About this lesson

Established Ableton instructor shows us what originality can be achieved from taking a known sample and experimenting with transposition, looping and different automation, using midi triggering and creating beats along the way, all while only using the computer mouse. He takes inspiration from the experimentalist musician and producer, Four Tet, who is known to create tracks using a very simple setup and dedication to sound slicing and time-stretching  He uses a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live soundcard, while running a motley selection of software, much of it lagging well behind the cutting edge. On his album Rounds, he sampled a gamelan loop and treated it in order to fit the key and tempo of his own record. 

Kieran Hebden (born September 1977), best known by the stage name Four Tet, is an English musician active in electronic music and described by SOS as the ‘producer who puts intelligence into Intelligence Dance Music’. Hebden first came to prominence as a member of the post-rock band Fridge before establishing himself as a solo artist with charting UK releases such as Rounds (2003) and Everything Ecstatic (2005). In addition to his eleven studio albums as Four Tet, Hebden's work includes a number of improvisational works with jazz drummer Steve Reid and collaborations with Burial and Thom Yorke. He has also produced albums by American improvisational group Sunburned Hand of the Man and Syrian dabke singer Omar Souleyman, and arranged the 2021 Madlib album Sound Ancestors. He has also remixed tracks by artists including Aphex Twin, Bicep, Explosions in the Sky, Bloc Party, Super Furry Animals, Radiohead, Ellie Goulding, J Dilla, Lana Del Rey, Manic Street Preachers, Sia, Black Sabbath and Madvillain; several of these were collected on the compilation Remixes (2006).