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6. Scenes and moving to Arrangement View

2021-12-29 -

Now we have some clips to work with, we can start building some ‘scenes’ – or rows of clips – but first some explanation. The way clips play in Session View is based on the loop settings and on the Follow Actions settings if it is active. Fold open the Follow Actions tab in the clip settings and look at the options.

Follow Actions are not limited to clips and also exist for scenes, and the Follow Actions tab is visible in the Scene View when you select a scene. In both cases, the Follow Actions decide what happens when a clip or scene has finished playing. Options include stop, play next, play again and so on.

We can use these to influence the columns or ‘groups’ of clips in a track, or as we will do here, add them to scenes so we can try out various song structures. So, the next stage is to start arranging our clips into useful song sections that we can then jam with, and apply some Actions.

Clips can be dragged, copied and pasted within the Session View either via the Edit menu or using standard copy and paste key commands (Ctrl/Cmd+C and Ctrl/Cmd+V). Using this technique, build up different combinations as rows of clips.

Once you’ve created a few scenes, you can name them so they make sense to you. Here we’ve started with a couple of intro scenes and then a couple of scenes we’ve called A Section and B Section. We’ll continue with this until we’ve created enough variants.

Jamming with our scenes is not only fun but helps us try out combinations of loops – great for intros, drops and so on. Nevertheless, to complete our track we need to move into the timeline-based Arrangement View. To make this easier to accomplish, try opening a Second Window for the Arrangement View.

The first way we can move clips into the Arrangement View is to drag them. This may not seem impressive, but you can also drag and drop scenes as well. So we could simply drag all our scenes into the arrangement and continue building the track from there.

For a more improvised approach, we can play the clips in the Session view and record this into the Arrangement timeline. You can do this on the fly by activating the Arrangement Record in the main transport. Even better, select Shift and Record, and recording only starts when you play a clip.

The most organised option is to actually organise the Scenes using Follow Actions and specific Action Times, so the scenes essentially play back an arrangement. Then all you have to do is select the Arrangement Record as above, then trigger the first scene and record the whole lot into the timeline.

Whichever methods you choose, you should now have your parts in the Arrangement View. Make sure to click the Back To Arrangement button so Live 11 Lite is playing from the Arrangement, not Session View.

We can now add some finessing to our track. First up, at bar 17, the beats all come in together and this is too sudden. Double-click the clip to open the MIDI note editor. Select Fold to hide unused notes. Try muting different sounds. Click on the piano roll note and click keyboard 0 to mute the selected notes.

Our beats now start at bar 17 with just the kick drum. We’ve also copied the shaker so it plays from bar 17 as well. However, we’ve removed it again on bar 24 simply by dragging back the clip end point.

Playing ahead, we want to double up the guitar part at bar 41 so that both the low and high parts play together. We’ve selected the guitar track and inserted a new audio track from the Create menu. Then we dragged the high guitar part underneath the low part.

Now we want to extend the drop section that starts at bar 49. We’ve duplicated the clips in bars 57 to 65. This is easily done by highlighting them and then using the right-click Duplicate option. We’ve also copied over the intro kick pattern and the high guitar part and copied bars 41 to 49 for the end section.

With our structure complete we can finesse the transitions. Head to the Browser and find Packs>Core Library and search for Noise. We’ve grabbed Riser White Noise and Sweep White Noise Fall and dropped them into the arrangement to create a new track, then copied and positioned these at section changes.

Finally, let’s do a kick drum build from bar 69 to 73. Select the clip and choose Consolidate from the right-click menu then open the clip in the MIDI Note Editor. Selecting just bar 69 and 70 we’ve made these 1/8th notes and then used 1/16ths for bar 71 with a final kick at bar 72 beat 1.

Before we start mixing, it can be useful to set up navigation locators. These appear in the scrub area and to create one, click your cursor where required in the arrange area – you’ll see a vertical blue line – then choose Set at the right hand. Live Lite will automatically number them but you can use right-click to rename.

To play from a locator, double-click it and use the arrows under the Set button to navigate to the next or previous locator. Alternatively, click on the Key button in the top right to create Key Mapping. Simply select a locator and hit a keyboard key to assign it. Now you can navigate with keystrokes.

Balancing and mixing in Live 11 Lite is straightforward. You’ve probably already spotted that levels, pans and sends can be adjusted in either Session or Arrangement views. Use whichever suits the task, but for us the vertical Session view is better for levels and pans, and we’ll use Arrangement for automation.

In Session View you can also fold open Instruments or Racks with multiple chains. For us, this applies to our Coral Kit track. In its track title bar, click on the circled triangle. This reveals all the sounds in the drum instrument and the first thing we’re going to do is adjust the level of the open hi-hat down to -5dB.

The other thing we can do via multiple chains is process and modify the individual sounds of the instrument. Here we’ve added the Channel EQ just to the snare and scooped out at about 800Hz and boosted the low shelf. We’ve also adjusted the sample length to make it shorter and added a 157ms fade out.

Now use the same technique to add a compressor to the kick. We’ve chosen Generic Compressor from the Dynamics folder, setting the Ratio at 3:1, Auto Release and Threshold at -17dB . This brings up the noise and flavour of the kick sample, but we’ve also trimmed the sample end to keep it tidy.

