The Ableton Q&A Thread

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claps12345
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Tracks get louder on ableton

Post by claps12345 » Sun Sep 04, 2011 8:52 pm

Yo,

I have been using ableton for a while now but I haven't noticed this before. For example, when I have a breakdown, so only a few tracks playing, ableton starts to make those tracks get louder in the mix, so when it drops again, the whole of the master seems quieter than it was in the breakdown.

I haven't noticed it before and I don't know if I have changed a setting somehow? but I can't find anything about it anywhere, so I have resulted to setting automation on the track volume during breakdowns so it doesn't sound quiet on the drop.

If anyone has seen this before or if its just what it does please let me know, any help would be sickk.

Cheers

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Re: Tracks get louder on ableton

Post by wub » Sun Sep 04, 2011 8:55 pm

Do you have a compressor applied anywhere on the track?

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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by RandoRando » Sun Sep 04, 2011 8:59 pm

why is it that when i pan something all the way left or right, it doesnt actually pan all of it, when i turn it 100% right or left it only sounds 70% left or right.
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claps12345
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Re: Tracks get louder on ableton

Post by claps12345 » Sun Sep 04, 2011 9:07 pm

wub wrote:Do you have a compressor applied anywhere on the track?
Yeah, I do have a few, I generally put them on synths and bass, to sidechain from Kicks.

Could this be the problem? If it is, what can I do?

Thanks

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symmetricalsounds
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Re: Tracks get louder on ableton

Post by symmetricalsounds » Mon Sep 05, 2011 11:26 am

claps12345 wrote:Yo,

I have been using ableton for a while now but I haven't noticed this before. For example, when I have a breakdown, so only a few tracks playing, ableton starts to make those tracks get louder in the mix, so when it drops again, the whole of the master seems quieter than it was in the breakdown.

I haven't noticed it before and I don't know if I have changed a setting somehow? but I can't find anything about it anywhere, so I have resulted to setting automation on the track volume during breakdowns so it doesn't sound quiet on the drop.

If anyone has seen this before or if its just what it does please let me know, any help would be sickk.

Cheers
not an ableton problem but an issue with the mix, sounds like you've got tracks that are overlapping majorly in frequency ranges therefore some tracks are cancelling parts of others out. when you get to the breakdown with only a few things playing they get to play at the level they should be because nothing is getting in the way. you need the moneyshot thread.

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symmetricalsounds
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Re: Ableton help!!!

Post by symmetricalsounds » Mon Sep 05, 2011 1:11 pm

stop posting new threads for ableton questions, there's a whole thread dedicated to just that

http://dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f ... start=1100

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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by claps12345 » Mon Sep 05, 2011 6:16 pm

@symmetricalsounds thanks a lot, I'll give it a go and have a read.

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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by Disco Nutter » Mon Sep 05, 2011 6:23 pm

RandoRando wrote:why is it that when i pan something all the way left or right, it doesnt actually pan all of it, when i turn it 100% right or left it only sounds 70% left or right.
Do you have any plugins on the channels or on the master? Doesn't happen with me and shouldn't happen.

@ claps12345

Either the tracks you are playing are not side-chained in the breakdown and you hear them at full volume, or you've got something (compressor/limiter) on the master.

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topmo3
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Just a quick Ableton question!

Post by topmo3 » Thu Sep 08, 2011 4:16 pm

Since Reaper took shit and died I've had to find alternate ways of producing, so I dug out an old demo version of Ableton Live Lite that i got free with my keyboard. Just a quick, newbie question since I yet again have to learn a new interface after just almost getting the hang of Reaper, when I've recorded some drum events and, on a separate track some bass, and press play expecting to hear drum and bass on top of each other but to my surprisei hear just bass. And can't get the drums playing no matter what. :o How do I do it properly?
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Re: Just a quick Ableton question!

Post by TieN » Thu Sep 08, 2011 4:26 pm

There are two different views in Ableton. A session view and an arrangement view (you can hit 'Tab' to alternate between the two). It's kind of set up this way so you can "jam out" in the session view and once you get something you like, take it over to the arrangement (via dragging, copy/pasting, or arming the record button on each track you like and playing them while the transport record is armed).

