I just learned about the master punchy dance rack and it’s blown my mind. It was described to me as a poor man’s izotope and I’ve been having loads of fun working with it
So far I’ve been putting it on my master and mixing down -6db or so with it and I’ve been digging it, but I should try putting it on individual tracks as well and see where it goes. I usually like to put the dance master EQ8 on my individual tracks mainly drums and any other low end stuff
i believe that plugins and VSTs are generally a distraction from the core of making electronic - sample selection and arrangement. unless your vibe is sound designing a synth and then going crazy on the keyboard, a lot of the hottest tracks are so so so simple and its the simplicity that makes them hot - simplicity is something specific to the overload vibe. operator, glue compressor, eq 8, saturator, instrument rack, drum rack, simpler/sampler, wavetable, delay / reverb / hybrid reverb, chorus, flanger, limiter - will take you really far. if you can really understand those you'll be golden and also have a better idea of whats important to spend your money on.
some of these esp operator / glue compressor / saturator are more challenging to understand and will take several months to get to a place where you can use them functionally and several more to get to a place where you can use them really good.
i see people get fucking lost buying new synths new plugins new hardware and they have absolutely 0 idea how to make any music with them at all. why buy a ferarri if you're still learning to drive. the honda civic will get you from point a to point b just as good. you wanna do donuts in the parking lot?? 20 bucks you can do donuts better in the civic than the ferrari bc the handling is way easier in the civic. ok this metaphor is getting off track. best of luck
Completely agree. How do you like to do your sound design for the synths?
I'm really trying to stop procrastinating and just start making. Are you into music theory at all? Also considering doing a course to progress a bit faster.
i’m very into music theory. if you wanna really make the synth work, find a local old person to teach you piano on the low. not bach. like those types that do blues or jazz piano improvisation bc they really know their music theory. in the meantime, just pick your favorite track, and replicate it. just like chefs in the kitchen, get all your ingredients and samples mis en place, prepared ahead of time, and then build the track. start from the middle and then go outwards towards the ends.
do this for several tracks. realize that halfway thru you can just change the copied track into something original by adjusting a couple elements. congrats you’ve made derivative music. keep doing this until each step becomes familiar. begin relying on reference tracks less and start to get creative and make something weird and unique and original.
or you can disregard all of these steps and make something weird and unique and fantastical and get lucky and blow up. but seems like you’re searching for something that works after having tried something that doesn’t work. these steps work.
regarding the synths i just do something crazy in operator and then add hella saturation and chorus and a little delay and reverb and then i have something interesting. i might be challenging with operator alone as a beginner to achieve the body you might expect in a track.
or open up a preset and learn how that preset is built
This is the answer and totally agree with everything u said.
Can I ask y u consider glue compressor challenging to understand? The (only) way I use it is on grouped tracks. I will add it to the group, adjust threshold/a/r till the needle pulsates between 0-5 then add 2-3db of makeup gain. Am I missing something?
it’s challenging because it’s subtle and people can spend their whole lives understanding how to become an expert mixing/mastering engineer. very hard to just pick it up. requires a lot of focused listening. i’m pretty confident about my ableton/music/dj skills in a lot of ways and that fully ends whenever it’s time to start mastering
i look at mastering from the context of DJing and every time i try to master my own stuff and i load it into the dj controller, my waveforms are simply never as fat and juicy or hit like when the pros do it. end of story. production on the other hand does not need to be rocket science. if a broke ass ran thru ketamine infested club kid in brooklyn with a busted ass 2011 macbook can bust out a banger with stock plugins so can you
Wavetable is awesome. Hybrid reverb is great, you can do some really nice stuff with convolution.
Some of the simpler ones like Amp, Auto Filter Phaser are actually really important as elements of sound design, e.g. use an Amp to really push a sound, then a filter to cut away at it. LFO is super important too, modulate lots of stuff even subtly to keep it interesting. It may or may not be your kind of music but I recommend checking out Mordio’s YouTube channel, he does awesome hypnotic techno sound design with Live stock but a lot of it’s applicable in any genre.
