixth one (the last one)
and I will right click and turn them into a group. So now I have a mix bus of just the effects right? So – So they're just hanging out in this, you know…
I could call this like… Glitches, right? So now all the glitches are hanging out in this group.
The next thing that I like to do is sidechain the drums in there. And why would I do that?
Well, basically there are parts where the snare hit also has this kind of glitch with it.
What I want to do is make sure that I'm not going to push the master too hard with the drum sitting
at the same time as the effects. And also the effects will duck nicely
when the actual drum hits are happening. It just kind of makes it nicer.
So, the classic turn your sidechain on, feed it the drum loop – We'll make the ratio all the way up
because we just want this to happen instantly.
The attack is going to be pretty low.
And now let's just check out what we got… And we need to pull the threshold down
to make sure it ducks, but now we have – So now all those effects are sitting in there nicely.
Okay. So that's kind of my method. Now the second way is… I discovered an incredible video (which I'm going to link here at the top)
from Ned Rush who was using Follow Actions to allow Ableton
to generate all kinds of amazing glitch effects.
And if you want to watch this in more explicit detail,
you check out that video. I'm just going to do kind of like
a derby quick style of it. But to start out, let's just go ahead
and listen to what potentially the end result of this effect will be like.
So check it out. It goes like this – Pretty sweet, right? Okay. So let's just go ahead and…
I'm just going to create this from scratch. So I'm just going to grab one of these
drum loops and I'm going to slap it into… now we're going to use Session View.
Now, don't worry.
You can still use Session View to record
your output of Session View into Arrangement view. You can still use the same kind of method
I was talking about before but in this case, what we want to do is, we want to
have the trigger mode become legato and we want to open up the…
If you don't see that hit the L and that'll open up this Launch section. And so now we can look at this
and we can say okay, we want to have the Follow Action of any of
these clips jump to any of the other clips. Now if you've watched any of my videos on Follow Actions
in order to have Follow Actions work, you need to have a group of clips together. Like, If I had a Follow Action on this one,
it wouldn't go anywhere. But if I had a Follow Action on this one,
it would choose any of these. They have to be grouped together. So I'm just going to delete all these guys
and all I need to do is make sure that Legato is on and that the Follow Action is going to Any.
You can also choose Other. Basically the idea here is that you
want it to skip around. So what we're going to do now is we're going
to look at each one of these clips. And what we want to do is we want to make each
one of the clips a little different in fun and interesting ways. So I also don't want
this loop to play all the way through. I'm going to maybe make it like, you know,
we'll make this 0 and this will be two bars long. Now every single time this time is up,
it'll switch to another clip. So I'm just going to duplicate this clip
and it's important that you duplicate so you don't lose your Other or Any. And so now what I want to do on this clip
is I'm just going to like, pitch it up. And I'm going to make its Follow Action last a lot shorter,
so maybe just two. Okay, two beats. So now this is what we have – Oh, you know what I didn't do?
Got to make sure we loop them! All right, so now they're looped check it out.
Hear that one little hit that was higher? Right. Okay. So that's the first
little thing and this is just the method. I will copy and paste that first loop again.
And this time I'm going to really scramble it up. I'm going to turn it on Texture mode. I'm going to maybe take the pitch down
and I'll let this one last a little bit longer. Maybe just one bar. And the other I'm going to do is
I'm just going to loop a different section of it. So maybe this section right here.
Okay. So now we have – So there's so much more here we can do.
Let's go ahead and start another one. And what I want to do is just loop one hit. So now in this loop by itself…
Now the other method is you want to pull these clips down so that they're not triggering other ones
for a little bit so you can work on what they're doing. So in this clip, what I could do is I could go in there
and I could say well, let's do some clip automation.
And what we can do is we can say all right,
let's take the transposition and kind of move it around right
so we could go up like this. Okay, and the next thing we can do is we can unlink…
If you unlink this section, you can have clip automation that's super long. How long do we want it? You know, let's make it a full… I don't know however many bars that is, who cares.
Now, what we can do is we can kind of make some different automations
and then over time we get this – Now because that's happening,
I can set the Follow Action to one bar and wherever this ends up it's always
going to have a different pitch or these different three pitches, right?
So now we have – Right, so we're just making glitches left and right.
I'm going to copy this again.
And this time instead of doing transposition,
if you change these Warp modes to Texture, we can do kind of the same thing
over an interesting section. So maybe maybe this section right here and we'll make this kind of that long
– an odd length, right? And what we're going to do is yet again,
we're going to change the grain size… in an unlinked fashion. So let's make this,
you know, really long. Okay, maybe we can make this, I don't know four bars long.
Okay, we'll make this four bars long
and then we're going to take this envelope and we're going to scramble it up right? So maybe we'll go… low to high… and then come down into the middle. And now we get this. I'm going to pull this out. And again, in order to get any effect I have to transpose this.
So maybe go up high – That's going to go back up. And we can watch that here. Doesn't matter. Have fun. Go hog-wild.
Okay, now I can drag this up in here and I can make this last for a short period of time.
Kind of an odd period of time.
And now we get this – These are just little elements
that are being added to this original beat. So again, I want you to go over to
Ned's channel and check out his thing because he goes a lot more in depth with this.
But what I'm going to show you is just how to capture this.
So, I know that this is in Session View but the cool thing is that I know that this track name is Follow Actions.
So I can open up my handy dandy Glitches group (right here) and I'm going to add an audio track.
