I love listening to dub techno but never really understood how to make it.
With that in mind I’ve delved a little deeper into the workings and capabilities of Ableton Live.
It really is a very powerful tool and it’s called Live for good reason.
You can perfect your ideas for each sound or instrument as a loop and save them all in Ableton’s Session View.
(This is only one way of doing things. Ableton is nothing if not versatile!)
From there you can record them into Arrangement View and carry on editing your track there as you would in a traditional Digital Audio Workstation, or you can, “perform”, your track live by triggering your pre-assembled loops in any order or sequence you like. You can also turn effects on and off while you record or perform. In fact you can do just about anything on the fly which is how I went about making this track.
I just recorded the loops live a few times, tweaking things as I went until I felt that the changes fell in the right places.
The chattering, echoing chord sounds are actually a 1.06 minute looped field recording of running water which I processed in Ableton. It never actually runs its full length without being re-triggered.
I made the drum and bass loops using Ableton’s built-in MIDI instrument racks and libraries.
I have learned so much so quickly making this that I had to share it even though it’s a bit rough and ready.
I fully intend to do more of this kind of thing in the near future. It was great fun to make!
