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Ableton Live has a lot of tools for creative sound design. In this article we will explore an interesting technique to create your own unique percussion samples from scratch using any sample of your choice. This technique is extremely simple and effective for cooking up new perks quickly removing any need for incessant sample pack diving. We will be using Ableton's simpler for the main sound design aided with some audio effects.

Selecting the Sample

Theoretically you can use any sample you want but we will make the most out of this technique if we use loops or long samples that varies over time and has a lot of textures. Fx Loops are a great choice, so are vocal and bass loops. We have chosen the Acid Birds Ambience Fx loop from the Drive and Glow pack that comes with Ableton Live 11 Suite.

Processing the Sample with Ableton Simpler

Our percussion samples will really start taking shape from this point onwards. Add an Amp after you Simpler. I have selected the Lead setting on my Amp and adjusted my Gain and Dry/Wet controls. You can look at the image below for a reference. The Rock, Lead and Heavy setting work very well. The Amp provides a woody texture to our percussion.

We will process our sound further by adding some waveshaping. We will insert a Saturation effect in our Fx chain and select the Waveshaper setting from the drop down menu.

As you can see in the image above we have adjusted our Drive and Waveshaper controls according to our taste and then adjusted the Dry/Wet. If your sample is clipping a bit then turn on the Soft Clip option. The Saturator adds some character and harmonic richness to our sample.

Adding a Filter Envelope in the Simpler

Now is a good time to go back to the Simpler and add some filtration. You can go through the various filter modes and add some filter drive for some added texture. Also adjust the Filter Envelope according to preference. I like to set my filter cutoff Frequency at a lower value and the Filter Envelope amount at a moderately high value. I have also adjusted the Decay control which has an interesting effect on our percussion sound.

Adding Some Creative Fx Processing to Further Enhance Our Sample

The Erosion audio effect is an extremely handy addition for any percussion sound design. I am using the Noise setting to add some character and fill up the harmonic spectrum of the sound.

As a last step to our sound design, I like to group everything into an Instrument Rack. If you look at the image below then you will see that I have also mapped Simpler Decay and loop Start controls to Macro 1 and Macro 2 respectively. This technique really shines at this step because now we can adjust our loop Start macro (S Start in the image) and create huge variation of different percussion sounds. We had chosen the initial sample because it had a lot of variation over time. Playing around with the Start will play different parts of the whole sample, creating different sounds and textures. You can also adjust the decay to create different characteristics in your percussion.

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Lo-Fi is a type of music where imperfections are introduced into the audio signal deliberately to achieve texture or character. Lo-Fi is an abbreviation for Low Fidelity, so music producers often employ plugins that artificially degrade the audio to give their sound a vinyl quality. In this article we will explore 6 easy steps to compose a lo-fi hip hop beat.

Step 1: Creating the right Chord Progression

Lofi chords are a huge part of their sonic quality. Most loft producers sample old jazz and soul records to create a nostalgic feeling. We will be creating our own progression from scratch and then we will sample ourselves. Lofi hiphop can be anywhere from from 70-100 BPM, sometimes even slower than that. The BPM for our project will be 75 BPM. For sound selection, try to remember what type of instruments old jazz and soul records would use. Using those sounds to create our sample will help us create a more old timey vibe.

Look at the chords that we have drawn in the image above. We are using a rhoads preset to create these chords. You can use an acoustic guitar or any other instrument but the way you create your chords will change according to that instrument. Here we are using the chords Em7 - Am7 - CM7 - GM7 for the first four bars, in the second four bar cycle, we are substituting Em7 with Emadd9. You can experiment with the added notes on these chords, also use vinyl or modulation fx on the channel to make things sound more aged.

We are using the phaser-flanger device of ableton, as shown in the picture above, to modulate our Rhoads sound.

Step 2: Turning Your Chord Progression Into a Sample

Once you are happy with how your chords are sounding, freeze and flatten them to convert into audio. There are a few ways we can sample this. You can do manual edits in your Daw to create MPC like chops.

In the image above, you can see that we have made quite a few edits to our original sample after freezing and flattening. Have your metronome on for this section as it will help you to flesh out interesting patterns. We are also applying crossfades at clip edges to prevent any clicks and pops. Alternatively, you can add your freeze and flattened sample into a simpler and use the slicing mode to create patterns using midi.

In the image above, we have added our sample into a slicer and then turned on Slicing Mode. You can play around with the sensitivity and slice by settings for different sets of chops. You can now program you sampled melody using midi.

These are the notes we drew in with our piano roll for the simpler. We are going to use this as a variation on the main melody.

