Quick Tip: Smart Mixing in Ableton Live
Tutorial Details
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Time: 5 minutes
- Requirements: Ableton Live
During a traditional DJ mixing session we need to be able to keep an even volume level during a transition and also keep a good spectral balance by utilizing EQ. I am going to show you a quick method of setting up a set in Ableton Live to achieve just that using sidechain compression.
We will be also utilizing the EQ3 device to split the signal between low and mid-high frequencies. As you will see, the technique described here is quite straightforward and can also be applied to other sequencing software. Source files included were made in Ableton Live 8.0.9.
Setting Up
Create two audio tracks that will hold your tunes. Drag an audio effect rack on the first track, rename the rack to Low. Drag an EQ3 device on the first chain. Leave the default values but deactivate the Mid and High band. Set FreqLow crossover to 200Hz. Drag a Compressor device after the EQ3, activate sidechain select the second audio track from the drop-down list as an external source, then Post Mixer from the External tapping Point. Set values as follows:
- Gain: 8.00dB
- Dry/Wet: 100%
- Envelope: RMS
- Attack: 0.01ms
- Release: 20.0ms
- Threshold: -28.0dB
- Ratio: 2.8
- Knee: 8.0dB
- Model: FF1
- Lookahead: 1ms
- Output: 0.00dB
You can try out different values later on to see if they work better with your set.
Next, create a second rack, rename it Mid/High and drag a copy of the previously created EQ3 device. Deactivate the Low band and activate the other two.
Drag the copy of the resulting audio effect rack to the other track. The only thing you need to change is the compressor’s sidechain external source. It needs to come from Track 1 this time. Also External Tapping Point must be set on Post Mixer, as well.
MIDI Mapping
Map a keyboard or a midi key to the Audio Effect Device Activator for both tracks. You can also map a midi slider to the main Crossfader. Assign the Crossfader Switch to A for the first track and B for the second.
In Action
Load up two beats on both tracks hit play and drag the main Crossfader to the left so that only the first one is heard. For this method to work the Audio Effects rack of the first track needs to be activated with the second track’s Audio Effect Rack Device Activator deactivated.
Now, as the tracks play, drag the Crossover to the right to mix in the second track and notice how the low-end of the first track gets compressed to make space for the low-end frequency range of the second beat. If you don’t need to use the Live Crossover, you can just bring up the volume level of the second track. In this case, though, make sure the Crossover Assign switch of the second track is properly set.
Once the second track has been fully introduced and the first track is not heard anymore, hit the key you had assigned to the previous step to switch on the Audio Effect Rack of Track 2, which will automatically switch off the Audio Effect Rack for Track 2. Then mix in another track from Track 1 and notice again the sidechained effect.
By repeating the above process Live makes the necessary volume adjustments allowing you to concentrate into more creative decisions. I inserted a Spectrum device on the first track to illustrate the spectral change on the signal once the second track is introduced.
Spectral Graph of first track before introduction of the second track.
Spectral Graph of first track after second track has been mixed.
Further adjustments
We could also use a Multiband Dynamics device instead of an EQ3 one to achieve a similar effect. If we wanted to mix in a vocal or any other medium or high frequency sound into the mix we could split the signal to three frequency ranges (using chains) adding three separate sidechain compressors to each range then MIDI map each compressors’ Device Activator button so we could select which spectral range we need to compress. I have included such a device on the 3rd audio channel inside the Project File.
Finally, I am sure that once you understand the concept, you will be able to apply it to your setup inc case you are working with any other sequencing software.
So, there you go, thanks for your time, I hope you find the technique useful!
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By George Mitropapas
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nice tut, I’ll try incorporating it in my live sets, but do you have some examples maybe of two tracks being mixed?
