Tape Notes search Topics Brands

Ableton

Download CSV

63 mentions in 20 episodes.

Air

54:18 · Ableton Live · named · medium confidence
“I don't have the DP4 here, so I put an Ableton Live delay.”
Recreating the original DP/4 tempo delay in the playback session, he substitutes Ableton Live's delay.

Arlo Parks

6:09 · Ableton Live · implied · medium confidence
“we're just chopping things up with the Ableton sampler”
The sessions being opened and played back throughout the episode are Ableton Live projects, referenced via the Ableton sampler.
6:09 · Sampler · named · medium confidence
“For the most part, we're just chopping things up with the Ableton sampler.”
Baird explains the album's drum breaks were chopped and layered using Ableton's sampler rather than a live kit.

Barry Cant Swim

19:53 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“And you're using Ableton, is that right? Ableton, yeah.”
Ableton Live is Barry Can't Swim's main DAW for all the album sessions shown.
20:42 · Ableton Live stock EQ · named · medium confidence
“People are going to watch this and be like, what the fuck, he's using this Ableton EQ”
He defends mixing with Ableton's stock EQ and compressors because workflow and speed matter more to him than boutique plugins.
47:44 · Prehistoric VHS (Ableton preset) · named · high confidence
“There's this preset on Ableton which I got from my friend O'Flynn. It's called Prehistoric VHS, a great little thing that adds some texture”
An Ableton stock preset recommended by O'Flynn provides a textural pad layer on Wandering Mount Moon with almost no processing.
1:24:17 · Granulator II · named · medium confidence
“There's quite an interesting thing going on with the Ableton granulator, we've got a harp loop in the granulator”
O'Flynn plays chords on a harp loop loaded into Ableton's Granulator to create the granular texture beds in Kympton.
1:51:23 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“That's why I'm still using the Ableton stock EQs and things and compressors, because anything that's not a hindrance to my fluidity is important”
He reiterates that Ableton's stock EQs and compressors keep his workflow fluid rather than reaching for outboard or third-party tools.

Bob Vylan

1:35:34 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“I'll often use Ableton's overdrive to give a little crunch and distortion to the vocal”
Bobby produces in Ableton Live and leans on its stock Overdrive device on vocals.
1:35:34 · Overdrive · named · high confidence
“That overdrive on Ableton was just a comfort thing for me. I don't know how my voice sounds if it's not distorted on punk music”
Ableton's stock Overdrive device is treated as part of Bobby's vocal identity, and Johnny kept it on several album vocals.

Bonobo

1:43 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“This is actually from the actual Ableton session, so hopefully all the parts are there.”
Bonobo opens the original Ableton Live session for Xpander to play back and solo parts throughout the episode.
4:07 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“I just kind of sat at the kitchen table with Ableton and then this tune just sort of popped out.”
Xpander was written at home on a laptop in Ableton Live in a single jet-lagged week.
18:32 · Operator · named · high confidence
“Oh, that's Operator. That's just Ableton Operator with a little bit of tape wobble.”
The call-and-response synth line answering the bass in Xpander is Ableton's Operator.
34:31 · Operator · named · high confidence
“Actually, no, there is a sub bass here that's Operator.”
A sub-bass layer under the Oberheim bass in Xpander is an Ableton Operator patch.
46:13 · Ableton Reverb · named · medium confidence
“This one's actually Ableton reverb, but I really like Valhalla.”
The pitched reverb return in this particular Sapien rack uses Ableton's stock Reverb device.
1:10:18 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“Ableton 9 happened and Logic 10 happened, and I saw Ableton 9 and I was like, okay, this is the path now.”
Seeing Ableton Live 9 (and a friend's deep racks/patching) convinced him to switch DAWs; he praises Live as exploratory and intuitive.

Bring Me The Horizon

1:07:03 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“He chops up and pitch shifts and stuff in Ableton with his guitar, and it's just super sick.”
Guest guitarist RJ Payson's glitchy Midwest-emo guitar style, used on Top 10 Statues, is made by chopping and pitch-shifting guitar in Ableton Live.

