🧠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).
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⚖️Precise Midpoint (63.5) vs Rounded Midpoint (64). The most common of these is 63.5, the value to input for the precise halfway point of a macro control in Ableton Live.
⚠️Note that Ableton Live only shows the rounded value in the display, and it always rounds all decimals down. (Why?!?) Often if you see a macro that says “63”, it’s actually set to 63.5. If only Ableton Live gave the option to display at least 1 decimal of macro values for this reason.
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🌓FRACTIONS TABLE Here’s a nifty table of basic simple fractions down to 1/12, provided in precise (to the 5th decimal place) and rounded values for both the 0-100 (aka percentage) and the 0-127 scales.
Fraction
0—127 (rounded)
0—127 (precise)
0—100 (rounded)
0—100 (precise)
1/2
64
63.5
50
50
1/3
42
42.33333
33
33.33333
1/4
32
31.75
25
25
1/5
25
25.4
20
20
1/6
21
21.16667
17
16.66667
1/7
18
18.14286
14
14.28571
1/8
16
15.875
13
12.5
1/9
14
14.11111
11
11.11111
1/10
13
12.7
10
10
1/11
12
11.54545
9
9.09091
1/12
11
10.58333
8
8.33333
⚗️Takeaway / Distillation. I wouldn’t expect anyone to memorize all of these, but recalling certain key values to pop in in at-whim can be useful. I personally always remember 31.75, 63.5,and 95.25 as precise quarter, half, and three-quarters for macro values — since I’ve had to input them so many times, whereas I tend to round one-eighth to 16 because I forget the exact value and don’t want to do math in my head.
The PerforModule Key Map Template for Ableton Live 11: mapping computer keyboard keys to as many potentially helpful functions as practical.
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.
While we all know that there is no such thing as a perfect or ideal FX chain order for all situations because it totally depends on context, i have eventually developed some general preferences for the order of effects in a signal chain. Recently updating all my templates for Live 11 has further honed my thoughts on the situation.
We can of course swap around the sequential ordering of effect devices, either for a specific intended result or as a matter of experimentation just to see if an alternate routing happens to sound better on given audio.
As usual when sharing my ideas, it is recommended that you not simply adopt the structure as presented, but rather that you test it out in practice and modify things over time to suit your particular style, keeping notes and updating your own templates as you go. Maybe you think the way i place transient shapers before compressors is idiotic. That’s totally fine!
I’ll share below my go-to effects order, and (most importantly)… WHY. While some of the choices are probably pretty unorthodox, none of them are arbitrary; they all have reasons. Are they bad reasons? Good reasons? Who knows. But i like to think they are built on logical rationale.
Keep in mind you’re seldom if ever going to need all these types of effects on any single track, but for times when you are using even two different processor types, some guidance as to their ordering might prove useful. Resist the urge to add more effects to a chain just because you can. The fewer processors required to get a sound how you want, usually the better.
You may have noticed, i’ve done a bit of a site redesign for performodule.com to make it easier to find stuff that you’re looking for. Now, there are handy thumbnails for individual posts, organized into four main sections:
•Free Ableton Live Packs
•Audio Production Tips & Tricks
•Sale Ableton Live Packs
•Releases & Reviews
Click on one of those to be teleported to a sub-page containing thumbnail links to individual pages for all available articles. Nifty!
Just below the three section links on the main page are blog entries in a linear stream, as before. So if you want to read the latest, just scroll down and see what catches your eye.
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PerforModule.com: Sidebar
You can also find specific posts in several different ways: by Search Term, by Category, by Month, or by Tag (see the column on the right side of the main page, or, if you’re on a phone, scroll all the way down). If you remember reading about something previously you want to look up but don’t recall specifics, one of these methods might be helpful.
To get notified about blog posts as they are dropped, use the “Follow Blog via Email” field. I don’t have direct access to the addresses entered this way; they send you updates automatically. If you want less frequent newsletters (1/month or less), scroll down to the bottom of the blog posts to sign up to the PerforModule mailchimp mailing list instead.
