We all work in different ways, some of us like myself build songs from an acoustic and vocal idea. Others like Producer, Artist, Mixer, DJ and Remixer Chris Lake create amazing song ideas by manipulating samples in Ableton. I’ve long admired Chris’ work, he’s prolific, both as an Artist and a remixer and he has something I admire greatly, a wonderful sense of melody. His vocal timing is great, when you listen to the Chris’ Remix of Blonde and Craig David’s track ‘Nothing Like This’ I don’t think remix, I hear a Dance Single. Every remix he does is an alternative version of the single, takes the song to a different place, opening them up to Club audiences while remaining melodic and interesting over repeated listens.
Chris’ DAW of choice is Ableton and in this video he shows us his work flow: His simple Studio set up demonstrates that you can make music with just a handful of pieces of equipment and a great command of your DAW and a lot of Creativity! Chris breaks down how he created the vocal effects for his Dance hit ‘Operator’, his workflow is supremely fast and the combination of his knowledge of Ableton and its extremely easy workflow is really impressive!
If you’ve missed our last video, where our Recording Connection apprentice Alex introduces you to the basics of Ableton, you can watch it here.
More Music Production Videos:
Using Ableton Live: A Beginners Guide
Check Out some Of Chris’ Remixes and Productions:
- Chris’ song ‘Operator’ that he breaks down in the video
- Break out hit single ‘Changes’ featuring Laura V.
- Remix of Blonde and Craig David’s ‘Nothing Like This’
- Latest single ‘I Want You’
I hope this tutorial gave you some new ideas on how to manipulate your samples and get creative with Ableton.
Please share which techniques you’re using to create cool and unique sounds. – Let’s make this a huge pool of inspiration for everyone!
Have a marvellous time recording and mixing,
Warren
Thank´s Warren for this great vid! I just become a Chris Lake fan! I totally have to check Ableton out. It has exactly that what I miss in my Reason 9 DAW. It´s like Chris says in the video, that the workflow with the sampler is a killer, and how you can manipulate the audio so easy is so inspiring and fast. But if you want to learn mixing on a SSL console but not have money to buy one, there is no better (in my humble opinion) than Reasons emulation of the SSL 90000. So much fun to imagine you are CLA….;-)