Ultimate Ableton Live 9 Complete: Parts 4, 5, & 6

Discover an overview of working with instruments in Ableton Live, compare instruments, plugins, and packs, and distinguish built-in Ableton instruments from third-party plugins, plus loading into MIDI tracks.

Gain a quick MIDI refresher by creating and editing MIDI clips in session and arrangement views, using the piano roll to move, stretch, and transpose notes, and auditioning instruments.

Master MIDI clips in Ableton Live 9, duplicating and deleting mini clips, using the piano roll with the audition light and fold, and exploring time warp concepts.

Explore the fundamentals of synthesis, distinguish synthesis from sampling, and learn a four-element framework to identify how any synthesizer produces sound.

Explore synthesis types in Ableton Live, including FM synthesis, additive synthesis, sampling, and physical modeling, and learn how timbre is shaped by parameters like friction, damping, and exciter.

Discover the four core building blocks of synthesis—oscillator, filter, amplifier, and envelope—and how to dial them in to create sound on any synthesizer, including Ableton Live.

Begin with analog as the first instrument in Ableton Live 9 and outline the instrument order, deferring Drum Rack and External Instrument. Save Simpler and Sampler for later; explore sounds.

Explore the basic outline of analog synthesis in Ableton Live by loading presets on a MIDI track, and examine oscillators, filters, amplifiers, noise, and the LFO.

Master analog sound design in Ableton Live 9 by building a bass synth with two oscillators, a low-pass filter, and an expressive amplitude envelope from attack to release.

Explore how noise and LFOs extend the main envelope, routing LFO1 to volume and to filter frequency, and saving presets for future sessions.

Explore all Ableton Live instruments, including analog, collision, electric, impulse, operator, and tension, with quick overviews of samplers like simpler, racks, and external instrument usage.

Discover how collision models percussion sounds using physical modeling, with mallet and noise sections, resonators, and pitch envelopes to create unique percussive instruments in Ableton Live 9.

Explore collision in Ableton Live 9, modeling percussion by tweaking the exciter and resonator parameters, using key, velocity, and noise envelopes to shape plate, membrane, or tube sounds.

Explore the electric instrument in Ableton Live 9’s physical modeling, focusing on strings, hammers, tines, and pickups that shape electric keyboard sounds and their oscillator-filter interactions.

learn the electric instrument framework with mallet, fork, damper, pickup and global sections, using physical modeling, force mapping, tone shaping, and presets.

Explore Ableton Live presets in piano and keys, audition electric piano tones, and adjust stiffness, velocity, noise, damper, and output, then explore instrument rack and instrument tracks.

Explore impulse, a simple sampler in Ableton Live 9, loading conga, hat, snare, shaker, and kick onto pads and shaping with filters, envelopes, drive, and velocity-dependent options.

Build grooves with Impulse in a session clip, loop kick and percussion parts, apply swing from the groove pool, and organize sounds with the group pool to craft drum kits.

Explore tension, a stringed instrument emulator in Ableton’s physical modeling, by shaping exciter type, termination, pickup position, damping, and body resonance to craft expressive string tones.

Explore tension instrument presets in Ableton Live 9 by auditioning piano, Stevie Wonder electric piano, and banjo sounds, adjusting exciter, filter, envelope, and LFO within an instrument rack.

Explore operator in Ableton Live 9 by examining four oscillators, their waveforms, envelopes, and modulation to craft fm and additive sounds.

Explore operator presets and the FM modulation to craft plucked piano and pad sounds. Learn how to use four oscillators with envelopes, LFO, and a filter envelope to shape tone.

Explore the simpler and the sampler, two flavors of the same sampler in Ableton Live 9, and review their core parameters for quick sound design. We'll preview racks next.

Master how simpler turns a single sample into a playable instrument via a drop zone, envelopes, and loop points; contrast with sampler’s multisample zones for multiple samples.

Explore Ableton's sampler by loading a sample, setting the root key, and shaping pitch, loop, envelopes, filters, and LFOs to craft pitched sounds and drums.

Build a multi-sample instrument in Ableton Live with zones holding kick, snare, and hi-hat samples. Set root keys, adjust velocity ranges, and use crossfade to blend samples across the keyboard.

Explore a realistic Ableton orchestral strings preset, convert multisample to sampler, and inspect zones and velocity layers across six samples per key to understand dense instrument libraries.

Discover the updated simpler in Ableton Live 9.5, a versatile sample player with classic, one-shot, and slice modes. Drag samples, transpose pitch with notes, and control warping, glide, and envelopes.

Switch from looping to a one-shot in Live 9.5 simpler, using trigger or gate, and apply a pitch envelope and filter to shape a single sample with hold behavior.

Explore live 9.5 simpler slice mode, auto slicing by beat, mapping slices to keys, and playing slices in order. Experiment with per-slice notes across three modes to create versatile beats.

Explore instrument racks in Ableton Live by building a multi-instrument rack with analog, operator, and galactic pad, using chains, velocity ranges, crossfading, and the macro button for control.

Map the Ableton Live chain selector to a physical dial using MIDI mapping, enabling three-state control (0-2) for instrument racks and live performance.

Map multiple instrument rack parameters to a single macro in Ableton Live 9, enabling synchronized control of filters and oscillators, with range scaling, renaming, inversion, and MIDI mapping.

Explore how to use instrument racks in Ableton Live 9, including chains, presets, and macro mappings for sound design. Delve into rackception, on/off mappings, and articulation to sculpt evolving textures.

Review drum racks in Ableton Live 9, exploring instrument racks, simpler inside racks, macro mappings, chains, and how receive, play, and choke functions shape dynamic drum kits.

exploit the choke setting in Ableton Live drum racks to stop a previous hit when a new one begins, using group choking with hi-hat open and closed as examples.

Demonstrate sends audio to drum rack returns, route via rack output, and build an effects chain with delays to sculpt percussive textures.

Explore the external instrument in Ableton Live 9 to control an external hardware synthesizer via MIDI and return its audio to the project for recording and processing.

Wrap up part four of the Ableton Live 9 complete course with insights on audio effects, mixing techniques, and plugins, and preview parts five and six featuring Max for Live.