Made in Ableton Live: S1gns Of L1fe on creating, arranging and mixing ambient music

Hi, my name is Chris and I'm an ambient music producer and content creator from the Bay Area in California. Some of you might know me from my YouTube channel S1gns Of L1fe, where I create ambient music and sound design tutorials. Today I'm going to show you how to create a chill ambient track in Ableton Live. Let's get started. Before we get going, I'd like to show you the template that I'm using for Live. This is a custom Ableton template called utility from material. This template features an

internal bussing and routing system to allow you to properly gain stage all of your tracks and it comes loaded with a bunch of custom effects. I've made a few additions of my own, such as using a few Valhalla and FabFilter plugins on my return tracks. I've been using this template exclusively for the past nine years and it allows me to focus on the music and my creativity during the production phase rather than focusing too much on the technical side. There are several different ways to start ch

ill ambient tracks, and one of the ways that I like to start is with the sample that really inspires me. The sample we're about to listen to is a Dune 3 preset that I modified from my good friend Echo Season from his preset pack Proximity Report. Let's have a listen. The first thing we're going to do is start building up some layers of glitch percussion so we can start to lay down the foundation for our track. One of the most important aspects of my music is the layering and then how those layer

s interact with each other in a compositional sense. Let's drop in three different glitch percussion kits that I put together. Each of them have a different purpose and a different esthetic quality, and we're going to layer them on top of each other to make our glitch percussion. The first one is called Glitch Main, where all of our really glitchy sounds are. The second is filled with what I call "longer samples" that sound a little bit more like traditional hi-hats. I like to use these a bit mo

re sparingly than the main glitch percussion, which we'll talk about in a minute. And the third rack is filled with glitches that sound really electronic, almost like electricity, and we'll use those to fill in some gaps. Before we go any further, let's add a kick drum to really start shaping the foundation for our track. Those who watch me work on a regular basis know that I'm always just building drum kits, and this rack here is no exception. I like to organize all my samples into specific dru

m racks so when I'm producing, I don't have to endlessly search for the right sample. It's all right there when I need it. So let's hear what it sounds like with a punchy kick drum underneath our track. When it comes to glitch percussion, there's a few things you might want to consider. The first is how these clips are interacting with each other. One thing I like to do is double click the first MIDI clip, which opens up clip view and then hold Ctrl or Command on a Mac and select the other two M

IDI clips. And now we have an overview of all three MIDI clips stacked on top of each other. Let's listen to what this sounds like. So what I like to do is come through and select the notes that are overlapping and hit Zero on the keyboard to activate or deactivate those notes. By doing this, we can create a sequence that's less dense but still has the complexity that we're after. So I encourage you to get meticulous here because you can get really detailed at this stage before we start arrangin

g the rest of our track. The other thing I like to do is adjust the Probability sliders for each of the clips. It keeps my music unpredictable yet harmonious, adding depth while maintaining the beat. The Chance column found underneath the Velocity lane is a percentage chance of how often the notes will play. So with the Main Glitch percussion track, I'm going to select all the notes and then set my Probability pretty high, somewhere between 80 and 100%. For the longer glitches, I'm going to sele

ct all of those and lower the chance to around 50% to 75%. And then with the electricity sounds, I'm going to make those pretty low. As I said, we're going to use those to fill in the gaps to provide our percussion with some really interesting surprises. Somewhere between 10 and 30%. Let's listen what it sounds like now, Some final touches here before we move on would be to add some of my go-to beat slicing and glitch style plugins. First and foremost, the Beat Repeat plugin inside of Ableton is

extremely useful for this type of percussion. My favorite preset over the years is definitely Microfillz, so let's add that to our main percussion track. Some parameters to take note of here are the Grid Size. You can adjust that to taste. I like to keep the Offset at zero and then lower the volume a little bit. Let's listen To really take this effect to the next level, let's add an LFO here to modulate the Interval knob. It provides a wider range of influence where the Beat Repeat is going to

trigger. And I find this provides some really cool randomized glitches without cutting into our actual groove. So I'm going to grab an LFO here, click on the word Map, and click on the Interval on the Microfillz. Back on the LFO, I'm going to lower the Depth... and then lower the Rate. Another plugin that I like to add after the Beat Repeat is Automaton from Audio Damage. Automaton does similar things to Beat Repeat, and the two combined will give us some amazing results. As a final touch, you c

an add Ableton's Auto Pan plugin. I like to set the mode to Random. And because most of our percussion sequences are 16th notes, setting the Time value for the Auto Pan to 16th is a great choice. Set the Width to 100% and adjust the Amount to whatever you like, depending on the desired effect. Sweet glitch percussion. Now that we've got our percussion done, it's time to move on to pads and start building up the rest of our track. Now that we've got our track in motion, let's lay down some pads.

