This is just one of many things. There's no one secret to making amazing music. You can have a clean track no pops or crackles but if its boring and generic then you won't get anywhere. I think a lot of producers get stuck in trying to make their songs tidy and clean and overengineer a track yet forget about actually songwriting. This is no shade to you, just something I've been observing a lot on youtube tutorials.
I think really the whole thing with getting rid of the pops and crackles is actually only a tiny bit of the video. He more emphasized bouncing to audio since it forces you into a different mindset that's creatively(since you can get crazy stuff with audio). This is especially the case if you render a synth with a bunch of changing modulations- you can chop it up and arrange it in a way you can't do with midi(or put in a granular sampler). Lastly, it forces you to commit and is a way to get you to keep progressing in the writing of the track. Also its easier to visually understand layers of audio versus layers of midi(when you a lot of tracks).
Yeah agreed, take the classic LFO by LFO theres clicks all the way through it from the kick tail. Sometimes clicks add something, sometimes tails are super important for flow.
The audio recording thing can be done by default in ableton with no plugins... make a new audio track and either set the input to "resampling" to record whatever the daw hears (so you could solo multiple tracks and print them to one) or set the input to the specific midi track you want to record. Then simply arm it and press the record button. When the track plays it will record the audio to the new audio channel. No need for MRecord or anything else.
@@snubdawg1386yeah but you can record your already warped version to a new track so that the warping is now baked into sample. This way, if you want, you can have warping off and still have the same sound. Definitely no need for a 3rd party vst for this ultra simplistic task.
Another person who does this a lot is Nasko. One of the things he likes to do is create big full chord stacks(with a chord progression, bounce them to audio, then throw them in a granular sampler or mangle them further with effects.
Isn’t Nasko the guy behind the best indie plugin this year - Chroma 😎 Btw once you bounce chords to audio and throw them into granulator you can then use position knob to follow the melody while introducing granular effects - magic 🔥
Try taking your drums group, and using something like infiltrator 2, bounce out a bunch of random variations, then use those resamples as out-of-this-world drum fills. Works wonders with literally anything honestly
Using the Rolling Sampler in this type of workflow is really amazing. Its basically a live recording program that keeps the last so many seconds/minutes of audio(using ram so it deletes audio from beyond the set time rather than storing on your hard drive). You can select a portion of the audio and drag into your project as an audio file for use. Amazing for saving time recording loops and one shots. Another advice for this workflow: make racks where you have a synth(with processing) and use a random modulator to control certain parameters on your synth. Draw a super long midi note and hit record and you have a bunch of phrases with your synth that you don't have to automate yourself(amazing for reeses and basses).
This is 100% accurate. If you're making "bass music", do everything in audio. I'm not going to argue with anybody about this, because it's been the case forever. However, this is just a bass music thing. Suddenly working in audio isn't going to spice up your trance productions.
Damn, if I think about it, I need to agree with you. “Melodic focused” genres are way harder to deal with audio only although you can always treat those melodies like samples - chop and cut them just like trap guys do
Cleaning out the clicks and pops is so crucial! Great tip so glad to see other people doing this too. Saves cpu and also helps you literally commit to sounds and move forward in the process
Glad to hear that and yeah, tbh clicks and pops are the biggest benefit but working with “limited” audio clips requires to use more creativity. Tl;dr - totally agree!
going to audio and doing a final mix in audio is the way. especially if you use lots of lfos, do ambient, or slower music. i had so much randomness every time i render its quite different. even had to reduce the randomness a bit. it has made it much easier to mix. my mid and uptempo tracks i havent tried recently, but i am hyped to do it. i feel they will benefit. there is more clarity and preciseness. also one ends up looking at the material much differently. although sometimes i end up rearranging or remixing things, which could be a bad or good depending *shrug Rolling sampler is frkng awesome! game changer
On point, especially the part about controlling randomness! This technique can also be cool for recording happy accidents which are obviously the best part of randomization 🔥
Good stuff! I use versioning... I have a version with all my midi & audio stuff and then when I start doing a mix down, I freeze and flatten everything and save it again. For mastering - I like using just 1 total wav file combined. Pretty much every song folder has several versions, that I can go back to and resave bits or parts as needed, as you can simply pull in a track and redo a freeze and flatten in the new version. Keeping things in the same folder makes it easy peasy from the file menu.
