How do I climb a brand new learning cliff?

December 6, 2020 12:30 PM

How should I approach developing an intuition for how to create the sounds I want with the (very expansive) palette of Ableton Live?

I'm no stranger to fiendishly complex production software or AV recording (years of video editing, 3d animation, etc -- it's not my primary job duty but it's a skillset I end up deploying frequently). Most of my artistic background is in 2d/3d art and video, though, and I have the benefit of 25 years of gradual learning there. I'm not really a musician, though I love to listen to music, noodle around on guitar, and have a reasonable background in the algorithms underlying DSP and synthesis. There's an Ira Glass "taste gap" thing going on here too, but I've been at this long enough to know that making stuff I'm not happy with, and understanding why I'm not happy with it, is the only way to get to the point of making stuff I am happy with.

So, Ableton (or any DAW, but Ableton is the one I've had the longest continuous experience with, and recently ended up purchasing a more featureful license, because I'm interested in the MPE stuff in 11). It's got just as many modes and tools as something like Blender, but I don't have 25 years of learning it piece by piece already, and I'd like to spend less than 25 years getting up to speed with the basics.

I guess I really haven't had to force myself to learn entirely new sets of concepts like this, in years. A lot of what I've done is gradual expansion of skills I've had since I was a pre-teen, and, at that point I had the advantage of a lot of free time, and probably more neural plasticity than I have now..

So, books? Videos? Courses? Read the manual, grab a single synth / filter and fiddle until I understand what it can do?

posted by Alterscape to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (8 answers total)

Reduce it down to what you already understand and add in pieces from there. Disable all VST type plugins and instruments if you can. Remove as many distractions as you can, distractions to me being a choice of 200 different reverbs. Watch some Youtubes about basics or concepts you already know the names of and don't feel you have to watch them to the end. It's fine to see how to do automatic clip triggering or something, but if you aren't going to use it then maybe move on to something else. Keep that gradual expansion thing going, it works for you!

You may already know this, but getting to something you like is rarely a first-shot thing, and editing your ideas down to the good parts that work with each other is the ear-skill to cultivate, if you ask me. Contrary to the minimalism approach above, there's nothing wrong with throwing everything you can think of into it, then spending your time chipping out everything that ultimately doesn't sound right with everything else.

And, as always: it depends on what you actually want to do with it. :)
posted by rhizome at 2:11 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

On the other hand, if you literally mean you want to make a specific sound as in timbre and pitch and envelope etc, I'd suggest picking one of the soft synths and ignoring all else. Something that is a classic Virtual Analog paradigm would be a traditional starting point, but you could also do FM or granular if those really pique your interest.

Sure there's all kinds of production stuff but making a sound starts with the synthesis, unless you want to be working primarily with samples, but it depends on what you mean by 'sound' a bit. If you mean 'sound' like an overall feel and aesthetic and style of music, then I'd suggest more what rhizome says above. Or heck even learning some basic music theory, some additional clarification on what you want to be able to do may help you get better answers. And if you find clarifying very difficult, then I definitely recommend reading a bit more on basic theory and concepts. Good luck!
posted by SaltySalticid at 2:17 PM on December 6, 2020

Luckily, you chose a DAW that’s comparatively very intuitive to use (once you spend a bit of time with it)! Also luckily, Ableton actually wrote a book to welcome and inspire people (Making Music - 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers), which I think is super helpful (seriously check it out). There are lots of devotees of this DAW out there sharing information (on YouTube and Reddit, and on various boards including Ableton’s), so if you encounter a hiccup, those resources are there, and people are usually keen to assist. There are also several online learning modules on various educational platforms (I know Berklee College of Music had a few, one on just Ableton).

I’m sure many of your general skills will transfer over. Don’t worry too much, have fun :)
posted by cotton dress sock at 3:00 PM on December 6, 2020

One good exercise is to pick a piece of a song you like, maybe just the intro or a chorus, and try to recreate it in Ableton.
posted by doctord at 3:25 PM on December 6, 2020

74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers

Cheeky!
posted by rhizome at 4:56 PM on December 6, 2020

Best answer: (Ah lol. This is what I was talking about, sorry!)
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:22 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

I just thought it was funny how Ableton had to be poking at Max/MSP.
posted by rhizome at 8:22 PM on December 6, 2020

Best answer: Heyyy! Welcome to the club. I've been a "serious" hobbyist of Ableton for the last 5 years or so, it is a truly amazing program and capable of so much. I took a scattershot approach to learning it, spanning from formal classes to getting lost in the rabbithole of YouTube tutorials. I didn't have formal musical training but I did have lots of experience with using (and teaching) software such as After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, etc. which I'd like to think helped me pick some things up. Here's some of the things I learned along the way:

• Consider keeping a notebook to document the key functions of the program. Ableton is generally intuitive after you've been using it for a while, the problem is when you return to it after a pause and can't remember how to do the most basic things. I also wish I had organized my project files better so I could go back and refresh my memory on a certain technique or effect. So I recommend labeling your projects very explicitly (I.e. "Learning the Operator")
• I did take this "traditional" course from Berklee,it absolutely fast forwarded my learning progress. Was it worth the $1250? Hmm, that's harder to say. I was able to convince my work to pay for it, but probably would have flinched at the price if I had to pay for it. The main benefit of any formal course to me is the accountability aspect, in this case ,having to turn in an assignment every week for 3 months was very helpful for my otherwise distracted brain. (As a side note, I haven't taken it, but I've seen this course on Udemy come up frequently as a good class and it's only $13 at the moment!)
• Don't sleep on the resources of the Ableton website itself! In addition to the excellent manual, they have a lot of of fantastic learning material that is truly helpful. For example, the subdomains learningsynths.ableton.com and learningmusic.ableton.com should be your first stops.
• There's a lot of great tutorials on YouTube, but a lot of bad ones too which can actually end up confusing you or giving you conflicting advice. I can highly recommend the videos from Ned Rush, he does a range of short, very focused tutorials all the way to long, complete songs. For 5 bucks you can support him on Patreon and get access to the files he uses in his videos.

Wow, I could keep going with this all day, but I have to start thinking about work. Feel free to MeFi mail me for more advice, but two more items!

1. In terms of hardware, the Push 2 from Ableton deservedly gets a lot of love from the community. It's designed specifically for the system. HOWEVER, it may be more than you need to begin with. I started with the LaunchKey Mini, it is also designed for Ableton and combines pads you can use for drumming or triggering clips as well as a small keyboard. You also mentioned looking forward to MPE. Yes! This will be a gamechanger when Live 11 comes out. (Live 10 technically supports it as well, through a cumbersome workaround. Do NOT try to use it in 10, seriously, it's a waste of time). The best entry to MPE is probably the Roli LightPad if you can find one in stock. Also, go and download this (free) virtual synth that came out last month called "Vital". It has a beautiful and (relatively) elegant UI and is a fantastic way to learn wavetable synthesis and supports MPE.
2. In the spirit of Steve Jobs ("True artists ship") I did the following and you should too: Set up an anonymous Soundcloud account and publish your experiments publicly. It's a liberating way to get stuff out of your hard drive and to create accountability (albeit artificial). The chances that your track will get any listens are slim, but that's really besides the point. I use it more as a way to track my progress over time and to share stuff with friends and family. Ableton has a direct export to Soundcloud feature which makes the process trivial.

Good luck, you're in for a lot of fun!
posted by jeremias at 5:39 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]