Producing a beat into a full song with Kaelin Ellis and SW8VY

Recently, Kaelin Ellis sat down with us to create a drum beat with nothing but a water bottle as his starting point.

Along the way, the multi-platinum producer also explored a variety of other topics that are key to his sound, including texture, arrangement, pocket, and more—you can see his walkthrough of the session here.

Above, Kaelin Ellis brought his beat to veteran producer and instrumentalist SW8VY to build it into a full song in Ableton Live. Watch them lay down chord progressions on the keys, design rich basses, sculpt their sounds with RC-20 Retro Color, add subtle transitions and accents, and more.

The two lean heavily into the stock plugins and instruments found within Ableton Live throughout the session, so you can easily explore many of the same techniques right within in your DAW. If you don’t have Ableton Live but would like to try it out, for a limited time, we’re offering new users Ableton Live 11 Lite for free after starting a Splice subscription.

What would you like to see next?

What was your favorite moment in the video? Who are some other producers you’d like to see collaborate on a track? Let us know in the comments section of the video, and subscribe to the Splice YouTube channel for more tips, tutorials, and insights.


Incorporate Kaelin Ellis’ groovy sounds into your own productions:

March 6, 2023

Harrison Shimazu

Harrison Shimazu is a composer, content strategist, and writer who’s passionate about democratizing music creation and education. He leads the Splice blog and produces vocaloid music as Namaboku.