For the last few decades, the music industry has been fighting on producing loud records, as they assumed that people prefer loud music over music with more dynamics. Not only today’s research proves that to be false, but also a new tool is being implemented by streaming services, which makes the loudness war pointless. The loudness war has led mastering engineers to use heavy compression and limiting on albums to the extreme. Metallica’s 2009 album „Death Magnetic” is the loudest album in music history, and in my opinion it sounds terrible. As a response to the loudness war, a mastering...

  In this tutorial, Francois is writing chords in the F-Minor scale shooting trying to achieve a rather dramatic and full sounding chord progression on an 8-voices and detuned saw lead sound. Listen in! Feel free to take a look at our MIDI packs:   MIDI Pack   Learn more about our Harmony and Chords: Course: Harmony & Chord Progressions        Keywords: EDM, Progressive House Chords, Future Bass Chords, Martin Garrix Chords, Avicii Chords, style track with ableton live, drums with ableton live, remix ableton project file, edit, starting with ableton live, starting out with ableton live.

There’s a lot of misconceptions about mastering. Some confuse it with the mixing process, some treat it as a „magic spell” to make your track shine. Today we’re going to bust the myths about mastering, so that you can apply it well. Think of mixing and mastering like this: Mixing is getting individual parts or instruments to work as a song. In the mixing process we are processing individual tracks in order for all the tracks to sound good together. Think of it like building a car. All the parts of the car need to be assembled properly in order...

  In this tutorial, Francois is writing chords and melodies using one of the nicest scales out there, the "Hirajoshi" scale. Although the scale first seems to be a little reduced, it offers endless jamming possibilities and an amazing atmosphere full of tension. But listen yourself! Feel free to take a look at our MIDI packs:   MIDI Pack   Learn more about our Harmony and Chords: Course: Harmony & Chord Progressions        Keywords: Boiler Room Style, David August, Francois Rengere, Nicolas Jaar, Berlin Techno Melody, Berlin Techno Chords, style track with ableton live, drums with ableton live, remix ableton project file,...

  In this tutorial, Francois is writing some moody chords and melodies on one of our Melodic Deep / Techno Ableton Projects. Sticking to E-Minor, he's trying to achieve a dramatic moody but also slightly uplifting and dreamy harmonic pattern. Feel free to take a look at our MIDI packs:   MIDI Pack   Ableton Template used: Deep Melodics - Ableton Template    Learn more about our Harmony and Chords: Course: Harmony & Chord Progressions        Keywords: Stephan Bodzin Type Melody, Berlin Techno Melody, Berlin Techno Chords, style track with ableton live, drums with ableton live, remix ableton project file, edit, starting...

EQ Eight is one of the most important production tools in Ableton Live. Today I’m going to show you when and how to use it. What is the frequency spectrum? To understand what EQ does you need to get a sense of what the frequency spectrum is. Make sure to wear headphones or listen on good speakers with a lot of low frequencies. Here is a fragment of a track of mine with no EQ applied. Here’s what this situation looks like on the EQ8 display: Now listen to the same clip without high frequencies. Notice that you can now...

In this tutorial, we are designing a Melodic Techno Club track with Ableton Live and NI Massive. Its a very groovy style and we are focussing heavily on perfecting the drum groove and drum / fx sound design.   Tutorial Table of Contents:0:00 Play Part of the Track2:30 Introduction4:20 Closer Look at the Drums and Effects18:10 Bulk of Audio & Vocal FX21:00 Bass23:40 Instruments Group37:10 Groove Analysis40:20 Play Full Track   Template:  This project file for Ableton & Massive: "Melodic Techno Giants" Ableton Project   Sound Packs: Additionally you can get the sounds and more Massive presets with our latest pack Boiler Production 2...

Since you guys liked the last article we’ve come up with more tips to fully utilize the powerful tools Ableton offers. 1. Redux Redux is an effect which degrades sound quality by using Downsampling or Bit Reduction. It’s a similar effect to a bitcrusher but has a different feel. My favourite mode is Downsampling with the Soft setting (2). For every sound I manipulate the Resolution knob (1) to my taste. Here I used it to add some hi-end grit to a saw synth layer: Before: After: It’s really nice to put it after reverb - it gives it a different...

Today I will show you how to work with MIDI in Ableton. Let’s get started! By the way - if you'd like to learn more about making music in Ableton feel free to check out our new course where we're explaining all the basics you need to get started. 1. Quick setup (Ableton Basics) Let me start at the default screen of Ableton. When you load it up for the first time, this screen should show up. What I want you to do is to press the Tab key on your keyboard - it will take you to a second...

  In this 3 part mini series, @nuckychulo shares his vocal mixing techniques on a nice Hip Hop Ableton project. Contents of this series: Gate and EQ EQ8 and Compression Reverb and Delay + Bonus tricks  Pick up the effect chain rack for this vocal mixing tutorial from our freebies section.   5h+ Course: Mixing A Track From Scratch in Ableton (with stock effects)     Keywords: mixing vocals like drake, vocal mixing like post malone, hip hop vocal mixing, vocal mixing in ableton   Check out other content on Hip Hop / Trap: How to Make a Trap Beat? Top 5 Elements Trap...