Composer & author Dennis DeSantis (Making Music Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers) shared this in depth tutorial on using the new tools in Ableton Live 12 to chop and join notes to create complex rhythms.

Video Summary:

“This video introduces Live 12’s new tools for chopping and joining MIDI notes.

You can use this to create very complex rhythms, which I demo by transcribing a few bars of Brian Fernyhough’s ‘Bone Alphabet’ for solo percussion.”

Topics Covered

0:00 Intro
1:49 How to chop notes
2:47 How to join notes
4:17 Bone Alphabet – the 1st bar
11:08 Bone Alphabet – the 2nd bar
14:37 Nested tuplets
16:20 Bone Alphabet – the 3rd bar
24:01 Wrapping up