Yup, that’s right, I’m thinking of moving back to Cubase.. I can still get back to it with the modest $200 upgrade cost.. it looks like.. …so I’ve been sorta evaluating the new version: Cubase 5. The last version I worked on was Cubase SX3… so its a few versions beyond…

Comparing Cubase with Digital Performer

I haven’t really been on Digital Performer, in a serious way, for all that long.. lets say a year maybe.. So I don’t really fully understand DP… and DP is.. arcane in places.. I’ll give you a for instance…

DP gripes

Workflow and the Arcane 

In Digital Performer.. you have two modes a plug in can run under.. ( I wasn’t even aware of this till the other day ).. one way is the new fangeled way… err, don’t even remember what they call it.. but essentially DP will render out what’s on a channel.. into an audio file.. and swap stuff around.. in order to save on CPU loads.. This is a groovy thing.. of course.. but seeing as my main computer has 8 processors in it.. it’s not a feature I actually need.. and the negative of this operating mode is that it can cause some plugins to go unstable.. which would explain a lot of the frustration I’ve had on recent projects.

The other mode is a “real time mode” where.. well.. plugs work in real time.. here things are stable..

But.. you know.. DP is a strange beast.. on mix down.. according to something someone said in a forum.. you have to separately mix down real time plugs.. Why? And um.. further more.. ReWire.. only works in real time.. and is a pain in the freaking ass.. at least in my experience.. to mix down via DP… which means Ableton Live and Reason.. in my case.

It may very well be that all this makes sense once one gets a little more advanced then I am.. but for me.. it’s just a pain in my butt.. 

Effects 

Why yes, it is true.. DP does come with a number of effects..  but how many of them would I use if I had a choice? Umm.. probably Master Works EQ, MW Limiter, Proverb, Delay, and the Master Works Leveler, are the effects I’m regularly given to using.. out side of that there’s a few that are ok.. but after that the rest are rather crapy.. and those that are good are.. not really all that exciting.

Instruments 

Frankly.. if you are the sorta person who uses virtual instruments.. or is interested in such things.. Digital Performer is NOT good enough unless you invest in other instruments. They are not wholly without merit… they are just.. well I turn my nose on them anyway.

[editors note: None of the DAWs out there, really, come with instruments that you’d want to be limited to using.. the point is Matt almost never uses and of the instruments in DP] 

Beyond all that

I’m not really sure what I can say about DP.. I feel as if… well I’m not as good with it, as I need to be, to really judge.. there’s a lot of things I don’t like about DP… and I think a lot of it is just where I stand on the learning curve… I’m slow with it.. not as productive as I like.. I find myself fighting the tools.. which has got to be some sort of an issue.

Onto Cubase

Effects

It’s a little hard to talk about Cubase’s effects as I haven’t really used them… but I’ll give you my presumptions anyway… and mind you I’ve been using cubase since.. I want to say version 3 or 4? That is way back in the OS 9 and earlier days! So.. I know my way around a bit…. and some of the older, more legacy effects, I do indeed know.

EQ

My impression is that DP’s Master work EQ probably beats out Cubase as far as EQing for color is concerned.. but then I don’t know really.. [Editors Note: Its pretty safe to say you want one good transparent EQ, and then as many for color as you can afford, so you probably wouldn’t rely on the EQs that come with you’re DAW, at least not entirely ] Cubase has 4 EQs.. one of which, the channel EQ, I have used before.. What I like about it is its just there.. as a part of every channel.. you don’t have to bother adding a plug in.. and I just sorta like that design better. I really like the user interface to.. good for making EQ adjustments. I also like that Cubase comes with a graphic EQ.. well actually 2 of them.. as sometimes.. don’t just want to work with a graphic EQ instead of a parametric?

There’s also a high pass low pass filter with resonance.. which to me could go under the EQ category.. this is probably where we are talking about color… but I have nothing to judge on.

Compressors and Dynamics

Cubase offers basically 3 Compressors… what looks like a standard compressor.. a multi band compressor.. and a vintage compressor. [editors note: In compressor speak, vintage usually means color.. and are often modeled off of one or another “famous compressors” again, you probably want lots of color orientated compressors]

What I will tell you is DP has a multi band compressor.. that I don’t much like using.. and there leveling amplifier.. which counts as a vintage compressor.. (though it does have “modern” modes to) I’ve generally liked the interfaces of Cubase’s compressors better..

Beyond this Cubase ships with a number of dynamics shaping effects that Digital Performer lacks.. including transient shaping, expander, and maximizer.

Distortion

DP has one distortion unit and.. well.. it leaves much to be desired.. its ok in one mode.. but try and push it hard and it turns into.. well.. bad sounding crap…

Cubase has DaTube.. which.. it’s not the best thing in the world.. but you know.. its not terrible.. for adding a certain sorta warmth… I actually kind of like it more then I would usually admit.

Since I’ve been away from Cubase, it looks like Cubase has added an amp simulator, tone boost, distortion, and soft clipper… some of which might be old stuff with redesigned interfaces but.. at the very least its more options then you ever got with Digital Performer.. and I’m guessing its better.. well.. it is a low bar to be better then but… and some of Cubase’s offerings in this department are purely for color.. and you know.. can never get enough of that sorta thing.

Reverb

Cubase offers 2 reverbs… really.. room works.. an algorithmic type reverb and a new convolution reverb. The convolution comes, by default. .with stuff that will give you the sounds of various speakers and analog gear as well as reverb sounds.. which… is more then you get with DP.. though I understand you can load, if you can find them, such things into DP’s pro reverb.. and I understand its not too difficult to find… but ether way, I think Cubase has to have the leg up.

I can’t say much about this room works.. accept that I was happier with Cubases reverbs when I left Cubase.. then I was DP’s reverbs.. when I went to Digital Performer..  so again.. points to Cubase.

Delays

It looks like Cubase has this area going on a little better then DP..

There’s lots of other stuff.. but I’ll leave it here, as this is sorta what I care about.. so.. onto instruments.

Instruments

Its hard to say much about Cubase’s Instruments without using them.. I’ve never been big on Cubase’s instrument.. but tend to like them better then Digital Performer’s.. And my impression, admittedly based of marketing materials.. is that Cubase wins this area by a land slide.. though.. it doesn’t have too much of a bar to get over.. and I’m certainly intrigued by the newer stuff.

But do I really care?

In my studio is Komplete, Kore 2, Omnisphere, Reason, Ableton Live, the Audio Ease all in Bundle.. and a bundle from VirSyn.. plus Cantor… oh yeah, and Native Instruments Machine plus Liquid Mix, never mind Melodyne…

My point is that the quality of built in effects and Instruments.. when looking at a DAW, is not really the most important thing to me…. as the level of stuff in my instruments and effects plug in library is several orders of magnitude better then what I could possibly expect to find in a DAW.

I love having lots of options, so I look forward to having a new set of options.. but it’s not as if I’d actually be relying on them or anything.. well.. unless they turned out to be surprisingly good… and I do think there’s some chance of that.

Other things

I prefer the way Cubase works with surround sound mixing.. I prefer the way it works with ReWire.. I have a lot more experience with Cubase.. so I expect to be more productive and to produce better work.. I hate the dongle key Steinberg forces on you.. and I hate there tech support.. and the way there company treats me.. It seriously feels like, from time to time, that they are penalizing you for paying money for there software instead of using pirated copies..  and not only that.. but in there videos where they explain there new features.. they have the balls to suggest offering a 9 week demo on another product of there’s constitutes “a feature.”