Step 3: Drums that sound old

The tone of your drum samples play a huge role in lofi hiphop. The drum programming itself is fairly simple. Go for drum sounds with some audible background noise, You can use some processing to lessen the high frequency response of your drum sounds. We also like to add distortion to our drums to make them sound more crunchy. Once you have your drum sounds selected you can arrange them directly on the track according to our grid, but we will use a drum rack. We are using a kick, snare and hit for our beat.

This is the pattern we have created, shown in the image above. Do not forget to vary the velocities of your hits as required. You can also use some saturation on the drums to fatten them up and add some more character to the sound. You can also experiment with different grooves on your drums, which will offset our midi from the grid, giving the beat more human touch.

Bassline in this genre of music is very different from one song to another. Tonally the bass sounds mellow and has much rhythmic variation built into it. Select a preset that has a solid low end with some subtle harmonies in the mids. For the notes in your bassline, you can follow the root notes of the chord, and then develop it further from there. We like to use a lot of octaves and melodic runs to keep things interesting.

As you can see, we have added our bass notes along with some melodic and rhythmic variations. Do not forget to add some processing to your bass if it is too quiet in the mix even when the volume is unchanged. We are using a saturator on our bass channel with the settings shown in the image below.

Step 5: Adding Fx and Foley

Textures are a major part of Lofi sound. The signature vinyl crackle is present on every track to give the listener the perception, that the song is being played from a vinyl record player. We are using a little bit of vinyl distortion on our main sample to simulate the vinyl crackle (image below).

You can also layer your sounds with foley to create more texture along with the vinyl crackle.

As you can see in the image above, the drums that have been programmed with midi is being layered with different foley samples to add depth and character to our drums. Vocal chops and one-shots also spice up your beat in a major way, making it more memorable for the listener. You can sprinkle in some more details with risers and down lifters for transition sections.

As you can see in the image above we added an impact sample and a white noise riser sample for our project. The impacts are placed at the beginning of every 8 bars, while the risers are placed at the 7th bar and 15th bar with varied lengths.

Mixing a lofi beat is fairly easy. Make sure to balance your faders first and then you can experiment with the pan pot. As long as your sound is well balanced in terms of levels and stereo image, you are halfway there. Kicks and Snares need to be able to punch through the mix. Keep the drums as dynamic as possible. Your bass would also be mixed rather loud in the mix. Other instruments and synths can be balanced according to your taste. EQ out any undesirable low frequencies to make space for your bass sound. Getting rid of the lows in your hiatus, cymbals, fx and instruments, will also reduce muddiness of the overall mix. Sidechain compression is also used in this genre often as an aesthetic tool rather than a tool for mixing. You can sidechain various instruments to your kick and exaggerate the sidechain effect to emphasise on the lofi character of your track.

As you can see in the two images provided above, the side chain settings on my melody sidechain and bass sidechain are different. The melody sidechain has more exaggerated and audible sidechain compression happening to create movement in the sound, while the bass side chain is much more focused on attenuating our bass sound whenever the kick strikes without being necessarily heard. You can also experiment with some subtle saturation or soft clipping on you master buss to further drive in that lofi feel of your track.

If you want to follow along with our Ableton project file, then click on the link provided below to download the .alp file:

Crypto Cipher Academy_Lofi Beat Tutorial (Ableton Project Download)

Trap Drums are not complicated at all. There are a few basic elements that we need to make a bouncy trap beat. A trap drum kit consists of a kick, clap and hi-hat at its core. You can add other snares, vocal one-shots and percussion samples to fit your style. Our three core drum sounds need to be punchy and short. Trap beats have a tempo of 140-160BPM. We will make our beat in 140BPM.

1. The Kick

Trap kick drum selection is extremely important. The kick needs to sit perfectly with our bass/sub in the mix. A short kick drum with a very emphasised attack would cut through the mix much easier than a sub heavy low-kick. Drag your sample into an audio track and start laying them according to Ableton's grid. You can turn the metronome on for reference.

We are also adding a saturator on our kick to add some more girth and presence. Distorted kicks are staple in the trap genre.

The melody and chord progression of our trap beat is extremely important for the vibe our beat is trying to create. Most trap beats are mostly based on minor scales. We will compose our melody in E minor.

In the image provide above you can see the notes of an E minor scale. Needless to say that our chord progression will also consist of a combination of these notes.

In Ableton, you can turn Scale Mode on so that the notes of your scale is highlighted on the piano roll. This will help us to adjust notes quickly.

We will start off with writing our chord progression. The chords that can be used in our scale are E minor, F#dim, G major, A minor, B minor, C major and D major. Our chord progression for this beat will be: E minor | G major | E minor | B minor (i - III - i - v)

As you can see in the image above, we have varied the velocities of our notes to create a realistic feel to the chords. We are using a chorus heavy Electric Piano to make our chords. We are also adding some mid-side processing to make our chords sound wide in the mix.

