Using Ableton Live as a Songwriter

If
you’ve ever written a song before, then you can attest to the importance of
staying in the flow and quickly capturing ideas as they arrive. When you’re in
the moment of writing a new song and an idea strikes you, the last thing you
need is to get stuck in the technical details of a DAW. When ideas are flowing,
you’ve got to capture them quickly, and you need to be able to quickly adapt as
those ideas adapt.

The
most important role that your software can play is getting out of the way and
being invisible. You need to quickly capture and create ideas and have the
ability to morph and transform them later as quickly as possible.

Ableton Live is the perfect tool for songwriters. In this article, we’ll explore five ideas that will help you capture your ideas with minimal friction and quickly adapt them as you work.

Capture MIDI Ideas Quickly

When
an idea hits, you don’t want to break the creative flow to turn on a metronome
and try to record the perfect take. With a traditional DAW recording experience,
that’s exactly what you end up doing. You noodle around until you find the part
you want, figure out what tempo you want to record, enable your metronome, and
then record until you get the right take.

With
Ableton Live’s “Capture MIDI” feature, you can record the perfect take the
first time, even when you’re not “recording.” Here’s how:

I’ve
got a piano preset loaded into Ableton Live, and my MIDI controller is
connected to my computer. I’ve set aside time for songwriting and decided to
just pick a key and start noodling.

After a few seconds of working out a part in my head, I feel like I’ve finally got it. Typically, I would enable my metronome, press record, and record until I get the right part. But not with Live’s Capture MIDI feature. All I need to do is click the capture button in Live to capture all the MIDI info I’ve been playing.

Captured MIDI

You’ll see Live has captured all the MIDI notes I just recorded, and it even made its best guess at my tempo: 65 bpm.

Detected Tempo

Once
I’m out of my creative-capture mode, I can go back and clean up this part to
land on my final part. I typically quantize MIDI and potentially move and shift
notes around on the grid to adjust timing; but, overall, when using Capture
MIDI, I can quickly get ideas out of my head and into Live.

It’s worth noting, Capture MIDI only works with MIDI data, but, if you’re recording audio, there are still some great tools in Live for you to quickly get ideas recorded into Live.

Use Session View as a Scratch Pad

Creativity
doesn’t follow a linear process. Often, in the songwriting process, we sit down
to write a song and want to force it to come to us linearly. We need an intro,
a verse, and then a chorus. We push back a possible idea for the bridge because
we’re not there yet!

When
you’re working with Ableton Live, you can easily capture your song as it comes
to you in small bursts of ideas and commit to a song structure later. In the
example of the song I’m working with, I decided to plug in my electric guitar
and capture a few ideas.

I recorded a few different progressions that felt like they might “fit” in this song. For example, I tried one that followed my original piano line (I–IV–vi–V) and one that switched up the order slightly (I–vi–IV–V).

Possible Progressions

The benefit of recording parts this way is I’m not committing to a song structure yet. I can also easily try out different lead lines over the top of different progressions by launching different clips in time together and combining them into scenes to play together at the same time.

Auditioning Parts

If you’re familiar with Live 11 and its new features, then you may be wondering why I’m not using comping for this. For me, I consider comping a tool to be used when I’m trying to capture the right part and recording in Arrangement View. At this stage, I’m not sure of the song structure and I’m not working on creating a “perfect” arrangement, I’m simply attempting to capture the parts as they come to me.

Capturing an Arrangement

Now
that I’ve got a few parts captured, I think I’m ready to commit to an
arrangement of the song. In order to do that, I’m going to record from Session View
into Arrangement View; this is going to allow me to record all the clip
launches in real time to build a song structure. Here’s how I’ll do this:

First, I’m going to stop all clips using the “Stop All Clips” button found on Live’s Master track.

Stop All Clips

Next, I’m going to press Live’s Global Record button, which will give me a 1-measure countdown until we start recording.

Global Record Button

Now, I’m going to launch the clips I have in Session View to form a song arrangement. It’s okay if I don’t nail this perfectly; I can always fix this later. This is essentially the process of forming a scratch track, or demo track, from the parts I previously recorded.

