Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Guest-blogger Hens Zimmerman returns to show you how you can draft up tracks with Ableton Note before turning them into fully-fledged songs in Ableton Live.

What’s Ableton Note?

Ableton Note is a new iOS app that’s been designed for making music on the fly. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to draft up new tracks while they’re on the road, doesn’t have access to their computer, feels a sudden urge to write a song, or is randomly struck with inspiration. Projects created with Ableton Note can be opened in Ableton Live for further editing and fine-tuning (but not the other way around), which is exactly what makes the app so useful — the potency lies in the ability to sketch up the rough outline of a song on the spot.

Image 1: Ableton Note: The Future is Now:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Ableton Cloud: A Virtual Bridge Between Note and Live

Ableton Note was launched alongside the Ableton Cloud, which serves as a virtual bridge between the app and Ableton Live, allowing users to upload their projects and open them in Ableton Live later. While this cloud storage service is free, you can’t upload more than five Ableton Note projects. You can set Ableton Note and Ableton Cloud to synchronise your projects in the settings of the app, which you only need to do once. Just note that you will have to log into your Ableton account to activate the Cloud service.

Image 2: Activating Ableton Cloud in the Settings Menu:Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks
Before you can import projects into Ableton Live, you’ll need to turn on the Ableton Cloud setting as seen in the screenshot below.

Image 3: Activating the Ableton Cloud in Ableton Live:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

After activating the Ableton Cloud, you need to log into your Ableton Cloud account. You only have to do this once.

Image 4: Logging into the Ableton Cloud in Ableton Live:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

After following the steps above, you can synchronise Ableton Note with Ableton Live. Now that that’s done, let’s turn a rough sketch into a fully-fledged song!

Making a Rough Sketch

The first thing you’ll notice when you open Ableton Note is that it has little icons instead of labels for each action.

Ableton Note projects are called ‘Sets’. Each Set is a collection of individual tracks that can be independently mixed using a basic mixer.

Image 5: The Built-In Mixer:

Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Compared to Ableton Live, there’s no Arrangement View in Ableton Note. You work in a kind of Session View where you outline songs by creating clips. Just like in Live, you can create Scenes by sticking Clips in a row. Clips can be duplicated and varied.

Image 6: Playing Back the Clips in Scene 2:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Per track, you pick an instrument from an extensive list of presets. When we open a Note project in Ableton Live in a minute, you’ll see every preset is a standard Ableton Live instrument. You can also create and save custom presets, import samples, and use recordings made with your phone. Self-recorded samples are easy to trim and a lot of fun to use.

Image 7: Editing a Custom Sample in Real-Time:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Ableton Note lets you edit samples in real-time. Here, what you see is what you hear, meaning everything that’s off-screen won’t be played. Want to include a part you can’t see? Simply scroll over to it or zoom out.

What’s also great about this intuitive app is that almost every parameter can be automated — just like the clip based automation function in Ableton Live. You can keep tweaking your automations until you’re satisfied and only then hit ‘Add’ at the bottom of the screen. It’s a lot like creating overdubs with a looper. While I don’t want to go too deep into everything that Ableton Note has to offer here (you can find excellent tutorials on YouTube), I do want to show you what happens to automations when a project is imported into Ableton Live, which we’ll look at in a minute.

Image 8: Clip-Based Automation in Ableton Note:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

After an hour of tinkering, my sketch is ready for further processing in Ableton Live. In total, I’ve created five tracks with four scenes. It’s nowhere near a finished track, but that’s the point here. Ableton Note is perfect for drafting up and outlining ideas. If this workflow doesn’t work for you, then just skip to the bottom of this article to find a few tips about alternative apps that might be more useful for you.

Image 9: The rough sketch is finished and has been given a name:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

After you finish creating a rough sketch, you’ll need to upload it to the Ableton Cloud so you can import it into Ableton Live.