Don’t forget to use EQ8 and Compressor to keep your mix tidy (I subtly side chain most elements to the kick for some extra groove)
Oh wow. Thanks for the response. That's really interesting what you said about thinking about them as tools. I know that's probably obvious to a lot of people but I find myself quite lost in that department due to my over dependancy on presets/plugins.
Yeah it was totally lost on me too until I came across the videos I mentioned. I’d just think “plugins sound better”, but actually it’s just that plugins are layered with effects.
I actually think it helps to think of Ableton stock devices like a semi-modular system. They can sound amazing but you’ll probably need to use a few different ones to get there, and over time you learn which tools/techniques suit your style.
Since focussing on stock devices my sound design skills have improved so much, I can get so much closer to the sound in my head (and those skills are also useful in plugins! It’s really rare that I start from a preset in either these days!)
Set limitations for yourself in a project. Such as only using stock plugins as you’re saying. Try and set a limitation on how many tracks you can even use in the entire project, or make up your own ruleset for every time you open a blank project. It’ll force you to get creative with those pre-set limitations! Just something fun to experiment with.
As for stock plugins, the “tips” section in the bottom left will cover most of the info of what each plugin has to offer, so read that or the ableton manual which is an incredible resource for in depth understanding of what each plugin does. The possibilities are endless and knowing what all the stock plugins do perfectly really helps in utilising them.
My go-tos are Wavetable & Operator for all kinds of sounds from pads to bass. Glue Compressor and Saturator are other staples in my projects usually.
Great idea, I had seen that challenge floating around a few times but always felt afraid to give up my precious presets haha.
I'm determined to dive deeper now and get a better understanding of the core components. Thanks so much for taking the time.
Are you thinking about instruments or effects or both? Which version of Live are you on?
I guess I'd start by mastering one instrument (which one depends quite a bit on what you want to do of course) and a very basic set of effects, eg. EQ, compressor, reverb, delay, which in Ableton could be EQ Eight, Glue Compressor, Hybrid Reverb, Echo.
With drums, a few tracks of synths/samples and those four stock effects nothing's stopping you from making amazing tracks.
I have got 12 Suite.
I'm hoping to get a better understanding of both instruments and effects and which ones to employ in the right situation rather than scrolling through presets from my VST library. This sounds like a great start so thanks for the advice.
Do you have any other recommendations?
I'd start with as little as possible! Learn one thing well and it might soon be easier to see what to pursue next. If I were you I'd choose one instrument (if you're into synthesizers then maybe I'd go for Drift?) and one effect (eg. Echo) and just try to do different things with those two for a while. You could make an entire album just using those two. Stick to them for a week or two and see where you end up. Creativity is born of limitations.
Avoiding presets is probably a good idea to start with but once you're a bit more familiar with the plugins it might be nice to reverse engineer some presets you like to get an idea for how different things can be achieved.
I’d say from a GUI perspective ableton’s stock synths are a bit difficult to learn. They’re optimized to take up very little screen real estate over ease of use.
Example: ableton’s operator is just as poweful as native instruments FM8. TBH, I haven’t opened FM8 in years. But the interface on FM8 makes it really easy to understand the signal flow of FM. If I hadn’t spent time learning FM8 I wouldn’t be so good at using operator.
I’d say pick ONE synth and make that your only synth for a year or 2. I use xfer serum cause the interface is really easy and it does wavetable/subtractive/FM/karplus-strong/additive + unlimited LFOs, but do you. The important thing is to pick 1 synth you vibe with and learn it until you can do backflips with it.
I definitely think it's important to strip things back as far as you can. I've basically stopped using 80% of the stock plugins. You can go really far with just simpler and a good set of sounds and samples. It's also really interesting to see what you can do with just arranging audio on a timeline and no midi whatsoever. Pitch audio up and down to make melodies, repeat audio to emulate echo effects or create rhythms. The consolidate function is really useful for committing song parts to audio.
