About This Course

Liz shares her creative ideas on how to broaden your horizons in the musical spheres, focussing on Ambient and Downtempo music.

Encouraging a unique approach when it comes to sampling. Stating that there’s nothing wrong with using samples, as long as you apply a creative touch to them.Using Ableton, pre-recorded samples, preset sounds and drum banks, she shows us a few of her tips and tricks

In this lesson you will learn:

• Sampling techniques and converting audio to midi
• Adding glitch effects to drums
• Treating low end (bass) in a mix and ways to make it more prominent
• Creating space and textures in a mix using reverb, delay and send channels
• Automating filters
• Creative processes for Ambient music

Lessons:

1. Sampling Techniques & Slicing samples to MIDI

Liz shares her tips on sampling existing drum loops into Ableton by slicing them into MIDI. Each sample hit gets it’s own channel and organisation is crucial for an easy workflow.

• Sampling techniques of a full drum loop using Ableton's Sampler, splitting each hit into individual channels. 
• Organising, naming and grouping drum hits so you can apply individual processes (EQ, Compression) to avoid changing the entire sample. 
• EQ and stereo imaging tips on individual drum hits.

2. Creating Glitch Sounds

Liz shares one of her most useful production tips on creating glitch like sounds from a drum loop. Using Effectrix and routing audio into the plug-in, she is able to create a world of unique sounds that feed off the original drum loop.

• How to create glitchy sounds on drum hits using Effectrix

3. Working with Bass.

Liz highlights the importance of working in mono when it comes to low frequencies. It’s important to reference bass sounds on laptop speakers to make sure it is audible not only on studio monitors and headphones, but across all listening devices.

• Grouping bass channels and the importance of setting them to mono using Utility. 
• Layering bass channels to make them more prominent. 
• Using multiple bass sounds to keep the track interesting.

4. Creating space in the mix and using filter

Liz shares her tips on creating space in a mix by controlling the low end of various sounds. Anything that is under 200Hz can become muddy if too many sounds are in that frequency band. 

• Filtering low end and percs at different parts of the track to create space in the mix. 
• Check your peak levels on any DAW and keep the kick below -6dB.

5. Lead Instruments and Send Channels

Using a standard Ableton preset, Liz shows us how she manipulates the sound to make it her own and why send and return channels are so important. Dwelling on the importance of reverbs, delays and effects to create textures and interesting sounds to stock presets. 

• Working on your lead synth EQ and send/returns.
• Creating movement with live strings + pads. 
• Using the arpeggiator, filter delay sends and reverb.  
• Applying stereo imaging. 
• Using a return channel with Overdrive and Bit Crusher to make sounds a bit more gnarly. 

5. Ambience

Liz shows us an Ambient version of the Downtempo track. Slower BPM (44) and shares her techniques into making an Ambient track. Stating that Ambient music is made for listening and more so in a relaxed state, so she takes off the low-end of the percussion and applies reverb in creative ways to make this happen.

• Filtering and LFO use for Ambient music. 
• Reverb usage on various elements. 
• Duplicating string channels and changing octaves. 
• Warping in Complex or Complex Pro mode. 
• Working with pads for Ambient music and phasing with filters.
• Sulfur geo-healing tones (751 Hz)