Form Audioworks x Loopmasters
We're delighted to announce a new chapter for Form Audioworks through our partnership with Loopmasters and Loopcloud. This collaboration opens up our innovative sound packs to a broader range of music creators and enthusiasts. All 3 of our current sample packs ("Cycles Melodic Techno, "Aether Downtempo Electronica" and "Lofi Fusion") are now featured on these renowned platforms, offering a spectrum of sounds to inspire and elevate music projects.
In addition to our current offerings, we're on the cusp of releasing a new pack next month. This upcoming release embodies our philosophy of exploring new soundscapes and creative sound design, and we can't wait to show you soon.
Our future releases will continue this trajectory of innovation and quality, all available on Loopmasters and Loopcloud. We're excited to see the new creative heights our sounds will help you achieve and we're grateful for your continued support as we embark on this exciting journey together!
5 free online tools to make beats
In this article, you can find 5 free online tools to make beats and music with. The best thing about them is that they work without any registration or login details, so whenever you feel like jamming out you can simply hit the link and start making. These websites are a great way to get hooked on finger drumming and if you are new to music making as a whole, they serve as an amazing and fun experience to get into more advanced music production.
Patatap
Patatap is a collaborative audio visual project by Japan based music duo Lullatones and Jono Brandel. Together they created a wonderful online music maker that’s not only great sounding but also very nice to look at. Sounds and samples are spread across the entire keyboard from A-Z. By pressing the spacebar you can load a new sound collection that also comes with a new set of colorful visuals. Unfortunately, it does not feature any loop or tempo functions but it’s an amazingly fun tool to practice your finger drumming skills.
HTML5 Drum Machine
https://html5drummachine.com/virtual-drum-machine/
‘HTML5 Drum Machine’ is a free online instrument inspired by the iconic Roland TR-808 rhythm composer. 5 different drum kits in the genres of hip hop, electro, house, techno and acoustic are available with integrated tempo, volume and tune controls - allowing you to make analogue type beats in a very fun and intuitive way. What’s super handy is that you can switch to a new drum kit but keep your programmed drum pattern going. Additionally if you want to switch to your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) you can simply export your drum loop as a wav file and continue working in Ableton, FL Studio, Logic and co. We really love how analogue sounding the samples are and spent a decent amount jamming along our newly created rhythms.
Typedrummer
Typedrummer is one of the most fun online music websites out there. There isn’t too much to explain or say other than to try out different words and phrases to see how they sound. You can switch between two sound kits - the default one is drum focused and the second one introduces more melodic elements for you to play around with.
Words for you to try out:
type, cabbage, endurance, cosmos, okay wow
Sampulator
Sampulator is a clean looking online sequencer that’s perfect for making quick beats. 45 samples in total are playable across your entire keyboard with integrated metronome and tempo control. Hit shift to record your jam and don’t worry about the exact placement, you can easily edit your hits by dragging them to the left or the right in the timeline below.
Chrome Music Lab
https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Experiments
Chrome Music Lab is a playful website that inspires people and especially kids to learn and make music in a more accessible way with hands-on experiments. The project explores music and its connections to science, math and art. Not only are the simplified technical tools on the page wholesome but also very educational. After exploring all the individual tools like the Spectrogram, Harmonics or the Oscillator you can visit the song maker to put your newly gained knowledge to the test.
When you are still lusting for more, don't worry we got you covered! Our debut sample pack 'Lofi Fusion' contains lots of full drum loops that you can easily drag and drop into your projects to get quick ideas going.
Useful Ableton Shortcuts
Ableton Live is a wonderful DAW. From its great sounding built-in instruments and effects, to excellent hardware integration, there’s a reason why it’s one of the most popular DAWs in the world.
Intuitive workflow is at the heart of Ableton Live, but it’s even better with handy shortcuts. We’re sure you already know some of these, but it’s always good to recap. Plus there’s a handy cheat sheet at the bottom of the page that you can save!
Read on for 17 useful Ableton Live shortcuts.
cmd (ctrl) + i – Insert Silence
This one is a great time saver. Selecting a bunch of clips in arranger view and moving them to create space can be a hassle. Just put your cursor where you want this insert a blank space and hit the shortcut.
cmd (ctrl) + Shift + D – Duplicate Time
Similar to Insert Silence, but instead of creating an empty area, you can duplicate a section of your arrangement into a new empty area and ‘push’ the existing arrangement out of the way, rather than overwriting it.
cmd (ctrl) + Shift + V – Paste Time
Copied a clip and want to insert it before something else without manually moving your arrangement? No worries, just select where you want to paste and hit the shortcut to paste and automatically make space.
cmd (ctrl) + SHIFT + Delete – Delete Time
Hit this shortcut to delete extra space in your arrangement.
cmd (ctrl) + L – Loop selection
Highlight a section in your arrangement and hit the shortcut to loop only that specific region.
cmd (ctrl) + T – Insert Audio Track
Inserts a new audio track (with your default settings).
cmd (ctrl) + Shift + T – Insert Midi Track
Same as above, but a MIDI track instead.
cmd (ctrl) + Shift + M – Insert Midi Clip
Select an area of a track in your arrangement and hit the shortcut to create a blank MIDI clip.
cmd (ctrl) + Shift + R – Render Selection
Select an area of your track and run the shortcut to render that section only. Great for creating stems or bouncing to audio.
cmd (ctrl) + J – Consolidate
Warped an audio track or cut one up and want to make those changes permanent for dropping in a sampler? Easy, just select the audio clip(s) and hit the shortcut to consolidate to a new audio file. Take note, this overwrites what is already there.
cmd (ctrl) + E – Split Clip
Works for both audio and MIDI. Just place your marker where you want to split and hit the shortcut to split the clip.
cmd (ctrl) + Shift + U – Quantize
When inside a MIDI clip, hit this shortcut to bring up the quantize menu.
cmd (ctrl) + Option (alt) + F – Create Crossfade
Use this to create a crossfade between two audio clips. Just select the area where you want to apply the crossfade and hit the shortcut.
R – Reverse selected audio clip
Reverses the audio clip.
H – Optimize Height
Optimizes the height of the project.
W – Optimize Width
Optimizes the width of the project.
Z – Zoom
Zoom to Arrangement Time Selection.
For a full list of Ableton Live shortcuts, head over to the Ableton website and check out the manual.
Ableton Live Shortcut Cheat Sheet
Here's a handy jpg to save for quick use! Just right click the image and hit save as.
