Play drums like a hero

Many hip hop musicians are used to play beats with pad MIDI controllers like Ableton Push, Maschine, or MPC. To be honest, hip hop is not my favorite music style, but I’m envious of their dexterity when playing pads.

Today, I stumbled over Melodics. Melodics is an app like Guitar Hero for Mac and PC. The idea is simple, you are trained to press the right button at the right time in order to create something like  music.

The download of the app is free and there are 20 free lessons. The training starts with simple lessons (with kick and snare), but they become more complex with the time.

Yes, it’s really similar to Guitar Hero.

Melodics: guitar hero like interface.

After playing a while, you get a feedback about the precision of your playing. Missed notes and too early or late ones. Gamification, do a job good and reach for that reason the next level.

Melodics: guitar hero like interface.

The lessons are labelled with musical styles. You get a short explanation, what’s typical for the actual  style. There are even fingering tips for each lesson. Great, although they only make sense when playing complex patters.

Melodics: guitar hero like interface.

From that perspective, Melodics is like Guitar Hero should be. But what I do miss is the opportunity to create your own stuff with the given samples. An export function or (even better) Ableton Live integration would be nice.

The payment model is not my favourite. You have to pay for month or year. I guess, it’s suitable for beginners, who will – after a few weeks – stop learning with that app and start making their own stuff. For me, occasional users will not be pleased with subscription. I guess, Guitar Hero is paid once, isn’t it?

However, this app makes sense and is really fun. So, give it a try.

alexander

Increase your creativity through Push

I’m wondering from time to time how can I improve my creativity by improvisation. What I mean is recording myself while playing an virtual instrument or drums with Ableton Push. I also expect more expressive and varying results. We all know how music often sounds, when music is created by editing the piano roll with mouse and keyboard. This won’t happen today.

I will refer to Ableton Push, although Push 2 was released for some time past. But I’m pretty sure, everything I’ll tell you can be transferred to Push 2.

A good starting point is the following: Live (not Push!) is in session view mode and there are some tracks with different instruments you like to play with.

If I like to play one of the instruments. I have to switch into Push’s note mode by pressing the “Note” button, in case Push’s session mode is highlighted (means active). Don’t be confused Live is still in the session view mode.

Live in session mode and armed track.

I order to play (or record) a different instruments you just have to press one of the left or right arrow buttons. You may notice that the track is automatically armed (the record button turns red).

This could be the moment to improvise while the metronome is playing. Just press the play and “metronome” button. By the way the knob for setting the tempo is directly below the metronome button.

Probably you like to change the main volume or volume of the metronome. The upper rightmost knob is responsable for that. Press the “shift” button simultaneously for changing the metronome’s volume.

After playing around you will record a first instrument. This will create in Live a clip, of course. Here are two ways to record a arbitrary long clip or clip with a fix length. For the second approach press the “Fixed Length” button and select the length.

For starting the (so called session) recording press the record button. You may notice, that the record indicator is not turned red, instead of the “Session Record Button” changed its colour. If there is already a clip, press new. This will create a new scene, which contains all clips of the prior scene except the clip of the active instrument. By the way, the “Delete” button will remove the clip of the active instrument.

Session Record Button

You can stop or restart the recording by pressing the record button again. By pressing the “Undo” button you will revert the last recording. The term “last” is not exactly what’s happening, but it’s enough to give you an idea. You can press the button again, in order to undo older changes. “Shift” “Undo” does the opposite, of course.

For enabling the quantization press short the “Quantize”. For editing the quantization settings hold this button.

Yes, there is a note repeat. I find it helpful when playing high hats, for example. Press “Repeat” and the flashing label will indicate, that the function is enabled. The note value is selected with the help of the buttons “1/32t” and so on. If you have set a swing in the quantization section, this swing will be applied to the repeat, too.

The “Device” and “Clip” buttons offers you to switch between the instrument and its clips. That’s helpful, when changing the macro controls. In case the device is select the upper eight buttons will change the macro values.

You can change the volume, pan, sends of an instrument by pressing the “Track” button. You can change the octave with the “Octave Down” and “Up” buttons.

I know there are much more details to tell, but I guess this could be a great starting point to improvise with Push. I promise more posts like this will be follow in the next time. Best regards!

alexander

The isomorphic note layout

At the latest since Ableton Push came out its key layout became popular. This key layout is called isomorphic note layout. But this idea is not new; accordions using various isomorphic keyboards have been built since the 19th century.

