The Covert Operators

In most of our recent packs, you'll find racks that look like a maze. Racks with a lot of devices, sometimes for a single purpose. These purposes can be summarized in a collection of tricks and techniques.

We're not trying to keep these tips and techniques a secret. But it isn't easy to explain them all. Because there are so many techniques and for each technique there are even more tricks.

For this reason, we have decided to try out some new ways of sharing this knowledge. In this topic about Live's Arpeggiator and the many techniques we have used in the past to create more interesting rack, we will share a few short videos that explain some of the tricks we utilize. 

The videos can be described as Intermediate to Advanced tutorial videos for Live users. Its assumed that you have read the manual and want to learn things that cant be found in the manual or anywhere else on the internet for that matter.

Here's another one of those things that settled with me over the last couple of years. Originally I did this with audio samples, repitching and pendulum looping on an Akai s-950 (yes, I'm old, so what?)

HD version at vimeo - although the message does come across in this smudgy version ;-) 

Wikipedia entry on "Phasing" in musical composition 

Here's an audio example: Three nearly identical midi loops, each slightly shorter than the other. 

Lets say you want a note to never end. You could either make an absurdly long clip with a note that is longer then your song. Or play with the attack and release of the instrument to make it sound like a smooth loop.

Neither of these methods really achieves the task we wish to do. Luckily there is a feature in Live just for this reason.

Make the note a bit longer then the loop. And let the loop have a lead-in.
For example: The note starts 1.1.1, Make the loop start at 1.3.1 and let the loop end at 2.1.1. The note ends at 2.1.2, past the end of the loop.

Now you have an endless note.

I have always loved the sound of a howling tape delay, and when I first got Live (version 3 at the time) it didn't take me long to start to build some of these routing structures I had previously worked with in hardware, using so called "dub mixing" techniques to send audio to delays and then manipulate the sounds within an effects feedback loop.

^^^ wow, that was a long sentence!

 Anyways, I have been rigging my machine to do HD video captures, and I think I finally nailed it. Please add any requests for future videos or comments on the quality/lack thereof, hehe. Click the first link below the video to go to vimeo if you need the HD version - cheers.

Ableton added a cool feature to Live 7, it allows us to determine our own personal default settings for Abletons Devices. I made a list of 10 Tips that explain how this feature works.

What better title for a little chapter on the Chain Select Ruler? I see too many posts on forums, suggesting that Ableton needs to implement program changes for their devices. In a way, they gave us a better solution and that solution is what we're going to explore today.

Since Live Clips have been introduced in Live 5, there hasn't been an easy way to store samples that are attached to the Live Clips you wish to store. This has improved in Live 7, but it isn't perfect yet.

But at least its possible. In this video I'll explain how you store samples and Live Clips in Live 7. You'll also see where your samples end up and I will explain why they end up in different folders of your Live Library. A High Quality version of this video can be downloaded from the Vimeo page. 

There are many ways to shape a waveform with the Operator, in this video we'll have a look at a method originally posted by Robert Henke. A High Quality video can be downloaded from the Vimeo page.