How to Modulate properly in Ableton

Hello guys. So, Stride version 2 is out. And it totally changed the way how you can achieve a lot of different variations from the same instrument. For me, it's blown away like for how much you can achieve in minimum time. I've been exploring sound designs for so long and like that's crazy. So, let's just dive into it and I'll show you today it's another tutorial about how to shape sounds, make iterations really fast and everything.

So, let's just dive into it to the new workflow and how you going to do that. So, basically I will start with two channels maybe. One will be for the instruments and the other one will be an audio track for the recordings. So, let's just load and a bunch of Ableton racks. Yeah, so basically what we going to do, we going to load a MIDI clip. We going to draw a MIDI note on the scale that you want. Let's say play this note. And now we going to map the parameters as always.

And most of the time you'll need to press on this button in order to record because this is on session view. So, press on this. You need to load Stride into your track. And this is the new UI. What you're going to do you're going to apply the curves. Basically, what I'm doing most of the time most of the time I'm just injecting bunch of automations into the rack and I keep few knobs for me to play.

I have this small Akai MPK Mini and I have eight knobs here. So, I keep things playful. Most of the time I will control stuff that they are in the in the beginning of the rack and the chain and not in the end. Just so my small tweaks will make a lot of impact in the end of the chain. Yes, so you can see we have 11 parameters. Let's just let's apply some curves and here you have the new button which is inject to clip. And what it does it just directly injects the automations straight into the clip. Let's listen to it.

As you can see all the parameters are moving. Let's just take all the MIDI note the whole 16 bars so we have it all the time. Now I'll just map some knobs for myself. Usually, I love to play with the waveform. And let's play also with the FM amount. And what I'm doing is I'm I'm making the rack evolve like and iterate all the time. I apply more curves, I add more instruments, and until I'm really happy with what I have, then I will duplicate the MIDI clip.

So, I can have on the same rack few different variations of bunch of automations. I hope it's clear. We'll get to it. So, let us just play with it for now. Let's have some fun. Let's add some raw effect. More feedback. And also what I really like to do, I like to control the character of the distortion. And let's map the Let's map the amount and the and the feedback and few more knobs so we can Let's try to inject also curves to these parameters. Okay, I think it's enough. Let's go back to the to Stride UI.

And lately what I'm really I love to do is basically to apply this kind of automation, I press sample and hold and then I mutate it and it comes really nice. So, let's try this one. I need to map the distortion curves once again because I didn't map them properly. Nice. What you can do a lot of times is just play like with a different positions of the of the effects like I can move them and get different results.

Okay, I like this chain. So now we're going to just duplicate it and when we go back to Stride we can just apply different curves. So let's do it. And now we have two MIDI clips which each one of them have different automation characteristic but in the same chain. So let's just jump between them and maybe record. Yeah, let's record it. Oh, sorry. I have to clear a space in my on my PC so I'll be right back.

All right guys, so before you make a sound design session and record stuff, make sure you have enough space in your computer. So let's get back right into it and keep our chain evolving and make interesting stuff. It's record. I saw that the second clip missed some parameters here. So, I just I just copy and paste it again. And let's apply more curves.

Okay, this is a basically endless. Let's just add more effects. Let's add a spectral time and play. Let's keep the time consistent and play maybe with the shift and feedback and spray. Sorry, you must have this track armed in order to add more parameters.

Now as always, let's back get back into Stride and apply more curves. Like here you can see we added the new parameters. It auto syncs them and you can apply on all or just you know add a bunch of new stuff for only like if you if you already like the curves that you have, so you can apply only on the new ones and inject them once again to the clip.

I would then BOTH PLAY TOGETHER. ALSO, TO GET THE NEW CHARACTERISTICS, you can play with the BPM itself. Like divide it to two or double it. Hey, this is pretty cool. That's some effect. So, what? As you can see that it's enough sometimes that I'm just moving the position of the devices themselves to get a new stuff. Guys, it's basically really endless. Like if you change the input now to a drum rack or something and percussions, it will sound total new thing. Keep adding devices. Keep changing parameters. I think I think this is really it's really awesome to create new stuff.

Use your sounds. Like experiment as much as you can to get this really unique sound that only in your sessions are made. Thank you for watching and let me know your thoughts.