Coming up with good melodies is difficult. Sometimes you just need a little bit of extra help spark creativity
Whether you’re a seasoned songwriter, or just getting started, having a little help coming up with melodies is always valuable. Using Live’s MIDI Effects in creative ways has always been a useful tool for generating interesting melodic patterns, but it’s been supercharged by new features in Live 12, like Scale Awareness.
Let’s explore how to chain several MIDI effects together to create a 1-note riff generator that will create infinite melodies by playing a single note on your keyboard. We’ll leave it up to you to choose a sound, but this technique works well with sounds that have short envelopes; things like plucks and stabs.
Once you’ve followed the steps, play a note to hear your generated melody. We’ll set up some defaults in the MIDI devices, but experiment with different values for the controls to see where you end up.
As with any random process, record your results to another track using Live’s Resampling feature to fix things in place.
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Tom Glendinning is a session musician, sound engineer, sound designer, music producer, composer, and VJ. As an Ableton-certified trainer he helps musicians be creative with Ableton Live. More at elphnt.io/about/
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