..Though they do, apparently, offer you the upgrade from the demo for “a special price”.. which.. I don’t know.. if the price is good enough.. the other product is actually quite good according to reviews.. it being there sampler.. I mean its no Kontakt but.. it does offer a good sample library.. and that combined with it’s Cubase integration.. probably makes it worth something to me.

Other odd thing is they only support sample rates up to 98kHz? Umm.. why? DP def wins that one out.. though I usually only work at 44 kHz because liquid mix’s instance count goes down once you go beyond 48 kHz.. so.. it’s not something that’s normally an issue for me.. but still!  

I kind of have the impression.. and I couldn’t easily explain this to you.. that digital performer is a lot deeper then Cubase.. and that much of my frustration comes from not having yet mastered those depths.. That MOTU, Digital performers developers, seems to treat me better.. and are not insulting in there marketing material.. is a big deal to..

Oh yeah.. um… just the way Steinberg uses hyped up marketing language..  I mean..  

1. Stienberg has always been an innovator in a lot of ways.. but they also have a habit of putting out lemons.. throwing at you VST instruments that suck ass.. that get repealed in the next version.. or two versions into the future.. and then sometimes they repeal stuff you actually like! So when they’re hyping it.. telling you how golden it all is.. you kinda look at them like “um.. what’s that smell?”
2. A lot of the features.. they hype as if to say “look how freaking innovative we are with these wonderful new features” when the reality of the matter is that in many situations they are playing catchup with there competition.
3. They have no credibility.. just because of how much they hype.. you get the feeling they are targeting new users whom are new to music production and kinda.. don’t yet know the ropes.. and are sorta trying to take advantage of you on that front.. where as with MOTU and DP.. you feel like they sorta care about you.. there customers.. And it may be interesting to compare this with a company like Ableton where you feel like “wow, these guys are really hip.”
4. Please Steinberg.. don’t try to convince me you got the best stuff since sliced REX –I mean bread.. Anyone with a brain knows there’s pros and cons to all the DAWs out there.. all I want from you is.. well I’d like information that didn’t feel like manipulation.. tell me, “what’s the virtues of you’re product in the current technological climate?” ..and do so honestly.. you know “authenticity?”

A light speed look at other DAWs

To be honest.. if I were to buy a new DAW.. and was starting from scratch as far as investing in stuff… I’d be looking Logic, Ableton, and maybe Reason… The one really stand out feature of Cubase is that it’s cross platform. .which means.. if you’re a Mac Guy.. you can also boot into windows and use Cubase over there.. with software that doesn’t run on the Mac..

My sense of DP is that its strong suit really lys in.. well.. post production.. working with Film..

Ableton’s biggest strength is just.. creative composition process.. but it’s super weak in terms of conventional sequencing.

Reason, of course, doesn’t do anything with recorded audio.. it’s basically a virtual instrument work station.. totally modular.. or pretty close to totally.. all be it a closed modular system, right? It’s very good.. emphasis on simple.. a few weaknesses here and there.. but very good..

Logic.. I couldn’t tell you.. I think it’s biggest strength is all the content it comes with.. loops, samples.. its effects and instrument library.. I think you can’t beat it for the price.. it probably has other places its strong to.. Although I must say, fooling around with it in an Apple store not to long ago.. I wasn’t all that impressed with the effects it came with… seems like it could use some updating.

I can’t really speak to Cakewalk on the PC.. but I hear good things.

FL Studio.. if you’re on the PC.. and if you do electronic music.. I think it’s pretty much a must have.

Pro Tools.. ProTools is a standard in a lot of places.. and if thats important to you.. I’d go that route.. but.. there’s much I don’t like about it.. just that its a closed system.. and I really want to choose my own control surfaces and audio interfaces… its expensive.. and.. I have no idea why I should even consider Pro Tools.. oh.. and not only that.. but you have to be very careful about updating your OS with Pro Tools.. it has some strange conflicts with Avid of all things.. 

Some final reasons I’m considering Cubase

I have a lot of old projects produced in Cubase.. many of them being very good I think.. all be it with some flaws.. the ability to go back into them.. fix the flaws.. well.. that could really make all the difference.. and probably makes it worth a lot more then $200 to me. 

I regard exploring new possibilities, as an artist.. stretching into new things.. as being one of the most important things you can do.. and it’s probably true in most other walks of life. Generally it’s a kind of oscillation.. between that area where you are really strong.. and the new areas you’re just starting to explore… It’s about integrating these two things.

In some of my newer directions.. I have some fear that what I’m doing might be nieve… The reason being because I am venturing into areas that are more conventional then my work normally is.. so that if you’re taking you’re first few steps on a very well trotted road, how excited can you be about what you find? I mean.. sure, you’re excited.. but maybe for everyone else its “Ho hum, I’ve seen that before.”

Still.. it is still me making the music.. still a product of my aesthetic thinking.. my aesthetic sensibilities.. still something that largely comes from within..  still my process.. etc. So whatever it is I’m doing.. it’s still inescapably me.. still has a certain.. I’m not sure what.

Ultimately.. where I see the future in the new stuff is finding ways for it to be more and more imprinted with.. whatever it is that’s unique in me.. and integrating it with the older stuff. 

Into the New Music 

If  you’ve been listening to my stuff for any length of time.. you’ll note that this new track is basically an evolution of some of what we heard on ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures:

Glitchy Goodness mix (As of yet untitled early mix) by Matt Searles

What we hear here is what we were hearing in Deep Space.. but now arranged, mixed, and sorta composed around.. in a kind of new way. It’s been said that the Deep Space stuff was like exploring out into space.. and now we are listening in on Alien conversations..

It’s a crazy kind of dark and harsh ambient.. or that track is, isn’t it? Makes me feel like a journey into the shadow side of the soul.

About this direction

The direction opens up a whole lot in the way of possible possibilities… err, so let me describe the process of the above track.

Inside Reaktor 

I started out in Reaktor.. with a sound source by which you can make music / sound / whatever.. via twiddling some knobs with your mouse.. by twiddling the parameters of sequences, synthesizers, sound generators, effects processors, and mixers.. you can only adjust one parameter at a time.. and you tend to not do it too abruptly most of the time.. you spend a lot of time navigating the interface just to get so you can get the thing you want to tweak’s parameter…

Controlling one parameter at a time.. sorta slowly.. with gaps between where you can tweak.. has the effect of making for a somewhat slowly organically evolving sound.. and because we are talking about parameter tweaking.. its as if the resultant sound is.. well it sounds like its coming from the same device who’s pattern and behavior is shifting over time.. and expressive in that way.

Parallel Compression  

So you do this over and over again.. generating a few sound files.. and you take these sound files and submit them to an automated process of what is called “parallel compression.” Parallel compression means.. you have a sound source.. that gets thrown through many compressors working in parallel.. and you mix the outs of the various compressors.. indeed I mix the sends into the compressors as well as the sounds out.. The idea is that the various compressors you’re dealing with all color the sound in different ways.. in relationship to things like.. the dynamics of the audio.. and they also effect the dynamics of the audio differently..  

So we are both colorizing the sounds and shaping there dynamics.. the latter of which will allow us more control once we get to the mixing and arrangement process.

The Mixing and Arranging Process

Next I take the audio files and load them into my DAW.. Digital Performer. 

There’s certain interesting aesthetic issues that pop up about this point. Because each sound file was generated independently of one another.. there’s no “design” to there interrelationships accept that they were all created at the same tempo… There relationships of timber and pitch (counterpoint, harmony, orchestration).. are.. in essence indeterminate.. which kinda brings us into John Cage Country…

What is similar is that.. in many cases the effects treated to the instrument are the same.. or at least some of the effects are the same.. and they are all created via the same process.. so the way they evolve over time is very similar: Process dictates a probability distribution of attributes.. so that its as if there’s a systems level interrelationship of stuff.