Image 10: Uploading a Project to the Ableton Cloud:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

After it’s been uploaded, it’s worth pointing out that any changes you make to a project are automatically synchronised. As mentioned before, you can upload five projects to the Ableton Cloud. When you try to upload a sixth, you get the following pop-up:

Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Thankfully, deleting existing projects and making room for new masterpieces is really simple. Now, it’s time to import an Ableton Note project into Ableton Live and pick it up from there.

Image 12: Available Ableton Note Sets in the Cloud:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Importing an Ableton Note Project

The Ableton Live browser shows you when any projects that can be imported from the Cloud were last updated. Just like a regular Ableton Live project, you can use the Preview function to listen to the different tracks of a set and drag any to an existing Ableton Live set. But that’s not what we’re doing today. Instead, we’re going to work with a complete Ableton Note set in Ableton Live.

Image 13: Ableton Cloud content available in Ableton Live:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

As you can see in the image above, uploaded Ableton Note sets have an .abl file extension, which means that before you can open it in Live, you’ll need to save it to your computer as an Ableton Live file (.als). Don’t worry, this doesn’t affect the original project, nor will any changes made in Ableton Live be automatically applied to your Cloud-stored project.

Image 14: An imported Ableton Note project in Ableton Live:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

In Ableton Live, your imported Ableton Note project sounds and looks the same as in the app. The instruments you see depend on the tracks you created in the app. In my example, you’re looking at four different instruments:

  • Simpler
  • Drum rack (met Simpler-instanties)
  • Wavetable
  • Drift

Each track is converted into a rack that also includes any effects that were added in Ableton Note.

Image 15: Every Ableton Note track has been converted to a Rack in Ableton Live:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

At this point, it’s worth noting that your combinations of instruments and effects can be saved as Instrument Racks in your Ableton Live User Library. This means that any happy accidents created using Ableton Note can be added to the list of options in Ableton Live, where you can then further refine your custom racks by adding macros or additional effects.

Ableton Note is great for making clip-based rhythms or melodies, and adding velocity info with your finger is arguably more direct and intuitive than using a mouse or Push controller in Ableton Live. Of course, any velocity info added in Ableton Note carries over to the Ableton Live project.

Image 16: All note information in Ableton Note carries over to Ableton Live:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Something to keep in mind: In the months that I’ve been using Ableton Note, I’ve found myself creating clips that come out more intuitively than when I’m sitting at my computer. Even if I end up using a completely different instrument, it’s worth saving these kinds of experiments as clips in my Ableton Live User Library.

Image 17: Saving an Ableton Note project as a Clip in the User Library:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Instead of filling up your harddrive with unfinished Ableton Live projects, I would recommend chopping existing projects up into separate parts and adding these to your User Library. This way, you build a unique collection of custom Clips, Racks, Instruments, Grooves, Presets, Samples and Templates that you can browse through when you’re in need of inspiration. Give the various bits and pieces clear names and you’ll definitely thank yourself later. Or, if you prefer to simply keep a folder full of MIDI clips, you can also just save any imported Ableton Note projects as a MIDI clip (see the image below).

Image 18: Saving an imported Ableton Note project as a MIDI clip:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Finally, let’s look at what happens to any clip-based automation when you import an Ableton Note project into Ableton Live. This info can be accessed via the Envelope tab in Live (as seen in the image below). Ableton Live shows a red dot for every parameter that’s backed up with clip-based automation.

Image 19: All clip-based automation added in Ableton Note can be accessed in Ableton Live:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

If there are a ton of breakpoints in your automation curves, like there are in the example above, then it can be a good idea to smooth out the curve using the Simplify Envelope command, which can be accessed with a simple right-mouse click in Ableton Live. This function simplifies the automation curve, resulting in a smoother curve with fewer breakpoints for more natural sounding clips. You can also use any of the other automation tools that Live offers to take your Note projects to the next level.

