Workflow Scheming- Track Sketching
Once again I find myself at a loss for time, with a lot to do.
I rambled about my workflow a few posts ago and there hasn’t been a lot of change. Today I sat down determined to mine my track folders to find something to ‘finish’. Nothing really jumped out at me and with the APC now I have a need to begin integrating it into my setup. So in the process of figuring out the macro knob banking I began creating an operator kick drum rack system (another one, you say). I created some other synth percussion tools at the same time. Then it hit me, boy do I spend a lot of time focusing on creating my own sounds, not that that is a bad thing. Thing is though, I spend that time but there’s nothing to show except more tools for later.
I’m determined to optimize my workflow. To that end I have decided to focus on sketching tracks out, using whatever sounds ‘good enough’ this will be a multi step process.
- Play with quick rough sounds to get a groove/chord prog/bassline I am fond of.
- Quickly sketch an arrangement around it with a basic drum kit.
- Put it away. Write something about it down on a notecard.
- If I’m feeling particularly inspired start at step 1 with another fresh session.
- One day a week, grab a notecard, finish the track by redesigning all the sounds and rough mastering.
If this goes well you should see some fresh tracks coming in.
I’ve decided to abandon my work on creating an APC40 and Reaktor tool for live stuff for now, I am going to see about assigning some of the notes to step sequencers though, maybe I can send midi out to get the feedback. Just trying not to obsess about it.
Weekend/APC40
So I played a show this weekend at the Hexagon, for More or Less’ Labor Day cookout extravaganza on Sunday. I’ll post some pics when I get them uploaded.
Saturday I picked up an APC40 Guitar Center was having a good labor day sale, it was a somewhat impulse buy. I’d been turning over the idea of picking one up for a while, but when I had the opportunity to take $50 off I was all for it. This device is really nice, what makes it nicer are the efforts that some have made to create a way for it transmit OSC to use with Max/MSP and other patches.
Currently I’ve used 64step (which I attempted to use for a live jam on Sunday), and MLR. Today I got the Reaktor patches created by kid Sputnik to work. This excites me because I’d like to figure out how to just use midi in Reaktor so I have access to all the knobs. Stay tuned.
Inspiring tools
My recent digs into the Reaktor user library inspired some new tool design for Ableton Live’s Racks. Last night I wanted to create some glitchy drum patterns, there are a plethora of tools for such in Reaktor, but I felt creative. I made a new rack that creates random drum hits from velocities, with a selectable glitch chain after it. When I replace the samples in it with my own I’ll put it up here. It creates very interesting glitchy hat like patterns but it could be used with any sound type.
I first started making this tool with another program, I was using the patching environment VVVV to create a random CC generator, but either my virtual midi wires were crossed or it was spitting out too many value messages because it was not communicating with the knob it was assigned to very well (it was assigned to the Chain Selector). Finally I decided to use the velocity plugin, in a random mode, and put the drum hits at different velocities. Then I use a velocity plugin after the randomization phase to put back a little oomph.
The exercise was quite fun, but it exposed some weaknesses in my ability to patch useful tools. I need to work on this.
Futurist Manifestos of Art and Music
So I was googling for “intonarumori” a term I wasn’t familiar with, in relation to a reaktor ensemble that Richard Devine recommended on his twitter feed (“IntonaruMori v v1.1″ by Rick Scott).
I found this interesting site with a collection of Futurist manifestos. Here’s are some excerpts:
From “The Art of Noises” by Luigi Russolo:
- Futurist musicians must continually enlarge and enrich the field of sounds. This corresponds to a need in our sensibility. We note, in fact, in the composers of genius, a tendency towards the most complicated dissonances. As these move further and further away from pure sound, they almost achieve noise-sound. This need and this tendency cannot be satisfied except by the adding and the substitution of noises for sounds.
- Futurist musicians must substitute for the limited variety of tones posessed by orchestral instruments today the infinite variety of tones of noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms.
- The musician’s sensibility, liberated from facile and traditional Rhythm, must find in noises the means of extension and renewal, given that every noise offers the union of the most diverse rhythms apart from the predominant one.
- Since every noise contains a predominant general tone in its irregular vibrations it will be easy to obtain in the construction of instruments which imitate them a sufficiently extended variety of tones, semitones, and quarter-tones. This variety of tones will not remove the characteristic tone from each noise, but will amplify only its texture or extension.
I found these manifestos fascinating, unfortunately they seem to be written primarily by fascists. 
Output from a sunday mess around session
Lazy Weekend
This weekend was somewhat lazy, ended up watching a ton of movies. Saw Rambo, that movie I think has the most kills per minute in anything I’ve seen for a while, very gruesome and over the top. Yet somehow hilarious. Jackie wanted to go see “Final Destination” in 3D, which was sort of a giggle fest as well, with all of the “hey look this is 3D” sort of shots.