The process of mixing and arranging is then our chance to insert a little design into the production.. For now I’m not doing anything much more sophisticated then deciding when an audio recording should be inserted into the arrangement, choosing additional effects for that instrument.. effects of the general mix.. and mixing the instruments.. –Although I have been creating custom stuff with say.. Native Instruments Machine.

The Mixing

In my conventionally unconventional music.. harmony is at least in part conceived of as 3 dimensional..  What I mean is.. the issue of overlapping frequency ranges is a central issue to the mix engineers stock and trade.. and some of how this is dealt with is panoramic positioning.. and just where a sound should be located in a virtual sound stage. Because in my music the mixing and the composition are integrated.. harmony is conceptualized in a context of spacial relationships.

So if you think about it.. the process of mixing.. can be like a process of contextualizing material.. which means embedding meaning into it..  and um.. that kinda thing.

What you end up doing is listening to the material of the audio.. the various audio files you have.. and asking questions.. What you do is making decisions about.. what to highlight at one moment or another.. what should be dominant in the mix.. how the sounds should interrelate.. how to make things interesting in terms of how the track evolves over time..

So in essence the mixing is the composing.. moving things around in space.. automating effects.. and all this kind of thing.

Where Maschine fits into all of this?

Maschine is in essence a pattern based percussive sequencer.. and a little bit more. You compose in it various patterns.. and then in your DAW you tell it when to play what patterns..

So, at the very least Maschine represents the possibilities of pattern based sequencing.. to my music.. something that’s very good for real time music production.. and based sequencing is a big part of what’s going on inside of Reaktor in much of this production.

Machine gets mixed in like any other element.. though its the one element where we have conscious control of.. so that it works to somehow.. fit things together.. I guess.. another layer of it..

Where to go from here

It seems to me that there’s an incredible number of possibilities moving forward from here.. I have an obvious interest in working out how to create a kind of music that is similar to this.. in a live scenario.. and then there’s all the kind of possible mutations of this…

With Kore [ and hands on controllers more genearally ] 

Kore, shown here:

represents one obvious set of possibilities. You can load up various software instruments, effects, and what not.. into Kore.. and control them via its buttons and knobs.. which you map to various parameters of the instruments / effects in question.. You have various pages of mappings that you can then move between.. allowing you real time control.. without a mouse.. and in a way were you can control multiple parameters at once.

Real time control of software, in this fashion.. radically changes the way you think, and how you work with.. the software.. it’s really awesome.

 A day or so latter:

Implications 

The full implications of real time hands on control of software in this fashion, and relative to this sorta production style are really.. well more then I can really lay out in full for you here today… but I can throw a bit at yea

Manipulating multiple parameters at once

As mentioned earlier… mousing around single parameters at a time produces a certain kind of organic evolution of the sounds.. hands on control is a very different beast.. we are not talking about… well there’s a certain artistry of performance.. kind of more power.. and with that power comes the need to know how to temper it.. and anyway.. there’s a good deal to explore here.

Beyond this.. things can get a little complex.. especially is we are using multiple controllers.. and the idea that we can now play with interrelationships on the performance level.

Recording Automation rather then Audio

A significant difference between the way I was tweaking away in Reaktor.. and tweaking away with controllers in a DAW is that we are now recording automation data of a performance.. and not simply the resultant audio.

This means we can go back in and edit the performance.. we can perform on one set of parameters on one take, and another on another take.. so that the results can become a good deal deal more complex in how they evolve over time..

There is a kind of negative.. which is.. well has to do with most modern music.. that you don’t really have to make choices.. when you can alway edit / adjust things latter… this is a kind of long conversation.. but basically it has to do with.. the creative process.. and being pushed into situations where you have to work your way out of the hard way.. and in so doing.. often that’s how brilliant things happen.. But without going to far into this topic.. I will say that ultimately its up to the artist, in how to relate to the technology on this level. 

Taking it to Ableton Live, and the joys of patterns.

I imagine the next phase of things is to take the whole production, and bring it into Ableton Live.. creating patterns.. using MIDI effects to tweak the patterns.. and make it so the whole production is produced this way…

Here we really get to thinking deeply about how to take this into the live arena.. also… we are getting out of Reaktor.. and using the rest of my instrument library.

This is sorta like.. “lets go do stuff in the usual studio” stuff. It’s hard to say too much about a path you’ve yet to walk but.. An Ableton Live based… pattern based.. compositional process.. can actually lead you into a world of more control.. more.. lets say design developed.. stuff.. then traditional linear sequencing… 

Basically.. you have a bunch of patterns.. and you play with how the different patterns play together.. this can be how you think of production and composition in the real design sense.. or it can be like the design of a framework for improvisation.

There’s perhaps more to say here.. but I’m tired..

Integration

The final subject is really integration.. to integrate this stuff with the stuff that I’m actually good at… or maybe the better way of putting it is where I’m already strong..

I see this kinds of hands on.. tweak it.. kind of organic evolution of sound.. as having certain elements that my more programmed.. crazy attention to detail music lacks.. In case you haven’t heard this stuff.. a reasonable example might be this remix of the Cobert Report Interview with Lawrence Lessig.. I did recently

BSO Steven Cobert Lawrence Lessig ReMix by Matt Searles

This track took me about a month to do.. there’s a hell of a lot more attention to detail then you might notice at first..  ( including a fair amount that doesn’t really come out when listened to streamed).. the problem with this track is perhaps mostly how short it is.. as so much of this sorta thing for me tends to be about taking a little trip.. and its hard to go that far in a couple of minutes.. In some ways you can listen to it as a prototype for the new direction of what we are calling my conventional work..  Even with whatever it’s flaws might be.. it does represent a step forward on that trajectory… 

I love the idea of taking a whole month to do a single track.. I mean just the level of detail you can achieve that way… that much love and attention to every moment.. of course it’s a little on the unrealistic side.. but still!

The integration can probably happen along multiple axises

1. If you create a music form where it literally takes a month to finish a couple minutes of music.. to have this along side music where in a day’s work can give you twenty plus minutes worth of music.. well.. now the month for a couple minutes is realistic.. 
2. I have this notion of a whole album that is of the tweak kind.. where via creative mixing.. the super programmed detail stuff.. sorta comes out of that world.. where in you’re really considering the album as a whole. ( which may not make a lot of sense for custom play lists )
3. The Tweak-age stuff could be an element inside of the super detailed programed sequence stuff.
4. There’s a lot of stuff I’m thinking about where.. you have.. say.. a kind of tweakage space reverb and delay inside of a deeply programmed mix..  

A Concluding Statement

Stretching is important.. and that’s really what this is about.. What’s slightly strange about this post is that it seems to almost emphasize the.. let call it objective facts.. over the sorta internal organizing principles that would be.. what is actually known.. the facts.. we must.. as Hunter Thompson would say.. buy the ticket, take the ride.. to really get at.. so it is a strange synthesis.. and we’ll have to see what happens.

In any event.. in the end.. this is just like a confession of one tiny piece in a much larger puzzle

Well.. what I ought to do now, perhaps, is finish up the part 2 of the remixing project posts.. and then move onto a kind of postmortem of it.. and I would do that.. accept that I’m now onto a new remix project.. and that’s kind of where my mind is at at the moment.. so… lets dig into that.

Working on Remix projects means moving out of my safety zone.. I’m fine with that.. accept.. I tend to like to “orbit” my safety zone.. another words.. go out into the difficult stuff as much as I can.. and then once I’ve had enough, go back to the safety zone.. work in such a way that you’re incorporating new stuff.. going on an explorative adventure.. but you’re also integrating it with your already built muscles.. and so far.. I feel like I’m a little further afield from my safety zone then all that…

The problem with jumping too far out is.. suddenly you start to realize how badly you suck.. or that’s the feeling you get.. It disturbs you’re feeling of comfort.. 