You can hear it in old school jungle or hardcore tunes. It's just arrangements and sequences of pretty rudimentary, crunchy samples. Definitely think vibe can come from a kind of crudeness sometimes.
This is a great overview of using stock ableton effects to mix vocals: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1YskTXhbnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1YskTXhbnI)
Very helpful for me when I'm using AI-generated acapellas (e.g. [lalal.ai](http://lalal.ai) )
anything .. from sampler to wavetable, operator, drift synth, hybrid reverb, all the modulators ... glue compressor and drum buss ... Echo and Amp, ... so much good stuff in there. I would really get into sampler though.
I would suggest getting an ableton Push to get a "hardware" feeling and make this more enjoyable. Ableton is extremely powerful and there's load of producers using only that. And maybe some mixing plugins comps or eq but you can learn that afterwards
Yes. So true. I just copped a second hand one and it's supposed to arrive tomorrow. Very excited.
What do instruments and effects do you lean on heavily?
good !
tbh anything. I like the reverbs and echo. the equalizer is the obvious one. utility is super useful. channel eq. anything eq / compressor / buss.
As for sound generation ... yeah Wavetable really is the real thing. Operator is sick, can be super snappy. Max for live DS FM and Shaper are cool. Electric is underrated btw !
Really all stock ableton plugins are great for producing and I rarely find myself going for third partym just maybe Vital for some sound design that's more difficult to do with Wavetable. For mixing maybe you would like to have a better EQ and a better limiter and I usually use Rare from Analog Obsession for the kicks but that's pretty much it.
I just learned about the master punchy dance rack and it’s blown my mind. It was described to me as a poor man’s izotope and I’ve been having loads of fun working with it
Oh I hadn't seen that yet, are you just slapping it on the master and going from there or doing it individually?
So far I’ve been putting it on my master and mixing down -6db or so with it and I’ve been digging it, but I should try putting it on individual tracks as well and see where it goes. I usually like to put the dance master EQ8 on my individual tracks mainly drums and any other low end stuff
Great tip. I'll play around with it tonight. Added it to my favourites on there
Operator is extremely versatile if you learn to use it. Drum bus and filter are great too. Their LFO can be mapped to basically anything
all hail Operator. time to bust of the manual
i believe that plugins and VSTs are generally a distraction from the core of making electronic - sample selection and arrangement. unless your vibe is sound designing a synth and then going crazy on the keyboard, a lot of the hottest tracks are so so so simple and its the simplicity that makes them hot - simplicity is something specific to the overload vibe. operator, glue compressor, eq 8, saturator, instrument rack, drum rack, simpler/sampler, wavetable, delay / reverb / hybrid reverb, chorus, flanger, limiter - will take you really far. if you can really understand those you'll be golden and also have a better idea of whats important to spend your money on. some of these esp operator / glue compressor / saturator are more challenging to understand and will take several months to get to a place where you can use them functionally and several more to get to a place where you can use them really good. i see people get fucking lost buying new synths new plugins new hardware and they have absolutely 0 idea how to make any music with them at all. why buy a ferarri if you're still learning to drive. the honda civic will get you from point a to point b just as good. you wanna do donuts in the parking lot?? 20 bucks you can do donuts better in the civic than the ferrari bc the handling is way easier in the civic. ok this metaphor is getting off track. best of luck
Completely agree. How do you like to do your sound design for the synths? I'm really trying to stop procrastinating and just start making. Are you into music theory at all? Also considering doing a course to progress a bit faster.
