KILLER BEATS

Ever wonder if that last drum or music loop you used in your last piece of production was legal? If you are throwing Acid loops into your projects and calling them your own, chances you are violating some copyright law or breeching a licensing contract/agreement of some kind. Don’t worry, we’re not here to rat you out, but we are going to do our best to keep you out of trouble and save you some time and your company some money. Using a little instrument in Ableton Live called Impulse may be the creative, simple and legal solution to beat processing you never knew you had.
Last April in this blog http://brownbagazine.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-05-08T11%3A44%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7) we showed you how to get your free copy of Ableton Live Lite. Now it’s time to get your money’s worth. With each free copy of Live comes the previously mentioned instrument, Impulse. It’s essentially a drum trigger that you populate with sounds/audio of your choosing. The Impulse module can be found in the browser window on the left side of the Ableton interface under “Live Devices”. Click on Impulse and right away you’ll see 8 empty boxes or slots surrounded by various parameters such as Decay, Volume, etc. All you do is drag a sample or audio file into any of the 8 empty boxes, adjust some volumes as needed and you’re pretty much ready to go. Record your midi info with a midi instrument or draw it yourself with the cursor. When you have your drum “kit” set up the way you like it, simply rename it and drag the module back into the browser under Impulse and all of your settings and sounds are saved for next time. If your company’s purse strings are so tight that they can’t even squeeze a Trigger Finger or a Korg Nano into the budget, don’t fret. Ableton Live lets you map almost anything that triggers midi, including the computer keyboard that’s under your fingers. Loops, software synths and midi triggers cost money. Everything mentioned in this article is free. Hashing out beats with Impulse is almost as fast as dropping an acid loop into your session once you have it set up. So we’d say your just about out of excuses.