Image 20: Simplifying Ableton Note curves with the Simplify Envelope feature in Live:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Image 21: The result: much smoother curves!
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Limitations

Ableton Note is by no means a mobile version of Ableton Live, and comes with a number of limitations. So you can decide whether this is a deal-breaker, I’ll go over the biggest limitations:

  • You can open Ableton Note projects in Ableton Live, but not the other way around.
  • Ableton Note does not support third-party plugins or instruments (yet).
  • Ableton Note is only available for iOS devices.
  • Unlike Live, Ableton Note doesn’t feature audio tracks. You only have Drum Racks, Wavetable, Draft and Simpler at your disposal.
  • You can’t use Ableton Note to control Ableton Live via your mobile device. To do this, you’ll need an app like TouchOSC, Chordion, Audanika, LK or TouchDAW.

Tips

In Ableton Note, you can select a key (e.g. D# Phrygian) via the Key & Scale setting in the Set Settings menu. This is amazingly useful since it makes it impossible to play in the wrong key. Of course, you can also select a more traditional piano keyboard (as seen in the image below). And don’t forget to try out the Repeats feature — it’s perfect for creating super-tight patterns in a flash.

Image 22: Ableton Note also features a traditional chromatic piano keyboard lay-out:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

It won’t take you very long to find your way around Ableton Note, especially if you’re an experienced Ableton Live user. Most functions and features speak for themselves, and the same goes for various icons. What might be a little less obvious, however, is how to duplicate or delete bars. You can do this by swiping left to delete, or swiping right to duplicate a bar. Just put your finger right where the bar numbers are and swipe. This feature is particularly useful when you want to cut a long piece of improv down to the most important bits. In practice, it’s usually best to quantise note events before you delete any bars. This way, you don’t lose any notes that were played too early.

Image 23: Swipe right to duplicate bars:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Image 24: Swipe left to delete bars:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

One of my favourite features of Ableton Note is the option to draw velocity curves. Select the note events you want to add velocity info to and simply draw a custom curve while you hear what’s happening in real time. This feature is surprisingly intuitive and perfect for adding that human touch to your clips.

Image 25: Adding velocity info in Ableton Note:
Ableton Note: A Musical Notepad for Fresh Tracks

Wrapping Up

If you made it all the way to this point, you now know how easy it is to create musical drafts with Ableton Note and import them into Ableton Live for further editing and finetuning. You’ve also learned how you can add the best bits to your User Library.

In sum, Ableton Note is a fantastic app and a practical way to make music on the fly, especially when it comes to outlining new songs. The interface is extremely minimalistic yet clear enough to support an intuitive workflow. Ableton Live users should feel right at home in the familiar Sessions View-like lay-out, complete with clip slots and scenes.

Alternative Apps

Excited to try similar apps? Here’s an incomplete list of apps you might be interested in:

  • Logic Pro for Apple iPad: Designed for Logic users, this seriously complete app can synchronise projects between your computer and your iPad, which is something that Ableton Note can’t do. On the other hand, it’s not free and requires a subscription.
  • Endless from Tim Exile: A great app to do more experimental things. Endless also supports collaboration with other music-makers and has an export-to-Ableton feature, making it another solid project kick-starter.
  • iMaschine from Native Instruments: This is an extremely extensive app that, sadly, hasn’t been updated in a while. To further process projects, you do need NI’s Maschine software and a matching controller.
  • Patterning 2 from Olympia Noise: This is probably my favourite iPad app. Patterning 2 also gives users the option to export projects to Ableton Live and features a brilliantly comprehensive drum sequencer that goes a few steps further than the polyrhythms built into Ableton Note.
  • Flip Sampler from Andrew Huang: A more than solid, sample-based app that can be used to create fully-fledged tracks.
  • Garageband from Apple: A mega-extensive app that’s completely free.
  • Koala Sampler: Another all-encompassing sampler app that supports exporting to Ableton Live.

See Also

» Ableton Live Software Packs

» Ableton Live Arrangement Templates: Copy & Paste Inspiration
» A 7-Step Guide to Live-Editing in Ableton Live
» Tools for Discovering Chords in Ableton Live
» How to Use MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) in Ableton Live

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