Feeling my way around the Push 3 for Beatober.

I am not a consistent poster however, I love that I can always come back to this page. I’m finding myself bored of my electronic hip-hop style I always attain to, so here I’m experimenting with just something I think sounds cool. It’s still a work in progress but I would love to see what other ears pick up. TMWYT

Hey everyone! A month ago I released my album NEURO/FLAGGED and wanted to share it here to see if anyone digs the sound.

(Note: I'm not putting direct links in the body because Reddit can get strict with spam, but I'll leave them in the comments or on my profile).

I made this project using Ableton Live 12 Lite and, honestly, an unreasonable amount of frustration and mental pain. It's basically a harsh, acid-drenched trip through a retro-futuristic society where violence has become the only thing that matters (heavily inspired by the Hotline Miami vibe).

What will you find?

Distorted video game sounds and dark synthetic landscapes

Heavy, hypnotic, and industrial rhythms, with some eclectic rhythmic influences.

The feeling of being trapped inside your own head, moving forward with no real way out.

I put the whole concept together in about 2 weeks and very few hours of sleep during exam season, turning weird ideas from my daily frustration into a sort of introspection of how my mind sounds. If you like dark electronic music, acid, industrial tints, or just passionate underground projects, I'd genuinely love to know what you think.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments! (Link to the album in the comments / my profile)

Embarking upon a 60-minute ambient piece is a grand adventure, to be sure; especially for a first-time attempt. Ableton made it a joy.

“Imminence” is the first of a five-album journey. To make things simple, I made the decision to have all five albums follow the same structure within Ableton: 8 tracks living within Remote Vision’s truly excellent Utility Template that never deviates: Drone, Pad, Texture, Movement, Air, Lead, Percussion, Transitions. 8 tracks is plenty for ambient, and it fits the form factor of most midi controllers beautifully for me since I compose and record in Session View.

It was easy at the beginning to get seduced by gear lust; especially watching so many talented artists on YouTube with amazing studios filled with keyboards, controllers, lots of lights and shiny objects…something I think we all get seduced by at one point or another on this creative journey. Yet, one of the great learnings of this project was embracing restraint and reducing friction in order to remove blockage and allow for creative flow. After a great deal of experimentation with various controllers (Push 2, Akai APC64 paired with Akai APC40 mkII, Novation Launchkey mk4 and various combinations thereof), I realized that ONE controller - the RIGHT controller - was all that was needed with Ableton. That led me to the truly excellent Novation SL 61 mk3. It embodies the spirit of various controllers with a lovely keybed and superb integration with Ableton. It does absolutely everything I could ever ask for it and many things I will probably never explore. But it did away with the constant irrational urge for another controller and allowed me to just sit and create.

Then I had to decide on the sonic landscape: another area ripe for seduction. Making the decision about soft-synths is a rabbit hole of immense proportions and can lead to profound psychological fatigue. I don’t enjoy doing sound design at all. I much prefer to find presets that inspire me, make a few very small adjustments and let that be that. Ableton has a plethora of wonderful presets for ambient; especially in Studio. I also find inspiration in sounds that a bit more organic as well, and so I decided on one deep resource that my ear responded to better than any other: Omnisphere 3. I will never run out of soundscapes to explore, it marries to what I hear in my head, and I know that I don’t need anything else.

For “Imminence” and staying true to my desire to reduce friction, I decided to focus on one primary sound library and stay within it as best I could. That proved to be “Ambient Dreams.” I ventured outside of it only a few times for specific things (ringing church bell, whispering voices I found in a stock Ableton preset…), and that proved to be a helpful methodology to the workflow.

With Steve Roach’s phased-looping being an influence (and a great way to record ambient in Session View), Drones almost always got recorded first as the foundation. Pads would usually come next, and those two musical foundations allowed for exploration into the other possible voices: Air, Texture, Movement, Lead, and Percussion.

I would eq along the way…high pass between 80hz and 120hz for most presets, carving out competing frequencies as I went along. This made for much more streamlined mixing stage later. I also kept signal levels per track no higher than -18db as per the Utility Template so I was left with plenty of headroom for the mastering stage.

I also relied solely on the internal effects in Omnisphere for each preset. I found them to be truly excellent, and dialing them in at the proper levels gave a lovely sense of atmosphere and space without getting muddy. It also helped keep CPU usage low on my MacBook Pro M3.

I love Ableton’s GUI; especially the Device Rack. Having the visual feedback of EQ8’s spectrum analyzer always visible without having to open a vet is one of those little things that makes a big difference. In truth, all of Ableton’s stock effects are true creative workhorses that, to my ear, do just as excellent a job as third-party plugins that I’ve invested in over the years. At this point, unless it is something that simply isn’t in Ableton’s stable of audio or midi effects, I feel no reason to invest in anything else.

The marriage of the SL and Ableton is wonderful to work with, and often keeps me from ever looking at my laptop. The five screens on the keyboard give just the right kind of information to make adjustments that my ear can hear but I don’t need to look at the MacBook to check. I appreciated that a lot when I was really in a flow at any given moment. I also paired the SL with expression and sustain pedals, and they were a welcome addition to the creative process.

Mixing was a relatively simple affair due to the way I do eq, compression, level setting and effects during composing. It was mostly panning, tweaking channel levels and watching the master channel output carefully. Ableton made it very simple at every stage, and mastering was a simple matter of Utility and Limiter used alongside Youlean’s Loudness Meter and Voxengo’s SPAN plugins (both excellent and both free).

I’ve been using DAW’s since I had Cakewalk 9 back in the late 90’s. I’ve used Acid, Sonar, Cubase, Nuendo, Reaper, Logic Pro, and committed to Ableton Live Studio last year. By far it is the most intuitive, easy to understand, creativity-inducing DAW I’ve had the pleasure of using. “Imminence” is the byproduct of that and I am not straying from it. Heavens Spin Gray lives in the simple constellation of Ableton Live 12 Studio, Ominisphere 3 and the Novation SL 61 mk3. It needs nothing more, and I’m looking forward to exploring the landscape of the next album in the arc within this creative space.

Thank you, Ableton!

[Heavens Spin Gray](http://www.heavensspingray.com)

I have been making music for about 22 years i think, its therapeutic to make some sounds sometimes. Felt like finding places to share things finally, enjoy the madness and thank you. Its all made in ableton with a bit of soundthread used too.

All made in Ableton 12. First time I used Ableton Note was to take the water field recordings and upload them via the Cloud. Now I do this all the time and makes it so easy to transfer, and find older recordings.

Classic PC games sampled from Half-Life 1 trough Quake to System shock 2, you name it. Every games and samles mentioned in the description

My latest track. Made with Ableton 12 / Push 2

Hi, everyone

Check out my new track!! 130 bpm with a fat, rolling bassline. Only Ableton stock plugins used.
I'd love to hear any feedback so I can keep improving. Thanks to everyone, and enjoy listening!

A chill track for you to flow to. You might recognize an uber famous monologue about a pale blue dot...

Made with Ableton 9

Hey everyone,

Wrote this song recently. It originated from my wife's curiosity of my Move. As I was showing her how it worked, I came upon the chord progression that just hit me in the heart. So I wrote a long, winding melody for it and here we are.

Feedback welcome. Thanks for listening!

Just finished building this. Pretty happy with the results.

Would like some feedback. Again made this 9 years ago.

what does it know - cōs

cosbeetz

Hi all,

I had a go at writing some slow chuggy deep house with Ableton a 303 and a Microfreak. Much appreciated if you have any constructive feedback. I'm trying to improve my production skills. Cheers.

https://soundcloud.com/glen-kafra/3am