Hello. My name is Catnapp. In this video I will show you how I make a song using Ableton Live,
recycling old songs, as well as showing you how I record and process my vocals.
So let's get started.
Okay, so here I have a project with some of the elements I usually use in a track.
First, I have the Drum Rack set up in a MIDI channel. I already selected some sounds
and I have a Drum Buss. I really like to use it to distort my drums.
Sometimes I use it on each sound to have individual control, but I still have it at the end of the effects chain
because I know I'll end up using it for everything anyway.
I have a Komplete Kontrol set up on another MIDI channel for my melodies or samples,
and I have a vocal group with one audio channel inside for my vocals.
I already have some effects here set up. These are the effects I usually use.
I have a gate, first of all, to reduce the noise if there is any that comes into my microphone.
An EQ Eight where I reduce the low frequencies instead of just cutting them off
because I like the feeling of still having a little bit of it there,
and I like to punch the high frequencies a bit because it gives my voice that extra crunch.
I have a Chorus to widen my voice in the stereo field.
I have a Saturator because I like to saturate almost every element of my track.
It gives the vocals a lot of warmth and a raw feel.
I have a Delay. I chose the classic delay over the rest because I use it in a very simple way.
I basically only choose from bit division settings 2 or 4, and that's it.
And then I have a Hybrid Reverb at the end. It allows me to change the pre-delay
very precisely because you can also set it to Beat Divisions.
So this is how it sounds without the vocal chain effect.
And this is how it sounds with:
So that's how the vocals sound. Next I will search for a kick that will serve as a starting point.
I'm going to go to my search space here and I think I had a sound like a long basic kick
inside my Splice Sample folder, so I'll search for "kick long."
That's how it sounds.
I'm not sure if this is going to be my final sample, but I'm going to have it as a reference for now
and hit the Command key to create a new audio track.
I'm going to rename it Kick Sample and color it blue.
I'm going to hit tab to go to Arrangement view. I'll drag my sample to my audio track.
I'm going to hit Command D with my clip selected to copy and paste it a couple of times.
Alright. I have my kick sample for now. What I'm going to do next is I'm going to work on my percussion.
I will create first my intro. I want my intro to last eight bars for now.
I was imagining a very simple percussion rhythm just to have something that I can sing on top of
and to get going with the track and then afterwards see what I like and what I don't.
I'm going to make a hi-hat to begin with. I really enjoy to create as I go, so I'll just press play and try some things out.
I'm going to set the grid to quarter notes by hitting 'Command 2' two times.
Then I'm going to create a hi-hat note by double clicking and duplicate it with command D.
Here is a snare that I sampled earlier...
and I think that's about it. I think that's everything I want for my intro for now.
Now I am going to work on my verse, so I'm going to grab the intro clip that I just created,
duplicate it using command D and maybe include some more elements.
I'm going to go ahead and make it a bit longer, perhaps four bars,
so I have more space to create some variations.
So that's going to be my verse for now. And then I'm going to go ahead and create my chorus.
I'll duplicate one more time. For the chorus I'll speed up my hi-hat so I'll change the grid back to 16th notes,
pressing 'Command 1' twice and duplicate the hi-hat throughout the whole clip.
I'll also add this little Minecraft sample at the beginning of the first and third bar.
So now I have my chorus.
I'm going to rename my clips by selecting them and pressing Command R,
chorus, verse and intro.
Now that I have a beat. I'll move on to creating a small melody.
So I'll go to my Komplete Kontrol channel, arm it for recording.
And as you can see, I already have loaded an instrument here
and chose a preset that I think would be a good match for the song.
And because I armed the channel
and the monitoring is set to auto, I can hear what I'm playing on my external
and it sounds something like this.
I'll go ahead now and record a melody, so I'll double click on the stop button to bring the marker
to the beginning of the track and hit record.
I'm going to add some effects. I'm going to look for a Reverb.
And a saturator to add some drive. I'll place it in front of the Reverb.
Then I'm going to also add a Compressor to duck the sound a bit each time the kick is playing.
To do that, I'll enable the Sidechain by hitting this arrow here
and choose the kick of my drum kit to trigger the compressor.