You can even snag the RSS feed if you’re old-school like that.
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Be sure to check out the Free Packs section to see if there’s any you missed. Lots of new posts in the works! Keep your brains peeled.
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p.s. if you like drum & bass music, check out this amazing new album 170.2 by Phidippus from Denver which i mastered recently. It bumps hard!
It’s Time I’ve decided that it’s time to write a post going over all the multiband dynamics processors in my audio plugins library. For me, this includes both multiband compressors/expanders as well as dynamic EQs, because i tend to use them for the same general purposes.
So what exactly is Warping? In Ableton Live, you can warp clips, so that they will always play in-tempo along with the grid. For most general composition and mixing tasks, you don’t want to do this, as it degrades audio quality, but for live performance it’s super amazing, since you can basically combine together any audio clips you want like legos. It’s also useful for transitioning between songs in more typical “dual deck” DJ-style setups, wherein the outro of one song can seamlessly blend with the intro of the next one, with a tempo ramp between them happening along the process.
Well, now we’re ratcheting it up a level to give you ultimate control of your own personalized device organization structure, with the ability to decide exactly what those categories will be.
Modified Audio Effect Categories
If you’re like me, you’re obsessed with systematizing your production tools and resources into a cohesive configuration, making it easy to access what you want when you want it, for maximally optimized workflow when diving into creativity.
While working along with the default categories for years, i was never quite fully satisfied by Ableton’s built-in selection of available choices, so i did some research and testing and determined that it’s not only possible, but actually fairly easy to set up your own custom categories. The trick is to plan things out logistically.
If at this point you have no idea what i’m talking about, please check out the above-linked blog post for background on how Ableton’s category structure works. Then come back here and continue on. The gist is that by including devices in folders of particular names, you can get them to automatically show up in Live’s Core Browser. Normally, we’re relegated to using the default built-in categories that Live comes supplied with. All PerforModule Premium Packs are set up with devices like this, so they install and devices show up in the Core Library for anyone who purchases them. But now, should you want to, you can modify those actual categories. Sweetness.
Virtual Folder Config
The trick to setting up your own categories lies with the VirtualFolders.cfg file.
VirtualFolders.cfg Locations (for Ableton Live 10, similar for Live 9)…
PC: C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 10 Suite\Resources\Core Library\Ableton Folder Info
Mac: Ableton Live Application (show package contents) > Contents/App-Resources/Core Library\Ableton Folder Info
Always Back Up!
When starting out on this mission, firstly save a copy of the original VirtualFolders.cfg file in a safe place in case you make a mess out of things and need to restore the default state. You can always reinstall Live to do so as well, but that’s not necessary if you back up the file.
In addition, you definitely, absolutely will want to save a backup copy of your own custom-crafted VirtualFolders.cfg in a safe place, because every time Ableton updates Live, it will get overwritten and you’ll need to replace it (just like with Themes aka Skins). Maintaining a backup of your custom configuration is essential in order to continue using it in the future, so do not forget to save a copy of it after you complete it.
Your Custom Configuration
If you open up the VirtualFolders.cfg file in a text editor (such as the recommended Sublime Text 3) and gaze around at it for a while you’ll get an idea for how things work.
Virtual Folders are arranged in Groups. Each Group can include an arbitrary number of Virtual Folders, which will be the names of the folders that show up in Live’s browser. Each Virtual Folder allows two parameters: the Name (a single string of text that will show up as the category title), and the Patterns, a list of text strings which will trigger search results for devices in that category. Neat!
To set up your own system, simply alter the existing entries, and/or add your own new ones. I would recommend starting slowly, perhaps by adding in one new category to one group and testing it out, before planning a major overhaul to the entire scheme. Be extra cautious about deleting existing options, since while doing so won’t affect any devices directly, it may reduce your ability to easily access certain existing patches.
In the image below, see how on the right i’ve added the “Chiptune” Virtual Folder to the Drum categories. Now i can find chiptune-style drum hits easier. Radical.
After you backup both the original and your new configuration, replace the original with the new one, restart Live and check out what happened. Chaos? Euphoria? Now ponder whether you made a wise decision.