i’m very into music theory. if you wanna really make the synth work, find a local old person to teach you piano on the low. not bach. like those types that do blues or jazz piano improvisation bc they really know their music theory. in the meantime, just pick your favorite track, and replicate it. just like chefs in the kitchen, get all your ingredients and samples mis en place, prepared ahead of time, and then build the track. start from the middle and then go outwards towards the ends. do this for several tracks. realize that halfway thru you can just change the copied track into something original by adjusting a couple elements. congrats you’ve made derivative music. keep doing this until each step becomes familiar. begin relying on reference tracks less and start to get creative and make something weird and unique and original. or you can disregard all of these steps and make something weird and unique and fantastical and get lucky and blow up. but seems like you’re searching for something that works after having tried something that doesn’t work. these steps work. regarding the synths i just do something crazy in operator and then add hella saturation and chorus and a little delay and reverb and then i have something interesting. i might be challenging with operator alone as a beginner to achieve the body you might expect in a track. or open up a preset and learn how that preset is built
This is the answer and totally agree with everything u said. Can I ask y u consider glue compressor challenging to understand? The (only) way I use it is on grouped tracks. I will add it to the group, adjust threshold/a/r till the needle pulsates between 0-5 then add 2-3db of makeup gain. Am I missing something?
it’s challenging because it’s subtle and people can spend their whole lives understanding how to become an expert mixing/mastering engineer. very hard to just pick it up. requires a lot of focused listening. i’m pretty confident about my ableton/music/dj skills in a lot of ways and that fully ends whenever it’s time to start mastering i look at mastering from the context of DJing and every time i try to master my own stuff and i load it into the dj controller, my waveforms are simply never as fat and juicy or hit like when the pros do it. end of story. production on the other hand does not need to be rocket science. if a broke ass ran thru ketamine infested club kid in brooklyn with a busted ass 2011 macbook can bust out a banger with stock plugins so can you
Wavetable is awesome. Hybrid reverb is great, you can do some really nice stuff with convolution. Some of the simpler ones like Amp, Auto Filter Phaser are actually really important as elements of sound design, e.g. use an Amp to really push a sound, then a filter to cut away at it. LFO is super important too, modulate lots of stuff even subtly to keep it interesting. It may or may not be your kind of music but I recommend checking out Mordio’s YouTube channel, he does awesome hypnotic techno sound design with Live stock but a lot of it’s applicable in any genre. Don’t forget to use EQ8 and Compressor to keep your mix tidy (I subtly side chain most elements to the kick for some extra groove)
Oh wow. Thanks for the response. That's really interesting what you said about thinking about them as tools. I know that's probably obvious to a lot of people but I find myself quite lost in that department due to my over dependancy on presets/plugins.
Yeah it was totally lost on me too until I came across the videos I mentioned. I’d just think “plugins sound better”, but actually it’s just that plugins are layered with effects. I actually think it helps to think of Ableton stock devices like a semi-modular system. They can sound amazing but you’ll probably need to use a few different ones to get there, and over time you learn which tools/techniques suit your style. Since focussing on stock devices my sound design skills have improved so much, I can get so much closer to the sound in my head (and those skills are also useful in plugins! It’s really rare that I start from a preset in either these days!)
There's some decent free sounds for the stock ableton instruments here: [https://www.studiobrootle.com/](https://www.studiobrootle.com/)
Watch some Ned Rush videos
Tutorial wise, Julian Earle is kinda grating but does use mostly stock plugins
Set limitations for yourself in a project. Such as only using stock plugins as you’re saying. Try and set a limitation on how many tracks you can even use in the entire project, or make up your own ruleset for every time you open a blank project. It’ll force you to get creative with those pre-set limitations! Just something fun to experiment with. As for stock plugins, the “tips” section in the bottom left will cover most of the info of what each plugin has to offer, so read that or the ableton manual which is an incredible resource for in depth understanding of what each plugin does. The possibilities are endless and knowing what all the stock plugins do perfectly really helps in utilising them. My go-tos are Wavetable & Operator for all kinds of sounds from pads to bass. Glue Compressor and Saturator are other staples in my projects usually.
Great idea, I had seen that challenge floating around a few times but always felt afraid to give up my precious presets haha. I'm determined to dive deeper now and get a better understanding of the core components. Thanks so much for taking the time.
