From the course: Ableton Live 11 Essential Training: The Basics

Fades - Ableton Live Tutorial

From the course: Ableton Live 11 Essential Training: The Basics

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Fades

“

- [Instructor] Editing audio often results in unwanted pops and clicks at the edit point. Let's take a look at how you can use fades to mask those problems. So I've got exercise four from chapter six open, and I'll start by mentioning that a fade is a utility that we can place at the beginning or end of a clip to cover a poor edit. Because oftentimes if there's a poor edit, the audio will actually be on when the cursor hits the beginning of the clip. And as a result, you'll get a pop or a click. So we can use fades to fix those issues. And let me show you how we can do that. So first of all, let's actually take a look at preferences. So, remember the key command for that is command comma if you're on a Mac or control comma if you're on a PC. And let's go to the record warp launch tab. And I'll just point out, we have a preference here for create fades on clip edges, which I have turned on. Now, when that's enabled, you're automatically going to get four millisecond fades at the beginning and ends of clips. So I leave this on all the time. All right, let's hit escape to get out of there. And let's take a look at how this plays out in session versus arrange view. So I'm just going to click select a clip here on the piano track. This is an audio track. And I'll point out that down here in our kind of audio overview, there isn't any mechanism for us to be able to adjust those default fades. There's no handles to allow us to do that. The only thing that we do have is on the sample tab itself, you'll see that there's a button that we can click to turn on those same four millisecond fades. Now let's tab over to arrangement view, and let's take a look on the organ track, which is also an audio track. Now, if I move my cursor to the end of a clip here, you'll notice that we just get the trim cursor. And if I do it over on the beginning, I get the same thing, But let's increase the track height. Now, when I do the same thing up in the title area of the clip, I still get the trim cursor, but if I move it down into the lower area, notice that we start to get these little boxes to appear. So let me put my cursor here near the beginning of that clip. And I'm going to zoom in with my plus key. See a little more in detail. And note that you can grab that square or handle there, and you can select it by clicking on it. And you can pull that out to extend the length of those four millisecond fades. You can also grab the handle that's in between the top and bottom handle, and you can drag that up or down to change the curvature if you want. Now, if you want to go back to the original default fade, you can just click select that top handle and hit your delete key, and we're back to the default fade. Now, another way that we can create a custom fade is to make a selection across the clip boundary. So let me disable the grid for this. So I'm going to go command four. I'm on a Mac. So go control four if you're on a PC. And I'm going to click before the clip and I'm going to drag into the clip. And then I'm going to create the fade by command, which is option command F on a Mac or control alt F if you're on a PC. And now you can see, we get that same elongated or custom fade, and it starts at the beginning of the clip and it goes to the end of our selection. Now we can still grab the handle and adjust that clip later on if we want. Now I'm going to hit my minus key to go back out. And let's go to the end of the clip. And I just want to show you quickly that we can do fade outs on the end the same way. So I can grab the handle and I can elongate the clip or make it longer, if I want. I can change the curvature. Or I can select across the end of the clip and use the same command, option command F. And I can add that custom fade. If I want to go back to the default, I just select the upper handle and hit my delete key. And we're back to the four millisecond fade. Now let's zoom back out one more time. And I want to click here before the start of the guitar chorus clip. And let's zoom in there. Now, as I move my cursor from this clip to this one, notice that we see the handle change from being on the left edge of the clip that I'm in, to the right edge of this other clip. And if I grab one of those handles and start to drag it out, you'll notice that I've got both a fade out and a fade in. This is what's called a crossfade. So if I want to make a longer crossfade, I'll need to grab the, both those handles, and then drag them to re-center that. Or you can use an asymmetrical crossfade if you want. If you want to make a custom crossfade again, you can just select across that clip boundary and use the same command, option command F if you're on a Mac, or control alt F if you're on a PC. And now we have that clip and we can grab either one of those handles to adjust it. So I don't often think about fades in Ableton because I choose to leave the automatic create fades preference enabled, but it's important to pay attention to your work. And if you hear a pop or a click, you can adjust the default fades to fix the problem.

Contents