On the music front, I worked with Reaktor some more. Building a few things to learn, and exploring how snapshots and such work. Last night I actually spent some time creating myself some material to ‘jam’ on and had a blast. I’m not sure the track I created was great, but I sure had a great time creating it, which is worthwhile. I think with some polishing and more precise editing it’ll be nice.
follow up: Productivity
A friend emailed me regarding my productivity issues with Music making, so I thought I’d make a follow up post.
What I feel is necessary is that I simply hit the record button during all of my ‘testing’ and ‘experimenting’ ideally one explores these thing with a sense of play. Currently I earn -zero- income from playing with sound, that’s why it should remain firmly in the play world. Remember this, self.
Saying this I mean that, perhaps I’ve been taking it too seriously. Like, “I need to finish x number of tracks soon, or no one will ever care”, it needs to be “Is this fun? Do I feel this? Am I just doing this to get something out?”
The last point can be addressed, but really I’m in an explorative process. Deep in sounddesign wrapped in envelopes, lfos and recently modular environments. Down in the weeds as I like to say. Note to self, keep playing, go even deeper, but record it so you can use it when you need to be productive.
Music making productivity
It seems my productivity on music making needs some work. It’s not that I don’t work, it’s that I get nothing done. I can easily chalk that up to too many influences, no clear direction, etc. At the same time, for me, it’s play to a large degree. How to focus play energy in a productive way? That’s the challenge. Part of that challenge may be deciding what I like, and want to make.
Last night I explored NI Massive’s presets, all of the percussive loop ones, and it was decidedly fun, I learned a lot about the tricks that one can do to create rhythmic loops with that program, which is pretty deep with the performance modifier and the step modifier. This could be handy for live performance if it doesn’t kill my laptop in the process. Turning down the quality would make it managable.
My neatest discovery last night was the ability to send program changes in clips, this could be super handy in future, since I have no external hardware I haven’t had a need to do this. Massive is not a VST you want to stack up in a bunch of Racks, it’s pretty beefy. My solution will be to use program change messages. Yay.
Weekend report
This weekend was all over the place, hurriedly got ready for my show saturday night. One important thing to remember when making a live set for a show, try to avoid changing it alot at the very last minute. Fortunately it was a place where experimentation was welcome and there wasn’t a lot of pressure. None of the set was pre-sequenced, it was designed to live loop, however there was a hole in a last minute decision regarding percussion looping that really broke the whole set up.
Taking advice from a good friend, I’m going to make a ‘fun’ set I’m thinking something I can pull 2+ hours of techno from and linking it up with VVVV.
Otherwise, I ended up purchasing a new mouse, still on the fence on whether I like the mouse or not. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time doing 3D modeling and I wanted something that would be both more ergonomic and allow for more precise control (laser). I settled on a Logitech MX Revolution which I do enjoy quite a bit, except there’s no middle mouse button. The clicking is so precise though that it’s pretty easy to click both left/right buttons at once to trigger a middle click. Works fine that way in Blender and Firefox. Reassigning mouse buttons in Ubuntu is not very elegant.
Here’s a pic:
Live Set for Saturday
So I’m here at work just thinking of some ideas for my live ableton set on saturday.
Really I think a short term deadline is the best option for me. It’s always been that way, when I shut off the inner critic and just start to try to get something done. My skills come out and the constant bickering about what is good, does it fit, just go away.
My basic way of thinking about a live ableton set goes a bit like this:
- Avoid unstable plugins, once I had dblue Glitch on a send it decided to mess up so my audio buffer made loud ass noises and I had to end the show. Test plugins with a play around live set for about an hour, or research bugs before comitting them to your set. You can build a nice rack for live buffer jackin’ by stacking some very basic plugins up and have a lot more control. Think a stack of Stretcher, Crusher, Instajungle all rolled into one rack with pertinent parameters assigned, this is live show gold mine, even for atmospheres.
- Keep your set simple but infinitely customizable by thinking in sound layers, Drums, Mids, highs. Use Instrument and Drumracks to make these layers even more complicated. Simplers stacked in an instrument rack with a knob to switch between them is a great solution to this, you can use more complicated devices than simplers but remember keeping the set lean and mean is the ideal.
- A good trick is to make some basic midi drum loops and use that channel to drive another channel that actually contains the sounds. Set the drum rack channel to ‘in’ and then make a second drum rack channel that takes midi in from your drum controller. Now you can have basic loops going and add fills by hand.
Just making some notes now to keep track of what I might do for the party mix when I get home.