Have you ever asked yourself why some of the more successful electronic artists seem to get away with a lot of repetition in their beats and songs? Deadmau5 comes to mind… to me, he is a master of repetition. And the reason is because his automation is subtle but yet effective. In this tutorial I’d like to explore some automation techniques that should add movement to your loops and help them come to life. [Read more]

Why can’t I get complex sounds like I hear on my favorite electronic records? I ask myself this all the time, and then I remember that it’s all about coloring your painting. In this tutorial I’ll discuss a layering technique that involves using a gate and some side-chaining action. [Read more]

In this tutorial I demonstrate how to build a massive sound by starting with one drum loop. The important thing to keep in mind is that your original drum loop should be of great quality and feel. Then everything else will sound good. [Read more]

I often get stuck trying to write full-length songs, especially in Ableton live. One of the most important things is to get out of the clip window and go into arrangement mode. This will shift your mindset into an arrangement mentality. Check out the tutorial for an idea of how to get started with this approach. [Read more]

Sometimes we have a stereo drum loop and we wish to apply processing to individual elements of the loop without affecting the entire thing. In other words, we might want to apply reverb or distortion to JUST the snare hits of the loop while leaving everything else untouched. This can be done either by manually chopping off the loop and putting the individual parts (snare, hats, kick, etc) into separate tracks. Or, we can side-chain a frequency selective gate and do some magic. On this tutorial I’ll demonstrate how to do this in Ableton Live. Side-chaining gates and reverbs can do wonders. Check it out! [Read more]