>> Yo, what's up guys? Mad Zach here and today I'm going to be sharing with you some of the
techniques and behind-the-scenes type of information about this last video that I did for Ableton,
where I was performing on the 64-pad sound pack that I’d made. So yeah, basically for
me, I've been working for a long time in the 16-pad paradigm. You know, where you have
a few drum sounds, maybe a bass or hook sound and one or two atmospheres. And so for me,
moving up to 64 from 16 was really a process of building upon what I had and expanding
all of those sound types.
>> I think one of the most important things that I could talk about with regards to this
type of setup where you working with all these days pads and sounds is actually sort of the
placement and distribution of where I put the different types of sounds. A lot of people
when they see this happening, they're like "oh my god, yeah, but how am I ever going
to remember where all those sounds are?" And so I have a bit of an answer to that and it's
wrapped up in sort of my technique for creating the packs. Basically it revolves around muscle
memory. So I always put, you know, the same sounds in the same places and I've developed
it in such a consistent way that now I can play just with muscle memory through any of
the sound packs. So you can see here on this sound pack…
>> I can play that same beat like that, or I could also go over to the next sound pack
and play the exact same pattern…
>> So, even though it’s a lot of buttons to remember, once you’ve developed this
sort of muscle memory, it’s all good. The other thing is that I put a lot of similar
sounds near each other, so you can be safely resting assured that in most cases the sounds
around where you're trying to hit are relatively similar to what you're trying to play. So,
for example, if I'm all...you know, using this as my snare and then I hit that, it's
not going to like the end of the world.
>> One of my favorite things about having more sounds at my disposal is the ability
to create a lot more intricacy and expression within a specific type of sound. So, for example,
over here on the 16-pad rack I have basically just these two kicks: the one that's a bit
more of a decay going on and this one which is just a bit higher. So, that pretty typical
for a 16-pad rack. But, if we go over to the 64-pad pack that I was using in the video
performance, you'll see that actually I have five different tunings of this bass drum kick,
as well as a muted, softer kick. And this is really cool because now instead of just
being like...
I can get a little funky and be like...
>> So yeah, up next, to talk about another way that I like to add a bit more dynamic
versatility to a pad. Which is that the duration that I hold a button down actually affects
the sound that is played, both the character and well, everything. So let's talk about
the way that applies to this hat shaker sound. So here we have a shaker, but you'll notice
that if I just tap and hold it down, it does this short thing with a little delay. Versus
when I tap it, it has a nice long release. And the way that that’s set up is really
simple, but really useful. So if you take a look at here and ignoring this LFO Max thing
that's on the sustain, basically I have the decay set down and the release long, with
the sustain kind of down at a lower value. And just because of the sort of the physics
of the way an envelope works, I'm not sure if you could call it physics but - the math
of it - it works out so that if you just tap it, it’s going to release the volume at
whatever level it was at in this decay process. But if you hold it down then it works its
way through the whole decay process and winds up down at that lower sustained value. So
here's an example of how I'm going to integrate that into a beat and you can hear the variety.
>> Another really cool technique for adding a bit of variety and dynamic to a pad sound
is by using an LFO and it's called a non re-triggering LFO, basically. And you route it to something
like the filter or the pitch and here’s an example of that in action...so you can
hear that every time I hit the button, it's actually playing the filter at a different
place and that's because even though the filter is moving like this because of the LFO, each
time that I tap the button it’s actually happening at a different place in that LFO’s
throw, and the result is this scratch type sound so…
>> So I'll show you how that breaks down in Ableton real quick. Which is...this is the
sound without any filtering - just some plain white noise, with a bit of delay. But I turn
on the filter and then you want to select bandpass 24, pump up the resonance a bit...here
and you can adjust these settings, you know frequency, as you like and then you pull up
the LFO here, make sure this is turned on, and this is turned off so that its not re-triggering
every time you hit the button. Another one of my favorite ways to sort of combine - just
get more mileage out of each pad - is to have sounds that again are different when I hit
them for a short period of time versus when I hit them for longer. But whereas with this
one it’s just different in the actual sound, this actually will play a percussive loop
if I hold it down...but if I just tap it I can still use it as a one-shot. Which can
be really cool if you’re like…
>> Up next I'm going to be talking about a few different techniques that I've used to
pull the sound pack together and really glue it and make it feel a bit more like a final
mix than just a bunch of one-shots loaded into cells. So the first way that I do that
is by utilising the send and return chains within Ableton’s Drum Rack. I've got here
just a reverb and a ping pong with a bit of an effects rack going on. It's not just a
ping pong, it's a ping pong and an autofilter that's moving a bit and that's being side-chained
as well. So they’re effects chains, but the idea is that they’re actually existing
within the Drum Rack and not as an external send and return. So yeah, the advantage of
that is that anytime I'm working on a sound and I want to add, you know, a little bit
of delay or reverb, I don't have to actually load up a separate instance of that effect,
I can just send that sample to my bus. So that's the first technique. The second technique
is more having to do with side-chaining. So one of the big things in my mind that differentiates
a typical sound pack or live performance with a finished track is this really tight mix
and the gluing together, which is caused by the side-chaining. So let's say we have a
sound like this for example, or let’s use this choir sample. So normally the way that
side-chaining in Ableton works is that you have to - since there’s only one side chain
input on the compressor - typically, you would have to put a separate compressor for each
thing that you wanted to be the side chain’s source. So, even though I have, you know,
all these kicks, I would have to have a separate instance of compressor for each one of those
source sounds. But what I do, as a workaround, which I’m very happy with, is to create
what I call a ghost bus. Also within the Drum Rack. So the same way that I created these
effects returns, I just created a blank return chain with no effects in it and I mute it.
And so now on the actual thing I want to be side chained, in the Audio From I select the
Drum Rack that I'm in and then on the second option drop-down I choose to side-chain bus.
Then anything I want to be the source for the side-chaining, all I have to do is send
that to this ghost side chain bus and because its muted you won't hear any of those being
layered in again, but if I go back to this thing that I want to be side chained, you
can see that when I hit any of these buttons it's triggering the compressor just the same.
>> So yeah, one more technique or little trick that I do sometimes - I don't know if it's
a trick but just a little tip - sometimes throwing a saturator on the master of the
Drum Rack, like just after the whole Drum Rack. Depending on where your levels are at
already can be a nice trick to sort of further glue things together. Adds a bit of overdrive
and makes things morph together in a cool way, so you'll hear before...here are the
kicks...with the saturator...maybe put a DB on there…
>> So that pretty much sums up everything that I wanted to go over in terms of techniques
and what went on behind the scenes with creating these 64-pad racks. As a finishing note I’d
just like to add that these can be for a lot more than just jamming out. I use them actually
as a production tool. So, because there's 64 sounds, you have actually every sound that
you would need to create a song with, right here in the Drum Rack. So all you have to
do is load up the Drum Rack and, you know, either play in your parts and arrange it like
that, or even just draw it in with your mouse. So yeah, that's pretty much it. Again, if
you want to pick up these sound packs, you can grab them from Ableton. They should be
free from the Ableton website, included with this new update. And again, I'm Mad Zach and
I hope that you enjoyed this video and all of the sounds packs. I've been having so much
fun with them, so I know you're going to as well and until next time, peace out.