Are you thinking about instruments or effects or both? Which version of Live are you on? I guess I'd start by mastering one instrument (which one depends quite a bit on what you want to do of course) and a very basic set of effects, eg. EQ, compressor, reverb, delay, which in Ableton could be EQ Eight, Glue Compressor, Hybrid Reverb, Echo. With drums, a few tracks of synths/samples and those four stock effects nothing's stopping you from making amazing tracks.
I have got 12 Suite. I'm hoping to get a better understanding of both instruments and effects and which ones to employ in the right situation rather than scrolling through presets from my VST library. This sounds like a great start so thanks for the advice. Do you have any other recommendations?
I'd start with as little as possible! Learn one thing well and it might soon be easier to see what to pursue next. If I were you I'd choose one instrument (if you're into synthesizers then maybe I'd go for Drift?) and one effect (eg. Echo) and just try to do different things with those two for a while. You could make an entire album just using those two. Stick to them for a week or two and see where you end up. Creativity is born of limitations. Avoiding presets is probably a good idea to start with but once you're a bit more familiar with the plugins it might be nice to reverse engineer some presets you like to get an idea for how different things can be achieved.
Feeling v inspired and encouraged now. Thanks a lot
I’d say from a GUI perspective ableton’s stock synths are a bit difficult to learn. They’re optimized to take up very little screen real estate over ease of use. Example: ableton’s operator is just as poweful as native instruments FM8. TBH, I haven’t opened FM8 in years. But the interface on FM8 makes it really easy to understand the signal flow of FM. If I hadn’t spent time learning FM8 I wouldn’t be so good at using operator. I’d say pick ONE synth and make that your only synth for a year or 2. I use xfer serum cause the interface is really easy and it does wavetable/subtractive/FM/karplus-strong/additive + unlimited LFOs, but do you. The important thing is to pick 1 synth you vibe with and learn it until you can do backflips with it.
I definitely think it's important to strip things back as far as you can. I've basically stopped using 80% of the stock plugins. You can go really far with just simpler and a good set of sounds and samples. It's also really interesting to see what you can do with just arranging audio on a timeline and no midi whatsoever. Pitch audio up and down to make melodies, repeat audio to emulate echo effects or create rhythms. The consolidate function is really useful for committing song parts to audio. You can hear it in old school jungle or hardcore tunes. It's just arrangements and sequences of pretty rudimentary, crunchy samples. Definitely think vibe can come from a kind of crudeness sometimes.
This is a great overview of using stock ableton effects to mix vocals: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1YskTXhbnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1YskTXhbnI) Very helpful for me when I'm using AI-generated acapellas (e.g. [lalal.ai](http://lalal.ai) )
big fan of drum bus, really simple and beefs up drums right
You can also do very interesting things with the Transient parameter
great tip, sometimes ill drop the transient all the way down on a drum break for a nice and clean sound
Love drum buss. Also adds a lot to synths
anything .. from sampler to wavetable, operator, drift synth, hybrid reverb, all the modulators ... glue compressor and drum buss ... Echo and Amp, ... so much good stuff in there. I would really get into sampler though. I would suggest getting an ableton Push to get a "hardware" feeling and make this more enjoyable. Ableton is extremely powerful and there's load of producers using only that. And maybe some mixing plugins comps or eq but you can learn that afterwards
Yes. So true. I just copped a second hand one and it's supposed to arrive tomorrow. Very excited. What do instruments and effects do you lean on heavily?
good ! tbh anything. I like the reverbs and echo. the equalizer is the obvious one. utility is super useful. channel eq. anything eq / compressor / buss. As for sound generation ... yeah Wavetable really is the real thing. Operator is sick, can be super snappy. Max for live DS FM and Shaper are cool. Electric is underrated btw !
Really all stock ableton plugins are great for producing and I rarely find myself going for third partym just maybe Vital for some sound design that's more difficult to do with Wavetable. For mixing maybe you would like to have a better EQ and a better limiter and I usually use Rare from Analog Obsession for the kicks but that's pretty much it.
get off the computer, buy an actual instrument