Already one of the best free educational resources on the internet for music producers, Ableton’s Learning Synths platform has just got even better.
Launched in 2019 as a partner for Ableton’s free web-based guide to making music, Learning Synths is an interactive tool built around a browser-based 2-oscillator synth. It starts with the basics, discussing the likes of amplitude and pitch, before explaining concepts and features such as envelopes, modulation, oscillators, LFOs and filters.
There’s also a handy Playground section that dispenses with the ‘Learning’ and just provides access to the synth.
Two of the best of the new features make it possible to take your Learning Synths creations into your DAW so that they can be used in a music-making context. The Export option turns your work into a Max for Live synth contained in a Live Set - this will work in both Live 11 Lite and Live 9.7-10 Suite - and you can now capture up to 60 seconds of audio from the synth (recordings are instantly downloaded as WAV files).
There’s also a new, configurable XY pad for the Playground, so you can adjust multiple parameters at once, and you’ll now find ‘Open in Playground’ buttons on the lesson pages. Click one of these and you can edit the sound you’re currently tinkering with in more detail.
Finally, there’s now Dark mode support (based on your system preferences) and Turkish, Finnish and Portuguese language versions have been added.
You can start getting schooled now on the Ableton Learning Synths website.
