Recording in Ableton Live

Transcript from Creating Stories Through Music: Week 4.

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So today. I'm in my favourite room in our house, and it's just raining a little bit outside and the sun has just come out, so it's really lovely. I'll show you around because I've got my favourite teacups and a painting that my uncle made for me, and it's my masks all in these boxes. Looking a bit messy at the moment, but today it's also going to be the place that I'll be doing some recording of the album.

So we've got Bartok there ready to go, and I've written out these scrappy notes here, so hopefully I can read them well enough to record them. But I've had a fun morning playing with Ableton and entering all those Midi parts in, so I'll take you through the whole process of adding instruments. I always get so excited about putting the parts together that I sometimes forget to put the practice in. So that's what I'm going to do first.

I've just done about an hour of practice on these parts, and I just realised some of them are going to take more than an hour, but I'd like to do some recording today, so I might do some pizz. lter, and I'll show you how I do that. But I had a question a while ago from somebody that I never really answered.

I'm so sorry it's taken so long to answer, but they were asking about my microphones and my recording setup. I just have a RODE microphone. I'll show you that a bit closer. It's just one of those ones. They're usually more for speaking than for instrument recording, but it was the one that I could get at the time.

So here is my set up. I've actually put it on a few boxes like that. And the reason for that is because I find if I'm here, so if it's slightly above. I've done lots of experimenting and I'm sure there's many, many better ways, but I find it works better as the microphone is slightly above my violin. I'll just grab it.

The microphone is slightly above where the bridge is. It usually sounds a little bit better. The other thing I try to do actually is I don't face my E string towards the microphone. I face my G string, and that's because it's a little bit warmer and the E string sometimes gets a bit harsh. That's just something I've experimented with and prefer the sound of.

I hope that helps a little bit. If you have any more questions, please do email me again and tell me if I haven't explained something that you really want to know. I also forgot to say on this device here I forget what you call it as a technical name. The input which I have turned up now because I'm talking, I have to always remind myself to turn it back to the middle when I record my violin, because it's much louder than my voice.

So I'm just going to record my screen so you can see what I'm putting into the computer. I'll talk at the same time.

Okay, so I just created another audio track which is this red number seven and this is called the session view. What you have to do is go to this over here the arrangement view and make sure that that track is armed. That's the one I just recorded. So maybe I didn't create another one.....

This one must be that one. What I'm going to do is make sure this one is armed, so that was the yellow. Then I go back here, check that the yellow is armed, that means I can record into it. This is something I discovered which is complicated. The other thing because I want to insert it that by nine I have to drag this down to bar nine.

Then when I'm ready to record, I press this bit here, and that will record that new track. And I'll do that. I'll do that now, just so you can sort of see how it fits in. By the way, I'm doing a technique which is meant to sound horrible. Okay,

So I messed that up it up. So I'm going to delete it. I have another go and I'll put it back to burn again.

Okay, so it's 430 in the afternoon now. I started at 9:00 this morning recording those Midi tracks into Ableton Live 12, which I downloaded to try the new version. It's taken me a long time to get a few bars down, but I think I wanted to try doing it this way rather than doing it my old way that I did for the other two albums, because I wanted to try something new, which I think is always good.

Even though it's really slow at the moment, I think it will be better. And that's always what we're trying to do, isn't it? Improve. And it actually brings me to something I've been thinking about this week, because I usually get to this point and I feel like giving up. I think if you've ever created something, there's always a point where you go, oh, you know, maybe it's no good and I should start all over again.

But I think I heard somebody say this week that you are allowed to follow your dreams. And that's what I would say to you, which is what I need to say to myself. Also, you can do what you love. And it's not selfish to do that.

I was lucky today in that I had an extra day of my other job, but one day I would love to be doing writing and music making full time. That's where I need to spend my time, that's where I want to spend my time, and I need to make it as fun as I can while I'm doing it. That's why having a cup of tea, a piece of chocolate, making music in my favorite room, all of those things that's helping me keep going and find the joyfulness.

Now, as always, if you have any questions that I can answer, I would love to help you in any way and I hope you're working on something creative to. And if you are, let's do it together. Let's all come together and cheer each other on. So until next week, week four I got a little bit out of whack, but it'll be week four next week.

I'll see you then and I hope you have a great time creating whatever you are making. Bye for now.

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