Thought I’d start a thread to chat and share tips and tricks about learning & using Ableton!
I’ve been experimenting with recording bass via an interface but here’s the thing; I found it super easy to record in Garageband on my iPhone (haven’t tried on desktop yet) and have it sound really nice using the virtual amps and maybe the virtual pedals.
But when I record in Ableton, it sounds crap. And I’m really struggling to figure out how to make it not sound crap.
I have Ableton Live Lite which may be a bit limited (only 8 tracks and 3 band EQ instead of 8 etc.).
But I’m wondering if anybody has any tips on how to make recorded bass sound good?
I tried Ableton when I got my Zoom U-22 (Ableton Lite license was included). Because it’s the “Lite” version, tech support is not available, so you’re pretty much on your own unless you fork out a few hundred dollars for the upgrade. I messed around with it for a few days, watched every YouTube video I could find, and finally gave up.
I use Audacity now. For my simple needs, Ableton seemed to be too much and too much to learn. Audacity is simple, easy to learn, and does all the basic stuff I need.
However, I will say if you’re serious about doing some major league stuff, Ableton will suit you if you can get past the learning curve.
Indeed! It seems like Native might have a ‘lite’ version of their guitar rig pro. Haven’t tested it out (yet ), but might be cool enough for the low low price of free. Likely to be limited enough to get you to spring for pro…
Wasn’t using any plugins yet, I will try out the two above. Thanks @howard@Alterationx10 !
I also need to experiment with recording from the headphone out of my amp, I have no idea how that will sound. Mic-ing the amp is certainly out because I don’t have a microphone!
And then I thought about some sort of workflow with recording into Garageband and then exporting and importing into Ableton but that doesn’t sound like fun.
I did a quick demo of all of these in Reaper. This is basically:
me -> Warwick Streamer LX 5 -> moderate compression -> Slight EQ (bass and low mids at 2:00, high mids and treble at 10:00) -> DAI to Reaper
Four passes through the riff:
Clean bass as example
G-K Amp Pro 2 (everything at noon, speaker + mic sim)
SHB-1 (everything at noon, gain cut a bit)
SHB-1 + NadIR (with default speaker sims)
SHB-1 sounds great, especially with NadIR. Nice slightly overdriven tube sound. Pushing the gain makes it distort well, too.
The G-K sim sounds like mud-garbage but that’s mostly because noon is not its best settings and the demo only comes with one speaker sim that is underwhelming. Tweaking the G-K sim will make it sound good.
Hysteria in progress ! the SHB-1 sounds pretty good and the IR cab sim gives it a bit more punch. in my opinion, those VST are way enough to sit neatly in a mix.
That’s literally as fast as I can play it reliably, a long long way to go
I think so too. The cab IR VST looks really flexible, look forward to playing with it. The SHB-1 sim is dead simple and just sounds good. Reminds me of Ampeg a bit, very mid-punchy and it has that overdriven tone to it.
those IR things are interesting, I’ve seen that Mooer made a small pedal to integrate an impulse response in a pedalboard. that’s crazy cool. I feel like a dinosaur with my rackmount POD (but I kinda like it)
I use a Shure MVi.
Runs off usb power so you can plug it straight into a iPhone or iPad. I like it.
Sound is just kinda flat with way too much fingers-on-string noises etc.
All the bundled amp sims effects in Live Lite seem guitar focused and sound harsh and unsatisfying to me with bass.
I imagine it’s possible to manually filter some noises out and warm up the sound if I understood how.
I’m gonna test some of these amp sims above though!
), but might be cool enough for the low low price of free. Likely to be limited enough to get you to spring for pro…
the SHB-1 sounds pretty good and the IR cab sim gives it a bit more punch. in my opinion, those VST are way enough to sit neatly in a mix.