In contrast to Push’s in key mode all notes are part of the layout, so you can play notes, which are not in scale. From my point of view this allows musicians more creativity. Use Push’s chromatic mode, if you like go this way.

Ableton Push in chromatic mode. As you can see, the not in scale notes are greyed out.

If you don’t own a Push, you can try one of the iPad apps like Musix.

Musix shows the C major scale.

The main advantage of this layout is the transpositional invariance. That means chords have the same shape when transposed to another key. So, you can transpose the following shapes by moving them horizontal or vertical.

Robbie James from Lostbeat made wide-ranging tables of shapes for chromatic and
in key mode. Have fun with it! alexander

Routing NI Maschine into Ableton

After discussing NI Maschine’s output routing in my post NI Maschine’s (output) routing, we able to map Maschine’s output to different Ableton channels. Let’s see what’s our plan.

So, we will rout each Maschine group into a different Ableton channel. Unfortunately there is no automation for this step. You have to select each Maschine group output and choose a different output. I think, you shouldn’t use Out 1, because it’s something like Maschine’s Master channel, but I’m not sure.

When this is done for all groups, you can create new channels in Ableton Live. Each channel get its audio from NI Maschine’s (output) routing and one of its outputs. Don’t forget to choose Monitor in, otherwise you will hear nothing. I think, it’s a good idea to save this settings to a song, so you haven’t to do this in Ableton again. Where there is light, there is also shadow. I shall not hide that you have to map every group to different Maschine outputs for every of your existing projects.

That’s all for today. Best regards!

alexander

NI Maschine’s (output) routing

Hello! Yes, I’m back. Today I would like to tell you something about NI Maschine’s default output routing. I was stumbling over this subject while routing every group to a different output channel in Ableton Live. This will be the second part of this series. But everything at its time and on its place.

This diagram contains the three relevant types. Maschine’s sixteen output channels (green) and the groups (brown) including their sounds (blue). Maschine’s default will route everything to the ‘out 1’ output channel.

You can select one group by clicking one block in the upper left area of Maschine’s interface – for example B Synths. The middle section contains the corresponding tabs Master, Group, Sound. Don’t forget that the Master tab is effective for every group and sound. As you can see (default) every sound is routed to its group.

This picture shows that every group (per default) is routed to the output channel Out 1.

Actually you can rout every group and sound to everything. Here is an example, how to implement an effect channel.

There are different types of sounds. The normal type is Sampler, but if you choose Input, you can rout the output of everything to this sound, but the Input can not root its output to the Input itself. You can add some effects to this sound, in order to get a common effect channel for some sounds. Yes, I think the label sound in that case is misleading. Anyway… in this example the output name is Drum FX with the letter of the group G.

Finally as you can see in the last two pictures, those effect channels are available for every sound and group. I know, these concepts and naming are a bit confusing, but from now on, we can use rout every output to a different channel in Ableton Live. And – of course – there is more stuff for creative routing in NI Maschine. The first one will be shown in the next post.

Best regards!

alexander

Understanding massive’s routing

Hello folks,

today I’d like to start a small series about Native Instruments Massive – currently one of the most popular virtual synthesizers. Just as many of you I would like to create my own Massive patches, my own distinctive sounds.
There are so many video tutorials. Most of them are step by step tutorials how you get a specific sound. But although Massive is so complex, there are only a few basic introductions. But I think, a fundamental understanding and knowing what’s going on in the background, leads you to good sound design. So let us take a closer look at the routing tab.

Routing tab (red arrow), device and symbol (orange arrow), signal flow (white arrows)

The routing tab shows the whole circuit diagram of the synth, e.g. the wiring of all elements. After I have shown you some examples, you will understand how the signal flows through the synth. Here is just a taster: Massive has three wavetable oscillators. You find the three symbols OSC 1, 2 and 3 on the left hand side of the routing tab. The oscillators are wired with two filters. The filter outputs are mixed and so on. I think that’s enough for the beginning.

 

1. Real serial filtering

In the first example I like to route the output from oscillator 1 through filter 1 and after that through filter 2 – the classic serial circuit. Needless to say, the oscillator 1 is switched on. The switch is located at the left of the device title. The lamp light must be blue. The diagram below must be read from top to bottom and from left to right.

