Live Playback - LiveKeyboardist

19Jan 2019 by Brett Pontecorvo

Create Smooth Patch Changes In Ableton Just Like In Mainstage

1Switching From Mainstage To Ableton, Blog, Featured, Live Playback

The number one challenge I hear from members of the Mainstage to Ableton community is that they have a hard time creating smooth and easy patch changes in Ableton. They remember how simple Mainstage makes it to have one patch die out naturally as you move to another patch in your set. This is because Mainstage does one thing, and Ableton does many things. Mainstage is designed almost entirely for quickly and easily switching patches. Although it does that very well, it's been my experience that it does not hold its stability under high pressure. Ableton is more akin to Logic Pro then it is to Mainstage in that it is a fully functioning DAW, so it needs to make space for other situations where you may not want a…

15Jan 2019 by Brett Pontecorvo

The Remedy For Muddy Piano Pad Patches

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

When playing piano/pad simultaneously, something things start to sound a little muddy. In my experience there are three things that generally cause this issue. The volume of one of the patches is too loudPatches are competing for dominance in the same frequency rangeThe initial attack of each patch happens at the same time For any of the above reasons, there are simple solutions. Before we jump in, pause and make sure you Join the Mainstage To Ableton Community. Every Tuesday and Saturday I release helpful information just like this to help optimize your live set-up, and I don't want you to miss out on solutions to your Ableton challenges, or information that will level up your Ableton game. Adjusting Volume Make sure that you piano patch has only slightly more…

05Jan 2019 by Brett Pontecorvo

Three Audio FX to spice up any Piano Patch

1Sound Design, Blog, Live Playback, Presets and Sounds

I love a good piano patch. I've spent a ton of time thinking about what makes a piano sound interesting and I think it really comes down to three things. ColorPresenceTexture There was a time that I really hated using non musical words to describe sound, so let me extrapolate a bit more. Color When I talk about "color", I am specifically referring to saturation that has been added to the low-mids. It doesn't have to be a ton, and sometimes, it's not needed at all. But time and time again I find myself adding a little but of saturation or distortion there to help give my piano sounds a little more body. Presense When I talk about "presence" I am specifically thinking about come form of compression. When I…

22Dec 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Supercharge Your Live Performance With Macros

1Creating A Keyboard Set Up, 1Sound Design, Blog, Live Playback, Midi, Program Features

Ever wonder why all of your keyboard sounds feel stagnant, sterile, and computerized? Perhaps you feel comfortable making set lists, but are looking to make your sounds go the extra mile? If you're tired of sounding more like a robot than a musician, read on... https://youtu.be/VB_rngXDS_4 Every instrument has the ability to produce many types of sounds... Ableton is VERY MUCH your instrument, so your approach to creating a variety of dynamics, textures, and tones is pivotal in creating a captivating performance. Unfortunately, just popping a few audio effects after a synthesizer isn't going to give you the ALIVE feeling that you need to have. In order to make your sounds pop you must have the ability to change how, and how much a sound is effected in real time,…

01Dec 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Creating Curved Automation In Ableton Live

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

Curved automation lines are a great way to add a more human-like feel to your automation envelopes. It can also help to create feelings of great anticipation by not only gradually changing a parameter but also gradually changing the speed of change. What is Automation? In the context of DAW software, automation is when a particular parameter is changed over the course of the song timeline. Automation is actually one of the reasons that I ended up switching to Ableton for my live performance use. I was able to create a bank of effects using automation that lined up with my timeline. This included things like filter movement, patch changing, reverb and delay amounts, distortion and panning. Ableton also allows you to unlink automation from notes or audio in a given…

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…

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…

09Oct 2018 by Brett Pontecorvo

Follow Actions For Groups

1UsingAbleton, Blog, Live Playback, Program Features

My first introduction a group follow action came from being a part of the band Fate Of Fools. We managed to create a ton of awesome stuff as just two people, but it required the triggering of some of the parts we weren't able to physically reproduce during a live show. My guitarist and closest friend, Jeff, would fire the first clip of our songs using a foot controller, and he would program follow actions to take us all the way through to the end of the song. Since we were using multiple different audio parts, and also some midi control tracks, there were times when we would be firing 8 or 9 different channels of clips per scene. That's a lot of work if you need to do that…

Category: Live Playback