hey everybody i'm rachel k collier and in today's video i'm going to show you how i use ableton live as my number one songwriting tool now i've been wanting to do this video for ages i've got lots of performances and production-based videos here on this channel but not so many on songwriting and this is actually a huge part of what i do so let's get into it i'm going to show you how i use ableton to write my songs so first things first let's talk about the track i'm going to be demonstrating my songwriting techniques
with it's called you can pretend it dropped this thursday i also played it live in front of 10 000 people on wednesday at sapphire gardens in cardiff let's have a little listen to it and you guys can see what you're getting yourselves into [Music] this way insecurities nothing else [Music] cool that's enough for now you guys are going to hear more as we go along in this session it's on spotify and all other streaming platforms now so if you like the sound of that definitely go and check it out after you've watched this video okay
so let's wind it back now guys the very first session of you can pretend and also let's talk about how do i start when i'm writing a track so when i grew up i was very much focused on playing the keys i was self-taught i used to copy melodies from the tv worked out the chords i could play with two fingers and had a very good time experimenting on the keys and going forward the piano that said you know when i went to college and things like that i completely rinsed song writing on the piano
i felt like i was very limited with my kind of melody and rhythmic ideas i ended up playing the same old thing the same old chords and the same rhythms and melodies were coming out and after a while this became very uninspiring for me so now actually i never write on the piano or in a traditional songwriting format anymore i find that by using ableton and throwing lots of sounds and creating a big palette that it inspires totally different rhythms and melodies to anything that i would create when i'm playing the piano so this what
leads me to the first thing i do when i am creating a song in ableton live i like to start with something wacky some sound sample loop anything that's kind of original and unique to me i don't just like to load in the first preset from serum that i find that sounds okay i want to try and make a vibe something that's going to inspire some crazy cool melodies rhythmic melodies from myself and i need to be able to inspire myself with the instrumental so how i started you can pretend was i dragged in a
full acapella vocal from a completely different rkc track what you've got what you've got why and then i used ableton simpler to chop up that vocal and create some little vocal chops so i actually made quite a few of these little chops this little one here as well [Music] so with these little vibey loops that i've created they're not just there to create vibe these are actually really important in the songwriting process they are now helping me to make decisions that i'm going to make later on instead of me sitting here and trying out lots
of chord sequences that i've used over and over again i've now given myself some limitations because these are suggesting to me not only rhythms but also harmony so now i'm ready for step two i'm gonna move on to the groove so once i've given myself a little bit of energy and something to bounce off that's when i'm gonna start to create my groove with ableton live and there are quite a few ways you can do this so the first way is the traditional ableton live way and that is of course to load in a drum
kit from the huge choice of drum kit ableton live suite gives us and then of course i can finger drum along [Music] or using the step sequencer built into push i can start to draw in a sequence [Music] okay i was going a bit crazy then but you guys get the message another way if i'm feeling pretty lazy is i might just drag in a sample from good old splice [Music] different combinations [Music] now another method i've been using maybe for the last 18 months is a plug-in called xo which is super cool for creating
instant drums and finding samples so in this track i did use the built-in exo sequencer it's really really fun you've got things like the swing here you've got effects and it automatically syncs within ableton live so if i hit play now and then when i settle on a groove i can just go and grab that midi clip and drop it in and just like then i can duplicate this and jump into the clip and mod things just like you would any other midi clip in ableton live so here we go and press it so these
are the three main ways i like to build a groove using the ableton live suite drum rack dragging samples and using a little bit of xln audios xo so you guys can see it's a bit messy here in session view i'm just throwing all my ideas out on the page but i love this i think it's really important for creative flow i'm not getting hung up on the arrangement yet i'm really just designing sounds and textures and making something that's going to really inspire me to sing on so now let's talk about our harmony this
is one of the funnest parts of writing a track add in our synths and our baselines and creating that foundation for the melody so when i come to working on my harmony it really depends on my mood whether i'm going to start with the bass first or whether i'm going to play some chords so what i'll usually do is just have a couple of synths plugged in press play on here and just basically have a little jam with myself now because i've got some suggested pitch here in the vocal sample there are only going to
be a certain number of chords which will sound cool with it [Music] so for example that f sharp did not sound cool the f sharp minor so but the a minor sounded cool [Music] f sounds quite cool [Music] let's try them as chords e minor but the cool thing is while i'm experimenting i can actually record lots of these ideas and see in the end which ones are my favorite so let's do that now this experiment let's lay down a couple of bass lines and see what feels good [Music] so i've got one idea here
[Music] that's not bad actually let's try another one two three four and so i can keep on going playing around with all these different baseline combinations until i find one that feels really good for me and the one of course that i settled on was this one a down to c up to b [Music] so quite funny chord combination actually we've got a minor c major b minor which is probably something i would never write if i was sitting here playing the keys like let's write a song let me try going to c major from
