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Creative Songwriting and Performance in Ableton Live with Afrodeutsche

At the end of last year, we were joined by UK-based producer and live performer Afrodeutsche for an exclusive showcase in partnership with Ableton’s yearly Education Tour.

Afrodeutsche’s sounds are melodic, sporadic and at times sharp as they sit beautifully between the realms of danceable drum-heavy club tracks and soaring emotional soundscapes. She’s been picking up the pace as of late signing with Skam Records to release her hypnotising 2018 full-length, Break Before Make, and recently dropping her excellent ‘Hold Me Tight‘ as part of Luckyme’s Advent compilation. The producer and live performer, real name Henrietta Smith-Rolla, has spent the last few years on a journey of self-discovery searching for her father and exploring her German and Russian roots. This, as you can imagine, has played part in influencing her creativity and welcomely bleeds deep into her sound.

If you’d like to gain access to discussions and live showcases like the one featured in this article, we offer a range of courses focused on Music Production & Sound Engineering, playing live and developing your skills. Watch the showcase, hosted by Ableton certified trainer, Simon Lyon, below.

During Afrodeutsche’s excellent pointblank debut she delves deep into how she experiments with sound, samples sorrow and reveals how she’s progressed from ambient piano brushstrokes to progressive, electronic anthems. She discusses how she performs live using Ableton to map sounds and effects to her controller and create a truly immersive atmosphere – all the while programming beats simultaneously. At one point, the UK-based musician fires up a number of projects including her first essence of recording and shows how her workflow has evolved. Additionally, she gives us a peek at her experimentations in scoring films using Live’s inbuilt ability to display visuals and shouts out her go-to sample pack for the big sub drums.

Whether it’s an artist masterclass, an industry insights discussion or a live panel, we host these kinds of events regularly at pointblank London – and for our students, they’re completely free. If you’re feeling inspired to fire up your DAW after watching this, why not take the next step and enrol on one of our courses, after all,  you could be watching the next one live.

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When you register with pointblank, you access an array of free sounds, plugins, online course samples, access to our social network Plugged In and much more! Simply register below and visit our Free Stuff page to get your hands on a range of exclusive music-making tools and tutorials provided by the team. Fill your boots!

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