How to use Ableton’s Looper as a songwriting tool to get ideas fast

Ableton’s Looper instrument is a great tool that is largely overlooked for most songwriters (unless of course your songwriting style revolves around live looping). I myself have only recently been taking an interest in it as a creative tool.

Initially I was curious how I could use live looping as a way to create happy accidents in my song projects. I’m always interested in letting your brain do it’s thing without getting in the way & I figured a great way to do this would be to set up the looper & just start recording things from inside & outside the computer.

This lead to me building some great & unexpected ideas that I could springboard into the beginnings of a song or add some finishing touches. I plan to use this tool quite a bit more to add some random flavor to my work.

Here is a video I posted showing one way I use Ableton’s Looper instrument:

 

 

What I did was to use Ableton’s internal instruments with Looper to create interesting soundscapes. So the notes stay in key while fumbling around, I used Ableton’s Scale effect. I create a group instrument so I could quickly choose from several sounds & I added a simple delay to make things flow with the tempo a bit. I also adjusted the volumes of each beforehand, so the loop sounded more balanced, but you can feel free to do whatever you like.

What’s great is that it doesn’t require any particular skill to do. Simply let your mind go & see what happens. I guarantee what you come up with won’t sound quite like anyone else.

Happy Music Making,

Jason

With that said, if you are benefiting from these posts, you will absolutely love my 2 bestselling books:

The Mental Game of Music Production
The Process for Electronic Music Producers

You can also Check out the: Ableton Courses & Instruments

If you are looking for personal guidance with your music production or Ableton, you can set up a free chat with me to go over exactly what your best next steps are to create the best music of your life. If it seems like a good fit, we can move forward from there.  https://musicsoftwaretraining.com/private-coaching

Happy music making!
Jason