The best stutter effect in music production: Ableton Auto Pan
Hello producing friends, Today, I'm going to let you in on one of the well-known secrets amongst Ableton Live producers. The use of Auto Pan can take your sounds more interesting. Have you ever had a loop you liked that needed a little variation. It takes 20 seconds once you're familiar with what these parameters. First, I'll go over what all these parameters mean, even though you've probably got a pretty good idea, The Graph: The first and most noticeable thing you see when you look at this. Left speaker is represented by the orange and the right is represented by the yellow. This represents how wide and what shape the pan automation is taking place. Amount: This adjusts the width of the pan. The at 10% it's barely panned. At 100%, it's completely in the left/right speakers. Rate: The pan is like a waveform. The rate in Hz, moves at speeds like sound does. The lower the hz, the longer the effect takes. This can be switched to tempo sync by highlighting the note under the knob. You get to have
Phase: This essentially establishes where the effect begins in the waveform. at 180 it starts in the center and pans equally left and right at the set rate. Adjusting the phase (the most important parameter for the effect I will discuss), will move the waveforms closer together. This can be moved to 360 where it becomes a gate effect, rather than a pan. You can also change the way it phases by highlight the rotation looking button under it rather than the elipsis. The rotation version just chages the starting point of the waveform. Shape: This parameter does what it says. Changes the shape of the waveform.The higher it goes the more immediate the drop in the waveform becomes. For instance, the sine shape will be a square at 100%, (Sharpest pan/gate) The buttons underneath it change the shape of the waveform. You can get sharper declines with saw waves/ triangles or you could get kinda random with the squiggly one. Adjust to taste.
Normal/Inverse: Just changes the position or right an left. The idea I'm sharing is one that involves adjusting an elipsis phase to around 360 and increasing the shape percentage to get a gate effect that is tempo synced to taste. You can leave the phase a little lower than 360 so it is a little more glitchy. That's about it. You can really dial in and get some crazy volume stutters (especially with the random waveform button). Now add automation to turn the device on only when you want it to stutter. (You can automate the rate too and phase and shape even and get really crazy with it. If you already knew this, here are more ideas for how to take this idea to another level!
Create an Audio effect rack with multiple chains. Put different frequencies of the effect through (slight or drastic)different pans/gates with different rates, etc, and turn them on and off according to taste. If you have a bass synth with a lot of mid, you could use your EQ8 to isolate the frequencies on their own chain on the effect rack and can stutter/pan them in any way you see fit. I personally always draw in the automation on (I keep it off til I want it). Map whatever you want to change over the course of the effects duration to macro knobs (especially if using a controller) and have at it! Alright, hope this helps you do something cool with your music production. More tuts as I find time for them!! Stay Creative!! https://soundcloud.com/blaze-loominus <---check me out!