I come from a guitar background, so one thing that I love to do is to find ways to put guitar into my music to create unique synth patches using my guitar and my collection of effects pedals. One of my favorite ways to do this is to use a granular synthesizer to process a guitar sample and turn it into a pad. So for this example, we're going to use the Granulator II synthesizer included in Ableton Live Suite. Now that we've loaded up our sample, I'm going to make a few adjustments here. Granular

synthesis is based on the concept of using tiny microsamples called grains to sample a source of audio, and then you can manipulate those grains even further to create some pretty wild textures and effects. The first thing I'm going to do is adjust the Spray control to around 4 seconds to get our grain spread out a bit further. Next, let's adjust the LFO here to around 3 to 5 seconds. And then let's adjust the LFO controls underneath the Grain Size and the File Position knobs to let the LFO sta

rt moving our grains around the entire sample. Click on the word Grain to reach the second set of controls. And let's adjust our Amp envelope to something more like a pad. 5 seconds of Attack, Decay, and Release. And then lower the Sustain by a few decibels. Finally, let's lower the cutoff of the filter to around 6 to 7 k. One more thing I know the sample I played was in a different key and this track is in the key of g minor. So over here in the pitch section, I've adjusted the pitch of the sam

ple to match the key of the track. That's about it for controls. Let's add some reverb and delay from our Return tracks and listen to what this sounds like. I really like that, so what I'll do now is record this and then move the rest of our clips forward as this will be the start of a nice intro. Next we're going to lay down further groundwork for the intro of our chill ambient track by creating an ethereal pad using the plugin Tree Tone, which is included in the Inspired by Nature pack. Let's

add a Tree Tone to a blank MIDI track. There are two options in Tree Tone we're going to focus on at the start. First, unlock the Gain by clicking off the Lock button above the Gain knob on the right. This allows Tree Tone to make sound. Next, make sure that the Noise Generator knob is turned all the way off on the top left, we're going to focus on the Rain control as well as the Lock to Scale function on the right. Add some Rain by turning up the Percentage knob And then adjust the Speed to som

ething relatively slow - between 5 and 10%. Add some Decay... and then click the Scale button on the right to lock the randomized oscillator hits to scale. You can select which scale you like depending on the overall scale of your track. In this track, I'm going to choose g minor. This sounds good, but to really take this up a notch, let's add some Spectral Time. Spectral Time allows us to freeze incoming audio and smear some of the taps coming from Tree Tone. Start by setting the Freeze functio

n to retrigger and then set it to sync. You can then set the interval to something relatively slow, like one 8th or one quarter depending on the desired effect. Then click the Freeze button. By retriggering it slow, it provides us with the perfect palette of slow moving tones that will eventually feed into our reverb. Let's increase the Dry/Wet, add some reverb and delay. Combining this with the Granulator II patch we made earlier, we get some beautiful washes of sound. Now that we've got our pa

ds all set up, it's time to record and start filling in the rest of our track with some other elements such as sequences and then moving into our overall arrangement. So as you can see, we're a bit further along now. I've recorded those two pads to audio and then slowly faded them in for our intro. I've also spaced out our percussion a bit and chose to start the kick drum early because I liked the way that sounded, and then moved the glitch percussion to start when the main part of the track fin

ally begins. One thing I wanted to do now was put in a few sequences and really start adding some energy to the melody. Sequencing is one of the signature elements in the music that I make, but I know it can sometimes be difficult to add sequences or a melody to a track if you have no idea where to begin. So let's add a synth patch and then start designing a sequence for our track around it. For the main sequence, I'm going to use a patch that I made in Hive 2. A few notes about the patch here.

This preset is basically just a filtered sawtooth oscillator with a noise sub oscillator. And both LFO 1 and LFO 2 are both affecting the Cutoff Frequency of Filter 1 with different time values. Since LFO 1 is set to Random Hold and LFO 2 is set to a triangle, it makes a very interesting sound. So try that on one of your own creations. Presets like this work quite well on its own as a pad, and it also works great as a sequence, which we're about to hear. So let's come back over to Arrangement Vi

ew and draw in a blank MIDI clip by selecting a region and then using the key command control shift m or command shift m on a Mac to create a blank MIDI clip. Now that we've got our blank MIDI clip up, let's draw in some notes. First things first. I always use the Scale function so I can limit the notes in the piano roll to scale. This has been a life changing addition for me that just makes life easier. And I find that I'm able to make better creative decisions when I don't have to worry if any

of the notes are going to be out of key. Press the Scale button here on the left. Choose the key that you're working in and limit the notes on the view by clicking Scale up here on the top. Now let's listen to what that sounds like with the rest of our track. You could use a step sequencer here, which I often do, but I find that just drawing in sequences by hand is one of the best ways to become a better producer and to bring your musical visions to life. I want to add one more sequence in here

that's almost like a counterpoint melody to the original sequence. With the right amount of delay and reverb, simple sine wave patches are often all you need to make the perfect complementary sequence to your track. The Delay settings are somewhat important, so I'll go over those now before we draw in the notes. On my first return track, I'm using a Valhalla Delay plugin set to Dotted 8th Note ping pong delay that's 100% wet. It's a relatively dark delay with a little bit of modulation. But I u

