1Sound Design - LiveKeyboardist

11Dec 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Delay: Essential Audio Effects For Keyboard Players

1Sound Design, Blog, Essential Audio Effects For Keyboard Players, Presets and Sounds

Delay can add a lot by doing a little. Admittedly this post transformed into to something different then I intended as I explored the Ping Pong Delay. In all of this, my passion is using the software as a piece of my instrument. When an electric guitar player plugs into their pedal board, the board is no less a part of their instrument than the guitar. As a keyboard player, how do I use my software the same way? This is a question I ask myself often. This post comes from that place. And I know you are going to love this approach to using delay. https://youtu.be/WoMH5YHi0eA What is Delay? Delay is an audio effect that takes a part of your signal, and repeats it after a given amount of…

27Nov 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Transpose Audio, Preserve Tempo

1Sound Design, 1UsingAbleton, Blog, Live Playback, Program Features, Recording

Manipulating audio in Ableton is absolutely the best. It makes changing speed, pitch, warping and slicing totally painless. Today our focus is going to on how to transpose audio in Ableton while preserving the speed. This, like most audio manipulating functions in Ableton, es exceptionally simple. The resulting audio also maintains very high quality. In most cases, it's difficult to tell the audio has been transposed to begin with. Unless of course, you want to make it sound totally processed, Ableton does that well too. But that's for another time. https://youtu.be/HBvc_qapmdg Transposing Audio Clips Once audio is brought into Ableton, It is ready to be transposed. All of the transposition controls can be found in the sample editor dialogue box in the clip view at the bottom of your screen. There…

24Nov 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Simple Guide To Installing VST’s for Ableton

1Sound Design, 1UsingAbleton, Blog

In all ways, I am a major fan of Ableton's built-in sound shaping tools. I actually think their collection of Synth's, and audio effects are basically complete. Often times, not enough credit is given to how great they are... This may be an intro for a different blog post. Chances are, you have decided at some point to welcome some third-party plug-ins into your Ableton arsenal. Many of these, particularly the ones you purchase, come with installers. So as soon as you open them up, they automatically go to the right place and you are ready to roll as soon as you restart Ableton. This article is not about that either. Today we are dealing with 3rd Party VST's that are sort of rogue and off the beaten path. I'm talking about the…

17Nov 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Preset spotlight: Light Keys

1Sound Design, Blog, Presets and Sounds, Recording

I have found in my talking with people about Ableton that there are a lot of people who hate on Ableton's preset sounds, and even on their built-in synths and instruments. It's my personal opinion that the somewhat lack-luster looks of many of its synths contribute to some users gripes with their sounds. I will concede that there are other DAW's that have some shinier out of the box sounds, but I can offer an immediate explanation for this. Ableton is modular in nature. Sounds and effects are meant to be layered, stacked, and used in combination to create awesome things. So for where certain routing abilities are in lack or effects missing within the synth itself, there are innumerable possibilities for sound and effect layering that quickly make up for…

13Nov 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Lowpass Filter: Essential Audio Effects For Keyboard Players

1Sound Design, Blog, Essential Audio Effects For Keyboard Players, Featured, Live Playback

A filter can do a lot to sound. You can think about it much like an EQ. As a matter of fact, an EQ is capable of many of the sound shaping functions that the auto filter is capable of. So what is the main difference? I like to think of an EQ as a way to mold a sound that you like to fit in with the other sounds that are happening. It is designed to be more of a mixing tool than an audio effect. I like to think of a filter as a way to drastically change the sound for artistic effect. It has more to do with what a specific sound will be sound like, than how it fits with the rest of the track. The…

10Nov 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Warping Audio In Ableton

1Sound Design, 1UsingAbleton, Blog, Live Playback, Recording

Warping audio is the process of lining up imported music or samples with Ableton's grid. I most commonly use this when I am trying to learn a solo by ear. Being able to speed something up and slow it down along with a click is a very helpful tool for me. How It's Done With Warp mode enabled, Ableton looks at audio and tried to use the transients to guess where beats may line up. You are then able to go in and using transient markers, or by dragging the suggested markers, you are able to line up the audio with Ableton's grid. It is important to note that double-clicking a transient will create a marker. So if you are 100% sure that a particular part of the wave belongs…

06Nov 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Reverb: Essential Audio Effects For Keyboard Players

1Sound Design, Blog, Essential Audio Effects For Keyboard Players, Live Playback, Presets and Sounds

Before most music hits our ears, it passes through some sort of a computer program: Protools, Logic, Cubase, Studio One, Ableton, and any of the others I might be missing. Very rarely is anything getting onto our most popular streaming services without being molded in some way by a computer. Even more than that, many of the sounds that we hear in music is created from a digital instrument: Whether it be sampled based, or a synthesizer. So it seems to logically follow that if you are playing a cover gig, you probably aren't going to make it through the whole night without having at least some handle on how to make computerized sounds. That is what this series is about. What we as keyboard players NEED to know to be…

06Oct 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Two Ways Reverse Audio In Ableton

1Sound Design, 1UsingAbleton, Blog, Program Features

It's extremely simple to reverse audio in Ableton. It can literally be done with the push of a button. Now, it wouldn't be much of a blog post if I just told you right in the second sentence of this post that all you need to do is select what you want to reverse and press, "R" on your keyboard, so travel with me as I stretch this out for at least 400 words. 2 Ways To Reverse Audio Method 1: Using the R key Step 1: Select a piece of audio that you would like to reverse Step 2: Press R to reverse it You have now created reverse audio Method 2: The Clip View Step 1: Double-click the audio you wish to reverse to reveal the clip view box on the…

02Oct 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Sends Vs Inserts: When and How In Ableton Live

1Sound Design, 1UsingAbleton, Blog, Recording

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, all audio was processed without DAW's. ::GASP:: It's true. There was a time before Logic Pro and Ableton and the likes were so easily accessible. Much of what is done in the digital realm of audio is paying homage to the analog world. This is where we get sends vs inserts. Certain audio effects were entirely separate units that audio needed to be "sent" to. See what I did there? A General Rule of Thumb Sends are to be used when you are adding to the original sound Insert effects are to be used when you are shaping and transforming the original signal. Simple enough, right? Now let's look at this in a bit of context. The most typical audio effect used as a…

18Sep 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Three Ways To Add Stereo Depth To Your Synths

1Sound Design, Blog, Midi, Presets and Sounds, Program Features

Adding stereo depth to your synth can make the somewhat lame not so bad, and the absolutely awesome, completely incredible. It ups your game. For a while, I really struggled to create interesting sounds with my synths. While there are a ton of possibilities for creating deep, interesting, and evolving sounds without using any effects at all, using some audio effects can really help speed the process along, especially for beginners in synthesis. Here are three really easy ways to add stereo depth to your synths. By the way, if you are new to Ableton, The Complete Transition Course comes with 15 great sounds you can start using immediately. You can check that out in the link above. https://youtu.be/448tBXO2aX0 Method One: Reverb It’s great if you’ve got a reverb setting…

Category: 1Sound Design