Producing Melodic Techno: Ableton Live Beginner’s Guide

Josh Bess presents melodic techno production video tutorials designed for the absolute beginner! See step by step how to make your very first melodic techno track in Ableton Live and start your journey into producing this epic electronic music genre. You also get the samples, audio effects, MIDI files, and Serum presets used in the tutorial so you can follow along.

Getting Started

• Course Overview (01:24) - Josh welcomes you and gives you an introduction to what you will learn in this course.

• Preparing Your Live 10 Project (00:33) - Learn how simple it is to set the tempo of your project in Ableton Live 10 and more.

Melody & Harmony

• Composing a Melody (04:12) - Watch how to import a MIDI melody into your project and edit the part as you desire.

• Splitting Melody & Bass (02:45) - Learn how to split a bass part from your melody composition for further development.

• Adding Atmosphere to Your Horns (02:06) - See the simplicity of importing preset audio effect racks to enhance the ambience of your instruments in Live 10.

• Pickup Note Bass Pluck (01:57) - Learn the importance of this simple rhythmic element, a pickup note.

• Adding Atmosphere to Your Bass Pluck (01:52) - See how to add a spatial element to your plucked instruments with Echo in Live 10.

• Sample Based Harmony (04:37) - Watch how to add fullness to your music with harmonized orchestral samples and learn when to use specific samples.

• Adding Atmosphere to Your Orchestral Samples (02:50) - Discover how to adjust the tone of orchestral samples with audio effect racks and filtering.

Drums & Percussion

• The Kick (03:43) - See how to compose a four on the floor kick drum pattern with a Drum Rack in Live.

• Low Tom Bass Rumble (05:13) - Explore how to compose a sixteenth note tom rumble pattern with a Drum Rack in Live 10.

• Dynamic Pulse With Sidechain Compressor (07:58) - See how to add dynamic movement to your drum pattern with sidechain compression.

• The Hi-Hats (06:45) - Watch how to adjust the time felt in your drum groove with hi-hat patterns.

Arrangement Tips & More

• Transition & Impact (04:02) - Connecting your song form with transitional sounds can be as simple as dragging & dropping audio samples into your project. Watch how!

• Practice & Experience (00:58) - Learn how to further build your skills with practice and experience.

• Sidechained Reverb Technique (06:08) - See how to build a custom sidechained reverb audio effect chain in Ableton Live 10.