Once we have the basic progression programmed, we can try some 7th or add9th chords to make our sound more interesting. If you look at the image below, we have added an extra 7th to our chords also varies the length, start and end positions of the notes to add a more realistic feel to our sound.

Now that our chord progression is created, we can move onto our melody.

2. Melody

For our melody section, we need to be able to create tension and release with the notes of our scale. The 2nd, 4th and 6th notes of our scale will create tension while 1st, 3rd and 5th will create release or resolution. An easy pattern to follow is to use tension notes at the end of a bar, while starting the next bar with a note that will release that tension. Let us say we add an A note on the last 1/8th note of a bar, then we will begin the next bar with an E note which will release the tension created by the preceding note. In the image provided below, the highlighted notes are our tension notes. Trap melodies also follow a basic call and pattern, where the first part of the melody raises a musical question, resolved by the following part.

We are repeating the call part of our melody (comprised of 2 bars) thrice, before playing our answer (also comprised of 2 bars) only once, thus creating our 8 bar melody.

Another helpful tip would be to fold your piano roll according to our selected scale so that only the pertinent notes are displayed. This will help us to create melodies fast.

3. Sampling the Melody

This step is absolutely optional, but a lot of producers like to bounce their melody and chord progressions into a single audio track. This helps us is experimenting with different chops and pitch variations. You can also try reversing certain sections to make your sound stand out. To consolidate your chord and melody into a single audio track, add an empty audio track (named Sampled Melody) and route the output of the required tracks into the Sampled Melody track.

Now arm the newly added track and hit the global record button. Hit stop once your sample is completely recorded.

Now we can slice up the audio as we like and add interesting variations in different parts of the melody.

As you can see in the image above, we have reversed our sample and adding some creative warping effects to make it sound interesting.

4. The Melody Section

After programming all your melodies and harmonies, it is important to group them so we can apply bus processing on these sounds. Control the lows of your melody sound so that they don't clash with our 808's and kicks.

Trap basses generally consist of 808's. They have a long decay and are often distorted. 808 selection is extremely important for our final mix. You should always preview your bass sound with your kick in any genre of music, to see that they are not conflicting with each other. If our 808 is muffling the kick from the beginning, then processing will not be able to solve our problem.

1. Tuning 808's

808's need to be tuned correctly to the key of our beat. Once you have selected your 808, draw it into the device view of an empty midi track. Your 808 will open up in an instance of simpler. Insert a tuner after the simpler. Now we can monitor the pitch played by the 808.

We can adjust the transposition of our sample from the 'Controls' tab in the simpler. We will tune our 808 as such, that when we hit the C note on our midi keyboard, the sample is also triggered in the same pitch.

808's follow the kick drum. You can copy the kick pattern directly into your 808 and then make changes in the pitch.

As you can see in the image provided above, the 808 in being trigger along with the kick. Now we can vary its pitch so that we can follow the melody of our beat.

While varying the pitches you can experiment with the octave, fifth and fourth. You can also transpose your bassline up a few octaves to check if you bass melody is sounding good with the main melody, then transpose it back down.

3. 808 Slides

Slides add some interesting movement to your 808. To activate this function go back to the controls tab and select Glide and set the time according to your liking. Our glide time will be 107ms. This parameter determines, how much time it will take for one note to glide up/down to the next. Glide can only happen when our instrument is monophonic and we have overlapping notes.

Pitch bends can add even more expression to your 808. We can bend both up and down, depending on what sound we want to create. You can use the envelope editor to draw your pitch bend curves.

As you can see in the image above, we have bent the pitches of quite a few notes. All these changes add to the dynamics of our 808 and help its presence in the mix.

5. Pitch Envelope

Adding a pitch envelope on our 808 can further enhance its punch. A pitch envelope determines how many semitones up will the sample play when triggered and how long will it take for the sample to come down to its original pitch (determined by the Decay Time of the pitch env).

Trap 808's are distorted to make them more present in the beat. If our 808 does not have much mid and high-mid content, then it can get buried when played on bad speakers. Distortion can make up for this disadvantage by adding some crunch to our 808. We need to use this effect in moderation so that we don't lose any low frequencies from the bass.

As you can see in the image above, we are using multiple distortion types to colour our 808. The trick is to use them minimally. All three effects together will add some nice midrange to our 808's.

Now that our 808's have been processed we can start recording vocal ideas and compose additional sections to complete the song. 

