Quadrophone

When you download and decompress an Ableton Live Rack (.adg), Set (.als), or Pack (.alp) file that was created and zipped in Windows, then try to open it on a Mac system, OS X occasionally has trouble dealing with the file format. Instead of associating the rack, pack or set with Ableton and opening it therein, the operating system marks the file as a “Generic Unix Executable,” meaning that it doesn’t really know what it is. Here’s how to fix the problem and open an ADG, ALS, or ALP file that you’ve downloaded to a Mac:

• Open the location of the downloaded ADG, ALS, or ALP file in Finder.
• Manually add the appropriate file extension to the filename. For example, if you’re trying to open an Ableton rack, you’d add an “.adg” extension, like so: “awesome-bass-fx-rack.adg”.
• Control-click the file. Select “Open With” from the context menu and click “Ableton Live.” Live should launch and open the rack, pack, or set correctly.

Why this happens, I have no idea; if I had to guess, I’d imagine that some part of the zipping process in Windows removes some kind of identifying information that OS X needs to recognize the rack as an Ableton file. There doesn’t seem to be any problem moving zipped Ableton files from one Windows system to another, or transferring an uncompressed Ableton file from Windows to Mac. If you have any insight into this, I’d love to know about it.

Speaking of racks and packs, you can download the Quadrophone Ableton instrument and effects here.

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There are probably millions if not billions of drum samples that you can download and drop into your DAW’s drum machine. The depth and availability of these sounds is amazing, but it makes sorting through the billions of samples to find the best ones a bit tough. Here are, in our opinion, five of the best drum sample packs for producing house, drum ‘n’ bass, electrohouse, hip-hop, and trance.

KJ Sawka – Live Drum and Bass Drums

Drummer Kevin Sawka (of Pendulum) recorded all of these samples live using classic acoustic drums kit models like White Pearl, Slingerland, and Ludwig Sparkle. The single-hit samples are decent enough, but it’s the loops and breaks that really stand out. Sawka’s drumming gives a loose, shuffling feel to the rhythms; these loops are perfect for bringing in a little more life if your production’s sounding too robotic and overly quantized. The loops’ tempos are mostly around the 170-180 bpm range, but there are enough slower beats (120 to 140 bpm) in there to make this pack useful for dubstep and breaks as well.

Thomas Penton – Essential Series

For anyone producing a 4-to-the-floor genre like house, trance, or techno, the depth and breadth of Penton’s sample packs is amazing. There are hundreds of kicks, snares, and hats, with timbres ranging from big and booming to short and clicky — perfect for layering together to make full-sounding beats. The pack has nearly every percussion sound you’ll ever want, from triangles to tambourines to tablas, and there’s a full set of massive-sounding crash and ride cymbals. There are three volumes in the Thomas Penton series of sample packs: volume one contains mostly single drum hits, volume two focuses on loops, and volume three has a mix of single hits, loops, basslines, and synth parts. They’re all great, but if you’re only going to download one, get the first volume.

Drumdrops – Drops in the Bronx

Drummer Jan Kincaid of the band Brand New Heavies recorded these samples; it’d be hard to find a better-sounding set of acoustic drums for your production. The single drum hits are all rich, smooth, and full; a little compression is all that’s usually needed to fit them into the mix. The pack includes kick, snare, hi-hat, cymbal, and percussion samples; the inclusion of different articulations like flams, rimshots, and rolls is a nice touch. In addition to the single hits, the pack includes hundreds of beats, fills, and drum breaks that add a nice live feel to your production, as well as a full set of hi-hat, brush, cymbal, and percussion loops for filling out the empty spots in your beats. Kincaid’s beats range in tempo from 70 bpm up to 137 bpm, making this an incredibly versatile sample pack.

Goldbaby – Tape Drum Machines

Goldbaby have a reputation for painstaking digital reconstructions of vintage drum machines; the “Tape Drum Machines” series is among their best. Each pack in the series contains individual samples of at least 10 classic drum boxes, including Korg, Roland, Yamaha, Linndrum, and E-MU models, each recorded to warm analog tape. Of the series, the first volume, which includes samples from the Linn LM-1, the E-MU Drumulator, and the TR-808, is probably the best to start with; the second volume, which has the LinnDrum and the epic-sounding Yamaha XD-5, is worth a look too.

Simplosive – Deep & Hard Kicks

No hats, no snares: just awesome-sounding kicks, kicks, kicks. It’s not the most versatile sample pack, but this is one of the best collections of kick drum samples we’ve come across. The “Deep Kicks” are mainly smooth, sine-wave-based drums, and work well layered as a sub-kick. The “Hard” samples are more distorted and attackier; they’ll add an instant punch to any beat. If you’re looking for that big club sound, drop one of these samples into your drum machine.

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Recording the sets that you play with Ableton Live allows you to build an archive of your live performances; after the show, you can go back, listen to the set, and figure out what worked and what didn’t. You can always just record into Arrangement View, but writing eight or more audio tracks at once — while also playing clips and running VST effects — can quickly overwhelm your system, causing drop-outs in the audio. Here’s how to record a live PA set in Ableton without any external devices, and without burdening your poor overworked hard drive too much.