Damn, then you’re soooo well organized. That’s a great idea btw. I usually save versions inside project folder and when I feel I need to get back to something I just drag it directly from a project file in the browser
I learned how to produce breaks, house and drum and bass in the early 2000's mostly using Pro Tools. Eventually I moved to Ableton, but, I really liked working with and the raw audio samples. Over the years I just liked to render each track to audio (most of the time and use that. This does however make it hard to go back to a track and make changes (sometimes and I'm sure there are better ways to avoid that nowadays) but I remember watching a skrillex video one day and seeing that he liked to have spacing between the sounds and mostly used rendered audio instead of midi. It was then I realized how much this can help and since then, probably for the past few years I have almost always finalized a track with waveform audio only, but I try to keep a version of the Ableton project that has the synths and Midi that I created that track with. It's really a great technique but can be time consuming
had a few session with sonny and can confirm he never used any midi in any of our sessions, other producers in the room would use midi, but he would just use the audio stems.
Bouncing midi files really makes a difference! I’ve recently started to record my external gear and whenever I’m working with those, my tracks sound so much better 🤩
@@Zdrewe Syntakt was my first real external gear :D I got myself also Digitone, and now Minifreak is also on my radar: I already have a place prepared for it 🤩
@Powhart hahah then it’s literally the opposite for me. I was always into elektron devices but ended up getting MicroFreak 😂 ngl Analog Heat would probably be my next purchase in future
@@Zdrewe MiniFreak is probably one of the best First Synth out there :D I think I bought into the Elektron Hype, but I like those boxes ;) So did You finally get any of the Elektron gear?
Great video man! But there are quicker ways to record clips into audio in Ableton. First is a M4L device called Audio Treasure - you place it on the mater channel and it automatically records the last 2 minutes of your session. The second is BiP - put it on your master, set a keyboard shortcut and use it to record any clip into audio 🤷♂
Im just at the beginning of producing and in the past I got many moments where I was like 'Ahh this is gonna change everything and producing will be that much easier with that approach'. In the last few days I got that same thing with taking audio rather than midi and building a track framework and this time I really thing its gonna make thing easier because I can really see what I'm doing that way 🤯
Glad to hear that and all the best for you my friend. It’s weird but as easy as working with midi seems to be, you can easily get distracted and catch yourself in a loop of changing presets and notes. Just like I wrote before - audio sparks the creativity
rendering early helps me avoid a fussy workflow, but i tend to edit that way in the mixdown final arrangement stage - which i try to do quickly. Also if you have music that is significantly wonky, alot of those audio arrangement techniques take too long - time you can spend writing new stuff. If i intend to write a spliced track, i normally keep everything straight and apply groove after (reaper stretch marks). Editing this way can be a bit dicey if you want to sound fresh imho.
@ZenWorld has video how when you are done with midi you should commit to waveforms and in my amateurish experience it works. I don't know why but it switches something in my brain. Also there are things you cannot do with midi (like reversing) and it show you tails you might not be aware of (as shown in the video). Another great thing is when you move to mastering stage, export everything as stems and do mastering as a new project only with audio files. So yeah. Nice video to be reminded of that. Thanks.
Means a world my friend and thanks for the tip 🙏 honestly there’s no right or wrong time to convert to audio. Close to the end of writing works the best for me but sometimes it’s a lot more fun to start only with audio and build a whole project with it exclusively
I've bounced things into my sampler plenty of times to do weird timestretching/pitchshift stuff but never had it occurred to me to do THIS! Neat idea! p.s. Dope dnb banger you got there! Big ups!
You know? I subscribed for your humour AND more importantly, the video transitions you are useing. Why? Because I'm more of a motion grapher and video editor than a mucisian yet hahaha good job mate! Cheers from Argentina
Kinda tbh 😎 it’s a systemwide app called MiniMeters. I found a theme that matches my Live skin and used floating windows option to place meters in empty spaces
Hey Man, These are some Ultra cool tips! Midi always seems to stress me out:-) Could you please share the music visualizer you use at 20 Seconds in? Looks great!!
