A few weeks back Point Blank tutor Ski Oakenfull took part in a challenge to work up the parts for a vocal track using Ableton’s Push device. Ski performed incredibly well, with the assistance of amazing vocalist (and former PB student) Viv May, and finished the challenge with a song that was virtually complete. For Round 2 Ski has created this video, where he arranges the parts of the song to produce a finished version. Below are some words from Ski on the process he went through…
Download the bass sound Ski created in this video for free using the Pay With A Tweet button below.
The main goal of last week’s Push Challenge was to create the seeds of a vocal track from scratch using Push, while trying not to look at the computer screen at any point. I’d never met vocalist and ex Point Blank student Viv May before, so I had no idea how the session would pan out. Thankfully, it went really well and Viv came up with some killer vocal lines.
As promised in the broadcast, I wanted to make a part 2 video to show how to take these initial ideas and start turning them into a finished track. For the live session we used a standard SM58 dynamic mic together with a reflexion filter to cut down on ambient noise from the speakers, but afterwards we re-recorded the vocals using a better quality condenser mic together with headphones. Viv had some new harmonies and a bridge section that she was keen to add as well.
I decided to record these new vocals directly into the arrange page of Live as I generally feel more comfortable recording in the traditional linear way. When it came to arranging however, I realised I could make use of Live 9’s fantastic new ‘Consolidate Time to New Scene’ feature which allows you to grab whole sections of the arrangement and place them back into Session view. You can then build up the arrangement using Scenes, and ‘Jam’ the structure back into the Arrange page.
After building a basic arrangement, the next stage is to start getting deeper into the production, which might well make up the next part of this video series!
Download the bass sound Ski created in this video for free using the Pay With A Tweet button below.
Transcription:
This video follows on from the Push challenge we did last week, where we had to make a track in under an hour using Ableton Push, and also without looking at the computer. I was really happy with the session, especially working with Viv May, the vocalist who’s an ex-student of Point Blank, and someone I’d never met before.
So in the session we used Push just to build off our ideas, build up some scenes, baselines, chords. But for this video we’re going to primarily be working at the computer. Straight after the challenge session we actually decided to re-record the vocals using a better mic, a condenser mic. Viv was also keen to add some more harmonies and a bridge section too.
We decided to do this straight into the arrange page, just because I wanted to easily name the tracks and try out some ideas. It just felt a bit more comfortable.
So in this video, we’re going to try to illustrate a few techniques moving towards a finished track. I’m not sure if we’re actually going to finish the tune, but certainly get a little further down the line. So we’re going to have a look at the consolidate time to new scene feature, which is something new in Live 9.
That will enable us to actually put the vocals back into session view from the arrange view. We’re then going to try build our scenes and then using Push again we’re going to record both scenes back into the arrangement. It will just allow us to improvise a little bit, try out some ideas.
So here we have our arrange page, and we’ve got four sections here. We’ve got a verse. This new bridge section which I’m going to play you in a minute. The chorus section, and there’s this little tag bit that she did at the end as well. So let’s have a quick play of the sections. This is the verse section.
The vocals sounds a bit better. The quality, I’ve sort of tweaked it, so we did a few takes trying to get the best performance possible. I’ve also done a bit of grouping as well, done a little house keeping so we’ve got our lead vocal on a separate track here, which has got it’s own compression and EQ, and reverb. Then I’ve grouped the BV’s as well, and I’ve used a glue [sounds like 02:33] compressor on those actually and again, some EQ and reverb.
I’ve also done some panning if we just quickly click over to the session view. You can see there’s a bit of panning going on here as well. Then finally I’ve made a music group where I’ve just basically put all the musical elements, the beat, the baseline and everything. So now let’s have a quick listen to this new bridge section.
Love this little hook here, this ‘yeah’ hook. Definitely looking to use that throughout the track if we can. Then we’ve got the chorus section, just remind you of that. I just added a clap to that as well just to lift that little bit together with the strings. Then finally we have this tag section.
It’s great that we’ve recorded it into the arrange page but it’d be brilliant if we could then put it back into session view, and then we could actually jam the arrangement down. It’s a fantastic new feature. I really love this in Live 9, and this is the consolidate time to new scene.
It’s very, very easy to use. All you need to do is find a start and end time, and just select it basically. So start, and then, you can see the vocals tail off at the end so I don’t want to lose that. I’m going to actually select just past that. So it’s going to consolidate this amount of time here.
What we do is we select it, and then we go up here, select it, consolidate time to new scene, click on that, it does its work. There we go, and if we now flick over to the session view you can see here that it’s created a new scene, and if we play it now. It’s exactly the same, but it’s now in the scene.
Let’s try the next section, I’m just going to click this button to go back to the arrangement. This is the same thing, we’re just going to select this time here. Go up to consolidate time to new scene. And if we’re lucky that should put it just after our last section, there we go. We flick between the two.
Brilliant so now let’s go to the chorus. Same thing select the time. Consolidate time to new scene. And it should have done the same thing, yep. There we go. Finally, let’s just do this last section here. I’m just going to do the same thing here. There we go, consolidate time to new scene.
There we go, so we’ve now got our four sections, and I’m going to go straight in there and name them. We’ve got verse, bridge, that’s actually the chorus, this is our bridge here. I just did it obviously in the wrong order, but, it doesn’t matter. And then we’ve got our tag section here.
This is where Push steps in. First of all I’m going to do a little house keeping on the session view page. I’m going to just delete these clips here, don’t need those. I’m actually going to just move this bridge and chorus around as well. Let’s just put that there. There we go, we’ve got those in the right order. And I’m just going to close up this BV section here.
I’m going to click the session button on Push, and you can see there’s representation now of all these clips. Then we can launch the scenes from Push. So what I’m going to do is just work on the verse section for the moment, just to build up a bit of an intro.
I’m just going to duplicate this scene a few times, here we go, and what we can do. Just going to do a traditional build up. We can start with the beat. I’m just going to take away the base and the chords here. Now we also take the vocals away as well.
So we have, this is our intro, and then we can then maybe come in with the capassa [sounds like 08:20], and then we can maybe come in with the electric piano riff. And let’s duplicate that one more time, and then we can come in with the base, there we go.
Okay, so let’s try recording this down. You can see I’ve just pressed this button here which is going to enable me to stop the clip so I can do some drum drops and that kind of thing as we go along. So let’s hit record and let’s go for it.
Here we go, you can see it going into the arrangement. Maybe do a drum drop coming up here, end of the first verse. In with the bridge. Maybe another drop. Chorus, then into this little tag section. Then an instrumental break to do something here, not sure just yet. Okay, then into the second verse.
Beat back in. Take the beat out here, in with the bridge. Chorus. Make this a double chorus but take the beat out here. Take all the beat elements out. And in with the tag.
So there we have it. A very basic arrangement. Now of course we can go into more detail and start adding lots of production ideas.
But I really wanted to illustrate how easy it is now in Live to bounce between arrange view and session view to make the arranging process much more fun and enjoyable.
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