Create a new audio channel (Ctrl + T) and rename it “Recording.” In the new audio channel’s In/Out section, select “Resampling” from the “Audio From” menu. Arm the channel for recording; the stop button on every clip slot will change to a record button. Ableton will now record the output from the master channel — including any return or master effects that you’re running — onto this audio channel.

Now select all of the clip slots in the Recording channel except for the first one. Press Ctrl + E (Command + E on a Mac) to remove the recording buttons from the slots. Start playing the first scene; Ableton will start recording your live PA set into the first clip slot. Trigger another scene or clip; instead of starting a new recording, Ableton will keep recording into the first clip slot. In the end, you’ll have one audio file containing your entire set in that slot. When you’re done playing your live PA set, crop the recorded audio file, open it up in your file browser, and transcode it to MP3 or burn it to a CD.

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As with nearly all of its parameters, Ableton lets you change the master tempo using an envelope in an automation lane. Unlike most other parameters, though, the master BPM envelope isn’t immediately apparent.

To change the master tempo envelope, switch to Arrangement view by pressing “Tab”, then right-click the BPM display in the upper-left corner of the Ableton window. Select “Show Automation” from the menu that pops up:

Ableton will display a new automation lane in the master channel. Use the two boxes underneath “Song Tempo” to specify the minimum and maximum BPM settings, then draw an envelope to control the tempo. Here, I’ve set the minimum BPM to 100 and the max to 130, then drawn an envelope that takes the tempo from 110 up to 130, then back down to 100:

Use caution with this technique — it can really annoy DJs when a song changes its tempo mid-track.

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It’s got three knobs, no patches and only makes one noise — and it sounds fantastic. Cellofan’s cello synthesis is as good or better than most commercial options’, and it’s lightweight and free. You can control the attack and release of the cello, then use the Slide knob to add glide. Cellofan is polyphonic, although it sounds best when it’s only playing one or two notes simultaneously. The only major downsides to the instrument are its lack of velocity control and that it’s only available as a Windows VST instrument. You can download a free copy of Cellofan from Soundkeys.

[audio:http://quadrophone.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/cellofan.mp3|titles=cellofan]

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Drawing an envelope onto a track’s volume control in Ableton’s Arrangement view makes the track’s volume fader essentially unusable. If you move the volume slider on a track, Ableton deactivates the automation; this makes it difficult to fine-tune a track’s overall volume while mixing. The solution: use the Utility plug-in to control the volume envelope instead.

Drop the Utility plug-in onto the track. Select the plug-in in the track’s Device Chooser section, then select “Gain” from the automation menu. Draw the envelope onto the track:

You can now move the track’s volume fader (in either Session or Arrangement view) to raise or lower the track’s overall volume while preserving the relative volume differences set out by the envelope.

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Using Ableton Live to, well, play live requires a different approach from producing in the studio. You need to be able to trigger clips quickly, with a minimum of thought involved, and you can’t stop and restart anything while you’re playing. Here’s my system for organizing clips for a live PA set:

I start by dividing the clips into categories. I separate them into “Instruments” (guitars, strings, pianos, etc.), “Pad” (background synths), “Synth 1″ and “Synth 2″ (lead synths), “FX Vox” (risers, vocal samples, stabs, etc.), “Bass,” “Drums,” and “Drum Tops” (percussion, hi-hat loops, and so on). This gives me eight audio tracks, meaning that I can control all the tracks in the set from an APC40 without having to worry about the bank select keys.

I then label the clips by key using the Camelot harmonic mixing system. This system uses alphanumeric codes to represent keys; G major, for example is 9B. During a set, you can move from 9B to 9A, 10B or 8B, and the mix will sound in key. The advantage of this system is that I don’t need to stop and figure out whether two keys are harmonically compatible: as long as I’m only moving one step at a time, the mix will sound good.

Finally, I color-code the clips by key. I also label the drum clips with an “H” for a four-to-the-floor beat or an “S” for a breakbeat. When everything’s organized, I can quickly combine clips from different tracks together with a minimum of cueing and previewing.

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Among its many abilities, BentoSan’s thoroughly awesome Mapulator plug-in for Max for Live lets you use bezier curves for track automation in Ableton Live. Bezier curves are much smoother and more regular than the automation curves or straight lines that Ableton normally uses. A bezier curve looks like this:

While the typical Ableton automation curve looks more like this:

Let’s use a bezier curve to control the volume envelope for a track. You’ll need to have Max for Live installed first (you can download a trial version here). Open up the Max for Live effects folder, drop Mapulator onto an audio or MIDI track, then add a Utility plug-in after the Mapulator. Click the “Gain” knob on the Utility, then click the “Learn” button on Mapulator. This ties the “Smart” knob on Mapulator to the volume control. Click the lower-left corner of the graph window to add the first point. Press and hold the “Ctrl” key, then click and drag downward from the upper-right corner to create a curve.

Select Mapulator in the track’s device chooser drop-down menu, then select “Smart” in the second menu. Draw an envelope onto the track:

When you play the track, the volume will follow the bezier curve — not the straight line. Listen to the difference between a straight-line volume envelope:

and one that follows a bezier curve:

Mapulator can control the automation envelopes for up to eight parameters simultaneously. Here, for example, I’ve set up Mapulator so that, when the volume is low, the track is sent to a reverb channel. When the volume increases, the reverb send level drops down:

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