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Techtorial: How to Create Organic Percussion & Textures in Ableton Live

For this tutorial, we’re focussing on how you can add gorgeous textural percussion to your tracks, giving your song a more organic feel.

Much like the percussion used in Maya Jane Coles’ excellent, ‘Something In The Air‘, our Point Blank Course Developer Chris Martin will take you through the steps to create something similar in Ableton Live, using only the DAWs in-built plugins. Follow on below to see the impact that using simple instances of panning, reverb and delay can have on your beats and take them to the next level.

Want to learn more about Music Production and Sound Engineering, or DJing, music business and more? Then be sure to check out our courses in London, Los Angeles and Online. Plus, we’re currently offering 25% off our selected online and Los Angeles courses until 18th April using the codes ONLINE25 and LA25.

To demonstrate this technique, Chris loads a “found sound” into Ableton Live’s Simpler which he wants to start processing. To begin the editing process, he drops in Ableton Live’s Echo which enables him to turn a single hit into a rhythmic pattern, before adding Grain Delay – a plugin that’s great for creating unusual pitch effects. To add more movement to the sound, Chris adds Live’s Frequency Shifter to the chain, followed up by a phaser to boost the colour on his percussive hit. Taking things further, he resamples his percussion sound and creates some stereo width using Ableton Live’s inbuilt Delay.

If you’d like to see more of Ableton Live’s effects in action and how they can enhance your tracks, then check out our recent Ableton Live Audio Effects video. For everything else, find out about our award-winning courses here.

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When you register with Point Blank, you access an array of free sounds, plugins, online course samples 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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