I'll duplicate the clip in order to play it when the kick comes in and check if the sidechain is working.
Okay, it's working.
All right, now that I have a basic structure, I can already try and record some vocals on top
Before I start recording some vocals. I'm going to make my verse part twice as long
and perhaps remove the melody from the verse and just leave it in the chorus.
Alright. I'm going to try and record some vocals.
Now that I have the main vocals, I'll record an almost identical second layer on top with a bit of a lower volume
to create a Fuller and more powerful result.
I'll also record some ad libs with a higher pitch to have a more dynamic vocal story.
Okay, I'm going to rename this track Vocals 2, then duplicate it.
So I will also copy the effects chain from that track and rename it Ad libs.
So now that I have kind of an idea of where my song is going,
instead of producing something new, I'm going to go ahead and look into
my older projects or unused demos and see if I can find something that fits.
When I feel stuck or uninspired, I go back to songs I didn't finish,
but still saved, sometimes even years ago, and get ideas from those to help me move forward
with the track I'm currently making.
So I have a folder here called 'Unused Demos 2021,' and I'm going to look through it to see
if something can be used for this song idea.
If I press on them, I can listen to what they sound like.
I think that this one definitely goes with the vibe that I'm looking for.
It has the same long kick intention, but it's way more powerful.
So I'm going to go to this project and choose the bits that I think
could work for this new song and copy paste them to this project.
So here I am at my Rave Three project.
I was listening through the tracks and what I really like are these bassy, long sounds,
Especially that one. I really like this riser for my chorus,
And the effects in general are very nice.
So what I'm going to do is I'll copy the tracks that I like from this arrangement over to my new one.
To do that, I could drag the tracks in from the browser,
but as I'm here already, I will select the tracks that I want to copy,
hit Command C and go right back to my other project.
Alright. So here we are. In the previous arrangement, I'm going to just collapse the vocals
and I'm going to hit Command V to paste the tracks that I just copied.
So my vocals were left alone here at the bottom, so I'm going to drag them up
so that I have all the tracks from my initial idea in one place
So that I don't get confused, I'll group all the tracks of my initial idea and rename it Track One.
Then I will color my group green and assign that same color to the grouped tracks and clips.
Then I'll do the same thing to the tracks I just copied.
So I've copied over the elements that I like,
and now I can start playing with the arrangement until I find something that works.
For example, first of all, these effects at the beginning were a bit harsh, so I'm going to remove them.
And maybe mute my intro by pressing zero on my keyboard.
By the way, I also used the long kick sample because I think the new one works much better.
All right. And then I'm going to bring this riser that I really liked from Right 3 into my chorus.
I think that could work.
Here's my chorus, here's my riser. Let's see.
Sounds good.
I think I'm going to go ahead and delete the percussion I initially created
because I like the copied percussion much better. I'm going to bring those drums a bit closer to my
to my other track so that it's more accessible.
So I think this is kind of the intro, judging by the little elements I see here.
And this is the verse, intro, verse, and here's the chorus.
I think I'll leave the rest behind.
And now I'll use these clips to structure a second verse.
So that's done. Let me copy paste the riser onto the second chorus.
So I'm just going to paste that riser and delete the rest.
And maybe copy the melody onto the chorus as well.
I think I can collapse my initial long kick sample as I muted it earlier, but I'll keep it just in case.
The chorus comes again after this, so I'm going to copy the whole chorus part and paste it here.
After moving the pieces around, I found a structure that works for the song.
So now I'm going to go ahead and record the chorus.
I'm going to place the marker a little bit earlier, so I have a bit of a pre-roll.
I'll do the same thing that I did with my verse, create another layer,
maybe call it Chorus B and record the vocals almost exactly the same.
So I'll finish up by recording some more vocals for the rest of the song,
do some mixing, tidy up and show you the final result.
As you can see, the project developed quite a lot.
I made an intro, recorded some extra vocals and mixed everything.
I added some new percussion elements and effects.
I also worked on the transitions and optimized the arrangement.
What you can see in this video is the first sketch of what afterwards took a couple of months to be really finished.
So that was a quick look at some of my workflow.
Hopefully, it gives you some ideas for your own production.
This is Catnapp. Thanks for watching.