As we speak I’m moving into a world of “being serious about electronic music.” Was I ever not serious about electronic music? Well.. serious in a kind of more focused way.. a kind of thinking that runs something like “this is what you must do to be successful out here” and then going after it.. in a focused sorta way. All I can really say is that I have a hell of a lot of work to do before I get to where I want to get to along this front.. enough so that I’m feeling a little unsure of myself.

Some of the basics of what it probably takes.

1. Get to know electronic music: I mean this from a.. “what’s happening” kind a level.. there’s a marketing element to this.. of knowing the market and figuring out how you want to position you’re self in said market.. but it’s also a kind of.. just feeling connected to it all. Electronic music is a world of a zillion generas and sub generes.. enough so that it’s possible that no one really knows this world in and out.
2. What are the production styles of the various generas.. how do you make the stuff? I’m me.. I’ll make my music my own damn way.. but.. having the ability to work inside of generas, or at least relate to various generas, will likely have some kind of pragmatic value.. I figure at least it would have some value to add to my musical vocabulary…

Ok, fair enough.. lets look at some other stuff.

I’m looking into the subject of live performance..

So.. I’m looking at gear like Mashine:

Here’s a video I rather like on it:

This video might give you some sense of what can be done with Native Instrument’s Maschine.. though it doesn’t really go too deep into it.. Native Instruments site does a bit a more.. but it’s still a little limited in what it tells you.. I’ve had the following twitter conversations:

Tweeting with CynicOne..  

cynicone@MattSearles ps: saw you were interested in MASCHINE. you’d get better use outta ableton live + pad kontrol or a mpc1k with jjos2xl IMHO…

cynicone@MattSearles …spent 2 hrs @ guitar center with one and it’s not ready for prime time. wait for v2 of the software at least.

MattSearles@cynicone well I already bought Maschine, it was on back order, so I’m waiting for it at this point 

cynicone@MattSearles aye….the lack of vsti sequencing, groove quantization & sample layering/editing capabilities were the negative 4 me.

MattSearles@cynicone you mean Maschine? Couldn’t you use it as just a controller in a DAW to drive external vsti’s? 

cynicone@MattSearles u could use it as a midi controller but really it’s a sequencer in itself. u have 2 run drums in maschine, then synths in a daw

cynicone@MattSearles its sort of a 1/2 baked software mpc at the moment. i like the idea but it’s not developed fully. 

Lets see if I can’t translate this into English…

Maschine has a built in sequencer.. kind of the old analog style pattern thing.. which is really how I think you want to work with it.. in large measure.. and for God knows what reason.. Cynic One is telling us that this Sequencer can’t be used to control external virtual instruments.. which does sound rather insane.. you can, as near as I can  tell, export MIDI from what you’ve sequencing in Maschine, and bring it into you’re DAW to then use with you’re more robust instrument library.. assuming you have such a library.. but you would think you’d be able to use some kind of inter application midi communication.. or something.. 

Sample layers is important to.. how hard you hit something.. say a piano or a drum.. effects the sound in more ways then just volume.. with sample layers you use different samples for different… well levels of how hard you’re hitting the thing.. basically.

Groove quantizing is.. if you have notes on grid.. as you would with a step sequencer.. things can get a little robotic… which depending on you’re aesthetic inclinations and the project at hand, can be a good or bad thing.  Groove quantization is a means for turning a robot into… well, a groovy robot… err.. gives it a more human-esk feel.

In terms of how this effects my analysis of “if it’s worth it.” 

Prior to the announcement of Maschine at NAMM, I was thinking I wanted to get into “this type” of technology. Everything I do, pretty much, takes place in the computer with software.. so I was figuring I might just get one of these types of controllers… and then when I saw Maschine I was like “oh, yeah, I probably want that.”

I’m very much attracted to the idea of this kind of production… and this falls into a number of categories.

1. I want more of my music production to involve controllers and human performances, even if quantized
2. I want some kinda controller set up for doing sorta “groove box” style production.. including for generative sorts of stuff.
3. I’m interested in playing with step sequencers that are connected to actual controllers. I think the reason I usually don’t like working with step sequencers is that I’m normally using them with mouse input.. which is not terrible exciting, and can often be a bit on the tedious side.
4. Maschine will operate as a controller for Ableton Live.. which at least has some value to me prior to investing in the new Ableton controller.. 

If I could kind of summaries it all.. Maschine is a pretty expensive piece of gear.. if it’s worth the asking price.. that’s probably a matter of how you plan to use it.. and I think Native Instruments making it with these limitations.. really works against it being worth the asking price. Still.. It’s a “we’ll have to use it our selves to really know” kind of thing.

Of course the thing is that I’ve already bought Maschine..  I’m just waiting for it to arrive.. so.. I’m sorta in the position of having to wait and hope for the best.

Tweeting with Veerrgg 

I had a somewhat related conversation with “Vergel E,” whom makes electronic music up in Canada.. and has a blog and podcast on electronic music that can be found here, where we got a little into Kore 2 and speculation on subjects related to Maschine Integration stuff…

MattSearles Wow.. some of the compression in Kore 2 sounds better then you’d expect

vveerrgg@MattSearles #kore2 is actually a pretty sweet DAW alternative. I’ve fallen in love with it as a “simple” environment to create/record in 

MattSearles@vveerrgg yeah I don’t think I’d normally take a compressor from guitar rig.. in a certain process sense. 

vveerrgg@MattSearles thats part of why i like it so much. it reminds me of the old days when I would just plug stuff together and see what happens

MattSearles@vveerrgg makes me wonder if I should work out how to program more of my Instruments/effects into its data base. Maybe program some patches 

vveerrgg@MattSearles that might be taking it to the extreme… but i agree there is alot of value in that database and “scene”interface

MattSearles@vveerrgg yeah.. I’ve heard that some of that might be painful.. 

vveerrgg@MattSearles I experimented with building scene changes in #kore2 it didn’t go over well. I’m still trying to learn an effective solution

MattSearles@vveerrgg Perhaps we must wait for #kore3 ? 

vveerrgg@MattSearles I’m curious to see how #kore might integrate with #MASCHINE . Ideally I would like to see it all combined into a DAW

MattSearles@vveerrgg me to, and wondering how #maschine might integrate into my process, since I usually program sequences more then play them 

vveerrgg@MattSearles if #NI built or integrated a visualization app into #maschine similar to #Resolume I would be very curious to try 

MattSearles@vveerrgg I’m getting super interested in visualization to, enjoyed your post on it ( http://tinyurl.com/blg4fp ) didnt know about #Resolume

vveerrgg@MattSearles I downloaded the demo of #Resolume and enjoyed playing with it. felt like a video version of #ableton based around video clips

vveerrgg@MattSearles made a #Resolume video based on some screen caps & video feedback. was REALLY easy once i had the material http://tr.im/gFqj 

MattSearles@vveerrgg I’m thinking I’m going to have to do that.. was thinking of doing pseudo similar stuff with Ableton/Max/Jitter

Ok, some context on this conversation 

On Resolume, Abilton and Max/Jitter 

Vergel and I share some interest in sound visualization.. and with this VJ-ing. Ableton have announced “MAX for LIVE” which you can use “Jitter” with.. This is a long conversation that I don’t really know too much about.. but basically MAX is a somewhat visual programing environment for all things electronic music.. and Jitter is something you can add to MAX that allows you to process video.. and is perhaps one tool that could be used for audio visualization.

