No matter how you use it in your mix, automation adds life to a song. As I covered in my overview of mixing automation, this is the process of actively changing some aspect of a track while the song plays. Let’s talk how to automate in my favorite DAW of choice, Ableton Live, with a quick guide including some examples of how you might practically use it in your mix.
How to Automate in Ableton
First, make sure you’re looking at your mix from the Arrangement/timeline view.
Automation mode can be engaged by pressing “A” as a shortcut or ticking the button in the top right with two circles at opposite ends of a line (signifying breakpoints).
When this is lit up orange, automation mode is engaged. At this point, any parameter which is able to be automated will be reflected as an adjustable bar in the arrangement view when you click it.
For instance, click the fader volume for a track, and the bar in the arrangement view will update to reflect the fader volume.
If you double click the bar at any point, you’ll create a breakpoint. You need two breakpoints to actually create a change, so do this again to the left or right of that initial breakpoint and you can drag that second breakpoint up or down to create a raised or lowered volume to the left or right of that initial breakpoint.
The time between the two breakpoints will reflection the active change period where the volume (in this case) is being boosted or cut before settling on its new higher or lower volume before or after that initial breakpoint.
Here’s a zoomed in image taken from Ableton’s manual showing three breakpoints:
The breakpoint in the middle is being used to pull the volume of the track all the way down for a brief instance.
Volume automation has many practical applications in your mixes.
Like I mentioned in my overview of vocal automation, you can automate the level of your lead vocal to keep it in front of the mix and on top of the instrumental from beat to beat:
This also injects a little life into your vocal/track when you introduce a little live vocal adjustment into it.
For what it’s worth and as you can see from the image, I recommend using a “Utility” plugin and automating the volume by way of its gain dial.
I prefer this because it keeps your fader free of automation, allowing you to make quick universal changes to a track’s volume by way of that fader versus adjusting the automation bar.
Putting a Utility plugin at the very end of your processing chain (after any EQ, compression, etc.) for a track is essentially the same thing as adjusting its fader. The only difference is it’s the gain dial on the utility plugin versus the fader.
To automate volume this way, insert the utility plugin at the end of the processing chain, make sure automation mode is engaged, then click on the gain dial.
This will update the line so that any adjustments you make will now affect the gain position/volume on that utility plugin instead of the fader. If you wanted to adjust the fader automation again, you’d just click on the fader again.
Speaking of vocals, you can use volume automation on a vocal to clean up breaths (see my guide on how to fix vocal breaths), fading in before each vocal line to attenuate the impact of each breath.
I also occasionally like to use volume automation to mimic the behavior of a volume pedal on guitar, doing quick fade ins from silence to full volume at the start of each chord:
A very classic example of this effect is heard on George Harrison’s guitar on The Beatles’ “Yes It Is”:
Note that when you pull a second breakpoint up or down, it creates a straight diagonal line between both points. A straight line signifies that the change is happening at a uniform rate.
While this can work for a lot of changes, a curved change can sound more natural.
To create a curve between the breakpoints, hover near that line, then hold “Alt” and click and drag that line up or down:
You can see how this would sound more natural than a robotic, uniformly changing flat line. The volume (in this case) begins coming down slowly for the first half before more aggressively dropping off on the back half. This can be adjusted by moving that line around in different directions while holding Alt.
You can also change the shape of the line between breakpoints by right clicking on the line and selecting from a bank of shapes:
… to create something like this:
You can also press “B” to engage draw mode in Ableton Live, changing the cursor to a pencil. This allows you to click and drag on the timeline to snap whatever automation is currently being affected to whatever degree you click:
If you click near the top of the space in that track, it’ll near max out the volume for that increment of time (which you can adjust via the “View” at the top). Click at the bottom and it’ll snap the automation down and silence the track for that increment of time (a bar, quarter bar, etc.)
Record Your Automation
You can also tick the record button without arming any individual tracks to automate a parameter LIVE.