The fader of OSC 1 is at the top, in order to route the signal only to filter 1. The fader ->F2 at the very top (serial), because filter 2 should get the input signal only from the output of filter 1. The MIX fader is on the very bottom, in order to route only the output of filter 2 to the synth’s output. (By the way, the MIX fader can be in the central position, in case – like in the screenshot – the slider of filter 1 is down.) The white arrows in the upper picture show the flow of the signal.

The next pictures shows how the UI elements and the circuit diagram are related.

 

1.1 Mixing serial filtering

But do not let us kid ourselves, the signal flow gets easily more complicated. Just stay at example 1. Real serial filtering and add one signal flow. By pushing up the MIX fader, the output of filter 1 is routed directly to the synth output without running through filter 2. The white arrows in the lower picture show again the flow of the signal and the orange one is new signal flow.

 

1.2 Bypassing the filters

If you like to bypass the two filters in order to add a subbass. You can use the Bypass bus.

Let’s vary the example 1. Real serial filtering again, in order to get bypassing. I have switched the OSC 3 on and made a kind of trick. I routed the oscillator signal only to filter 2. But the ->F2 fader position shows you, that the signal never will reach filter 2, because of its top position. Maybe you noticed the white B in the circuit diagram (Click it, if it’s not white!). That means, the output of OSC 3 is directly routed to the EQ device. Now there is only one step left. If you switch on and upper the Bypass fader you can hear the output of OSC 3. This approach is generally interessting if want to avoid processing one oscillators.

 

2. Real parallel filtering

In this example I will use two oscillators. Oscillator 1 is routed through filter 1 and oscillator 2 is routed through filter 2 – the classic parallel circuit.

The fader of oscillator 1 and 2 are set in that way, that signal of OSC 1 flows through filter 1, and vice versa. The fader ->F2 is at the very bottom, to run the filters in parallel. The two fader of the filter devices are at the top, in order to run their signal to the synth’s output. The fader MIX is in the center position, to mix the oscillators with equal volume. The next pictures shows how the UI elements and the circuit diagram are related.

 

2.1 Mixing parallel filtering

By pushing up the fader ->F2 a bit, the output of filter 1 is routed into filter 2. So filter 2 is processing the output of OSC 2 and OSC 1 after filtering by filter 1.

That sounds complicated, that’s the reason, why I prefere diagrams. The orange arrow shows the addition signal flow, from filter 1 output to filter 2 input.

For the sake of completeness, you can enable more than the bypass (b) in the circuit diagram by clicking on the according symbol: The bypass (B), feedback (FB), inserts 1 and 2 (INS 1 and 2). Apart from the bypass, you can active the device at different places in the diagram. That means you can decide, when signal is routed through the device – for example before or after the filter. Therefore, don’t be surprised, that you won’t hear unplaced devices.

That’s all for day. To be continued. I hope that helps.

alexander

Generating drum fills

Today, I like to generate drum fills with the help of Ableton‘s MIDI effects. My starting point is a drum rack with samples I made and a programmed drum pattern:

The drum beat sounds no so bad, but probably a bit boring. I would like to get something like that:

And here is the way I created this drum variations and fills. First of all I grouped three MIDI effect devices. Ableton‘s Arpeggiator, Randon and Scale.

Please consult the screenshot for getting the parameter settings. Of course you can’t use all of my Scale device settings. In case you are not familiar with the Scale device, think about a matrix or filter. The horizontal axis represents the incoming MIDI note and the horizontal axis the outgoing MIDI note. Such a filter leaves the notes as they are, if all red squares are building a diagonal from the lower left to the upper right. Enough with theory – I would like to hear only the clap, snare and bass drum when the device is enabled. There is no need to say that the these settings depend on the drum rack. You have to find your own settings.

The mapping of the macro knobs is a bit tricky. After pressing the Map Mode button you should map the Chance parameter of the Random device to macro one. Then map the device on/off switch of the Arpeggiator and Scale to this knop, too. I like to switch on the Arpeggiator and Scale only, when the chance value is over 50 percent. This is achieved by editing the upper Macro Mappings table. The minimum value should be 64.

Finally I mapped the Arpeggiator’s Synced Rate to macro knob two and the Style to macro knob three.

So, we are done. Just vary the Random Chance in order to get drum variations and fills like in the example above.