Launching Individual Clips

If I want to trigger an entire scene of clips at once, then I can use the Scene Launch button to play all those clips at once.

Scene Launch

Once you’ve got all your parts recorded, you can press stop and switch over to Arrangement View using Tab on your keyboard to see your recorded arrangement. This allows you to quickly go from your separate parts you recorded in Session View into a fully formed arrangement and song structure in Arrangement View.

Recorded Arrangement

As our arrangement is starting to come together, it’s possible that we want to customize even further. Here’s how to do that.

Change Key/Tempo to Transform a Song

Even
after you’ve recorded your content, you’re not stuck. You can continue to edit
your song, to make fine edits to your clips, and more. For example, let’s say
that I wrote this song but have decided I want it to be female led. That doesn’t
mean I have to go back and re-record all my parts. It’s a simple fix in Live.
Let’s start with transposing all our audio first.

Using your mouse or trackpad, highlight all your audio clips.

Highlight Audio Clips

Next, we need to see Clip View in Live. If you’re currently seeing the devices and effects you have loaded onto your track, then hit Shift+Tab to toggle over to Clip View.

Clip View

Now I’m going to transpose these three audio clips up a whole step using the Transpose knob. I need to raise these clips by two semitones (or half steps) to get to one whole step.

Pitch Transposition

If you start to hear odd artifacts or your audio loses its original timbre, then consider changing your warp mode. For simple transpositions, use Complex; and, for more extreme transpositions, you can use Complex Pro. Complex Pro can help reclaim some of the timbre of wildly transposed audio.

Warp Modes

Now
that I’ve transposed my audio, I need to transpose my MIDI. In my case, this is
a single piano clip. Here’s how to make that happen:

Double-click on your MIDI clip to view the sample editor.

Sample Editor

Next, select all the notes in your MIDI clip. An easy way to do this is to click into your note editor and use the Select All keyboard shortcut: Cmd-A on a Mac or Ctrl+A on PC.

All Notes Selected

With all the notes selected, I’m going to use the Transpose box to raise these notes up a whole step. To do that, I click and drag up until the lowest note becomes a B1.

Transpose

As
this song has progressed, I’ve also realized that I don’t want this to be a
ballad. I think the lyrics, melody, and progression would work best as a
mid-tempo song. This is an easy change to make.

In the upper left-hand corner of Live’s screen is Live’s global tempo. To change the tempo, it’s as simple as clicking and dragging or clicking and typing the tempo you’d like your song to be. In my case, I want to go from 65 bpm to 80 bpm.

Live’s Global Tempo

Now that my song is at the correct tempo and key, let’s talk about one final tip that will help me work faster next time I go to write a song!

Save Songwriting Templates as a Starting Place

There’s
nothing scarier than a blank page for a writer. When it comes to recording a
song, there’s nothing scarier than a blank Live session! So, give yourself a
head start.

Create
a template with your favorite, go-to sounds and some inspiring loops and save
it as a template in Live 11. This will allow you to start with sounds you know
and will let you quickly get started. Here’s how to create and save templates
in Live 11.

First,
open a new Live Project.

Search through Live’s browser to find sounds that inspire you, or sounds you often use, and load them into your Set. You can also load default clips you like or record your own drumbeats using sounds loaded into Live. In my case, I’ve got a piano, pad, bass, lead, and a few drum loops loaded into my Set.

Song Writing Template

Next, navigate to Live’s “File” menu, but, instead of choosing “Save Live Set,” choose the “Save Live Set as Template” feature.

Save as Template

Give your template a name and press return.

Name Template

Now
you can quickly open and get back to this template at any time when inspiration
hits.

To get to your template, click Live’s “Show Browser” button, click on “User Library,” “Templates,” and then double-click on your template you saved, in my case, “Song Writing Template.”

Navigating to Template

When
inspiration hits, you can quickly open this template and start creating!

Recording
and producing original songs for your church is incredibly important. Using
Ableton Live as a songwriting tool will let you focus on what you’re writing,
stay in the flow, and create more music. Use the tips in this article to help
you get more recorded and stay focused on the task at hand — creating great
songs.
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