Get creative with Ableton Live

PROBLEM: How can I use randomisation in my compositions and performances?

Randomisation is a fabulous way to add some variety to your Live projects, whether you’re involved in production or performance. It’s such a user-friendly, controllable, way to create variations in instrument or effect device settings, or even the structure of a song, occurring over a defined period of time. And although it’s ‘random’, you can set your own limits on exactly how random it’s going to be! Typical randomisation settings in Live allow you to specify minimum and maximum values, so there are only good surprises to look forward to – nothing too chaotic, and everything stays synced (unless you don’t want it to), and if needed, it’s very easy to configure your setup so that a single click will restore your randomised settings to their original values. These techniques can give us continual sonic development, coming up with sounds and combinations of parts that you might not have conceived yourself. In our walkthrough steps we discuss a few different ways to apply randomisation, through follow actions, with MIDI notes in the clip editor, and with macro settings inside racks – and, we have to say, Live 11 has taken all of these to a new level.

01

Live 11’s Follow Actions are great for randomisation on a structural level, affecting how often clips play. Click the toggle button next to the clip name, click the Follow Action button, then choose Any as the action. Move the Chance slider in order to affect the likelihood of the action occurring.

02

Follow Actions also work with scenes – horizontal rows of clips – so playback of entire sections of a musical structure can be randomised. Click on a scene or scenes in the master track, and make your follow action settings. The Action Times can be as long or as short as needed.

03

Focusing now on the clip view, we can use the randomisation button to vary the chances of notes in a clip playing, as well as their velocities, using the editor lanes below the notes. If your instrument parameters react to velocity changes, it’ll add more variety to your sound design.

04

When using a rack with assigned macros, hit the rand(om) button whenever you want to create a new combination of macro values. When you get one you want to keep, save it in the Macro Variations section at the left end of the rack by clicking the New button.