I’m new to Sonic Academy, great to finally be here and learn how to use Ableton properly! I’d be grateful for any feedback on why my Ableton Live 8 (8.0.4) appears differently to the Irish tutor doing the tutorials (doing How to make Progressive House). I’m using a Windows PC, and he’s obviously using a Mac. I have the following problems:
Simpler: The tutor will drop in a Simpler Instrument to a Midi track. He simply selects ‘Simpler’ from the list of Instruments and drops it onto the Midi Track in the Session View. However, when I try and do this I get the warning symbol come up as I’m simply selecting the ‘Simpler’ folder and not the generic instrument itself, and I have to navigate through the sub-folders of the Simpler folder to get a Simpler Instrument I can use, e.g. the ones in ‘Drums’ and ‘Piano and Keys’ folders. So I use the ‘Keys-Acoustic Piano.adv’ instrument because I have no generic ‘Simpler’ one.
Compression: I have the same problem with the Compression Audio Effect. For example, the tutor simply drags and drops to the Drums Group of midi tracks the generic ‘Compressor’ effect. But like Simpler, I can’t do this as ‘Compressor’ is a folder name, not an actual compressor. Thus I’m using the ‘Generic Compressor.adv’ effect instead.
The same issue applies to Reverb, I have to select a particular type of Reverb, I can’t just use the generic ‘Reverb’ effect, as it’s a folder name, not an actual effect.
Are these things due to differences in the way Ableton is set up between PC and Mac or is there some other setting to apply?
Recording Midi: In Tutorial 10 (Pad Sweep) of the ‘How to make Progressive House’ tutorials, I follow the steps in recording all my Midi tracks (plus the PRG Cm Pad) to the 12th Midi Track to create a new pad sweep (3 minutes into the video) but I get no Audio signal to this 12 Midi Track and when I arm the track, and hit the global record button, I get a new clip appearing but no midi is recorded. Why is this?! This means I can’t then edit and copy the clip, changing the envelopes or pitch bend, because I have no Midi part. I’ve checked all my mixer settings and they seem the same as the tutors. What am I doing wrong?
First off upgrade your live to the new version 8.13 as you will run into problems with the more recent tuts as Live is not backward compatable.
Also not sure if you are new to Ableton if you are then follow the Make Music in Ableton tuts that should help
It could also be that you have not installed the library properly - go to preferences and I think there is a button that says repair libray (not on my music PC currently)
The Mac and PC versions are as far as I can tell are identical (I am PC user) so that would not be the issue.
If all that fails I would uninstall live and make a clean install - then if that fails contact Ableton support
The PC version and the Mac version look the same, also there is no difference that I can see between 8.04 and 8.1.3. I think you need to look carefully at the video to see what is selected.
For the Simlper issue you are having make sure you have the correct Live browser icon selected. I think you have the Library icon selected. To the left of the folder list there are 7 circles with Icons in. The top one is an arrow that opens and closes the file list. To add a simpler you need to have the second icon selected, it will show “Live Devices” above the folder view. Then expand Instruments and drag Simpler onto a Midi track or the area that says drop files and devices here.
It might be worth doing the make music with Ableton videos first so you get used to it a bit more.
Thanks to everyone for their helpful posts, especially Slender and Ant. I’ve now upgraded to the latest version of Ableton Live (8.1.3) - which has given me all of the grooves from the Groove Library (another issue) and Ant was indeed right about me selecting the Audio Effects from the Library and not the Live Devices. Doh!
It’s all beginning to make sense, working my way through the various tutorials and tracks starting to sound good, which is a big improvement of my previous efforts in Ableton, since I had little understanding of how to programme sounds, making them sound good together. The Progressive House tutorial is an epic one!