More Warp Markers and Envelopes

We cannot stress the importance of understanding Warp Markers enough—they are the essence of Live. The amount of groove massaging made possible by Live’s Warp Markers is truly limitless. At first, you may be frustrated by how to specifically adjust a beat or loop to make it sound the way you’re hearing it in your head or how to get it to align properly within your audio project, but with a little practice, you will develop an intuition for how Warp Markers gradually shift a pattern’s events. In the following list, we have outlined a few of our favorite techniques to get you started. After you master the examples, take time to experiment with Ableton’s powerful Warp tool. There really are no rules, so go for it!

• Feel: The trouble and triumph of loop-based music is that “feel” often becomes stagnant, unwavering, monotonous, and uninspired. It’s why dance music is often for dancers, and not always for classically trained musicians. To combat the static element in loop-based music, it is important to add a little variety from time to time, even if the results are basically imperceptible to the untrained or unsuspecting ear. There are several methods for doing this, but the easiest we’ve found is to subtly (not randomly!) change the volume of some beats in a few of the repetitions. For instance, say you are working in Live’s Arrangement View and you have played four measures of a loop. On bar 4, you might try attenuating (reducing) the volume with a Clip Envelope (shown in Figure 14.1). Though a drummer tries to play like a machine, the strength with which he hits the drums will vary slightly throughout his performance. By adjusting the volumes slightly, you can replicate this variability. Remember, it’s best to play with the volumes of subdivisions (hi-hats and percussion), not the main beats (such as the kick and snare drums).

  Figure 14.1. Altering the volume here and there can add realism to loops.

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• Ahead and behind the Beat: Drummers and bass players have developed a unique relationship through the years. An artist’s “feel” is often as important as what is being played. You will hear musicians or critics say it’s not what musicians play, but how they play it. One musical dialogue common to the tradition of drummers and bassists (including organ and synth bass) is that of playing ahead of the beat and behind the beat. The idea is that the bass player (and the rest of the band) plays on the beat, while the drummer plays slightly behind the 2 and 4 snare hits. Generally, you want your kick drum to remain in the same place, meaning squarely on the beat. To play on top or ahead of the beat, the drummer ever so slightly rushes the hit on the snare and even the hi-hats and cymbal parts. This can give the music a rushed or more energetic feel, which is popular in many dance styles. In Figure 14.2a, we have provided a simple drum beat. Notice that the beats line up perfectly with Live’s Warp Markers. In Figure 14.2b, we have pushed a few Warp Markers to the left to make the snare hits feel sluggish or behind the beat, while in Figure 14.2c, we have pushed the same Warp Markers slightly to the right of the snare for a more rushed feel—ahead of the beat.

  Figure 14.2a. A simple drum groove aligned with Ableton’s Warp Markers

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  Figure 14.2b. Moving the Warp Markers to the left makes the beat feel more laid back.

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  Figure 14.2c. Moving the Warp Markers to the right makes the groove feel “on top.”

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• Extending One-Shot-Style Loops: Sometimes, a looping sample plays too often. Examples such as a single drum hit firing every eighth-note instead of every quarter or a horn section blast on every downbeat instead of every measure come to mind. If you want the blast (shown in Figure 14.3a) to happen once every measure, you can use a Volume Envelope. By unlinking the length of the envelope and stretching it to a bar in length, you can mute beats 2, 3, and 4, resulting in the blast being heard only on beat 1 (see Figure 14.3b).

  Figure 14.3a. The one-beat-long horn blast. Listening to this loop gets annoying really fast.

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  Figure 14.3b. Ah, much better. We’ve muted the last three beats so we hear the horns only once a measure.

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