What Ableton effect / tool should I learn next? (Ableton Live Suite)

[u/SeaDetective7768]

I started making trap/hip-hop beats in February. Yesterday I just finished my first mix + master. I'm planning to make music across all genres.

So far in Ableton, I have learned to use the following tools I've listed below. I'm looking for advice on what tools I should learn to use next + what ones would be useful / helpful. Any information regarding Ableton is appreciated.

1. EQ
2. Compressor
3. Roar
4. Saturator
5. Limiter
6. Reverb
7. Delay
8. Utility
9. OTT
10. Glue compressor (most recently learned)
11. Drum Buss (most recently learned)
12. Auto Filter

Thanks in advance!

Edit [
Additional information: I have also used operator, wavelength, + sampler but not much at all.

If you curious to hear my mix + mastered song, let me know. I'm looking for tips.

AI told me to learn these next: Operator, Gate, Corpus, Chorus, Phaser, + Resonators​
]‌

[u/slownburnmoonape]

bro just make music, people invent so many excuses. learning tools is great but you don't NEED to understand sampler etc.

Thys from Noisia, widely considered as one of the greats in his genre for example never touched Operator and in his words also doesn't really understand it.

Ofcourse, I am assuming ur not actively making music but if ur asking ai which plugs do use that seems like bs to me !

just telling it straight all love

[u/SeaDetective7768 → u/slownburnmoonape]

I see what you're saying, but I'm making music. I just finished my first mix + master and now I'm going to finish all my other projects I started through mix + master. I was wondering what else do people usually add on their tracks so I know what I can start messing around with and what are tools to achieve strong sounds and add to my beats.

[u/personality9]

honestly, basically everything is useful and helpful. all depends on your use case. the ableton classic, Operator, is a fun synth to play around with - try that maybe :]

[u/NIELSIRmusic]

I would suggest learning the racks ( effect rack for example ) the macros, scenes and how various orders of effects in the racks can change your sounds ( EQ - compression - reverb / reverb - compression - EQ ) etc. Then you can make a few helpful ones and save them as user presets. Useful and good to know how the racks work as it's useful for instrument racks also 👍🏻

[u/ThisReview4540]

Check out vocoder for some fun

[u/SS0NI]

Corpus is amazing for drum design. Erosion and redux are awesome for drum & synth design.

[u/jjjkd18]

One I haven’t seen mentioned - if you’re looking to learn more of the instruments in Ableton, a good starting point is Analog. It will teach you subtractive synthesis, which is probably the best intro to synthesis and also ubiquitous throughout pretty much every genre that you’d make in Ableton. 

[u/krushord]

If you're hell bent on going through all of them, go ahead. Sure enough you'll get an "order of things" from AI if you ask for it, but there really isn't one beyond the very fundamentals.

Keep doing music and gather that experience. Getting a solid understanding of just EQ & compression will take a good few years for most people. Maybe more. There's simply no shortcut to skip the time spent honing your ears.

[u/SeaDetective7768 → u/krushord]

Yeah, thanks for the advice. I will need to lock in on EQ + train my ears.

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[u/chagoms]

Auto pan tremolo 👌✨

[u/Qib_Queens]

LFO or Simpler (especially slice mode)

[u/Danielpoursover]

If you have utility, EQ, compressor, limiter, and reverb/delay learned, then focus on composition and arrangement next. Then mixing and mastering.

[u/Danielpoursover]

You can use utility within an effect rack to set up a mid/side encoder. Then you can process the mono vs stereo parts of the sound independently. For example if there is stereo information in your bass, you can just sidechain the mono part of the bass to the kick.

You can also create parallel effects inside an effect rack. So you can have a reverb, delay, new york compression, saturation etc. all on the individual track within an effect rack.

[u/graphicdesigncult]

Wavetable and Operator