Editing and saving found sound audio files using Ableton
I've made a few home recordings of percussive sounds with a Zoom recorder, which I'd like to use in my projects. However, I'm not sure of the best way to prepare, edit and save the audio files so that I can best use them as samples in Ableton. After looking at a few tutorials online I get the impression I should be editing the files in the arrangement view and then exporting them as audio to a folder on my PC and then importing them into my project from there. Is that about right? Should I be doing anything to the audio files such as normalising them - and can that be done in Ableton?
Hey Peter! If you go to the BONUS TUTORIALS option in the menu and then choose the Sound Design tab. On the 3rd page, you'll see a whole sample design series. It's a pretty fun set of tutorials I made during lockdown showing just that; how to make your own samples from home recordings, in this case of the sound of washing dishes! Anyway, it runs through the editing, processing, exporting etc. Hope this helps!
Hi Peter, from what you’ve said, it sounds like the easiest (maybe not the best!) approach would be to import your recordings onto a track in arrangement view and it into separate clips for each sound, then each clip can be dragged into a simpler, sampler or drum rack and edited there. Or just copy the clip onto a new audio track and edit there. All depends on what sort of editing the clip needs first on what the best option might be, simpler/sampler can do all the basics like start/end, loop points, fades etc but heavy audio processing is probably best done on a clip in its own track - you can then consolidate the clip and put it in a simpler later on.
Many thanks, Rob. Those tutorials look like they'll cover exactly what I was looking for. I have only watched the first one so far but will work my way through the rest of them shortly. Thanks, Simon, for your suggestions too. I'll definitely experiment with simpler and sampler as you suggest.
