Fades in Ableton Live: How to Introduce Sounds Smoothly (Beginner Tutorial)
How is it going, producer? Thales here for a quick beginner tutorial on how to use Fades in Ableton Live. Like this:
You can use fade ins to introduce sounds smoothly, whether it's a single audio sample, a loop, and you do it by starting out in complete silence then slowly increasing the volume. And you can do the opposite with fade outs to smoothly get rid of elements in your song.
And it's a pretty simple concept, but sometimes people create fades, then they can't find them anymore, they can't view it. It can become a bit of a problem, but I'll show you where to find them.
By the way, you can take that concept and apply it to MIDI too, like if you're using a VST instrument instead of an audio sample, then you can use gain automation, and we'll talk about that later.
Are you ready? Alright, come in.
This is how you create fades in Ableton Live. Just pick your audio sample or loop, and drag these little squares on the corners of you clip – to the right if it's a fade in you want to create, and to the left if it's a fade out – and the more you drag it, the smoother it gets.
Listen to how this section sounds without the fades:
Now with the fades:
By the way, it's possible to design the shape of the slope by dragging this square in the middle of the fade line, and that will change the dynamics of how the fade behaves. You can make it fade faster or slower.
And you can tell visually by looking at the weveform that gets smaller when you apply more fade.
I use fades all the time to make transitions between sections, for example, from verse to pre-chorus, if they have different instruments that are entering the arrangement or leaving it.
If you're going to introduce, let's say a guitar sound in the pre-chorus, bring it during the last few bars of the verse with a nice slow fade, and that will help build anticipation towards the pre-chorus, so that the transition won't be too shocking – if that's your goal.
That's what I did in my latest song, I started with rain sounds, but I wanted them to leave the arrangement as soon as the song actually started, but in a soft way, instead of just cutting the audio suddenly. Check it out:
You can also make crossfades between two different audio clips, which can result in some interesting textures. I picked these two random drum loops to show you an example. Here we go:
Now if all of a sudden you can't edit your fades anymore, they're gone, can't find those tiny squares, it's because you are on automation mode, which means you can draw automation lines on your effects and plugin's parameters, like this one.
When you're in automation mode, you cannot edit your faders. To do that, you have to turn it off by clicking this button on the top right.
But if you want to create fades on MIDI tracks, instead of audio tracks, the regular fades won't be available. And there's different ways of achieving the same result, but my favorite one is to insert a Utility effect, then design a gain automation curve that looks like a fade. And it does a similar job.
You can actually select a couple bars, then right click, and pick one of these shape presets. Let's hear that:
That's how you deal with fades in Ableton Live. There are many possibilities here. So much cool stuff you can come up with now that you know how to do it.
But before you go get creative, make sure to subscribe to the channel and like this video if you learned something because that's a big help for me.
Sound good? Thanks for hanging out, I'm Thales and we'll talk soon.
#ThalesMatos #MusicProducer #PopMusic
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