I spent the day happily fooling around with Ableton. The original goal du jour was to start roughing out a framework for a looping saxophone cadenza that will segue between the Aquarius and Pisces melodies for our Zodiac project. Nevertheless, I got a little sidetracked and ended up just experimenting a little bit, getting a feel for some of the possibilities within Live. Anyway, here’s what I came up with:

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Geek details: the toy bells and saxophone material came from the Pisces melody; I made up the bassline and drum tracks myself. Not sure if any of the ideas will make it into the final cadenza. I’m simply overwhelmed with the built-in possibilities of the software. I dressed up the saxophone lines with a little compression, and applied a couple beat repeat effects to the bell lines and drum tracks. I recorded the track you hear from the Session view. Gotta start somewhere!