In this video Jonny Miller (Jus’Listen/Sonarpilot Audio) shows you how to add an extra layer of musical elements to your favourite tracks. A very simple but effective technique using transpose and warping to give your Ableton Live DJ mix your own unique stamp.
Jonny Miller is celebrating 20 years in the music business throughout 2011. His musical roots lay in the early 90s rave/drum&bass scene while his DJing and productions have seen him journey through the full spectrum of electronic styles. Most notably he is known for his broken beat, dubstep and cosmic disco releases. Jonny lovingly curates his own Jus’Listen Recordings label but now also runs the brand new Sonarpilot Audio imprint, recently featuring the music of Ramadanman and Simbad. Watch out for see further developments and releases on the label in 2011. He teaches the Ableton Production and Ableton Dubstep Production online courses at Point Blank. For more about Jonny head to his soundcloud and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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Video Transcription:
Hi there, it’s Jonny Miller from Point Blank Online Music School. Back once more to show you some cool little tricks with Ableton Live 8. And sounds and samples and loops from clipproduced.com. Tonight I’m putting together a little DJ mix. A lap top set. And I want to make a little DJ mix of all my favorite dubset tracks. And the first one I’ve chosen is this one, Silky versus Screen. And this is on the silky, Silky City Limits Volume 2 album, music. Definitely one of my favorite dubset tracks of the last couple of years, actually. And what I want to do in the mix is kind of add some extra little noises and extra bits of music to this track to kind of make it my own. I love it so much I want to add to it and make it my own somehow.
And for that I’m going to use this really cool LoopMaster’s pack DJ mix-tools 16, mix effects. Now a few months ago a little while back I made another video on the DJ mix-tool series using sweeps and rises over the transition of a DJ mix. And we’re going to be doing something fairly similar today but instead of using the kind of standard builds and rises and sweeps that I’ve covered before, I’m going to use more musical samples. If I go into the selection loops, here, I’ve actually got a series of different stabs and hits that all have a musical root note. So for instance this one is in the root note of “E”.
So all these stabs in this loop all share the same root note of “E”. Now I know the Silky Screen track is in the root note “F”. So all I need to do to get these samples to play in key with the Silky Screen track is just make sure that instead of playing in “E” they play in “F”. So that’s one semi-tone. So I’m going to drag that over into session view alongside the Silky Screen track. Just go down to the transpose function take it up by one semi-tone. So “E” is now “F”. And if I play those samples now they’re now playing in the root note of “F”.
So what I’m going to do, I’m going to work through this clip and just take all these different little stabs and chords and just add some [warp] markers in here. And just move them up to the nearest four bars and that way I know that I’ve got a little sample that plays every four bars that is in the root note of “F”. Now I could put the Silky Screen track on and actually I’ve set up a little loop here in the second clip, it’s from the same tune but I’ve just looped up a little selection of the track which is kind of towards the end of the track. It’s the final drop and for me it’s the kind of peak of the track. If I just play that.
And this is just purely to show you how these samples will fit perfect over the top. Now if I just bring that down in volume a bit. I’ll start adding these stabs that I’ve thrown in and tuned with the transpose control to the key of “F”. So if I just drop these in now I’ve got the Silky Screen a little bit quieter so you could hear the difference. You can hear that perfectly locked in key with the Silky Screen track. So this is why there’s the extra stamp I’ve put on top of this tune. Those two kind of play side by side together. It’s just adding a little bit of extra musical preference in there. Let’s put that over the intro. So here in the intro of the track it’s mainly drums and percussion. And that just fits perfectly. So any sample I’ve got in here that is “E”, any of the chords selection, for instance how about this one, or some of the… What else have we got here? Let’s go to, come out of here and go to single shots. So any of these.
I’ve got some of the chords here as well. These are in “E”. Let’s put these, let’s put that one in. Again one semi-tone up so it’s now “F”. Let’s solo this up so you could hear it. So that’s going to work really nicely now with the track. Just put in a bit so you could hear the music. So I could take any of these “E” deep chords and change them to “F” really quickly. I mean we could do the same thing for “A”. Take it up, down a few semi-tones until it plays in the key of “F”. So any sample that you have actually, I mean I’m just using this DJ mix-tools, but any sample that you’ve got in your library, it might be a little stab or a pad or a little vocal sample.
Have a look at what root notes it is, just use the transpose function to bring it in key with your favorite tracks and use them in your DJ mixes. And for this particular video, again I’ve used the Loop Master DJ mix-tool 16 mix effects samples. It’s just got loads of nice little things kind of ready to go. But of course I could go through my whole sample collection and just pick out some extra sounds I could work into the mix. Now what I’m going to do is start adding some other tracks into this set. Start warping the different tracks making sure they mix perfectly in terms of tempo. And then I’ve got my extra little tracks here samples and sound effects that I could put in. Take a look at their root note, adjust them to whatever root note of the track I might be playing any time in my mix. And start adding these extra samples in on top.
OK. You can learn loads of cool stuff like this on pointblackonline.net. And I’ll be back next week again to show you some little tricks with Ableton live 8 and sounds and samples from clipproduce.com.
Peace.
