Ableton live keyboard software#
Ableton live keyboard plus#

Ableton live keyboard software#

It comes with Ableton Live 9 lite key and other software from Alesis. It has 25 full-sized, velocity-sensitive square-front keys, perfect for playing virtual instruments. What is the Best MIDI Keyboard for Ableton Live?Īlesis V25is the best MIDI keyboard for Ableton Live. What To Consider When Buying a MIDI Keyboard for Ableton LIVE.Alesis V49 USB MIDI Keyboard Controller.7 Best MIDI keyboards for Ableton Live 2022.What is the Best MIDI Keyboard for Ableton Live?.It can be that there’s too much, and levels need to be reduced, and maybe a Limiter should be applied to the rack, or it can be that there’s not enough volume and you need to compensate at various points.Ī computer, a sample, a copy of Live, you don’t need much more to get going with keyboard parts. Adding different chord effects to each chain, or even arpeggiators, takes our simple ‘one sound, one finger’ premise even further, especially for live performance.Īs soon as you’re stacking up instruments, volume management becomes an issue. Live’s Compressor can handle this, and again, you might think about sidechaining individual chains instead of the whole rack.Ī rack is a great way to split an incoming MIDI signal from a clip or keyboard into several paths, that’s what the chains are. If you’re working with a project that does have drums, especially MIDI drums where each part of the kit can be isolated, sidechaining is another way of adding rhythm. You can never have too many LFOs, and if you use Max For Live, there are separate audio and MIDI LFOs so you can use even more of them. They’re especially powerful if you mix different rates with different parameters, so they cross over and diverge at various points in the tutorial we use an LFO set to 1/16th for volume, and another set to 8 beats for filter frequency. An LFO is a great way to add rhythm to a preset, and especially useful if you want a groove but you’re not working with drums and beats.

Live is absolutely dripping with LFOs: they’re everywhere, in instruments and audio effects. Time spent with these is never wasted – they can produce a wide range of results. It’s possible to choose from several different filter types, as well as circuits modelled on individual real-world filters. The filter is the same one found throughout Live’s audio effects, and is ever-present along the bottom of the Simpler display, and in more detail under the Controls tab. Finding your filterĪs well as separate audio and MIDI effects there are powerful sculpting tools inside Simpler itself.

Ableton live keyboard plus#

If you like, you can create a new rack that contains the original rack plus any MIDI/audio effects before/after it, so the entire structure can be saved as a single preset and recalled from other projects.

We added a reverb after the rack, so it applies to the whole thing, and put a delay on the upper chain containing the high frequencies only. Reverbs and delays are great for adding spacey effects to a rack. If working on a sound for a particular project, you should EQ it in relation to the other parts, as an abstract concept, it’s hard to tell how much bass you might want. In the example here we’ve used two chains, but there’s no limit to how many chains you can have, especially remembering that racks can contain other racks! We applied EQ to each chain to avoid building up too many clashing frequencies too much low end and mid can make everything sound very mushy.

Once you have a rack under way, the fun begins. Simpler’s easy to use, and even if you don’t have any of Live’s other instruments installed, it’ll combine with racks and effects to give you excellent sound design options. In this case we want to make a sound that works with a MIDI clip, but also with live keyboard input, which is why we’re not using automation that requires a clip to be running.

Building a preset for a busier, snappier, part with more notes might be quite different. We’re making a pad sound, using long sustained notes, so we can better enjoy the sound as it develops. We made this sample in the first place, which is an advantage because it means we know what the original pitch was. We’re using a very straightforward sample loaded into Simpler for this exercise – mainly chosen because Simpler is in every version of Live – Intro/Standard/Suite. Fortunately Live has many tools that can help to build interesting parts from a single note, and the most important one is racks. It really doesn’t matter if you’re not one of the all-time great keyboard players. Sometimes a keyboard part is about performance, sometimes it’s about using other techniques to make an interesting sound and then a musical part from a less-than-exciting source sample.