Insights and Inspiration: Six of Our Favorites from 2017
Over the past twelve months on the Ableton blog, we tried to provide you with a diverse range of perspectives, inspirations, sounds and strategies to enrich your music-making experience – here are a few of our favorite tutorials, articles, artist features and movies of 2017.
Vocoder: Not Just for Vocals
Evan Chandler, aka Slynk, walks you through a few different ways of using the Vocoder device. See how to use it effectively for vocals (of course), but also for dialing in really funky (and rather Daft Punk-y) tones for bass, drums and percussion. Plus, you’ll learn a super-cool method to animate chords and textures using just the Vocoder and Arpeggio MIDI device.
Watch Vocoder: Not Just for Vocals
Free sampled instruments from Pre-Columbian America
Made with actual archaeological artefacts, the free Metaphor of Sound Instrument Racks are a fascinating collection of multi-sampled instruments that were made and used in America before the arrival of Europeans.
Read more and download the free Instrument Racks
Bonobo: The Path to Migration
At the beginning of 2017, we caught up with Simon Green, better known as Bonobo. On the eve of a world tour and the release of his Migration album, we chatted about his sampling philosophies, workflow and the evolution of his 15-year career.
Free sounds and devices from Jason Grier’s Demonstration Disc
As part of the release of his album, Demonstration Disc, Jason Grier made the entire project – a collection of over 1800 samples and generative Ableton Live music tools – available free as a download.
Get the free sounds and devices
What is local? Perspectives on music-making in a hyper-connected world
With so much of our social interaction and music consumption taking place online, what role does our local environment or region still play in music-making practice? We explored this question at last year’s Loop and on the blog, trying to pinpoint what has been gained and lost in our new hyper-connected reality.
Push: Inside the Track with BMaul
Finger-drummer extraordinaire Brian Mauleon aka BMaul walks you through the steps and settings on Push that let him create a fleshed out beat track on the fly.
Bonus track: One Thing with Kyoka
2017 saw the launch of our One Thing series of short inspirational videos. In the episode featuring Kyoka, the Japanese producer shows us how field recordings can become the basis for composing melodies.