Advanced Ableton Live: Bass Music

This intensive 4-week course gives students the tools to create hard-hitting, festival-ready bass music using Ableton Live. Whether you’re into dubstep, riddim, trap, or bass house, you’ll learn how to sculpt aggressive bass patches, program modern drums, build explosive drops, and polish tracks for live and streaming contexts. The class focuses on genre-specific production techniques, mixing for loudness and clarity, and translating creative energy into structured, high-impact tracks.

Topics

• Subgenres and History
  • Learn dubstep, riddim, trap, and bass house traits including BPM norms and rhythmic feel.
• Drum Design for Bass Genres
  • Layer kicks and snares, shape transients, and program hi-hats, fills, and groove.
• Ableton Drum Tools and Bussing
  • Use Drum Buss, saturation, compression, and multiband workflows for punch.
• Bass Sound Design
  • Build wub, tearout, reese, and growl patches using Serum, Wavetable, and Operator.
• Sub Bass and Low-End Management
  • Tune subs, carve space, and manage distortion and compression for clarity.
• Resampling and Processing
  • Bounce to audio, create edits, and add movement with filters, bitcrushing, and frequency shifts.
• Drops, Groove, and Call-and-Response
  • Write 16-bar drops with triplet or straight grids and lock kick to bass.
• Build-Ups, Transitions, and Arrangement
  • Use risers, automation, and silence to drive energy and structure full tracks.
• Creative Mixing and Loudness
  • Apply EQ, sidechain, width, and limiting to achieve clean, loud, genre-ready results.
• Export and Presentation
  • Prepare a final track for class playback and release contexts.

Goals

• Produce and present one complete original bass music track with intro, build, drop, and second section.
• Design three custom bass patches and resample at least one into three usable variants.
• Program a 16-bar drum loop that uses layered kick and snare plus dynamic hat patterns and fills.
• Achieve pre-master headroom of at least −6 dBFS and a final master ceiling of ≤ −1 dBTP.
• Balance kick and sub so the sub fundamental remains stable and mono compatible below 120 Hz with correlation ≥ 0.0.
• Meet a target loudness suitable for streaming or club contexts while preserving transient impact and width.
• Document creative choices with references and export a delivery-ready project folder with proper naming.