a minor i would never choose that and then no i probably would never go to b minor cause that just sounds really weird but with this little crazy vibe here and these drums [Music] i've created now like a harmony sequence that is kind of cool and a bit different thank you samples and session view for giving me that bit of magic inspiration and then obviously that's like kind of a mid-range sound i can start to improvise some synths along with this it's just a minor [Music] little inversion major so i played pretty much exactly that
with the prophet [Music] when it gets to this point i'm like hmm you know what yes i think i'm starting to feel this now and i'm starting to think i'm starting to think oh right okay it's timer i want to try and create some melodies i want to try and sing over this but i have to wait until i have done something very very important and that has created a b section so whether that arrangement is just the synths by themselves and then the b section could be [Music] or it could be a whole new
chord sequence or bass line altogether [Music] whatever those differences are in the sections it's really important that i do give myself like an a and a b section before i pick up that microphone because otherwise what i have found is i've created like a really cool verse but then i've gotten nowhere to go for the chorus and yeah then it can be a bit tricky so i always like to give myself enough to play with just so i've got enough to improvise over to get an a and a b section i hope that makes sense
so before i jump in and start showing you how i improvise my melodies i just want to say i know i'm skimming over ableton live here very very fast i do have a whole course on how to produce a track with ableton live so go and check that out if you are interested in learning from me how to use this software to create your music okay let's get into it now i'm gonna tell you guys the next step that i like to do when i'm writing my songs and that is to improvise melodies so now
what i like to do is i create a channel spoil myself a little bit put a little processing on it and i'm really not thinking about my vocal performance now um so yeah don't judge me on that i'm just thinking about what cool phrases can i get from my from my little groove that i've created so what i'm gonna do then i'm gonna hit play [Music] and i'm gonna keep doing this for a while you know a little bit higher in my vocal range and then i also like to experiment with rhythms so let's try
something faster rhythms let's try faster rhythms and see how they feel faster than it it feels good [Music] okay i realize this must sound terrible right now but what i'm trying to demonstrate to you guys is just like how i'll try a lot of different you know things lower in the range higher in the range rhythmical and then really just listen back and you know and see if there's anything cool in these takes [Music] so moment of truth guys here are the official actual improvisations that i did do when i was writing the song so
let's have a little play through some of these [Music] so we've got that one what's this one i mean it's kind of embarrassing playing with these but i hope um when you go back and listen to the song this is where the verse came from counting down the days will i feel myself again and this part ended up being the middle eight [Music] and then let's see what else we had it's a faster rhythm so that one didn't make it because that one's the same [Music] that one didn't make it either but these two did
so when i get to this stage where i'm like cool i've got like a definite a and b section here and you know this may not stay like this for the rest of the production but this is enough now for me to say yeah you know what i like this i'm going to actually try and write some lyrics um based around these melodies so the next part of my songwriting process is actually away from ableton live and there's a couple of tricks i like to use which i'm going to share with you guys and hopefully
will be helpful and the first one of course is using pinterest lots of kind of quotes and poems and things like that will come up and all these kind of phrases you can use then to bounce off to write your words you can pretend it's definitely a song about kind of just getting on with it even though you know things feel really rough right now it's kind of like tricking yourself that everything's okay and by tricking yourself actually you will find that oh you know you've kind of forgot what was actually happening and why you
felt sad in the first place so it's kind of what my lyrics for this song are about they're up on the screen here this is another website which is amazing a friend of mine called stealth who's another artist showed me this a few years ago and it's called rhyme brainwriter and it's really cool because you can write a phrase like write a phrase and it will give you like rhyming words that go with it and then also like suggestions of similar words so when i've written my lyrics guys i'm feeling good about them i will
come into ableton's arrangement view and use the comping in live 11 to basically record a ton of vocal takes pick my favorites and then you know process them and go crazy so you guys can see the project has gone from what you saw in session view to i think around 95 tracks of audio so lots more textures here adding toms adding more percussion you know the synths i will have added like a ton of synths really everything in red here will have been added in the production arrangement stage bringing these bases so fleshing out all
of those parts from the original writing session just in session view going in on the transitions and creating a big beautiful arrangement a production like this can vary in time some productions like this can you know you guys saw me watch me make a remix a video from a couple of months ago i did in 12 hours but actually this song i did start in march 2020 and finish in march 2021 so i wasn't working on it for the whole time but i kept sort of going away from it and coming back to it and
this ended up being quite a big production so there we go guys that is how i use ableton live as a songwriting tool i truly couldn't write the music i write without ableton i sound like a proper nerd but i truly truly mean it without session view if this is taken away from me i don't feel i've got that ability to experiment so freely and to create so if you guys want to get your hands on the stems the ableton set or even a little sample pack from this song then head over to my patreon
right now if you want to learn ableton then check out my course otherwise i would love it if you go ahead and listen to you can pretend it's out on all streaming platforms now and i've also got a little music video dropping for it in a couple of weeks too so stay tuned for that otherwise thank you so much for watching i'll see you guys next time [Music] you