PerforModule’s Configuration Strategy
I’ve found Ableton’s default categories for the Sounds group to be mostly adequate, and so i haven’t altered much there. Notably, i’ve removed the “Booms” entry (new with Live 10), which i find useless and annoying to exist as its own folder, since anything i’ve found that could be classified as such could instead fit into a more appropriate category.
Because i was already invested in having sorted thousands of patches into the existing categories, it made sense for me to keep them, but perhaps in your case it might be a good idea to reassess the default categories and use ones instead that make more sense to you. Perhaps you would prefer to have multiple categories of basses available, for example—coordinating your clean, distorted, and wobbly bass patches separately. I might change “Synth Misc” into “Chiptune”, since that’s basically what i use the category for anyways…
Note that the Drums group is for drum hits, not drum racks. (Unfortunately, i’m still not sure of a way to suavely organize drum racks by type, so for those i still use User Library folders.)
The AudioFx group is where i’ve shifted stuff around a bit more.
The “Analysis” category is added, and it is much welcomed. “Distortion” has keywords added so that degradation effects show up there. Various effects previously crammed within “Mixing & Mastering” have been granted their own categories… I’ve added a “Compression & Transients” category to align with the Elemental Mixing Template. “Gating & NR” category for dynamics-increasing and noise reduction effects. “Console & Saturation” has been added as a category, since i tend to use those for different purposes than more overt distortions. “Delay” (previously placed inside “Modulation & Rhythmic”) now has a dedicated category. “Enhancement” category added for exciters and other special-purpose, hard-to-categorize processors. “EQ” now has its own category apart from “Filter”. “Generative” category added for audio effects that generate sound. “Channel Strip” category added for multi-effect chain plugins. “Loudenating” category (shoutout to chris from airwindows for that term) added for limiters, maximizers… things whose purpose and result is to make stuff louder. “Multiband Dynamics” category added, because those beasts are unique and special-purpose enough to have their own demesnes. “Parameter Control” category because all those MaxForLive gadgets are so damn nifty to have on-hand in an accessible fashion. “Routing and Playback” for all the odd toys that do strange things with channel routing, signal sending, and et cetera. “Verb” because why the heck is there not a reverb category to begin with? They used to live in “Space”, which now i can designate only for things to do with stereo panning, perceived positionality, phase, and depth of field. “Drums” and “Instrument” still exist as effect categories, and are used for instrument-specific plugins (examples: eddie kramer DR, bass professor).
Should you use the same custom categories as me? Probably not. But you can use these examples as thought-food to inspire your own devious system planning that suits your particular preferences.
But Why?
“I can just custom organize stuff however i want in my User Library, and ignore the Core Library. What’s the practical point of this?”
I dunno… i guess if you’re an anal-retentive nerd. It just streamlines stuff and feels like a cleaner, more unified experience. If you can’t see the appeal, then this is not for you. Have fun with your disorganized midden heap of chaotically-organized junk. Just kidding. It’s all love. Well, mostly.
Limitations
As swagtastic as implementing a custom system in this way feels, it’s still far from perfect. There are various improvements that could certainly be had.
Being able to classify individual Samples, Loops, and Clips might be kinda neat. As mentioned above, drum racks don’t count as a group like the other device types, and that’s kinda dorky.
Being able to access things with a sort of tag-style metadata system might be more elegant than folder trees. I know some DAWs can do this.
You may have heard many varying descriptions of the difference between track compression and bus compression, usually including vaguely-defined, mysterious terms like “punch” and “glue” which don’t really help us understand anything.
Well, i have a kinda dorky yet effective way to think of the difference between track and bus (aka buss) compression for you. Continue reading →
“Perfect” Tuning
With the modern era of digital capabilities to re-tune recorded material, almost all music you hear nowadays has “perfect” tuning on all of the instruments and vocals. But what does this mean, exactly?
Generally, this tuning is based on equal temperament. But is equal temperament the most “perfect” tuning for absolutely all musical situations? I say… nope.
PerforModule 