> Step by step

6. Building a beat with samples in the Arrangement View

1

Switch to the Arrangement View and select the Samples option in the Categories pane. This will pull up the list of factory one-shot samples that ship with Live. There are a lot of them, so type ‘kick’ into the Search pane at the top of the browser. This will drill down through the content and bring up a list of samples whose name contains the word ‘kick’.

2

The selection highlight turns yellow to indicate that an active search filter is being applied and remind you to turn it off once you’ve found what you’re looking for so you can then find other stuff. Make sure the blue headphones icon in the lower left corner is illuminated – this shows that Preview is enabled, so the sounds will be played back as you audition them.

3

Click the first sound in the list to audition it. You can click each sample to hear it, or speed things up by using the Down arrow key on your keyboard to flick through the list quickly, listening to each sound as you go. When you find a sample you like, drag it to the required position in the central tracks area. We’ve put ours on the downbeat of bar 1.

4

If none already exist, a new audio track will be created with the sample in place on it as an audio region. Alt- drag the region to copy it onto the beats you want – if you’re going for a four-on-thefloor vibe, draw a selection region to encompass one quarter-note beat and use the Duplicate command ( Cmd-D) to fill the required number of bars with kicks.

5

Drag the edges of the Loop bracket to set the range you want to loop (four bars in this case) and either use the Cmd-L key command or the Loop button in the transport bar to enable loop mode. Hit play and the clip will loop, allowing you to continually monitor your progress by listening to the loop as you construct it.

6

Repeat the process, this time adding a clap sample. Type the word ‘clap’ into the search bar to search for a suitable sound – we’ve gone for Clap 808 Light Quick. Drag the sample from the browser onto the second blank audio track and repeat it so that a clap occurs on every other kick drum beat.

7

Continue building your beat by dragging other samples onto new tracks. We’ve added some open 909 hi-hats by searching on the term ‘hihat’ in the Drums category and dragging Hihat Silver Open onto the offbeats between kick drums. The tail of the sample is too long, so we drag the right edge to the left, onto the beat, to shorten it.

8

Use the tracks’ volume sliders to balance the volume levels of each part as you build your beat. This is done by dragging downwards on the numbers in the blue boxes directly below the on/off switches in the track headers. Here, we’ve lowered the volume of the kick drum to -2dB and the open hi-hats to -3.1dB for a better overall balance.

9

Once you have a four-bar section you like the sound of, you can select the entire loop by drawing a selection range across it, then use the Duplicate command to copy the section several times to form the basis of a rudimentary arrangement. You can then delete parts within this to create variation in the pattern as the track progresses.