Ableton Live

Ableton Music Production Course | London

Learn to produce and perform the music you love using Ableton Live in class sizes of no more than six on our interactive and engaging course from our flagship Electronic Music Producer Program. You will cover all of the music production skills needed to be well on your way to creating and performing tracks in any style using this unique software which has revolutionised the creative process. As well as being a perfect introduction to music production for beginners, our lessons also serve more experienced self-taught Ableton users, as they fill in the blanks thoroughly with our instructors, which on your course will include an Ableton Certified Trainer and a respected producer/engineer from our superior roster. They will show you how to produce and perform music in Ableton, just as they do. Total class time is 36 hours where you can ask a question and bounce off of your instructor and fellow learners at times it feels right and productive. Please do take a second to appreciate the value in that over online courses and tutorials.

All courses come with extensive notes put together by our expert course developers and you also get an industry recognised certificate on successful completion. Have peace of mind that we are an official Ableton certified training center, and check out more testimonials at the bottom of this page to see what recent learners thought.

Ableton is almost identical on a PC as it is on a Mac so it’s fine if you use the PC version on your laptop and/or studio. If you miss any sessions due to holidays or illness, we will do our best to engineer it so you can come back on a future cycle of your choice to catch up. Most GMP learners worldwide qualify for a 40% EDU discount on Ableton software. Find out if you do here.

Many learners these days prefer to use their own laptops on our courses for things like getting help customising their set-up, and they have their project exactly as they left it in class to work on at home. So we made the course more affordable, but added a £50 supplement for learners who wish to hire an iMac loaded with software. Please ensure you book an iMac when you book your course if you need one. Controller keyboards, headphones, and audio interfaces are always provided for everyone.

Getting Started

Understanding your genre
Getting set up: Audio and the preferences window
Session view vs. Arrangement view: applications of each
Live concepts: clips / scenes / browser / library
The concept of Ableton’s unique warp engine
Launching clips
Intro to FX
Intro to instruments

Creating With Audio & MIDI

Warping in practice
Quantising audio
Clips: clip view and clip properties
Making beats with Drum Racks and Simpler sampling
Effects: Live’s effects and using third-party effects
Basic routing and resampling
Automation: creating dynamic changes in your arrangements

Sound Engineering & Recording Techniques

Group tracks and advanced uses of routing
Introduction to sound waves, frequency, and amplitude
The recording patch in detail, introduction to gain structure
EQ and compression for recording
Foldback, headphone mixes, and latency
Digital, analogue, sampling rate and bit-rate
Microphones overview and stereo miking techniques
Recording specific aspects of Ableton
Brand new Live Audio-to-MIDI features

MIDI Tracks and Composing with Virtual Instruments

Simpler – Unlocking the full potential of this simple sampler
Drum Rack – Programming beats, manipulating sounds, chopping up loops, vocals, and tracks – making rhythms from anything. Slice to MIDI
Using and controlling third-party virtual instruments
Grooves + groove extraction
Setting up a MIDI keyboard or drum pad controllers
Getting creative with MIDI effects

DJing and Live Performance

Preparing (warping) whole tracks and harmonic mixing
On the fly DJ effects
Using MIDI controllers effectively/mouse-free control
Push 2
Grouping tracks and basic routing
Structuring your sets and using loops
Recording your performance + editing the arrangement view
Bouncing down

Advanced Techniques

Advanced warping – acapellas, classical music and anything without beats!
Multi-track warping
Clip envelopes – creative uses of Ableton’s unique loop-based automation on audio fx, instruments, and midi fx. Easily achieve complex music, sound, and rhythm manipulation
Using all automation types together – creating build-ups and break-downs with complex sounds
Intro to Racks & Chains – powerful hidden features. Layering FX and instruments
Mixing tips and techniques