Hands on: Add audio effects with Ableton Live

Ever since the early days of music studios, audio effects have been pivotal to the recording process. Initially, effects were used to replicate natural sounds such as reverb, but over the years more and more bands have used effects as an integral part of their sound.

For example, effects are so tightly woven into the fabric of Pink Floyd’s songs that stripping them away would destroy much of the appeal of the band’s work. Hearing The Wall minus effects would be a bit like trying to enjoy a jammy dodger minus the jam.

With effects playing such a large role in today’s music, it’s not surprising that all the major sequencers, such as Steinberg Cubase and Ableton Live, are stuffed full of them.

However, now they’re so readily available it’s easy to fall into lazy working patterns for how you make use of them. For example, you may end up adding delay effects across a whole track when it would be better to just add a little bit to a specific track during the chorus.

One way to force yourself to think more about how you apply effects is to get to grips with effects automation. All the major sequencers now let you attach automation data to the built-in effects plug-ins.

Using automation, you can dictate when and how an effect is applied to a track. Once you learn how automation works it will open your eyes to how creative you can be with the latest effects plug-ins.

Living with Live
As its name suggests, Ableton Live’s sequencer is designed to be used for live performances; as such, it also makes it relatively easy to automate effects.

You can record the changes that you make to plug-ins in real time while a track is playing, and come back later to edit this automation data in great detail.

We’re going to use Live version 5 for this walkthrough, but if you’ve got the previous version of the software you should still be able to follow our tips.

Get started
First you need to create a simple track. Click on the File Browser 1 button on the left-hand side of the user interface.

Open the clips folder and then create a simple tune using ‘Upetty – 165 – Groove 1.alc’ from the Beats folder, ‘Noisy Bass – Var 1.alc’ from the Bass folder, ‘Driller – Var 1.alc’ from the Lead folder and finally ‘Chuggin – Var2.alc’ from the Rhythmic folder.

Now that you’ve created a track, you need to start adding some effects. If you’re not in the session view, switch to it by clicking on the small icon located in the top right-hand corner of the main Live window.

You need to add in a master effect so click on the B Return channel strip to highlight it. Now you need to select an effect from the Live Device browser.

Click on the devices button on the far left of the main window and scroll down to the Audio effects folder. Drag and drop the Ping Pong Delay plug-in onto the window at the bottom of the screen.

Let’s add another effect while we’re at it. Select Auto Filter from the Audio Effects section in the Devices list and drag it onto the bottom window to sit beside the Ping Pong Delay.

It’s time to add some of these effects into the mix, so click on the channel strip for the first track and then crank the dial for Send B fully to the right.

Next click on the channel strip for Return B and push its volume up fully to make sure plenty of the effects signal is being fed back into the master channel.

Recording the changes
You now need to zero all the settings on the effects before you start recording automation changes.

First of all, crank the Dry/Wet dial on the Ping Pong Delay all the way to the left so it’s set to be fully dry, then make the display on the Automatic filter show a straight line so it’s not processing any signal.

Finally, turn the effects off completely by clicking the green button in the top left-hand corner of each of their interfaces.

Now you can start the fun part of recording your automated changes. Luckily, Live makes it really easy to record automation data.

Just click on the Record button on the transport bar and then click Play. While the track is playing, click the On button on each of your effects and then on the Ping Pong Delay, gradually turning the Dry/Wet knob all the way to the right to introduce the effect into the mix.

You should be able to hear the delay acting on your drumbeat. Next, start dragging around the dot on the Auto Filter screen to filter the drumbeat.

All the changes you make are being recorded in real time by Live as automated events. When you’ve played around a bit, hit the Record button to stop recording.

Click the Play button to hear the automated changes you’ve just made. You’ll notice that the knobs and buttons you’ve touched during recording are marked with a red dot.

They will start to move automatically to recreate the changes you made while you were recording. If you want to remove the automation data associated with a button or knob, just right-click on it and select Delete Automation.

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