If you want to follow along with our Ableton project file, then click on the link provided below to download the .alp file:

Crypto Cipher Academy_Melodic Trap Beat Tutorial (Ableton Project Download)

In this article we will create a future bass drum pattern and discuss a few techniques you can use to make your patterns stand out. Let us start off with some ground rules. Future Bass tracks vary between 130 - 160BPM. For our project we will set the BPM at 150. Our time signature will remain 4/4 just like most tracks in the genre.

Sample Selection

Future Bass has very punchy drums. So it is always ideal to start off with a good sample. Starting with a bad sample will lead to endless processing that will probably not end up sounding on par with a good sample anyways. There are a lot free resources on the internet where you will find some good samples. Once you have your samples ready we will move on to programming our drum pattern.

Programming the kick

Select a punchy kick with a short decay. You can drag your audio sample directly into your track and arrange them on the grid, but we will use midi for our project. Insert an empty midi channel in Ableton (Shift+Ctrl+T for Windows and Shift+Cmd+T for Mac). Double click on your midi channel and then double click on your kick sample. Your kick should open up in a simpler, in the device view of your midi channel. Switch the simpler to 1-Shot mode from the default Classic Mode. In this mode the sample triggered plays till the end of the sample.

Now highlight the first 8 bars of your grid and insert midi clip (Shift+Ctrl+M in Windows and Shift+Cmd+M for Mac) and double click on it to open up you piano roll.

When using midi always remember the note C3 will play the kick sample in its original form. 

In this article we will focus on the Chords, Leads and Basses used in the drop section, take a look at the music theory and explore a few tips that can make the process of coming up with melodies or chord progressions easier.

In case you have missed Part 1 of this series, we recommend that you read that first and then come back to this article.

Chord Progression

We will be making our drop in G Major Scale so go ahead and turn on the scale function within your DAW. You may also want to fold the piano roll of your DAW to the selected scale (shown in the image below).

Major 7th and minor 7th chords are used frequently in Future Bass. Extended chords like Add 9th chords are also quite common. For our track we will be using the Chord Progression:

|| G Major 7th | G add 9 | B minor 7th | D add 9 || 

As you can see in the image above we have altered the standard voicing of the chords to make them sound better. As long as we stay in the selected scale, we can experiment with these voicings till we get the right feel for our chord progression. 

Once we are happy with how the chord progression sounds, we can alter the rhythm of certain chords to add more energy to the composition and compose a B section for the drop. Along with altering the rhythm we can also add some extra notes in the higher or lower registers to add more movement to our music. It is important not to add to many notes at this stage. We need to maintain space for other elements and keep things interesting. As you can see in the image below, we have largely kept things similar to our initial progression, only adding some variations in the 2nd and 4th bars.

At the moment we are using a default saw wave from Wavetable (check image below) to map out chords, we will be covering sound design in the next part where this basic sound will be altered into something much more complex.

Main Melody or Lead

Now that our chord progression is ready, we can start experimenting with different melodies that will be in scale with our chords and also fill in the empty spaces in between. For our composition, we want our lead to be slightly offset from the rhythm of drum pattern. To achieve this, we will use the concept of syncopation where certain notes in our melody will land on the upbeat to create rhythmic variations. We also want the melody to sound uplifting, so we are using the G Major Pentatonic scale (G, A, B, D, E) instead of the regular G Major. As you can see in the image below the melody is kept very simple and with the chord progression they almost act like a call and response but it is not very obvious.

Another important trick that has been used here, is to always rest on one of the chord degrees (notes played in the chord), this makes the lead resonate better with our chord progression. We have also varied the velocity of the notes according to taste to add a bit of humanization.

We will also create a variation for this melody so that the drop does not sound repetitive. We are using a few notes out of the G Major Pentatonic scale for this section, other than that we are keeping the feel similar to our first melody (as shown in the image below). 

For both the melodies we are using the default triangle wave from Wavetable. We will alter the tone in part 3 of this series, when we explore sound design.

Bass

The bassline for our track will be extremely simple. We will be placing the bass notes on beat to accent the downbeats. The main role for the bass is to thicken the sound of the chord progression. Hence we have used the root notes of our chords as the main bassline with some minute additions (shown in the image below).

We will also create a variation for our bass part like we had done for our chord progression and lead. In this version we are going to keep things similar to the first pattern but we will add some more syncopated notes to create contrast (check image below).

We have made the bassline using the default sine wave from Wavetable as shown in the image below.

Conclusion

Thus we have created a chord progression, lead and bass section with a variation for our Future Bass track while exploring some tips to help us be more expressive and efficient with our note selection. In the next article we will explore various sound design techniques to give our music the Future Bass sound. If have not read our previous article in this series, please click the link provided below.