I think the big thing is.. it will turn Ableton into a VJ tool.. and potentially a rather amazing video tool at that… Which along with the new Ableton Controller.. could be quite amazing.

On the subject of Kore..

I pretty much always use Kore as plug in in my DAWs… Kore is a combination of hardware and software.. it can load instruments and effects in it.. and stuff can be routed around, and controlled via its hardware controls.. which is pretty damn cool.. On the software side it comes with a number of effects, plus utilized a number of native instruments effects / instrument library engines.. and provides a way of managing them.. and you get this “super instrument” sorta thing where you have multiple instruments and effects programmed together into a single patch..

What I take to be how Vergel is using Kore 

But then there’s the stuff I find a little more mysterious.. which I guess is where Vergel is having his fun. For starters there’s a way of using it for live performance out of the DAW environment..

As a part of that is a system for live performance.. where you essentially create something like a “live set” where you can move between Kore patches.. where Kore essentially turns off the unused patches.. and you can move between these sets for different parts of a song or set list.. This is one of the areas where Vergel has been running into problems.

Another thing worth mentioning.. which I guess Vergel is also using? Is a built in.. gosh, I’ve never even used it.. what is it? Is it a step sequencer of some sort? It is.. well pretty rudimentary.. and I suppose this is a larger part of what Vergel was getting to with the question of Maschine and Kore integration.. 

There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of an ability to modify the sequence as its playing.. not from the Kore controller anyway… and not only that but you don’t get banks of sequences…. and you can’t sequence modulation.. or I say all this without really knowing what I’m talking about.. but that’s my impression.

What would be kind of amazing is if Native Instruments really thought this out.. to the point that you had something like a step sequencing environment that integrated all these technologies..

It would make sense for them to do this as.. besides making the kinds of studio tools I use, they also have a rather substantial suite of DJ-ing tools.. which Maschine fits into rather nicely.. and you could see how the integration of all this stuff could really be cool… and make business sense for them

A few latter 

To somewhat complicate matters I’m looking at the Jazz Mutant Dexter and Lemur

Here’s a couple of videos:

First the Dexter

Dexter gives  you a multi touch graphic interface.. think iPhone, for controlling you’re DAWs 

The problem with Dexter.. besides being pricey, is that it doesn’t actually work with the DAW that is now my main DAW.. Digital Performer… So I’d ether have to revert back to Cubase or… go to Logic.. the latter of which being pretty expensive ($500).. as a pose to just an upgrade ( probably about $200)… 

And now for the Lemur

Lemur is like Dexter only.. you can make you’re own interfaces.. and I guess would generally use it for controlling like.. Ableton Live, MAX, Reaktor.. VJing stuff.. etc. What follows is one fellows swing at making such an interface.. to go along with.. I believe it’s a MAX patch.. working with Live?

DyNAmic sequencer from Lo-Fi Massahkah on Vimeo.

Very very cool..

So some more about this

The biggest problem with Dexter and Lemur is that its super expensive.. though for a few days past my writing of this.. it’s half off.. which actually makes it something worth considering for my self.. and yet……

You know there’s rumors that Apple will come out with a tablet Mac.. sorta iPhone on steroids.. that would be all touch screened out.. one assumes that such a device would be a much better device for doing what Lemur and Dexter do.. and its not at all unlikely that it could actually be cheaper..

If this were not enough, Microsoft has been working on multi touch technology to.. which it is likely to use as a means of differentiating it’s mobile OS from Google’s OS.. But even outside of all this, I’m sorta assuming that given the economy.. it’s not unlikely that the costs of the Dexter and Lemur will drop..

The list price of a Dexter is in the ball park of a Mac Pro.. at that price.. the potential market place is rather small.. I’m guessing.. It seems to be very much in the DIY MAX planet.. that’s the target audience.. which is often a little on the avant guard side of things.. not a group known for an excess of wealth… if the price were to drop.. and you were to focus on economies of scale.. you’d have a much huger potential market.. and you gotta be thinking with the possibility of Apple and Microsoft coming into that market place that.. well.. you really need to do something.

There are other issues I could drag up but.. but.. lets move back to the more or less original subject of all this stuff for live performance.

So electronic live performance

I’m gathering various tools along these lines.. There’s a really big challenge to working this stuff out.. if I can make my production style live.. The only way I can imagine it being possible is via MAX.. which is a very complex kettle of fish with which to attempt to tango.. 

But we won’t get into all that here.. we’ll end here.. with just saying.. well I don’t know.. that there’s an interesting set of challenges around this stuff.. and I’m sure I’ll be blogging about it more soon 

Editors note [ brother new Ape V was like “yo, when we gonna get a new blog post from ya” and seeing as I had this one in draft form.. figured I’d finish it up and post it.. this is really a kind of subject point of view on the subject of remixing but.. with any luck, you can dig it ] 

So Evan’s suggested I get into remixing.. which on the surface sounded like.. well something interesting to try out.. it’s not something I’ve really done before.. so I haven’t been too sure that I’d be any good at it.. or.. how much work it would take to get good at it.. as a part of this.. he suggested I take a look at entering this contest to remix Empire State Human….

First Impressions

I started by listening to the Melancholic Afro track.. featuring Wofgang Flur.. a part of the original Kraftwork group.. and started to try and figure out what I was supposed to do.. that is “what is remixing anyway”.. what’s it all about.. and where could I take this music.

The early ideas where not so much the ideas of someone doing remixing.. as they were those of a mix engineer.. and when I download the original session material..  I somewhat freaked when I realize all the effects they used had been printed on the tracks  provided for the remix. 

When a mix engineer builds up a mix.. he or she uses a whole lot of effects.. mostly EQ and compression.. reverb, delays.. that kinda thing.. in such a way to make the tracks fit together in a certain sorta way.. into a mix.. if the effects are printed.. meaning  you get audio tracks.. with the effects in the recordings.. you loose a lot of flexibility in terms of how to mix them… cause there’s no getting those effects off the tracks.

First directions 

My initial reaction was… “well, I have some audio to midi conversion abilities in my software” which translates into software analyzing the recordings.. and creating MIDI performance data.. that can then be performed by various digital instruments.. thus allowing you to use your own sounds, more or less as if played by the band.. Besides this it also allows me to rearrange the melodic and harmonic material.

It turns out.. my project studio at this point, in terms of electronic music production tools, is very strong.. by professional industry standards. The areas where I feel the need to invest more in tend to be mix engineering and recording.. 

The result of all this is.. I probably have the tools to create a kind of new version of the track.. that is perhaps more to my aesthetic sensibilities.. and probably realize it on a very high level.

But then a strange thing happened

Direction shifts into Ableton Live

I’ve been haunting the local guitar center.. doing gear research and picking up a few things.. and generally shooting the shit with the sales staff. In one of those conversations one of the guys suggested that Ableton Live was a very good tool to do remixing with.. and of course I own Ableton Live.. 

Ableton is a loop sequencer with.. somewhat immature MIDI, recording, and mixing tools.. Because of the way I usually work.. I don’t really use Ableton that much.. and don’t really feel like I have a great mastery of it..  I, along with many other musicians, feel that Live has a kind of.. different paradigm for how you work with it.. and thinking in that paradigm doesn’t feel totally natural.. at least not yet.