So within this audio track I want to make sure
that it's in that group. So I'm now going to just record the output of
Follow Actions into this track. And I'm going to make myself some more mixable elements. So now these first two tracks are muted. Okay, so I'm ready to roll now, so – So what we're doing is we're having
Ableton do the the editing work for us. All we're doing – we're kind of like the selector,
we're finding our favourite loops… our favourite glitches and sounds. And we're dragging that back into our main composition. So this area over here being the sounds and this area being the song. If I run out of space in my composition, all I got to do is select this area go to my Edit menu and we're going to create silence or command I.
So what this does – we can just say,
I need eight more bars of space – hit eight, boom. And I've pushed all this stuff over here. This is just a way to be extremely efficient when it comes to having a collection of sounds
or a palette (and you could think of it as a painter) you have a palette of sounds and
then this is your song or your composition, right? So all I have to do is now go in here and listen to this. I love that right there.
So this is now something that I can add to my other section. So I want to find a snare hit that I like, so now I can add this to a snare drum section that I like.
Here we go. This is perfect. Love it. Okay. So as you can imagine I could just keep grabbing stuff out of this recording of Follow Actions
Love it. Okay. So as you can imagine I could just keep grabbing
stuff out of this recording of Follow Actions and I could keep working on my composition over here. Let's move on to the third way.
I'm just going to delete this Follow Actions track. I don't need it. Now, the last one is called Midi Fills. So up until this point we've been working with audio. Now in this Midi Fills section, this is kind of interesting. What I can do… I have a choice. I can either play with my keyboard,
the notes that these drum rack samples are sitting in or I can just have a MIDI clip that plays those,
which I happen to have over here.
Let's listen to what it does first
and then we'll break it down as to how to make it. So here's this track – Kind of fun, right?
So let's listen to this in context. Now we've got the 16th kind of sound going on.
Now what is happening here? This is kind of complex.
But I mean, I think it's actually pretty simple if I break it down. So I'm going to move this back over here to a section where we're not dealing with our composition. Because right here this is our song or our composition. So let's just loop this guy right here. Now if we look at the clip,
what's cool is if you have a drum rack and you populate it with samples,
it will show you those samples in the piano roll. Super useful. So what have here is we have an arpeggiator
that's playing sixteenth notes. If I turn off these other devices,
this is what we've got going on. Right. It's just playing through those samples. And what it's doing if I put it on the standard mode Up it'll just play through the samples in an up fashion.
So – I can make it go down. What I'm going to do is I'm adding
layers of complexity to this so that I'm using Ableton's muscle to make edits for me and I'm just playing selector.
What is my favourite thing that Ableton did. So in that regard, the first thing I'm going
to do is I'm going to change the Arpeggiator to Random. So now it's just going to play at random. It's picking random of these samples to play, right? Now if you want to see how to do this,
I'm just going to go ahead and make this again. So shift-command m-makes me a new MIDI track, right?
I don't even have to make it that long. It could be this long, it doesn't matter. And instead of going in here and making a
MIDI drum beat like you're used to, what I'm doing is I'm now just going
to take each one of these samples and stretch them to the actual length of this clip. So what is this is basically
just like it's like having a chord, but it happens to be that the samples
in here are populating my piano roll.
So now I have this clip made.
Okay, and what this is, is I can just duplicate this. It's the same thing, right? Okay. So we're playing random notes.
Now the next thing we need to do is we need to add more Random. So the next thing I'm going to do is I added a Velocity.
And now in this Velocity as you can see from the centre
(I have a whole video on Velocity if you don't know already) but I can set this random amount to make it so that each hit has a different random velocity.
So now we've got – See how they're jumping up and down in volume? So that's adding another layer of complexity –
like a drummer hits a drum with different loudnesses. Now we have that going on.
The real cream of the crop here is up until this point everything is just kind of going
ta ta ta ta ta ta and never having a break right?
So, the way that I did this is I dropped a Random – I don't change anything else other than just –
I drop a random on here and I increase the Chance.
What this means is that now,
not only are there four different percussion sounds to make, if I increase the chance it will
jump up out of this range of notes, and every once in a while miss a note and it will
play one of these squares that has nothing in it. So, what do we get now? We get random rolls, right? You feel me? Okay.
So how is this cool? Well, the thing is, is that like…
in the same way that we used the Beat Repeat before with those effects,
I can just grab one of these effects drop it on to the Midi Fills…
And I can open it up. Turn it on. Let's see what we got going on here.
I'm going to scramble some of the controls. Maybe we'll turn the depth up, we'll change the intervals
and we'll just do something different. Now we've got this new situation where… I'm going to turn the mix back on
so we can hear the whole thing. But now we've got – How cool is that? Now we can record
the audio out of this and now we've got MIDI fills for days –
making us interesting results.
I could even turn this up and get – glitchier sounds… super fast ones… That's pretty weird.
Or I could make it more practical, leave it at 16 and maybe only make the Dry/Wet
of this like halfway up. So now I get – Okay, so that's a usable sound.
I'm just going to make a new Audio track, pick Midi Fills, record the output.
Let's go ahead and get that. All right, there it is.
So now I can just grab this guy. The very first thing that happened is really cool.
It's like – Right? That's kind of fun.
So I'll grab that, put it somewhere in my composition, make sure that I can hear everything.
And now I've got more elements to drag and drop into my Glitches section.
So this is now going to be the Midi Fills that it's in the Glitches, right? So – Oh I love it. That's so cool.
Okay. So what I've got assembled here is now… after I've done all this work,
what I've got assembled is this drum loop that has all these different elements in it,
being generated by Ableton.
Word. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you like this kind of thing – like, comment, subscribe. Really excited about the the growth of this channel,
and I really appreciate everyone's support. Go check out Ned's channel.
It's really awesome what he's doing, much love everybody. See you next time. Thanks..