MIDI Instrument Recording in Ableton Live

In my previous tutorial I talked about the basics of what MIDI is and the various instrument choices available in MIDI that one can buy and use as a vst inside Ableton.

In this tutorial I will provide a short overview of how to invoke an instrument into ableton live, attach a midi controller for it and start recording. For the overview of the recording method please check out the video I have posted below.

 

Guide to setting up MIDI tracks

• Open Ableton and you should have an audio and a midi track by default.  Go ahead and right click on the audio track and delete it. 
• Now go to the empty space next to the midi track and right click and add another midi track. 
• Go to your Ableton instrument folder. this menu will be located on the left hand side and the icon will look like a folder and will not be numbered.
• In this folder depending upon the version of Ableton you have, there will be options to choose multiple instruments.
• With the instrument panel open, scroll down to instrument rack and pianos, Highlight the first midi track (just click on it so that it is active).
• With the first track highlighted, just double click on the piano patch that you want and it will get assigned to the first track.
• For the second track do the same process and select a drum kit from your instrument list.
• Once both the instruments are assigned, the name of the channel will change from midi to the name of the instrument.
• On the mixer controls panel of each track there will be an arm button, this is small circle under the S(solo) button. This needs to be turned on, press it will turn RED indicating that the track has been armed for recording your inputs.
• Now, make sure that you have your midi instrument connected to the system and it is functioning. If you do not hear any sound, then the midi options have not been set up right.
• To get to the midi screen on Ableton go to preferences section of Ableton. On the PC this is in the Edit menu. On the MAC it is in the Live menu as shown below.

• Make sure that you MIDI instrument shows on the panel and the input is turned on. My M-Audio Oxygen 49 and APC 20 controllers show up on the drop down menu of the device list. Once I choose them, Ableton picks the best default settings for the controller. Check this page on ableton for debugging controller issues. An example setup is shown below.

Recording MIDI

Follow the video above on recording and quantizing the recorded notes to your tempo and beat pattern.

Recording can be done in two ways, either record by hitting the master record button and the recorded pattern will directly be in the arrangement view on the tracked that you armed. I prefer the second method of recording in the session view. Just press the circle on the first clip slot of the instrument you wish to record. This will start recording and you will have this clip in the session view. Always have the metronome turned on to give you an idea of the tempo.

You can also do multiple takes here and then mix and match them on the arrangement view. I will cover this in a later tutorial. 

Quantizing your recorded notes is an important step since it aligns the notes to the closest bar based on the beat pattern. Unless you are a professional who has been playing forever, it is guaranteed that many of your notes will fall either too fast (more often) or slower than the beat. To correct these the feature called quantize is used to move the notes over to the closest beat bar. In most cases quantization will correct the notes perfectly based on the settings you use.

Example if you are playing at 4/4 with 1bar resolution then you could have all your notes quantized to 1/4 to have then line up with each bar of the beat. If you are playing faster say eighth notes then change your quantize settings to 1/8 beat.

There is also an option to turn on Record quantization, using this method Ableton quantize the notes as soon as it receives them to the nearest beat based on the quantize settings that you have. I use this a lot for songs that I record using straight 4/4 beats. If you are doing any other time signature like 3/4, 6/8 or 7/8 then you might need to change the grid to triplets and/or do a little more tweaking to get the notes aligned right.

Adjusting Recorded Notes/ Overdubbing

Once the notes are recorded, the OVR button on the top of the screen is turned on, it should be yellow, you can keep playing and the notes you play will continue to be recorded over the previous clip. this is a very useful feature for..say a drum kit. I have used this feature in the video above. A simple example is, on a multiple instrument drum patch you can play the kick drums first, turn on Overdub and layer the snares next, quantize and make sure everything is good and then turn on Overdub again and go on to the hats and cymbals.

A word of caution, if your instrument is a single patch like a guitar or a piano, do not have OVR turned on unless you want to change a part of the notes. Having overdub turned on in this case will record over your previous recording and you will lose all the notes from the first take. If you want to play multiple piano segments, then just trigger the next clip in the session view and record a new take.

You can draw a section around the notes you recorded and highlight all of them, after which you can use the left, right,up and down arrow keys to move them wherever you want to adjust the sound or the position of the notes. You can do this for single notes too by just clicking on one note and highlighting it.

Editing Velocity of Notes

Another useful feature in Ableton is to edit notes for velocity and panning. If you are using a hammer action keyboard or a velocity based midi controller then this will be done while you are inputting the notes. But if you have a normal keyboard which does not have velocity profiles in it, then all the notes will be recorded at the same velocity. When you listen to the recording, it will sound mechanical and will not have the human touch. So to edit velocity as soon as your notes are recorded, double click on the clip to bring up the notes view. At the bottom of the screen you will see a section with sticks with a circle on top. You can hold the circles and drag the sticks just like a normal volume control and set the velocity you would like each note to have. 

This is also shown in the video above where I edit the velocity of the Hats that are recorded as part of the drum loop. there are many more advanced editing techniques in Ableton which I will handle in later tutorials. 

With that, this Ableton Basics tutorial for Midi is done! Check out my next tutorial soon, the next one will include instructions on how to tweak an instrument to get the sound you need.