Ableton Live set up | Getting started

Pro Production Masterclass | Ableton Live | Sie Medway-Smith (Bjork, Depeche Mode, Rudimental, Rita Ora, Massive Attack ...)

What do you want Ableton to do for you?

So, quite often with other daws, for instance, logic Pro tools, things like that,  often you’ll be shown a way of working. It’ll be, this is what this software does and this is how you use it.  Now, Ableton  is also like that, but it also works in a number of different ways.

And because it works in a number of different ways, this is an important question to ask right at the very beginning.  What do you want Ableton to do for you?  Let me give you some examples there.  If  I was going to  start learning this program,  and I was a singer songwriter, and I played an acoustic guitar, and I sang,  I would want Ableton to be working in on the audio side of, of  its capabilities more so than the midi side of stuff.

And then the opposite of that is I could be an electronic producer  beat maker,  so I would want Ableton to be working on the MIDI side and grooves making backing tracks.  There are two completely separate ways to work,  and Ableton enables us to do that.

And the kind of  songwriter producer that I am, I’m combining both of those worlds. I’m combining live recordings  and I’m using MIDI  for a lot of things as well.  So I think this is a really important  thing to ask yourself  right at the beginning. What, what do I want it to do for me?

Okay,  let’s, let’s, let’s move on from there. So you can see, I’ve,  I’ve written here, getting your musical ideas from your head and into the real world.  Now, that’s what I want Ableton to do for me. I  have something in my mind.  It could be a synthesizer sound. I could be watching a  movie and a piece of music comes on and I hear a sound,  and I might,  the next day I might be sitting down in my studio and  I’ve got this in my head.

 Ableton enables me to be able to get that out  into the real world.  And  knowing how  the interface of Ableton is working  is what’s gonna enable me to do that.  And you’ll see this word quite often  on forums, on  YouTube videos.

You hear people talk about workflow,  and that’s exactly what that is. Getting ideas from my head into the real world. I need to develop a workflow  and getting to know Ableton is gonna enable me to find out what that workflow is for me.  You can’t have one without the other.  So if you don’t know what Ableton does, you can’t have a workflow.

 If you don’t have an idea what you want to use Ableton for,  you can’t have a workflow.  So these, these things, they feed each other.  Learning  what you want it to do  and what tools  you need to learn to make that happen  will give you your workflow  and that, so workflow is something that I’m gonna talk about quite a lot.

This is gonna keep coming up  over and over again over the next  24 sessions.  You’ll hear me say it all the time.  So it’s important to work out  how you want that to be and only you know how you want that to be. and it’s different for everybody. You know, I am, for an example, I’m working with people,  other professionals on the same level as what I’m working at.

And we all have our own different workflows.  Things that work for me don’t necessarily work for  everybody.  Okay? I, I feel like I, I went into that quite a lot. but it’s very important to get that  worked out  right at the very start.

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