I didn’t include any audio files to keep the file size down. Did you download the source files? Just follow instructions, the “q” keyboard key should be mapped to the Smart Mixing Deck A and Smart Mixing Deck B Audio Effects racks, if not, map it yourself. Drop your 2 tracks in “Track 1″ and “Track 2″ audio tracks, drop down the volume of the second track and deactivate Smart Mixing Deck B Audio Effect rack(Smart Mixing Deck A should be activated). Hit play on both tracks, then mix in the song from the second track by increasing the Track 2 volume. Drag the Track 1 volume down once you have Track 2 playing at full volume. Then hit the “q” key to activate Smart Mixing Deck B and deactivate Smart Mixing Deck A Audio Effect, then mix in a song from the “Track 1″ audio track. Hope I made it more clear…
it’s called CROSSFADER, not crossover :)
you keep bouncing between those 2 terms
Oh, yeah, sorry! Hey everyone, it’s CROSSFADER! Sorry about that, thanks Paddy…
I’m a little embarrassed to admit I was drawing my crossfades and eq adjustments on the timeline prior to reading this. This is a huge upgrade to what I was doing, I especially love of the idea of assigning one keyboard trigger for multiple controls. Working with the crossfader and ‘smart’ eq like this gave me some headroom to add other things to the mix, like gratuitous dub samples :) I just posted a mix made possible by this fine article here: http://unnmu.com . Thanks for the tips!
I’m not able to get any audio when i load this project.. any ideas??
SELECT YOUR AUDIO OUTPUTS FROM THE MASTER CHANNEL…. THE PROJECT IS SET TO USE 3/4.
Did you actually drag any audio into track 1, for instance? Also, check the crossfade assignments on each track and the position of the master crossfader on the Master channel. Let me know how it goes…
Yea I added one of my songs to track 1, and another to track 2 – no audio comes out of my
speakers regardless of anything… I checked the crossfader
Oh, maybe check your Master Out on the Master Channel. I personally use 3/4 outputs of my soundcard so 3/4 might be preselected there. Change it to 1/2 and let me know how it goes…
sorry to keep bothering you George.. Im really interested in this technique and even if I copy and paste the effect rack that you pre-made into another project or something it immediately zaps any audio from being able to play.. is there any other initial setup required?
No other initial setup is required. Best thing is to save your non working live set and email it to me, if you want…
well didn’t work for me.good starting point, but i think you missed something:
1 – the lookahead is used to allow short attack times,so if you set 1ms lh and 1ms attack you get a zero attack time, no reasons to set it lower(if you don’t need to anticipate the compression)
2 – the settings of the multiband compression must be different for every band, generally lowering threshold and thightening the ratio for higher freqs, while leaving a softer knee on the basses. relase times should be adjusted to give more transparency,and
3 – to work properly the sidechain must be set post-fader, so you can give the right amount of final output of the compressed song. if it’s possible it’s better to set a agc compressor behind to make this part automated
if you are interested write me here piguz@libero.it , i can post the (ableton native) project i made. it’s really transparent, maybe less noticeable because of the total absence of ducking, but it sounds good to me. (also really useful for mixing the submixesof a song)
in any case thanks for your great idea. i’ve been looking for sidechain comps featuring true multiband sidechain but apparently there’s nothing like that on the market (maybe the alchemist,but i will never buy it)
besides that, the eq3 is really phase-destructive (colouring – as you prefer) and, after a hard research on the web, I found a transparent splitter based on a great 4 band set of eq8 using phase inversion coupled with crossfader network in order to make the result absolutely transparent !!!!(whoever- http://www.signaltonoize.com if i remember well- has done it, is a genius)
and then i applied my compressors, fine tuned in three flavours (from LA-varimu-opto style almost automatic , to finetuned vca transparent !!!!)
it’s abut 7% cpu on a core duo, so it’s not what we could call “light on cpu”, but still…
i designed it for studio mixing (not dj use at the moment, but can be easily finetuned if you find the two-band version on the web)
if you are interested email me,i’ll be happy to send the .adg files.
byeee
enrico
I might be missing something here… i found the tutorial good! but i feel some instructions were missing…..
i downloaded the tutorial file.. and Im just wondering where is the compressor added in the tutorial?
NB, Im am not very adepth ableton! still learning..