Made in Ableton Live: Zan Lyons on creating audiovisual pieces, cinematic sound design and more

Learn how Zan Lyons prepares immersive audiovisual experiences in Live, plus the processing that gives his sounds a sense of space, depth and movement.
Listen to the finished track here: • Zan Lyons Terminal
00:00 Intro
00:29 “Terminal”
02:32 Setup
04:19 Ebosuite
05:03 Creating a drone
10:01 Lasers
16:17 Exporting
17:40 Automation
19:53 Adding sounds in Arrangement View
25:35 Viola
27:08 Outro
#abletonlive #madeinlive #live11

[@strudelkopf]

I love the notion of keeping the focus on art rather than tools, that's so important, now more than ever

[@Neurotypique]

Incredible to see the A/V crowd represented, the piece presented is ridiculously good! An episode on real time audiovisual performance would be amazing

[@nyingjea6837]

Thank you Zan for this BRILLIANT tutorial!! Thank you Ableton for creating an inspiring DAW to create masterpieces like this!!!! This is stunning! Such great inspiration!!! 💜

[@InclusiveMusic]

A brilliant video Zan - very inspiring and I love your comment that "Art is a conduit for the divine and if you treat it like that, the journey will be endless".

[@evanseesred]

Very clear, thank you. Would love to see more content from composers/producing making music for film and video. Thanks Ableton!

[@modu2255]

OMG I literally just clicked on the video because I liked his haircut and now i'm absolutely blown away WHAAT? Amazing work! I'm definitely gonna start experimenting with Ebosuite after watching this :O would love to know if this also works in realtime for live performing. The "Terminal" Projekt looks sick would like to watch the whole thing

[@AdrianDuyzer]

WOW! This is a terrific and absolutely inspiring video. The work presented - Terminal - is phenomenal! Thank you for putting this together, it is very much appreciated.

[@simongallifet325]

Cool tutorial, thanks! The problem is that Ableton doesn't have any frame timeline with a magnetic grid. It is so painful to put sounds in sync with the video in the arrangement view.

[@mattwooddc]

Sounds like a job for Ableton 13

[@shane5003]

Well, you could sync Ableton via midi time code or possibly rewire with a program that can do that. I don’t really think that that’s an issue though because even if you say plus or -30 ms from the visual queue, your brains going to see those things as correlated, so just turn off the Ableton grid and align the sounds where you like, if you’re trying to make stuff beat oriented on the grid with the music I like the beat grid in Sony Vegas

[@UltraSuperMegaChicago]

Interesting point of view, and certainly could be more friendly bringing timeframes… still there are many ways to mark with sound on your video edition software… also I do love the accuracy of placing a note or a video in a specific milisecond, wich is hard to achieve with 24 fps or even 60 fps … so many millisecond between frames

[@StudioMagnetique]

Incredible work, fascinating workflow and a nugget of wisdom to sign off. Thanks for this, will be checking more of your work for sure.

[@crybo]

Wow! Sound and visuals are incredible!

[@mnmj]

Brilliant tutorial from Zan Lyons. Very well and clearly explained and demonstrated, and it answered a lot of questions I had in doing this type of work!

[@user-qw6gc2kf5l]

thank you so much for sharing this inspiring process!

[@valiumdupeuple]

Terminal is magnificent!

[@kenbrady119]

Wow this is beautiful, time-fluidity and all.

[@SHLDMusic]

Incredible tutorial and work! Many thanks for sharing 😊

[@DaveTherrien]

A great tutorial! So many great tips! Thanks!

[@HeathHolme]

That was cool Zan @thisisourpunkrock great to see your thought process and sound design workflow in Live. Thanks for sharing 🙂

[@Fl4ppers]

Absolutely brilliant video. Zan is a genius with this stuff!

[@apalomba]

Awesome! I love this so much. Very inspirational!

[@queswer]

Kesinlikle çok işimize yarayacak bir örnek olmuş. TEŞEKKÜRLER Zan ve Ableton

[@arda_lyon]

Very inspiring and great tutorial. Very interesting minimalistic approach in the sound design.

[@garrybartlett6853]

Quality... clear and precise... Thank you...

[@GloveBunniesVideos]

Wow, just incredible. Thanks so much.

[@josipvulic5471]

oh, you are so very wise my friend, truly enjoyed watching this.

[@bryanvigue8779]

I love this so much, especially the fact you did this with a laptop and a smartphone.

[@VentureSilk]

Wow! I’m impressed! That was really inspiring 🙏

[@UltraSuperMegaChicago]

Amazing and super inspiring far beyond the tools

[@lukout]

Amazing !!! Inspiring! Thank you !

[@andycordy5190]

Making the cello into that dark drone is a revelation for me.

[@BearbearbearbearbearbearRarrrr]

Ebosuite is awesome.

[@leroy0053]

this is wild!!

[@peterbsims]

Wow. He is a genius. This totally inspired me.

[@vyacheslavaristov1686]

So good, thanx

[@agpride09]

nice work on your projects

[@daraacca]

fantastic

[@inversionproduction]

Very cool man I like to call that Seeing Sound.👊🏾

[@breslin44]

This was great

[@djernanifusion]

Thank you very much

[@rdmkrns]

Inspiring!

[@ckrug32]

Super inspiring, Zan. Your breakdown was clear and your workflow way less intimidating than I thought it might be. Thank you for sharing this awesome project! Which app do you use for grabbing the visuals and depth information to import into Unity? And do you use Unity to animate cameras and particles?

[@krishnalasar4847]

super to work the new plugin so shortly after the release

[@bmwolfe2786]

This was really helpful! I want to try this video plugin and key/midi assignment for live audio video. For this piece you used the ableton video plugin more as inspiration to get the audio right, correct? Then made the video line up perfect to the audio in premier or FC or something? Based on what you created in ableton?

[@Lordxfx]

Epic.

[@JoelLinus]

For windows you do need a plugin to import video

[@ernestolagos5962]

GREAT

[@jungresonant9772]

powerful

[@droid_boy]

If you like the short clip from @Zan Lyons, you really enjoy listen to it on his own channel. Because it sounds like the sound in this clip is mono, while it is stereo on his channel. Sounds even more immersive!

[@antistatikk]

Oh, this looks very interesting. But is the video exported in mono by accident?

[@Tejay21]

SUPER

[@necrotictrust]

the King.

[@EchoReverb6]

using laptpo builtin Mic to Rec .... and sounds amazing

[@noahberndes9188]

I wish they'd actually make the AV stuff workable in Ableton. Right now you don't choose to do it with Ableton, you choose to do it despite using Ableton

[@vexkiddy]

Hi Zan!

[@jonathanjacquet4628]

Alec Empire in the background ❤

[@erndog64]

Thanks Zan....really...from a newbie 😂.

[@nth7485]

Wait what, Unity, on a Mac?

[@aaronschwach9832]

what does he use to make the visuals?

[@applecross7348]

2:07 he uses the unity game engine

[@Nico-Daus]

🫶👏👍🙏🫵

[@DaikiGuitar]

U8

[@alsxdb4735]

No music no party

[@badmilk1735]

Epilepsy

[@cristianrojas5233]

😪

[@AFRoSHEENT3ARCMICHAEL69]

Wtf no release date for when 12 will be out? Why? Still don't have as many options as Logic yet. People think they're getting an update when in reality y'all trying to catch up with the other DAWs. Release it already.

[@cecilia_mackie]

Nice! Let’s be friends?