Firstly I mastered the song Game Boy by AnneAnne, a synthpop-ish piece that is an astoundingly impressive display of composing, lyric-writing, instrumental performance, singing, arranging, production, and mixing… that all coalesces into a bangin’ track filled with clever and hilarious 80s and 90s nostalgia tech puns.
Next up was Dimenensional Drift by Human Synthetics, an amazing atmospheric d&b piece, replete with crushing breakbeats and enveloping bass that continually shifts and evolves as it progresses, evoking a dark and moody vibe that is enticing and addictive to listen to and get lost in.
For both pieces i used my newly-developed Finalization effects pack and template for Ableton Live Suite 12, demonstrating how it allows you to get as deep as you need to with professional mastering and high-quality results with no need for external VST plugins.
It was a great joy to work on finalization of both of these songs on-the-fly at the Music Production Club meeting! Thanks to both of the artists for contributing their songs and to Brian Funk for hosting the meeting plus recording and producing the video.
And no i don’t use generative ai for any aspect of writing this blog because that would be lame, unimaginative, boring, below my standards of quality and veracity, and personally unfulfilling.
The free Push 3 User Mode template has been updated for Live Suite 12.4.1+ and is available once more! (Grab the .alp directly here).
Push Controllers have an underused feature called User Mode. The problem is that you have to manually set mappings. So i did the work, planned out and made a template of mappings for the Push 3 that make the utmost of the controller’s hidden capabilities.
The live set comes pre-loaded with the Push 3’s physical controls mapped to Ableton Live functions for use in User Mode, adding to the total capabilities of the controller. It’s totally dope as a creativity launching pad. I spent hours getting lost in jamming while vetting the update!
Feel free to save / print this handy Push 3 User Mode reference image.
Template Features: ☞ 8 Audio Tracks, selectable with buttons. Use these for general audio work, mixing, audio in, routing, etc.
☞ 8 Synth Instrument Tracks, selectable with buttons. Pre-loaded with sandbox starting points for Ableton’s native synths. Just start using them! Tweak, hotswap, etc. Electric and Operator have been enhanced with Expression Control for added pad expression.
☞ 6 Sample / Percussion Tracks {ɴᴇᴡ}. Use these to drop samples in for sound design and to play drums / percussion. Drum Rack is pre-loaded with a Session Drums kit. DS Rack is pre-loaded with one of each Drum Synth. 8x Impulse is set up with 8×8=64 drop slots available.
☞ FX Aux Return Track with Return OctoFX. Whoah, an FX rack with eight distinct effect chains you can trigger and use on anything whenever? Cool! Pre-loaded with eight parallel effects you feed whatever you want into and use individually or combined. There are eight buttons, each for one effect, and eight control knobs that alter them all in symbiotic ways. Push and hold buttons to trigger effects; twist the knobs to alter them.
~ FX 1: Repeat (feat. Beat Repeat). ~ FX 2: Reverse (feat. Convolute). ~ FX 3: Offset (feat. Delay). ~ FX 4: Wobble (feat. Echo & Chorus). ~ FX 5: Filter (feat. Filter Delay). ~ FX 6: Stretch (feat. Hybrid Reverb & Grain Delay). ~ FX 7: Space (feat. Reverb). ~ FX 8: Resound (feat. Resonators).
☞ Looper Aux Return Track. Built-in organic jam Looper with Push controls and foot pedal multi-button. Send audio to the looper and manipulate it without ever having to use your mouse. It’s fun.
☞ Analysis Aux Return Track. Two spectrum analyzers and two glue compressors repurposed as rough VU/peak meters. You can choose which audio to send through analysis (all is, by default).
☞ Keyboard Mappings Included! The template set comes pre-mapped with the Key Map Template for Live 12, for even more instant functions. Both midi and keyboard key mappings work together alongside each other.
Modding As You Go: Feel free to modify the sets built from the template, deleting tracks you don’t need, duplicating and modifying others, etc!
Conflict & Harmony with Other Controllers: The midi messages sent by Push’s User Mode are unfortunately hard-coded and non-adjustable. The easiest way to avoid potential conflicts with other controllers is to make sure that none of them use MIDI Channel 1. When you want other controllers to double the same functions as Push User Mode, however, you can simply program them to output the same value. For example, to map Tap Tempo to an additional controller, you would set the desired control to CC 3 of Midi Channel 1, and then both controllers will have that function.
Changelog: New Sample & Percussion MIDI Tracks: _Blank Simpler, Sampler, and Sampler racks ready to drop samples in. _64-pad Drum Rackcombining theSession Drums kits SessionDry & DirectNatural. _64-pad DS Rackpre-loaded with Drum Synth slots as well as 505, DMX, and LinnDrum kits. _64-pad Impulsebecause we can’t forget about Impulse.
