06 Loops

 

Loops

(30 minutes)

Some samples are meant to be played in repeated loops when you use them. We will refer to them as 'Loops'

  1. Load up the Project File that you made last week
  2. Make sure you are in Arrangement View for this part
  3. From the Browser, select Samples
  4. From Samples, select 'Breakbeat Ghosts 90 BPM' and drag it onto a blank Audio track
  5. It now forms an Audio Clip. Double click the Clip and you will see different parameters that you can change, in the Clip View

  6. Clip View, displaying the parameters of an Audio Clip that contains a sample

  7. If the Loop button is on, you can stretch this Audio Clip across many measures by pulling on the edges of the Clip (your mouse cursor must be a square bracket)
  9. You can also Split the Clip into smaller parts by unfolding it (click the triangle button), clicking on the vertical line where you want to Split, then right click to Split


  11. You can also Copy and Paste parts of the Clip and move them around

Making Changes to the Clip

  1. Starting from the 'Sample Box' of the Audio Clip, trying the REV button


  3. The Warp function enables the Audio Clip to follow the Tempo of your Project. As you change the tempo of your Project, the Audio Clip's tempo also changes. Without Warp, the Audio Clip would fall out of time. 
  4. The best settings are Beats for beats, Tones for tones, Texture for textures, and Complex for complex sounds
  5. You can use the :2 and *2 buttons to exactly halve or double the tempo of the Audio Clip


  7. Try the Transpose knob (which changes pitch, and is very useful for loops of melodies) and the Gain slider (which changes the volume)


Hands on Task

  1. From Samples, load 'SC Game Time B' onto a new Audio track
  2. To make this loop (in the key of B) match the example melody and layers from last week (in the key of A), you must Transpose the it by -2 st (trust me)
  3. Try cutting it up, pasting and moving around parts
  4. Do the same with the drum loop 'Breakbeat Ghosts 90 BPM'

Free resources for loops

(30 minutes)
  1. You can download your own samples in WAV, AIF or MP3 format
  2. Create a New Folder and rename it ‘My Samples’
  3. Use the Ableton browser to ‘Add Folder’ so you can see ‘My Samples’ in Ableton
  4. Go to www.musicradar.com, click on ‘Free Music Samples’
  5. Try one of these 
  6. Download into your ‘My Samples’ folder
  7. Extract / Unzip into sub-folders of ‘My Samples’
  8. Drag and drop these samples onto different Audio tracks and play around with them
  9. If you accidentally drop a Loop onto a MIDI track, Ableton will try to convert the audio of the Loop into MIDI notes!
Another great source of free samples is https://cymatics.fm/pages/free-download-vault



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