Now let’s look at the noise effects track. First we need to add space to the effects and we’re going to use a delay. From Audio Effects>Delay and Loop>Delay, grab the Pong effect. Adjust the Mix to taste (78% for us). The sound is also too dense so we’ll add the EQ Three device, setting the Low to -60dB at 500Hz.

Next we’ll add some sidechain compression to our string part, using the kick as a trigger. This is very easy to set up in Live 11 Lite and to get started add the Generic Compressor to the string track. Now click on its triangle icon to open and activate the sidechain.

Now in the Audio From menu, select Coral Kit, and below this from the list of kit options, select the Kick 3K Deep – Post FX option. Now adjust the Threshold, Attack and Release to taste. We’ve set the parameters as -15dB Threshold with Auto Release, 15ms Attack and 3:1 Ratio.

Panning is a great way to help define sounds and here we’re going to pan our electric guitar parts. You may want to set this using Session view, as the pan pots are easier to use. We’ve set the low guitar to 35 left and the high guitar to 35 right.

Live 11 Lite has an improved Chorus plugin with new ensemble setting and we’re going to use this on the bass. We’ve loaded the Warm Ensemble preset setting width to 100%, rate to 0.29Hz, amount to 65%, feedback to 13%, warmth to 18% and Dry/Wet mix to 50%. The result is a subtle but rich effect.

Your Live Lite Set already contains two send effects, A Reverb and B Delay. We’re going to keep the reverb and replace the delay with a CM Studio classic, Microfuse reverb from Surreal Machines. You can get this from Studio at FileSilo, and once installed, use the hot swap icon in the Delay to grab it from the Plug-Ins menu.

For Send A Reverb, we want a short reverb and we’ve loaded up Dark Small from the Reverb>Room folder. This is great to add a bit of space to the bass and guitars. Set the send level just below the level and pan on the track header. We’ve set both our bass Send to -7.0dB and guitars to -6.0dB.

To access the Microfuse presets, click on the spanner icon in its device title bar. This opens the plugin and from there we’ve opened the Reverb Larger Plate preset, setting the Mix to 100%. We’re adding this reverb to the string (-3.0dB), white noise sweep (-2.5dB) and rhythmic piano riff (-13.00dB).

To further finesse our track we need to use some automation. Arrangement view is particularly well suited to automation as we can have multiple lanes open in each track so it’s easy to see what’s happening. To activate automation, click on the icon next to the padlock at the top of the track headers.

Once automation is active, you’ll see a drop-down menu on each track header. This is the automation control chooser and includes all the automatable parameters for the track. Initially we need the level and send parameters, which you’ll find in the Mixer entry in the list.

Our first job is to adjust the volume level of the string in the drop-down section. On the string track, use the control chooser to select Mixer and then Track Volume from the list. You should now have a dotted line in the arrangement area for volume.

You can simply click on this line and create individual break points to adjust the volume automation. A much quicker option is to select the clip and use the context sensitive arrows. We’ve grabbed the middle arrow and reduced the string level in the drop to -8.5dB.

The kick needs similar treatment in the drop-down but with some more precise tweaks. As you can see, we’ve reduced the level slightly (-2.0dB overall) and then done some final tweaks including a fade up as it comes to the end of the drop.

We want to try one more automation move in the drop section. We added some of our Microfuse reverb to the rhythmic piano part. In the drop section we can automate this send level higher to create a more spacey feel. We’ve selected the B send in the automation chooser menu and adjusted it to about -9dB in the drop.

We’re now on the final stretch with our mix. The next step is to do some tidying. We want a less sudden ending, so we’ve removed the drums in the last two bars (103 and 104). The quickest way to do this is to just adjust the clip’s endpoint.

This now makes the noise sweep effect at the end sound a bit too isolated, so grab its two clips and move them to taste. We’ve moved them a couple of beats earlier so the pair of clips start halfway through bar 102.

Sticking with the noise sweep track, this has a very long tail. Use the automation to draw in a volume fade. To finesse this, use Alt/Option + cursor to add a small bend to the automation.

The Live 11 Lite master output can be processed just like any other track, and we’re going to add some subtle mastering style processing to sweeten up our mix. There are various Racks in the Core Library folder and we’re going to start by loading up the MS Rack Template.

Use this Rack to adjust the sides balance slightly up and widen the mix (we’ve set ours to 1.5dB). Next up, activate the Bass Mono option and set it to taste. We’ve set ours to 130Hz so everything below this frequency will be mono.

Now sweeten the whole mix. We’re using another Suite classic, the Pultec-inspired PTH2A-CM from OverTone DSP (download from FileSilo). The settings are very straightforward and we’ve added 3.5dB at 10kHz and 2.1dB at 100Hz.

New in Live 11 Lite is a Limiter effect. Add this at the end of the Master output chain. We’ve loaded the Upper Ceiling preset, setting the ceiling to 0.1dB. This is just as a final stage limiter. If you’re getting a lot of gain reduction, reduce the Output Level on the MS Rack. Ours is set to -3.0dB.

Creating your final master audio file is very easy in Live 11 Lite. Open the Export Audio dialogue box from the File menu. There are a lot of options and the first things to set up are the rendered source, which for us is the Master, and the start and length, which for us are bar 1 and 106 bars.

Other options include sample rate, file format, normalize and Render As Loop. When you’re happy with your choices, hit the Export button at the bottom, select a suitable destination folder, give the file a name and wait for it to render. And that’s it, you’re done!