This can be a streamlined way to adjust the volume in realtime as you see fit – simply start recording and move the gain dial (for example) to actively change the volume in realtime and have those changes saved, effectively “recording” your automation.
When you play back the track, the volume will actively adjust like you just did when it was recording.
Speaking of which, you can also take a relatively complicated collection of automation points which you might have created via that live recorded automation and smooth it out with Live’s “Simplify Envelope” feature:
Simply left click and hold to drag and highlight a span of automation, then right click that span and select “Simplify Envelope” to greatly reduce the number of breakpoints while maintaining the same shape. This makes further adjustments to any automation changes much easier.
Other Uses of Automation
That’s the simple process of the many ways of how to automate in Ableton.
While volume automation is the most obvious and common application of automation, you can replicate the same process to adjust seemingly limitless other parameters.
Panning
Adjusting the panning of a guitar actively around the stereo field from lick to lick to keep the listener on their toes or simply moving an instrument a full 180% across the stereo field can create an interesting aesthetic effect.
To automate a track’s panning position, simply click on the panning dial for a track while automation mode is active and the line now controls that parameter. Moving the line above the center moves it one direction and going down moves it in the other.
Width
I’ve preached this before, but automating the width of your entire mix is a great way to make certain moments feel more impactful for the listener.
As I covered in my overview on how to get more mix width, you can drop a utility plugin on the master bus, then click on its “Width” parameter.
Now we can pull down the entire mix’s width for the verse, then add breakpoints shortly before to when the chorus hits so that it’s back to 100%.
This mix feels held back for those verses, making the chorus feel that much bigger and resulting in a bigger payoff for the listener.
You can do a similar thing by holding back the panning on individual instruments and tracks, but this is an easy, macro-level way to make a chorus and mix bigger.
EQ Band/Filter
You can automate the gain or simply the position of an EQ filter. Create a low pass filter around 200Hz or so. Click on the the “Freq” for that band in EQ Eight (or whatever EQ plugin you’re using) and now the automation line is affecting the position of that cutoff filter.
Raise it up from 200Hz to 20,000Hz over the 20 second course of an intro to a song to start off with just the low end pumping and make that mix feel like it’s coming out of the bottom of the pool or you’re heading into a club to hear it live after hearing it through the venue’s wall.
Compression Ratio
You can automate the ratio on a compressor to actively change the feel of a track from dynamics to pumping energy and back again. Automation is like so many things in mixing – there are no limits to what you can do if you use your imagination.
Reverb
You can automate the Wet/Dry percentage or the delay time of reverb on a track actively up or down to make a track feel like it’s getting farther away or closer up to the listener.
A lot of mixes automate the impact of reverb up for an outro (especially combined with a volume fade out, which in itself is a form of automation).
Modulation
A lot of effects have built in automation (… automatic automation?) by way of how they operate.
Modulation based effects like chorus use a low frequency oscillator (LFO) to actively automate one or more parameters of a track’s audio in realtime.
I talked more about this in my overview of the different type of audio effects, but there are plenty of modulation based effects like chorus, phasers, tremelo, flangers, etc. which will automate pitch, volume, timing, etc. by way of introducing that LFO.
No manual automation is necessary with these effects, but it’s worth including and mentioning as an alternative to manual automation for adding in some life to the various tracks in your mix.
One last note on how to use automation in Ableton – if you manage to find a parameter which CAN’T be actively automated as is the case with certain plugins, particularly older ones, you might try using Ableton Live’s “Envelope Follower” under the modulator’s subfolder in its plugins:
Drop this plugin on the track you want to adjust, click on the “Map” button, then click on whatever parameter you want to automate/modulate. The “Min” and “Max” parameters (the two numbers to the right of “Map”) as well as the controls at the bottom, particularly “Gain”, can now likely be adjusted to actively affect that parameter you couldn’t automate in in realtime.
And yes, you can automate all of these parameters as usual via the timeline.
Now start thinking outside the box, and happy automating in Ableton!