But of course lots of people LOVE Live.. is it just that they are more the type who works with pattern sequencing as a pose to linear sequencing? I wonder this.. and yet, though I’ve always been more the one to go the linear sequencing route.. so much of my music is actually about patterns…

Jumping in

So I started out by loading the Melancholic Afro session into Live.. taking the tracks and creating loops out of them…

The process of creating Loops is.. interesting. You could create a loop that’s just like a normal repeating riff..  or you can create loops.. where based on where the start and end points of your loop is.. basically creates something very different then the original music.. like creating a glitch in it or something.. So, for instance.. I quickly created a drum part from what was originally fairly synth pop-e, and turned it into something more Slayer-esk.

Loop Envelops 

Ableton is very powerful in how you can work with loops.. even if I do crave more power… in that you can use “looping envelopes.” A looping envelop.. well an envelop is.. it controls a parameter.. So.. pan, volume, pitch, effect send, any element of how an effect unit is processing sound.. the envelop can control and automate.. and a looping envelop simply loops that parameter automation.

Also worth noting is that the envelop loop lengths do not have to conform to audio loop length.. and that you can have many envelop loops going.. that are all of different lengths.. which allows you to work with a kind of polymetric textural evolution.. that’s, say, awesome for ambient music.. and has a lot of creative compositional applications.. 

How things look from where I’m standing now

I have a kind of vision, along with a road map for getting there, for what sorta remix artist I might like to be.. and some sense of what I’m probably capable of.. and so it is that I see remixing Empire State Human’s Melancholic Afro as a one step in the process of getting there… lets see if I can kind of describe this a little bit.

All the software tools at my disposal have there own individual strengths and weaknesses.. and so you want to work in such a way as to maximize there strengths and minimize there weaknesses.. which ultimately brings us to the subject of workflow.. and workflow is currently the real challenge for me…

Working on a remix in Live.. I start out making loops.. loops that will allow me to reconstruct the music as it was.. but also loops that are like experiments.. explorations.. “lets try this.” And for each track.. of the original sessions.. we’ll have a whole number of loops. 

The next step is to arrange the loops.. this is really the compositional part.. It starts out by fiddling around playing different loops together.. and playing with possible orders for how we could move around from loop to loop.

It strikes me that there are some interesting things that could be done during this process.. We can take our loops.. or sections of loops.. or other material.. and convert them into REX loops.. perhaps for use in Reason or Kontakt.. sections could be treated as samples in Kontakt.. and different parts could be bent around in different ways to make sense in our evolving arrangement mix.. and of course things like audio to midi conversion.. or different pitch shifting technologies.. could be used to further manipulate things into a new form.

Next Day Some Time

All of this is basically “manipulation vocabulary” or tools of facilitating that.. the process of arranging is basically composing.. this in combination with mixing..

The way I plan to move forward on this project is to finish creating loops.. play with loops, arrange loops, mix loops..

This post is starting to wander around a bit.. so how about I talk about what I think is special in how what I’m doing.

So I wanted to share with you some gear I’ve been checking out… brand new, just announced gear… from Native Instruments and Ableton.. the theme here is hardware control of software.. the integration of the two.. which is something I’ve been thinking about a good deal lately. So.. without further a-do…

Native Instruments Maschine 

I’ve been looking into these kinds of.. groove box style controllers for a little while now… What sets Maschine a part from its competition is that it’s an integration of hardware and software.. Usually you get full on hardware.. which is capable of controlling software to a more limited extent.. or you get just a controller, which again is only able to control the software to a limited extent.. here we get the two married together.. 

Generally.. the full on hardware devices a bit more expensive, sometimes a lot more expensive.. and often are somewhat limited with respect to expandability.. where as here.. you have access the the full set of sounds you got going on your computer, basically.. I’ve been seeing Maschine (why must they spell it this way) retailing for around $600. 

There’s a good deal more that Maschine is capable of then this one little video shows.. Native has the rest of there videos on they’re site.. which can give you a fuller appreciation of the devise..  

[editors note, Matt figured this was worth adding, about a day after this was written]>>

I imagine that the economics of a tool like Maschine versus a full on hardware unit are worth mentioning at this point… Most full on hardware units of these types.. well the higher end ones anyways.. the ones that go for a few grand.. are units that try to do everything in one box. This can be economical if you’re not some one with a larger studio..

Like.. take the new Akai MPC 500 sampling work station.. lists for $3500.. this unit has a built in 80 GB hard drive, 2 XLRs, usb, ADAT.. various outs.. blah blah blah.. you’re limited to a 64 track MIDI sequencer, 16 bit 44 kHz audio.. you’ve got limited effects routing.. and the effects are not really all that.. it’s ability to slice up loops is some what iffy..

Now, if you break all this down.. you could get a MacBook Pro for 2K, a Focusrite Pro 4 audio interface for $500.. which has like 8 XLRs in.. all of which actually have phantom power.. and the pres are of way higher quality.. you could pick up a copy of Logic for $500, Maschine for $600..  So for $100 more.. you’re on a whole other planet.. I mean you’re just light years beyond..

I would assume.. if you’re serious about music making.. you must have a decent computer to start with, as well as a DAW like Logic.. and an audio interface.. so at this point things are stacked even further against the full on hardware units.

This is not to say that the full on hardware units don’t have there advantages.. you are, after all, just carrying around one piece of gear.. all the features are made to work together in such a way that.. can sometimes be quite elegant.. but generally these kinds of devices are favored more by “old school peeps” who are intimidated by computers.. and the more complex DAWs.  <<

APC40 for Ableton Live

This is what has me REALLY excited. As near as I can tell from the video.. the integration between the controller and Live is awesome.. which isn’t quite to say that it’s without limitations.. though one would have to play with it to really get a sense of what those limitations look like.. and many of those, I’m sure, evaporate when you add Max for Live to the equation.

Why is Matt Excited about this sort of stuff

I guess I learned a valuable lesson from Kore 2.. when you have hardware control over software, you experience the software in a whole other way… and you can work with the software in a whole new way.. I don’t quite know how to over state this.. 

Ok.. so there’s one.. well actually two.. other things to share.. This is gear I’m actually a whole lot more sold on the above mentioned tools..

Euphonix MC Control

The guy presenting here is a bit more annoying then the fellows in the above videos… don’t you kinda wanna slap him around a little bit? …But if you can look past this.. this is some pretty amazing stuff… 

Euphonix MC Mix

These tools aren’t totally perfect.. they’re probably not worth the investment, from what I’ve heard, if what you’re looking to control is purely Reason or Ableton Live.. as it doesn’t control them so well.. MC Control’s touch screen has a very narrow angle by which you can view it, so you kinda need to be on top of it to use it.. and the screen is known to flicker a bit. There’s apparently a few other sniglets here and there.. but they’ve been doing a good job of updating how these work.. 

That said.. from my point of view its a pretty amazing controller.. and for my studio what I’m thinking of investing in is the Euphonix MC Controller and the Euphonix MC Mix.. which.. and don’t I wish there was some kind of a special bundle deal when you buy them both at once.. run at $2,500 for both.

The price is.. well a lot of money.. but, if you compare it’s features and price versus similar control surfaces.. you really can’t beat them. 

Next day:

I want to continue this bit on talking about using hardware to control software.. particularly as it relates to the Euphonix stuff… or at least how I’m thinking about it.

The first thing is.. when you have touch sensitive motorized sliders.. and in the set up I’m talking about you have 12 of them.. you’re in a situation where you can see what’s going on with your mix automation just from the controller.. as a pose to having to switch on over to your mixer view window in your software..

I think the really big thing here is.. tactile control.. when you mix in the box without these kinds of tools.. you’re controlling the software via a mouse.. via one pointer.. so you can really only move one parameter / one slider.. at once… and you don’t really have the same kind of control over things.

Further, if what you are controlling is effects or a synthesizer program.. you’re in a situation where different parameters interact.. which is a situation where you’d really like to be able to work in a way where you can fully explore that interaction… which is hard to do with a mouse!

