How To Unlock Ableton Live's Powerful Distortion Plugins With Waveshaping

Distortion is one of the most useful effects in your toolbox, for everything from subtle warming of a signal to extreme overdrive. In this short 4 minute video from the full course Ableton Live FastTrack 301: Distortion, Ableton expert Timo Preece shows you the secrets of waveshaping in Live's native distortion effects.

Using waveshaping as an algorithm for distortion instead of a more conventional analog source can produce much harsher and more extreme distortion effects, and Timo shows you some practical examples of how you can use this to your advantage. You'll also see how to map modulation sources like LFOs to distortion parameters to make things even more exciting!

Ableton Live FastTrack 301: Distortion

Distortion and saturation are naturally occurring musical phenomena. That’s why DAW makers include plugins to electronically recreate them. We asked performer/producer Timo Preece to develop this FastTrack™ course to explain how, why and when to apply these highly specialized audio FX.

In this collection of in-action tutorials you learn all about Harmonics, Soft Clipping and Waveshaping. You see how to Warp, Stretch, Sizzle, and Excite your tracks. Timo then explores Multiband distortion, Erosion and Vinyl.

Completing this course will thoroughly “saturate” your brain with new ideas, and forever “distort” the way you produce your tracks… So get ready to explore the world of saturation and distortion with Ableton Certified trainer, Timo Preece.