bouncing to audio isnt just for clicks and pops. its also way less cumbersome on the cpu along with offering resampling and freedom to some crazy shit you wouldnt otherwise be able to do in midi. 9 out of 10 times in modern edm, if you're leaving synths on midi, it's not a compelling sound
Hi, love the video! Cool idea with this mRecorder thingy, but if you wat to make the process even more smooth and workflow firendly, then you should try BiP for Max 4 live. All you need to do is to place it on your master, map recording button to any key you like and make that your default template, so every new project opens with it already on. From now on in order to bounce something to audio all you have to do is to select track by highlighting it and press designated key. This little fella saved me so much time you wouldn't belive, highly recommended :)
Believe me or not but I heard about bip many many times and for whatever reason I haven’t got it yet. Got the same story with clipgain and once I finally tried it, I can’t live without it 😂
Nice video, but if you want to record your poject into audio (without freezing or exporting it), you don't need any fancy plugin. - Make a "group" with all your tracks - Create an audio track outside of this group - Route the output of the "group" to the new audio-track - done. Takes
As I mentioned earlier to someone, resampling is also a great way. The free Melda plugin is cool for recording in the background to catch some happy accidents or sounds on the go. For final export or final audio commitments - the method you mentioned is the way to go
As I said, I have ClipGain M4L device mapped to Q key. You can do this for any key of your choice by pressing Cmd+K and mapping “show window” button from ClipGain
how do you implement the graphic output metering tool on the top of your ableton transport? Need that! great video, thank you. Always wondered how Skrillex actually crafts those incredibly tight arrangements. As always with the pro stuff... it's a very simple process, that's purely relying on skill, patience and musicality... ;)
Thanks for watching 🙏 so the tool is called MiniMeters. By default it has every signal monitoring type in one lane but you can adjust the position of individual modules and keep them on top of any window on your device. That’s what I did here basically 😉
😂😂😂❤️🔥🔥🔥🔥 thank you for such an amazing entertaining tutorial, can you tell me how can I remove background noise in my vocals? I use Ableton Live Lite 12 & I have not the budget for a Paid de-esser
I don't understand where these pops or crackles that need to be cut out are coming from. What are people doing in this genre that generates this issue?
It’s usually due to sound design - especially filters, wave shaping and a lot of movement on those above caused by using LFOs and other modulation shapers
i bro , did you know you can create a AUDIO TRACK with Resampling audio otpion , and record everything from ableton into this track . then drag and drop into the navigator the file u jsut recorded ..... no need Extra software
You’re at least 5th person mentioning this and just like I answered before. Sure thing you can do that but sometimes happy accidents come as you sound design or play with effects (just like I’ve mentioned in the video). That’s where recording in the background becomes useful
Agreed. Removing tails and pops is only the small part of all the benefits of working with audio. But don’t get me wrong, as I said in the video - I’ll still use MIDI for flexibility
Sometimes from sound design (like using reverb filter with serum for example) or a long decay time which can interfere with other elements as you progress through the track
@@mttlsa686 when recording audio or midi within a loop in arrangement view, you have the option to expand the track to reveal "Take Lanes", which show you everything you recorded each time playback looped I would love to see this same feature for freezing/flattening tracks; where you could expand the track and it would show you each version of the track you had before each freeze/flatten
@@Zdrewe I have a wishlist for Ableton a mile long 😂 for this one the only complication I can foresee would be whichever audio effects were on the previous iterations, they would have to go somewhere, not sure how to work that out.
I briefly explained it but the whole point is that with something like Mrecorder (especially retrospective mode) you can just have it in the background, switch tracks, delete and experiment. There’s nothing wrong with direct resampling and I use it all the time but with third party solution you can catch some happy accidents. Plus it’s free so you loose nothing
You don’t have to stop what you are doing and resample using the Mrecorder if im understanding the video correctly. Sometimes those few moments can cost you creative energy so I can understand why it’s worth it!
As someone said here already - removing clicks is only a small part of this whole “strategy”. You’re partially right tho, using automations for that will work but only to some extent. By using it you can easily get rid of important parts of synths release and decay. Long story short it’s better to see the whole sound
This kind of music doesn't make me trip, it sounds like drill noises and it's horrible to hear. You can cut, copy, paste, reduce, compress, it's still crap. Skrillex is construction noise, not music. We're not going to talk for hours about his lousy style. Sorry if I offended some of them, it's not their fault that they have no ears ;-). On the other hand, thank you for your tutorial, working on the stems and removing residual noise seems like a good thing to me.
It touches on the old ongoing issues with different or new types of music. Same was with rock, jazz and basically any other genre. But no harsh feelings, I get it. Bass music or any of harder EDM subgenre isn’t for everyone. You’re lucky that I’m not making uptempo or raw here 😂😂
