Beginner's Guide to Music Production in Ableton Live

Ableton Live is one of the most popular DAWs around, loved for its flexibility and intuitive workflow. On this brand new course from Senior Tutor and Ableton Certified Trainer Rob Jones, you'll go from first steps with the software right through to exporting a final arrangement, and everything in between. The course is suitable for all ages and abilities, taking students through all of the main areas of the software slowly and clearly, to help forge a thorough understanding of the different ways music can be made.

Once setting up the software has been covered, Rob embarks on two hour-long lectures focussed purely on working with audio samples in session and arrangement view, respectively, showing how to lay out simple song structures in each. He then moves onto MIDI, explaining the fundamentals of working with instruments and demonstrating the numerous ways of producing melodic accompaniment. The subsequent lessons then develop skills for editing and track building in the arrangement, as well as teaching how to create beats with Drum Racks, how to record audio and the basics of mixing, covering balancing, panning and applying a number of different effects.

Other topics featured include using 3rd-party plugins, sampling with Simpler, assigning MIDI controllers, and even some bonus tutorials on working with Loopmasters Loopcloud. By the end of the course, you'll be able to confidently work with audio samples and MIDI instruments in Ableton, whether making simple backing beats for performing with session view or more fleshed out songs in the arrangement. The 10 hours of streamed tutorials come with the projects from the modules, plus written notes providing a neat summary of the content of each lesson, along with a bonus 500MB pack of samples from Loopmasters to kick start your personal sample library.

In addition, there are assignments at certain stages throughout the course, with extra materials provided for practicing all of the different techniques learned in the tutorials. Check out the sample module for an example of the teaching style and course content, so you can see for yourself how much there is to learn from Rob's experience and software knowledge, which will have you on the road to becoming a serious music producer in no time.