In this Ableton Live tutorial, Dubspot LA Instructor James Bernard shows you how to use Live’s Audio Effect Rack with a combination of reverb, delay, compression, and filtering to generate a washout, a spatial effect commonly used during breakdowns and buildups of dance tracks.
One of the most common questions I am asked, is how to transition from one section of an electronic song to another section (usually during a breakdown) while keeping the energy level high. Though inserting some sweep effects, riser sound or clever sample manipulation can aid in building energy, it can be tricky to take a track that is moving at a very high energy pace and switch gears without losing the momentum.
A common technique which is used quite a lot in techno, electro house, dubstep and many other genres is to use a spatial effect that I like to call a “washout”. Basically, this effect uses a combination of reverb, delay, compression and filtering (using an EQ) to create a sort of audio “smear” across the mid to high frequency range of the song. Ideally this type of effect is one that you could control in real-time, by turning a knob on a controller.
In this video, I show you how to use the Audio Effect rack device in Ableton Live to chain together multiple effects and create a washout type effect, and how you can use macros to add the effect to a song in real-time. – James Bernard