se Dotted 8th Note everywhere in my music, and if I'm using it, chances are it's coming from this. So, back in Arrangement View, let's draw in a simple lead to complement our original sequence. I'm going to choose 8th notes for this sequence and create something that's going to play along with our original melody. Let's create a new MIDI clip here, choose 1/8 Notes... and then let's start drawing in some notes. To copy this sequence over, let's use the Duplicate function. Select the region you w

ant to duplicate, and hit Ctrl D or Command D on a Mac to duplicate the notes. Let's duplicate that over, add a little accent note, and let's duplicate this clip and have a listen. Awesome. That sounds great. Now that we've got our sequences in order, it's time to move on to arrangement. At this point, I filled out the track significantly and there are a lot more parts added to it. It's by no means finished, but I wanted to give you a general overview of where the track is at now and point out a

few things. When it comes to finishing the track, as you can see, I've color coded everything and renamed the tracks to keep it organized. But one thing I wanted to mention is I like to keep all of my tracks in the MIDI stage while it's still in production. And then when it comes time to mix, I make sure that I always bounce every stem to audio before I start doing any mixing. That way, I know that all of the audio will be exactly the same every single time when I work on the mix. Sometimes syn

ths can sound different each time that you play it. So to make sure that everything stays the same, I'll duplicate each track and then freeze it before I begin the mixing stage. This is a really important step that I see other producers missing. So my best advice is, before you start to mix, just save where you are, save another version and then freeze and flatten every track to audio and then start mixing. That way, if you need to change any of the MIDI for any reason, you can go back to a prev

ious version rather than being locked into audio tracks. When it comes to effects, with the exception of the delays and reverbs I have on my return tracks, I don't add any insert effects at this stage until I've frozen it to audio. Most of the track right now is in MIDI, but as you can see here, I've added a Fab Filter Pro-Q 3 to our Granulator II patch for some quick cleanup of the low end and some subtractive EQ as well as an instance of Super Massive because it's already been bounced to audio

. Same goes for the Tree Tone patch. Since it's already in audio, I felt it was a bit quiet and needed some compression. I've added a Pro-C 2 for some volume and organic thickness. When it comes to mixing, I like to grab a Utility plugin and place it on the master fader and switch it to mono mode. This helps with hearing my levels correctly, especially because so much of my music has a wide stereo field. It can become very distracting to the ear, and I find that mixing in mono helps me focus in

on the levels rather than having everything bounce all over the place. I also use pink noise for mixing, which has been a total game changer for me by giving me a base leveling template to work with. And then I don't have to worry about any of the elements in the track overpowering each other. Because I'm working with so many layers, making sure that I'm not unintentionally burying any of the tracks is super important. As far as the arrangement goes, I like to add several parts that play off the

original idea and then combine those tracks to form something new that I may not have thought of before. We'll spend a lot of time adding tracks similar to the way that you might use Session View to mix and match a ton of clips in different scenes. That's one way that new patterns start to emerge. This is a very similar workflow when I'm in the production phase and I'm letting the track evolve. When I make edits, I literally feel like I'm carving into those tracks and coming out with something

entirely new. For example, in this section I had a few musical ideas and when I combine them in a unique way, it really took this section to a whole other level. I make tons of edits, so I often save multiple versions of tracks because they go through so many changes. But making these changes allow me to push myself as a producer and really work towards getting better with every track that I make. My best advice would be to not be afraid to add too much to your track or take stuff away. It's bet

ter to have too many musical ideas because you can always cut back and edit them as you go along. As far as details go, you can see I've added a bunch of new parts, as well as carved out sections where the melody changes to make the track flow better and provides added context around the original idea. These can take some time to make, as it's easy not to stray away from the original root note, and a lot of tracks in this genre tend to stay like that. But if you really stretch your limits, you c

an make some awesome musical breaks like this one just by changing the base note and using a more traditional compositional approach. A lot of the parts I added were really just patches made from simple waveforms like this patch in Hive 2, which is just a filtered sawtooth with some reverb and delay. Or this transitional element is just a simple white noise patch and Phase Plant with a band-pass filter and the LFOs moving slowly up to create that classic whoosh style transition. I find that a lo

t of my best work comes from starting from simple waveforms. Especially in track like this with so many layers, things can get pretty complicated when you start adding tons of long delays and reverbs like I do. Overall, I'd say if you're trying to get into producing this style of music, just go for it. At least for me, producing music like this is always a challenge, but the more you do it, you're going to get better. Your first track might not be your best track, but I find that each track you

make, you're making incremental improvements that are going to make a big difference later on. So that's about it. Making chill ambient is all about your process, and then spending time crafting those sounds in the sound design stage and then bringing your track to life with an interesting and meaningful arrangement. I want to give a special thanks to Ableton for inviting me to create this video, and thanks for watching. As always, stay inspired. Peace.