Clean Bandit

12:04 · Operator · named · high confidence
“It's the same kind of sound that we used in Rather Be and Rockabye... this is the most exposed pure incarnation because it opens with just the Operator on its own.”
Ableton's Operator is described as Clean Bandit's signature lead sound, opening Symphony completely exposed.
19:16 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“This is that Ableton stock operator, just sine wave with a bit of Ableton reverb.”
Symphony's master session is opened in Ableton Live, with the hook played by stock Operator and Ableton's own reverb.
26:17 · Operator · named · high confidence
“The original demo was using that same Operator synth in the verse.”
Crybaby's demo verse originally used the same Ableton Operator sound before it was swapped for MIDI guitar.
26:40 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“There's just an Ableton project called Just Cry Baby. March '21.”
The earliest Crybaby writing session survives as a dated Ableton Live project, one of around a thousand in the folder.
26:41 · Operator · named · high confidence
“The Operator. It's just an Ableton preset. Not even a preset. If you just load an Operator in Ableton, you just have to turn like 2 knobs”
The signature wobbly synth riff of Rather Be is Ableton's stock Operator instrument with only a couple of parameters tweaked.
26:44 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“If you just load an Operator in Ableton, which is like one of their default synths”
Clean Bandit write and build all their beats in Ableton Live, using its bundled instruments.
28:25 · Ableton Live · implied · medium confidence
“it came out how it did because you wrote it on that QWERTY keyboard... I'm just using the middle row of the keys, like A to L”
Jack wrote the Rather Be riff by playing Ableton's computer-keyboard MIDI input on a laptop on the tube, which shaped the unusual intervals.
45:00 · Operator · named · high confidence
“all it is is a sine wave, but it's got an LFO... you just turn on the LFO... then we turn the release up”
Jack rebuilds the Rather Be lead sound live in Ableton's Operator, showing the sine wave, pitch LFO, release and attack settings that create its melancholy wobble.
50:57 · Operator · named · high confidence
“I think it might be an operator as well... you can see down here, it is also an operator”
The Rather Be bass line, exposed in the second verse, is also Ableton's Operator.
1:22:36 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“we tend to get it to a certain level in Ableton, and then once we start getting the final vocals, take it to Mark and then mix it down”
Productions are built to near-final stage in Ableton Live before being handed to mixer Mark Ralph.
1:38:10 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“I think this is so boring, but just Ableton. I don't know.”
Asked what he couldn't live without, Jack names Ableton Live as the tool that facilitates his creativity.

Djo

29:06 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“I usually use Ableton, so sorry to anyone watching me struggle.”
Ableton Live is Adam's normal DAW, used for the more experimental production work.
1:21:21 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“We did some of this in Ableton, where we get a little freakier with production stuff.”
Ableton Live was used for the more experimental copy-paste, bit-crushed production elements in 'Egg'.

Four Tet

1:17:37 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“I had a folder of acapellas and the very first one was 3LW, No More. And so I got that and I just dragged it into Ableton”
Looking at Your Pager was built in Ableton Live, starting by dragging in a time-stretched 3LW acapella; the whole session is shown on screen.
1:37:32 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“Sonny's just insane. Watching him use Ableton is the highest level I've ever seen”
Describes Skrillex's extraordinary speed and plugin knowledge in Ableton Live as something like alchemy.
2:02:15 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“I don't know what Ableton does. The new version just came out. I haven't bothered to try any of the new things”
Argues that deep listening beats studying the DAW: he hasn't explored the latest Ableton Live update beyond being annoyed at the new file browser.

IDLES

54:09 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“when Bowen comes to me with these batshit insane Ableton sessions or crazy concepts, I just say, I'm going to trust this”
Kenny Beats describes receiving Bowen's experimental Ableton Live sessions and choosing to champion the ideas in them.
1:39:15 · Saturator · named · high confidence
“I really like the Ableton stock saturator and just engage soft clip... put that on your drums right now”
Kenny recommends Ableton's stock Saturator in soft-clip mode as the quickest way to get punch on live drums.
1:39:26 · Drum Buss · named · high confidence
“And DrumBus. DrumBus is sick as well. — Yeah, I'm off DrumBus now. I hate plugins that you don't know what they do.”
Bowen champions Ableton's Drum Buss while Kenny says he's gone off it because its processing is opaque.

Imogen Heap

16:23 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“Because I did go to my lighter setup, I'm using quite a lot of just basic Ableton effects, but I really love this kind of phasey effect”
The track's recurring phased texture came from stock Ableton Live effects used in her stripped-back mobile setup.
23:29 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“they're actually just off the Ableton shelf... that's what I love about Ableton, you could just quickly chuck things in. I use it live as well”
Praises Live's stock instruments and speed of idea capture, and notes she uses it on stage as well as in the studio.
38:46 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“I'm pretty sure I just used the Ableton, like, pitch it down, change the performance, so it didn't sound like it was trying to sound like me”
The song's 'death voice' was made by pitching her vocal down with Ableton Live's built-in pitch/warp processing plus reversed vocal edits.

Kae Tempest

19:27 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“It would have been the piano, so I'm gonna open up the Ableton session... with Ableton, you put the audio in and then it feels like putty.”
Fraser T. Smith explains that he starts almost every production in Ableton Live because audio feels malleable in key, tempo and ideas before committing.
1:13:35 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“Added crashes and some sounds from a drum rack that I had in Ableton.”
Ableton drum racks supplement Fraser's live drum performance on 'Forever'.

