Ableton for Music Creators and Artists
Course 4: Studio Preparation

In previous courses, you’ve recorded some vocal melodies, bass, and drum to give you the building blocks of your song. In this course, you’ll start to put them together and fine-tune each of those elements. You’ll learn the fundamentals of audio clips, how to work with those clips in Ableton, and how to use the Warp Engine feature for tempo matching, audio quantizing, pitch shifting, and more.

You’ll also step back and really listen to what you’ve been recording so far. This course will cover the anatomy of a song and how to pick out what your song is missing, whether it’s vocals, a specific instrument, or effects. You’ll also take the time to record new vocals and how to use pitch correction in Ableton to smooth those vocals out.

Preparing for the studio for recording is just as important as the recording itself. You’ll learn how to practice before recording your vocals, different warm-up techniques, and how ad-libbing can prepare your voice and release emotions. Your homework will be to work on warming up and recording some of your ad-libs–there’s no telling when they might come in handy!

The digital field trip will take you to Shure, where you’ll learn about microphones, headphones, earbuds, and other personal monitoring solutions. You’ll also listen to Depeche Mode’s Music for the Masses for quick lessons in layering vocals, production quality, instrumentation, and setting the mood of an album. Meditation, course review, blog entry, and quiz will round out the course.