With computers becoming more and more prominent in the studio, a new form of mixing has started to emerge. By mixing digitally, an entire new realm of possibilities is open for you to explore. Imagine having the ability omit the rigorous task of doing take after take of a mix until you finally get that 'perfect.' Instead, you know have the ability to focus your entire creative process on 'how' you want the mix to sound. Want to rip sections from three different tracks and edit them together, coupled with some beats that you wrote yourself? Do it. The only limit you have when mixing digitally is your understanding of the software... and your imagination. That said, we're going to attack one of the prominent pieces of software for creating a digital mix.

Hang on to your knickers. ;)

Ableton Live is a program that allows for you to take various audio loops and mix them together. It is fully VST / DX compliant so feel free to implement any / all of your favorite plug-in's while working the software.

The first thing that you'll need to do is sort out which tracks you're interested in using in your mix. This is no different then planning out a set that you would spin on vinyl. Personally, I like to load up a slew of potential candidates in Winamp and organize them so that you get a general feel for the set progression. Once you've got the general framework of the set planned out, go ahead and rip all the MP3's to .wav and stick them in a directory.

Open Live and hit the Tab Key. This will move the program into 'Arrangement' mode which is where you're going to be spending most of your time. Left click and drag your first .wav file onto Track 1 Bar 1 and you will see a colored piece of audio appear. To get a better view, click the upside down triangle located next to the Track 1 text and you will see the track expand so that you can see your audio wave form.

Next, double click the colored bar and you should see an expanded version of the wave form appear at the bottom of your screen. Left of the wave form you should see two boxes, one labeled 'Envelopes' and one labeled 'Sample'. In the Sample Box, make sure that the 'Warp' button is lit up. At this point you’re ready to warp the audio so that it's beat matched with the master tempo of the project. At the top left of your screen, you should see some grey boxes labeled 'TAP' 'The BPM of your Project' 'The Time Signature of the Project' and something that looks kind of like this [oo]. This button turns the metronome off and on. Go ahead and turn your metronome on so you have something to match the beat against. Once this is highlighted, move the |> courser so that your at the beginning of Bar 1. Hit the space bar and you should hear the Track start playing.

Now this gets a little bit tricky. If you've got a track that has some ambient audio at the beginning, it might be wise to move the curser farther into the track until you get a nice beat going.

Okay, now that you've found the first downbeat of the track (Downbeat refers to the 'Cue Point' that you typically scratch on while you’re waiting to drop into your mix) left click the '1' located down in your expanded wave view at the bottom of the screen. Drag this marker until to get to the very beginning of the wave form for that downbeat. Once this is done, you should be able to hit the space bar and hear the track play with the metronome hitting right on time. Now, chances are you will get about a measure of matched audio before the metronome starts to phase out of sync with the track. At this point, you need to look and find the wave form for the beginning of your next 'four' count is located. You can hit space bar as many times as you want and listen to the track to find where this wave form is. Once you've got it located, double click the '2' located in your expanded wave view and drag this marker to the beginning of the next four count. You'll notice that the grayed out markers located between 1 and 2 will move and they should line up with the beats located between these two points. Depending on how much the tempo varies in the track, you might find that the rest of the song is perfectly mapped to the master tempo by just setting these two warp points! If the track is not mapped, repeat the above steps on the markers at 3, 4, 5, etc. until the whole track is perfectly mapped out.

Be careful about setting to many warp points at the beginning... A single misplaced warp point can cause all the markers past it to get off beat (Ableton guesses where the remaining beats should be located by averaging the amount of time stretched and between points x and y, then applying that on a sliding scale to the rest of the track.) For the most part, you should be able to map an entire track with 7-8 Warp Markers. If you find yourself adding tons and tons of warp markers, you might want to start over and remember this rule of thumb:

Set your first marker. Double Click and drag the number '2' to the beginning of the next four count. Go back to the beginning and listen and you should hear the track closer to being synced up. Rinse... Repeat.

Once you've finished mapping the entire track, go back and spot check to make sure there's no beats that are totally out of sync. Sound Good?

Aite! Your first track is mapped and locked to the Master Tempo! Feel free to double click the BPM button up in the top left and change the value to something like '100' when you play your track back, you'll notice that it stay's synched with the Tempo (And depending how much your shifting the track, it'll probably sound pretty strange.)

This concludes the first part of the Tutorial. Stay tuned for part two!

So, have you guys had any problems with live just spontaniously starting to disregard the warp points on a track that had -previously- been working just fine?

Like you beatmap two tracks together perfect, plot the eq's and shit, save the project... and then next time you open it, one of the tracks is just completely off beat for some reason?

This has been happening to me a lot.

nah never had any problems like that before.... thats strange... i have no idea what could cause that but a bad copy of ableton maybe??? Any thoughts JJ???

I dunno, I think I was just doing something wrong..

I've never had this problem... =/ The only time I've had issues with the Warp Points is if I'm trying to warp a track and the Tempo is automated slightly up or down... If you do this, you should see something is wrong 'cause the program will automatically build about a million warp points to compensate... The solution:

Map the track, then automate the tempo.

I'll keep an eye out though and let you know if I solution to your problem. =)

P.S. I haven't forgotten about doing the next section to this piece, I've just been really busy... I'll get to it as soon as I have time. Thanks for the patience! =>

I think my problem has had something to do with the 'loop brackets' that are attached to the clip (in the warp view) I think somehow in slicing / editing / moving / stretching the ends of clips in arrangement view I have screwed up the 'loop' on the inside of the clip.

God live is so complicated sometimes.

I had a problem like that but I just had to reboot, but that was in 3.0. I haven't had any problems since I switched to 4.0

Anyone having weird time-stretch distortions in Live, on samples that are being extremely stretched, should try going into the warp dialog, and messing around with the Warp Mode settings.

Warp Mode defaults to Beats : 1/16th, but for some samples if you change to one of the others (tones or texture) and tweak out the 'grain size' etc settings, it will make the stretch a LOT smoother.

nice post JJ, thanks.

just started toying with Live last night -- looks quite interesting, obviously i have alot to learn...

beware if it's d it's gonna crash and die.

so um... where is the second part of the tutorial.. its been months JJ...

d0h! Damnit... Sorry bro... I've been up my ass with personal production... Uhm... I'll see if I can't write the remainder today when work settles down. =)

LAME!

I know! I suck at the keyboard as of late! You can wait. Please don't hate. =]

This flow was brought to you by MC to da 3 don't cha know.

Christ... I didn't get around to it... Arg... I try again tomorrow.

i haven't had any problems here

when is it due?

you need to save the clip (bottom left of scrren, just under warp button) as well as saving the set. Otherwise the track just reverts to its original state next time you open live.

hope this helps

What sucks is when you rip a track from vinyl and your deck floats during the recording ever so slightly. My 4/4 track went to a breakbeat and it all went haywire...I had to add all kinds of warp points to correct it.