Maribou State

37:24 · Ableton Live · implied · medium confidence
“it's on this sort of stretched format called Beats, so it slightly glitches... Oh, this one's on Re-Pitch”
Their choir pitch trick relies on Ableton's Beats and Re-Pitch warp modes for deliberate glitch and turntable-style pitching.
1:19:32 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“it's the layering and it's pitching within Ableton... using the different algorithms like Complex Pro and Beats and Re-Pitch”
Answering a listener question, they explain their clean pitch/formant textures come entirely from layering and Ableton's warp algorithms, not pedals.
1:34:47 · Ableton Live · named · medium confidence
“we really got more into out-of-the-box EQ stuff for the first time, whereas previously we were quite happy with the Ableton EQs”
They contrast years of using Ableton's stock EQs with the new hands-on CADAC console approach.
1:55:48 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“It's the wonderful thing about Ableton. We'll chop certain notes and we'll pitch them and we'll change the part”
Recorded woodwind parts are re-composed by chopping and pitching clips in Ableton to fit the harmony.

Pomplamoose

25:41 · Ableton Live · named · medium confidence
“when I got to the studio, I created a drum loop on Ableton, ran it through some filters so it sounded old and crusty”
Jack built the guide kick-snare drum loop in Ableton on the day of the session and piped it to the band's headphones.

Porter Robinson

1:57:22 · Ableton Live · named · medium confidence
“I've tried using Ableton and other sequencers, and this one is just, I'm so married to the way that it moves.”
He mentions trying Ableton Live but preferring FL Studio's workflow.
1:57:51 · Operator · named · medium confidence
“It's basically Operator. It's the most simple one.”
He compares FL Studio's 3xOSC to Ableton's Operator to explain how basic his main oscillator source is.

RDS

19:38 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“But yeah, so this is all done in Ableton? Yes.”
The band confirm the whole Pressure session, and their production workflow generally, is built in Ableton Live.
35:07 · Ableton Live · implied · medium confidence
“I really like using texture mode, or tone mode I think... like that old jungle time stretch effect”
Live's Texture and Tones warp modes were used to mangle and time-stretch Tyrone's vocal at the track's climax.
58:45 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“being received by the gate, this Ableton gate plugin. There's a bit of an attack, bit of a hold, the floor is -8”
Live's Gate device, side-chained from a rim transient, creates the subtle 'womp' pumping on Fire Desire's held bass.
1:29:14 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“basically using expression control in Ableton, so it's a random input, each note gets panned slightly differently”
Live's expression control was used to randomise panning per note so the arpeggios dance around the stereo field.
1:39:35 · Dynamic Tube · named · medium confidence
“this Dynamic Tube saturator, so it's just becoming more crunched and crunched”
Ableton's Dynamic Tube saturator progressively crunched the piano and other elements at the end of Exhale.

Rex

11:53 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“It was kind of a good insight for both of us, as far as production and Ableton and Teo's techniques”
Alex describes learning production and sampling techniques from Teo working in Ableton Live on Guitar Song.

Sam Gellaitry

7:41 · Ableton Live · named · medium confidence
“I've tried Ableton and I can't really get anything good out of it”
Sam explains he has tried Ableton Live but stays with FL Studio because it's second nature.
34:48 · Ableton Live · named · medium confidence
“Ableton is better for solos and this is way better for chords, because you can jump up and down octaves”
Comparing computer-keyboard input in Ableton Live versus FL Studio's two-octave QWERTY layout.

Tomora

12:59 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“Usually I use Ableton as like a kind of playground, it's so easy to throw things around, different pitch, different speed”
Tom Rowlands describes Ableton Live as his sketching and experimentation playground for Tomora sessions.
24:50 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“Steve is allergic to Ableton”
Noted that Tom's engineer prefers not to work in Ableton Live, so drum sessions move to Logic.
28:31 · Ableton Live · named · high confidence
“Recording the vocals in Ableton, I like doing that because it's so fluid... the whole thing is running all the time”
Ableton Live is praised for non-stop vocal recording and easy rearranging, unlike other DAWs.
57:04 · Sampler · named · high confidence
“It's me playing the bass guitar into this Ableton sampler and playing around with the resonance to the velocity... just the Ableton stock sampler”
The resonant 'mouth harp' sound in I Drink the Light was made by sampling bass guitar into Ableton's stock Sampler and mapping resonance to velocity.
1:03:18 · Granulator III · named · medium confidence
“There's incredible granulator, Granulator Three, which I've used a lot of... I love using Aurora's voice”
Granulator III in Ableton is used heavily for granular processing of Aurora's vocals.

d4vd

26:54 · Ableton Live · named · medium confidence
“I was literally sending them emails like, can you add this feature and add more tracks and add more plugins? And I saw this on Ableton.”
He emailed BandLab's creators requesting features he had seen in Ableton Live, rather than switching DAWs.
38:17 · Ableton Live · named · medium confidence
“What is the difference between a reverb on FL Studio between Ableton and different plugins.”
Ableton Live is cited as a reference DAW whose effects he recreates from scratch in BandLab; he says he never downloaded it.