The implications are bigger and deeper then this.. but.. I figure that’s probably enough for one post. 

I just got a news letter from Ableton on there new live 8.. links to videos.. and what not.. seems worth talking about.. perhaps in some detail… I’d be sharing the videos with you, accept for some odd reason Ableton decided not to make there videos easily embedable..  so.. you’ll just have to deal with just my yacking about it.

Matt On Live

I haven’t dug real deep into Ableton Live.. of all the sound software in my library, minus new stuff, Live is sorta where I’m the weakest.. and there’s various reasons I would attribute this to.. the two main reasons are as follows:

#1 Live is a very unique sort of sound program.. DAW, which kind of requires you to think about making music in a different way from.. well, what you’re used to. As a part of this.. it’s primary applications seem to pattern based music.. which is not what really my main thing..  

#2 Live is a DAW that’s meant to be played like an instrument.. and so you really want special controllers to get the most out of it. I have one such controller.. from M-Audio.. but the bitched at there tech support do not respond to my problems! ( I hate tech support sometimes )

As a result of these two things… well that and some of the sound library that came with my copy of Live are corrupted.. have caused me to not really work a lot in Live..  and have me feeling like it’s probably the last program I’d likely upgrade.. at least until I start getting more into it. however.. with there being a new Live on the horizon.. it’s worth at least entertaining.

I do still harbor some interest in getting serious about Live.. It’s a very cool application.. with lots of unique creative potential.. and I do feel like my work could hugely benefit from getting serious about it. 

New Stuff on the Horizon

Live 8..

The new Live features a new “groove engine,” a new “warp engine,” a new “looper,” 5 new effects, and some workflow enhancements.. lets take a look at each in a little more detail.

Groove engine 

The new groove engine is actually pretty groovy.. you can take any audio file and it will analyze it’s “groove” and allow you to apply that groove to any bit of audio or midi.. you adjust the percentage by which you want it to effect what you’re applying it to and.. then print it, so to speak.. which permanently groove-if-ies it.

Personally.. Id rather just be able to adjust percentage over time.. perhaps adding various percentages of different grooves to the same bit of audio.. automating the percentages over time.. that’s what would make sense to me but.. apparently not to Ableton? But I still think it looks pretty cool.

The Warp engine.. has to do with tempo matching.. how you match the tempo of one audio file to that of another… say the tempo of the project you’re working on.. basically Ableton have made this a good deal better in there latest version.

Looper 

Looper.. basically.. you have a foot peddle, sold separately of course, that controls Live.. makes it record a loop of what your about to play.. which will then loop.. and over time, you create layers of stuff.. by repeatedly hitting the foot peddle..

It’s kind of cool.. I don’t quite get why you need a whole new feature to do this sorta thing, or whatever.. but it is what it is.

New effects 

The new effects include Vocoder, Multiband dynamics, over drive, limiter, and frequency shifter.. Live has needed a better limiter.. I’ll say that much! The other features are cool to.. and now it really does have a lot as far as distortion features.. relative to what you’d expect to ship with a DAW.. so you know.. it’s something.

Workflow 

The workflow enhancements are.. well.. they basically update this and that..

Matt’s Conclusion

Ableton is.. more religious then any software developer I know.. about putting out new versions yearly.. which.. is a cool thing.. but.. much of the updates seem fairly minor.. I’m not sure of the upgrade price.. and not sure if its totally worth it to me.. particularly given the sorta secondary place we find it taking up in my studio.

Other new stuff on said horizon 

APC40 

The APC40.. this is a special controller codeveloped by Ableton and Akai… I’ll wait for reviews before I get serious about it.. but.. it looks super uber groovy.. kind of the ultimate controller for Live.. Just by sorta watching the video for it, I can see all sorts of wonderful implications. In my view, this kind of a tool could make all the difference.

A theme that is very much on my mind these days is that a significant problem with the software based studio is the absence of hardware interfaces.. particularly good hardware interfaces. The hardware interface is still.. kinda sorta, not what it could be.. generally speaking.. and I would go so far as to say that.. the world of hardware controllers is not likely to… well they probably wont get it right anytime soon.. I give it a good 5 or so years…

How good the APC40 is is.. not clear from Ableton’s presentation.. but that it was codeveloped by Ableton and Akai, specifically to control Live.. gives me a good deal of hope.

The questions marks are mainly.. how much will it cost.. how well does it work with other controllers.. and how well might it work for things other then Live.. like say virtual instruments and effects loaded into Live.. all of which is not entirely clear at this point.

Ableton Suite 8

Ableton Suite 8 is a library of instruments, loops, and samples.. a total of 10 instruments..  It’s retail price is $700.  Umm.. $700 is a pretty substantial investment.. If this library is usable inside of software other then Live.. then it might be worth considering.. but given how much I’ve spent on studio instruments lately.. I’d be hard pressed to shell out that kind of money for the suite.. unless there’s a special price when bundled with the price of the upgrade.

Max for Live

There’s no pricing information available for this one yet.. But.. it’s Max/MSP for Live.. Max is.. a graphical interface development environment, basically.. for digital instruments, effects, and what not… Max for Live sounds like it’s essentially Max streamlined for working with Live…

The issue here is.. I’m already thinking about Max/MSP/Jitter for my studio.. and I’ll be damned if I’ll buy it twice.. so unless they have some kind of a deal for Max users.. I’m not sure it’s worth it for me. 

Share

Ableton is unveiling a new means of collaborating with people over the internet.. which basically makes it easy to share your work.. for collaborative purposes, with other folks.. and you can apparently share stuff with folks on Face Book, MySpace, and embed this stuff on your blog.. people who are not Live users can get a limited time demo of Live to work with your stuff that way.. so its basically like a marketing tool for Live.. 

Some of what Ableton are doing with Share sounds like it ought to be a free service.. but they are apparently looking to charge you for using it.. so the question becomes.. how much.. at what point does it make sense.. and at what point do you look at it as.. another scheme to rid you of money.

Frankly.. sharing large files, like the the project files you use in making music.. is not an easy task via the internet.. so a service that can help with this makes a lot of sense.. but… it’s certainly doable without the service.. and I’m not really sure that the service adds enough value that it would make it make a lot of sense to… well to make it worth being a pay service.. this combined with some of what they are offering feeling like it should be free in the first place.. at least leaves one with some questions marks. 

Conclusions 

I don’t really get the feeling the Ableton really understands it’s marketing issues. What percentage of Live users are just using Live on it’s own.. versus own a regular DAW? I don’t really know the answer to this.. but basically my feeling is.. if you’re serious about electronic music.. Live probably belongs in your tool kit.. along with Reason, and.. probably one traditional DAW.. in my case Digital Performer.. and some people might add ProTools to the list.. 

When viewing Live from this perspective.. I think any extra stuff you’d buy for it.. you really want that stuff to work with other stuff.. If you’re going to shell out $700 from instruments especially for Live.. I think they really need to work in your other DAWs.. If you’re going to spend a lot of money on a hardware controller for Live.. you really are going to wait it to be able to perform double duty with other apps.. and if you’re going pay for a service like share.. well.. you probably want to share more then just projects done with Live.. in fact you probably want a full on collaborate feature set.. of which there are a number of competitors cropping up.. many of which are free..

If Ableton were to get all this right.. they’d be a lot more tempting.. though some of this stuff is quite tempting, I must say. 

Haven’t been blogging so much lately..  bad Matt!  But how about a short little post? ( He says realizing short never happens for him )

So there’s basically 2 things worth talking about today.. or thoughts, or things I seem to be up to. #1 Is the music production stuff and #2 Is thinking about promotional efforts.