The Effect Encoders now also control Warp Mode parameters, depending on mode. _Stretch affects Transient Envelope & Grain Size, Wobble affects Flux, and Filter affects Formant.
_Main Track button now focuses on the main track, similar to with User Mode Off (instead of Limiter Mode Cycle).
_The Plus Button, while held, now temporarily enables MIDI Arrangement Overdub (instead of Select FX Track).
_The Foot Pedals are now mapped: Pedal 1 to the Looper Multi-Purpose Button & Pedal 2 to Solo FX Return Channel.
_The Page Left and Page Right buttons can now be used for MIDI step input (as well as for Clip Scrub).
_Runaway feedback possibility in FX Return prevented.
_The MIDI Tracks are grouped and folded by default to reduce clutter.
In other news, i’ll be mastering songs live using the new Finalization template & effects at Brian Funk’s Music Production Club live meeting on Saturday the 19th at 12 noon EST. I hope to see you there!
I recently had the pleasure to provide a “Mastering Masterclass” via The Music Production Club. In preparing for it, I decided to craft an audio mastering template using Ableton Live native effects only that is up to the same standards as my own personal “Tasty Mastering” workflow (which has seen continual evolution in use on many professional mastering jobs).
This rabbit hole (like most projects) ended up consuming more time than initially anticipated, partially due to honing protocols for implementations of fresh features that all PerforModule packs are gradually being updated with (macro variations, xyz control, consistent styling, etc). But it’s done now!
𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒛𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 is a self-installing Effects Pack and Template Set for Ableton Live Suite 12.4.1+.
It includes seven bespoke custom effect racks, each meant for a specific purpose in regards to audio finalization and optimized for the highest-quality fidelity and most tasteful results possible. You’re not meant to use every single effect for every mastering job — but amongst the tools provided are all the capabilities towards such ends that one might ever need.
𝐕𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐫. Smooth out top end sharpness. 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐄𝐐. Unique multichannel EQ. 𝐓𝐫𝐢-𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐒𝐩𝐥𝐲𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫. Next-level effects layering. 𝐖𝐨𝐨𝐟. Low cut and boost duties combined. 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐀𝐮𝐱 𝐒𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐇. Auxiliary density injection. 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫. Inflator clone using Ableton’s Saturator. 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭. Seamlessly blend MS and LR Limiting.
I’m happy to announce the release of the brand-new effects pack Drum Enhancerz Two, as well as a fresh update to the classic original Drum Enhancerz pack. This update took quite a lot of time and energy, but was quite fun to accomplish.
🧠Memorizing Sucks. As audio engineers, certain numerical values become often-used and thus can become useful to memorize. If you suck at memorizing stuff like me, graphs and charts can be helpful.
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🎛0—127. In Ableton Live and other programs, range values are often scaled from 0 to 127, rather than 0 to 100. So it can be useful sometimes to know certain fractional values to type in (either mathematically perfect for extreme precision, or rounded values for quick input).
When applying dynamic effects, we are rarely going to need the entire timing ranges available, depending on the tempo, right? The new Tempo Dynamics pack provides go-to racks with minimum and maximum values hard-wired to ranges most potentially useful, given the chosen tempo — avoiding values that are likely too fast or too slow to be helpful.
The PerforModule Key Map Template for Ableton Live 11: mapping computer keyboard keys to as many potentially helpful functions as practical. [Note: if you’re on Live 12 now, maybe hold off on downloading this perhaps for the moment, since i’m working on a new keymap template for Live 12. Feel free to steal some of the ideas from this post in the meantime, though!]
The Template
There are three parts to the template: •a Live Set pre-loaded with the recommended key mappings, •a Diagram showing color-coded key functions, and •a Spreadsheet listing custom-mapped and built-in key mappings, also explaining some quirks.
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Mosey on over to this dropbox folder to download the Key Map Template Live Set, Key Map Plan Diagram, and Spreadsheet Guide. Read on for nauseatingly meticulous details below.
“WTF are Loudness Units?” you may ask. Well, they are simply a measure of loudness, just like decibels. One LU actually is equivalent to one dB. However, an important difference is that Loudness Units are “shaped” according to the human ear’s proclivity to hear certain frequencies more easily than others. Effectively, LUs tend to feel more consistent to our brains than dB will when measuring varying frequency content, and therefore LU meters are preferable to use (compared to, say, RMS meters) for assessing the overall loudness of music.
Below are shown six free LU (aka Loudness Unit) meters, listing features of each. The most important value when matching the loudness of songs is IL (Integrated Loudness), which is the average loudness over the entire course of given time (with very quiet material gated out).
These devices are available as VST effect plugins for any capable VST host (such as Ableton Live, for example).
