In this Ableton Drum Tutorial we focus on creating organic percussion loops from found sounds. This is perfect for Deep House, Tech House, Techno and any other style where a unique percussion loop adds some extra flavour.
The key for this technique is to pick an audio sample containing transient rich material ie clicks, bangs, pops etc.
With some nice material selected we want to consolidate a good length to work with for a percussion loop; typically this will be 1 to 2 bars in length.
Next up add warp markers to each transient and drag them to the nearest 16th note on the grid. You may need to zoom in and line up the transients more precisely with the warp markers. To do this hold down shift and drag on top of the warp marker – the waveform will scroll whilst the marker remains fixed in place.
Listening back to my audio I felt it needed to come down in pitch and was a little rushed. To remedy this I transposed the audio down using the pitch transpose by 3 semitones and added a SP1200 groove file to give a more laid back feel.
The final step was to carry out some audio editing to avoid the loop sounding too monotonous. A few hit duplicates and a touch more transposing and it’s job done – a unique loop with organic found sounds.
This is one of favourite techniques when creating percussion as it regularly throws up ideas that I just wouldn’t think of if programming the traditional way. It also adds a lot of depth and character to my drum loops.
I hope you have fun with it!
The next Ableton Live tutorial will be posted at the same time next week.
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