After finally having an in person lesson in which to properly explore ableton live with 1:1 assistance I finally felt confident to finally approach it and I must say it’s clear why this program is so popular. Even with the base software instruments and effects there is so much to be done. The first piece of work is a group project we did in which we had one sound we had to create a piece from, I took a contact mic recording and placed it into the simpler on the slice mode, from there (after a few minutes of experimentation) I decided to turn the transposition all the way up on the simpler, it gives this glitchy low-res effect which I found extremely satisfying. From there I followed an example given by Jose where I took the midi of a pre existing song (in this case Giuseppe Verdi – Il Trovatore – Anvil Chorus, a song I’m strangely enthralled by). Using this method of composing with preordained rhythm and progression meant that I didn’t have to worry so much about writing the music itself and could instead focus on tailoring the sound to make it so I was as happy with it as possible. I also layered the track over itself, one with the transposition all the way up and one all the way down to best cover both bass treble and mid. After a few minor tweaks and changing the BPM I was left with the following:
Intrigued by this glitchy effect that came from turning the transposition all the way up, I plugged my girlfriends bass guitar into my zoom h4n and recorded a few twangs and manipulations. With this recording, I placed it into the simpler and turned up the transposition and got an interesting glitch effect. However I felt that it wasn’t quite enough. I had previously heard of the legendary “OTT” compressor preset in Ableton and decided to push it to it’s limit by putting nearly every setting on high and doubling it up. What I got was a really interesting look into the usually unheard parts of a guitar string, because the compressor took everything and brought it into a more audible range there were so many things that I had no idea I was hearing, combined with the glitchy transposition the whole thing was very satisfying to me. It really played to my interest in hearing beyond ones usual capacity that I developed during the radio module. Overall I am very happy with the result:
The Natural Rhythms of Things by Dinas