So you recorded two tracks: bass and drums, in the session view I take it? (The one that doesn't look like a traditional DAW, and has all of your monitor levels). You can hit play on each track that you recorded and hear both (not the transport control play). Or you may have recorded both onto the same track and not realized it (if you're recording from audio and not MIDI). For a more traditional setup, you can switch to the arrangement view and record things that way (or copy/paste your tracks from the session view). I hope this helps. I'll try to explain further if needed, or answer any more questions if you have them!

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Re: Just a quick Ableton question!

Post by topmo3 » Thu Sep 08, 2011 5:48 pm

Yes, I'm quite still in the learning process, so thanks for the advice! I might not understand entirely what you're saying since this is a whole new interface for me, but in the session view I sort of "recorded" the midi event that I had put together in the small piano roll (By the way, how does one copy/paste the one bar-long loop that you "jam out" in the session view? 'Cause the recording seems a bit inpractical.)

What I did was I made two different tracks, the other had drums and the other one the bass synth. The drums were playing fine, but when I did exactly the same process when creating the bass track, as i did with the drums previously, the drums suddenly go unaudible, and is replaced solely by the bass. I tried to listen to the each track separately in the session view, using the play(record) button that you use to get the beat rolling when you "jam out" as you're drawing midi events to the piano roll, if you catch my drift, but it was no use. Still I can only hear the bass. I went far enough to remove the whole channel from the session view where the bass synth was in, but still wouldn't get the drums heard. I'm terribly sorry for the poor explanation but i hope you can help with this probably quite simple problem! :Q:
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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by claps12345 » Thu Sep 08, 2011 6:09 pm

Ermm, by the channels, do you mean the tracks?

I use compressors a bit, which somebody said that could be the reason, but I've always used them and never had a problem before. I have gone back to older songs that I have made and it has started doing it on them now as well, but it never happened on them. I'm now having to turn down tracks before drops as it goes much quieter at the drop otherwise.
I have also noticed that it does it if i solo a track, that individual clip will start to get louder

any idea, it never did it before....

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Re: Just a quick Ableton question!

Post by TieN » Thu Sep 08, 2011 6:15 pm

You may have accidentally recorded over it. It's kind of weird to get used to at first, and a different way of thinking as far as DAWs go, so these things happen at first. But if both tracks have their respective record buttons armed, then every time you try to record to the arrangement view, they'll both record.

Say you have drums already recorded into the arrangement view. You then go to record bass, but don't turn off the record button for the drums. When you record the bass, the drums may be overwritten by nothingness (assuming they're not being routed from an outside source such as reason). Just be wary of what record buttons are armed and which are not. I usually record all my patterns in the session view (the one where everything is vertical, as opposed to a horizontal timeline view).

Try recording a scene:

-Start with your drum track and a bass track.

-Record the drums into the drum track by hitting the little circle inside the first cell in your vertical drum track, then hit the spacebar to stop (or click on the square at the bottom of the track, or the square at the bottom right corner of the view that says, 'Stop All Tracks')

-Now preview it by hitting play on the cell that you just recorded (Don't make anymore drum hits if you don't wish to add them to this preexisting recording. To make sure you don't do this accidentally, simply unarm the record button before you preview it).

-If this all sounds fine, unarm the record button for this track (if you haven't done so already), for safe measure. (It's not necessary, and I don't turn mine off based on my workflow, but for now this should help you understand the way Ableton works.)

-Now repeat the above steps in your column for your Bass track.

-To listen to them together as a scene. Hit the play button for the first row (or wherever these events lie) located at the right of the session window.

Let me know how this goes. If you need further assistance, I'll try my best! This is just the very first building block to learning Ableton. You can record as many different variations as you want and click them in different orders to listen how things may sound together. If you like certain combinations, you can copy/paste them to the arrangement view (highlighting the events in the separate tracks you like, then ctrl/cmd+C, and ctrl/cmd+V in the arrangement window (making sure your cursor has selected the top-most track you'll be copying in. I don't know why Ableton doesn't automatically detect this). Or in a more live sense, you can simply arm the master record button and start hitting play on different event cells (which will automatically record all of your different "scenes" and parameter movements to the arrangement view, where you can go on to do further editing).