I hope that helps. Happy new year!

alexander

Waveshaper about the sample pack for Ableton Live:

“Modulok is a percussive sample pack made using two semi-modular analogue synths, a couple of vintage synthesizers and a bunch of analogue FX all linked together in a modular fashion.

Crafted by hand with love and care, the goal is to bring out the character of the analogue sound, both smooth and wild, futuristic and retro, raw and advanced, in a big & versatile drum-sample pack, suitable for all kind of music. Analogue but not cliché, this pack knows no boundaries.”

Tech spec: Features more than 380 samples for a total size of 153MB, 364 one-shot samples, gathered in 4 categories: kicks, snares & lasers, hats & cymbs, percussions & sfx (each category being also sub-divided in 2 sub-categories for a quicker browsing); 23 loops of analogue drones and textures for your audio production; 24bit, 48Khz stereo WAV files; This pack is released for free, as Waveshaper’s contribution to KVR DC2012.

WornOutJunkie

Modulok is one of the entries of the KVR Developer Challenge 2012 and my favorite so far, Modulok is a sample pack by WaveShaper, made with a couple of vintage synths, two semi-modular synths and some analog effects. It features more than 360 unique samples and are really well organized into categories and subcategories, and then labeled to give you an idea of the sample. Sample quality is 44Khz 24 bit stereo WAV.
If you don’t know what a sample pack is, is a collection of sound files recorded and/or sythesized, and put together so you can integrate it into a song, beat, video or anything you want.

The highlight in this library is that is really original, extremely easy to use and the sounds are REALLY useful, its not one of those packs full of crap-samples.

 

 

 
Ease Of Use

I was impressed with this pack…

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ABLETON PUSH

I think, since Native Instruments released Maschine, there is a new generation of powerful controllers and Push is one of them.

And I’m happy that Ableton Live 9 will have some new features like recording automation in session view mode. See the ‘New in Ableton Live 9’ video by AbletonInc for more information.

EDM arena

ABLETON PUSH

Exciting news for Electronic Music Producers today!  Ableton Live 9 just dropped with a ton of new features.  In addition to this Ableton has also announced PUSH.  PUSH is a new instrument that solves an old problem: how to make a song from scratch. With hands-on control of melody and harmony, beats, sounds, and song structure, Push puts the fundamental elements of music making at your fingertips – and it fits in a backpack alongside your laptop.

See it in Action here:

MORE INFO: 

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Hundreds of free tutorials

I am frequently asked for free Ableton Live tutorials. The good news is that are many tutorials online. The bad news is, there are only a few videos well suited for beginners. So let’s start an overview. What does the internet offer to beginners and medium advanced Ableton users?

Not surprisingly, does Ableton itself host some tutorials for absolute beginners on their website. I think this is a good starting point.

The biggest site is Dubspot (New York, USA). They offer video tutorials about djing and digital music making for beginners and advanced users. They make interviews and workshops with prominent musicians. Dubspot keep commercial courses, too. Therefore be not surprised, if they promotion their courses within a free tutorial again and again.

It has become a little bit quiet around another large side called WinkSound (New York, USA). They provide video tutorials about djing and music making for beginners and advanced users.

But less known sites are not necessarily bad. For example Anthony Arroyo’s website The Ableton Cookbook (Austin, USA) offers video tutorials about music making for advanced users. There are live courses available. I personaly like his videos, because they are very detailed and comprehensible.

Synthtopia is a very hugh community, which is engaged in all aspects of digital music making. Synthtopia offers video tutorials about music making for medium advanced users. The content is posted by users of the Synthtopia community.

The maker of Abletontutorials is posting many free tutorials. Unfortunately, it’s a tumblr page so the page is unstructured without any search option.

Or don’t forget Nicks Tutorials. Hi has video tutorials about music making for advanced users on his page. You can buy some rescoures and more video tutorials. Ableton8tutorials and Lynch Audio are small sites, which have many free video tutorials and some free resources.

I am afraid there is no maintenance for the site Timofey, but there are very useful tutorials and download, because the author demonstrates how to recreate popular electronic songs.

Last, but no least, Heatercore listed 365 Ableton Live Tips.

The last thing I have to say is that, there are not enough tutorials for absulte beginners. You you agree?

Till next time. alexander

P.S. Look at the comments in order to get new tips especially for beginners!