Again, I'll come back to this thread as I can to try and help. I know manuals can be confusing at times, but I think Ableton could explain this better than I can. Read up! :W:

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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by RandoRando » Thu Sep 08, 2011 6:17 pm

Disco Nutter wrote:
RandoRando wrote:why is it that when i pan something all the way left or right, it doesnt actually pan all of it, when i turn it 100% right or left it only sounds 70% left or right.
Do you have any plugins on the channels or on the master? Doesn't happen with me and shouldn't happen.
no no effects at all, even the master pan does the same, i can still hear it on the other speaker although panned 100%. could it be something with my audio driver? cause ableton doesnt have asio4all in the preferences menu for some reason so i just have to use my comps soundcard.but in FL the normal soundscard works fine.
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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by citizane » Fri Sep 09, 2011 10:00 pm

Hey everyone. Terribly, terribly sorry if this has been asked/answered before but I'm clueless regarding how to search properly.
Just got ableton live about a week ago, and I'm slowly getting the hang of it, I do have tons and tons of question but one that's been bugging me quite a lot:
When I use an automation clip on the LFO, is there a way to decrease the "range" of the lfo speed in the automation clip in some way? I feel like I should peek through a microscope every time I want to slightly change the wobble pace somewhere without just fucking up the speed entirely, it's quite annoying.
Again, sorry if it's been asked before!

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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by RandoRando » Sat Sep 10, 2011 12:22 am

citizane wrote:Hey everyone. Terribly, terribly sorry if this has been asked/answered before but I'm clueless regarding how to search properly.
Just got ableton live about a week ago, and I'm slowly getting the hang of it, I do have tons and tons of question but one that's been bugging me quite a lot:
When I use an automation clip on the LFO, is there a way to decrease the "range" of the lfo speed in the automation clip in some way? I feel like I should peek through a microscope every time I want to slightly change the wobble pace somewhere without just fucking up the speed entirely, it's quite annoying.
Again, sorry if it's been asked before!
what synth are you trying modulate the lfo on
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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by Disco Nutter » Sat Sep 10, 2011 10:32 am

You can enlarge the automation lane quite a lot, should help.

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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by Steve_French » Sat Sep 10, 2011 10:49 am

citizane wrote:Hey everyone. Terribly, terribly sorry if this has been asked/answered before but I'm clueless regarding how to search properly.
Just got ableton live about a week ago, and I'm slowly getting the hang of it, I do have tons and tons of question but one that's been bugging me quite a lot:
When I use an automation clip on the LFO, is there a way to decrease the "range" of the lfo speed in the automation clip in some way? I feel like I should peek through a microscope every time I want to slightly change the wobble pace somewhere without just fucking up the speed entirely, it's quite annoying.
Again, sorry if it's been asked before!
if you load your synth in an instrument rack, you can assign one of the perfromance knobs to a parameter on your software, and set the range with the instrument rack, i'm sure there are videos explaining how to do it, but the basic jist of it is, load an instrument rack, load your synth into the rack, expand the rack, and choose 'map mode', then select the parameter on the synth that you want to control, then there should be a window sort of thing on the left showing what you just chose to map, and next to it there should be something to do with the range of the parameter.

hope this what youre askin :D

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Re: Just a quick Ableton question!

Post by topmo3 » Sat Sep 10, 2011 12:04 pm

Cheers bruva! I think I got the jist. One more thing though, when I got an Impulse preset kit and i want to hot swap some of the drum samples, how does that work? I click the hot swap-icon and i try to click and drag the samples that it displays on the left into the kit but it won't work. What am I doing wrong?

Edit: Also, is it possible to use non-factory samples that I already have on my computer with the drum machines? If so, how?
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Re: The Ableton Q&A Thread

Post by Steve_French » Sat Sep 10, 2011 1:43 pm

i dont use the hot swap function, i havnt been bothered to figured it out :P

when you say drum machine, do you mean a drum rack with for example, an 808 kit loaded? or do you mean something else?

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