The Music Production Adventures

Though I didn’t post anything.. I have been writing about a new project I’ve started… inside of Ableton Live.. This project reached new hightes today.  So lets explore a little:

Of all the DAWs in my sonic arsenal, Ableton Live is the one I’m weakest with..  I have certain ways of working.. that I’ve been evolving for the past 15 or so years..  and I’m not sure how Live could fit into that way of working. Usually I think it has the potential to bring my work in new directions.. and so that’s some of what I find myself exploring…

The first stage in the current adventure has been creating loops.. I have a rather large library of audio.. music I’ve made, stuff I’ve recorded…  The process is one of loading up the audio files, and selecting loop points. Live will do the beat matching for you.. so whatever the tempo of the original work… Live will match it to the tempo..  

But the real fun comes from shaping looping envelops that control the parameters of whatever effect you might want to place on your loop.. Via various processing you “design loops” that are often unrecognizable.. from there original. This is, at least for me, a fun and unpredictable creative process… which yields results I wouldn’t other wise be able to achieve. 

Today, however, brought all this stuff to a crazy new level. As I began digging around my hard drives in search of audio files.. I started to find some interesting things….

A shape forms

Some of what I found were recordings made..  Well the podcast episode I recorded hours after my mom had passed… Left phone messages from my therapist and collection agencies.. There’s a collection of sounds that.. as I started putting together an arrangement of this stuff..

Well it was probably some of the most emotional sound art I’ve ever heard in my life.. It was powerful as hell..  It was also emotional draining, to the point that I felt on the verge of an emotional breakdown from going there.. but I think it was also therapeutic.. and I have this feeling that I really do need to go there.

So that’s basically that on the music production side of things..

Online Music Marketing

While running a few errins, I was seduced by the evil Barns and Nobel.. in to buying “Web Marketing for the Music Business” by a Mr. Tom Hutchison.. brought to us by Focal Press… 

Well I think this is about the best book on the subject I’ve come across. As a “social media peep” I’m hyper up on how marketing and communications are changing in this new media space.. Even if I’m not executing on it, I am an expert on social media strategy…  or something of one.. ( seeing as most of the people I look up to as mentors / experts in this area claim not to be experts these days )… In any event… this puts me in a unique place to evaluate such a book.. never mind all the music marketing type books I’ve read in the past.. and I’m here to tell you that this book is totally top notch.. from what I’ve been able to gather thus far.

So reading a book like this brings me to rethinking my strategy / shtick..  

So I’ll kinda leave this post short.. with just a couple finishing comments:

I’m feeling inspired by the promotional adventures ahead.. but also somewhat in awe of the challenges of it..  so wish me luck… 

NaSoAlMo: What it is and why we like it

This month, or November actually, I plan on participating in NaSoAlMo, other wise known as National Solo Album Month.. This is a thing where various musician / sound artistic types.. decided to participate in a challenge to create a solo album in a months time..  Basically.. it’s an excuse to get serious.. for a month.

Last year, as long times followers would know, I created ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures.. for NaSoAlMo….  This, I must tell you, was one hell of an adventure. There’s nothing like working your ass off on something, if you want to grow by leaps and bounds… and at the end of last years National Solo Album Month’s thing..  I felt like I had made a giant jump in my music production / etc skills..  And so now, we embark on the next adventure…

On the Stategery and tactics of taking on such a challenge

Generally speaking.. if I’m working in my conventional ways.. and didn’t have a lot of other stuff to contend myself with.. was very focused.. I could maybe spit out about a track a week.. which might be around.. oh lets say an average of about 6 minutes a pop…. which comes out to what, like 24 minutes of music? Well.. the challenge is to make an album of at least 29:09 minutes.. so that’s not quite going to cut it.. and seeing as I have other things to deal with in life.. and seeing as last year I only found out about this about half way through the month… one must develop alternative strategies and tactics.. which is perhaps another interesting thing to deal with… 

So, lets take a look at last years strategies.. and this years strategies.

ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures Production Strategy 

I found out, as I said before, about this challenge, about half way through the month.. but had already begun work on a few tracks.. so figured I could still make a go of it.. If I tried something radicle.

My radical process started with.. working with different types of sound generating type programs.. where you improvise via tweaking various parameters and record the results. This instantly creates a whole lot of music.. but then you have the question of “is this interesting music?” So the next challenge is “how do we make this interesting music?” This became the jumping off point for an experimental sonic adventure. For the most part, this involved the following approaches:

1. Lets Process the crap out of these audio files.
2. Lets mix stuff together different versions of processed audio into a kind of composite audio file.
3. Lets slice up the audio file into discreet loops n stuff
4. Lets sequence the loops
5. Lets integrate this with our usual way of working 

 Well, that’s the broad outline anyway.. 

Tools Used

1. Ableton Live
2. Arturia Storm
3. Native Instruments Komplete (mostly Reaktor)
4. A Wimpy G4 Mac
5. Reason
6. A guitar
7. A Zoom H4 field recorder 

Ok, so that’s the basic broad brush stroke outline of it.. You can read more of my writings related to this project here…  That would be the full list.. The writings where I wrote during the production are as follows: Off In Reaktor Land, Red Rum Re Drumed, and finally Gonzo adventures in music production.

Should you like to hear the album in it’s entirety, you can find it on over here at mattsearles.com/music. 

At the time I created it.. I wasn’t real sure of it.. but since then I’ve gotten a lot of good reviews from people.. and now figure.. well, it’s probably a pretty good album.

The New Production Adventure

Tools likely to be used:

1. The Bad Ass 8 Core Mac Pro
2. This here new MacBook (2GHz Due)
3. Komplete 5
4. Kore
5. Ableton Live
6. Reason
7. ReCycle
8. A Tascam 16 channel Mixer as a MIDI controller
9. An M-Audio DJ like MIDI controller
10. A Guitar
11. A Slide Bass
12. Digital Performer
13. Liquid Mix 16
14. Couple of budget Condenser Microphones
15. Zoom H4

In addition to all that madness..  I’m looking to add VirSyns Cantor Vocal Synth and… VirSyns “Take Five FX bundle” which includes Bark, Matrix, Reflect, TDesign, and VTape. Indulge me as I talk about these a little, won’t you?

1. Bark is a pretty interesting looking  27 band filter / EQ and compressor
2. VTape is a set of analog tape emulation plugs that emulate tape based saturation, delay, and flange. I’m very much in need of a tape delay type effect.. and very much wanting some sort of analog tape emulation warmth.. 
3. Reflect is an Algorithmic Convolution Reverb. Even in the current version of Digital Performer, I’m not feeling like my reverb bases are covered quite enough.. and I expect Reflect to really help out along these lines.. and the integration of Algorithmic and Convolution technologies into a single reverb unit is a quite attractive thing.
4. TDesign is a Transient former.. I don’t know too much about this sorta effect.. but it does give you control over your dynamics / transience.. and there are quite a few production folks out there whom are very into such things
5. Matrix is a Vocoder, and according to a recent issue of Sound On Sound, a very impressive Vocoder.

 So… as you can no doubt see.. We’re talking about a massive upgrade from last year’s project.. studio wise anyway, so, what of the plan off attack?

Plan of Attack

I have lots of music ideas, and I’m pretty sure this project isn’t going to be able to explore them all.. but, we’ll certainly see how far we can make it.

• The first thing I want to do is.. See if I can’t jam out some stuff using Kore to control various Reaktor beatboxes, sequenced instruments, and sound generators..  This will effectively create one box full of building blocks.
• Next I want to experiment with a somewhat traditional-ish approach to sequencing.. where you play around on a keyboard, quantize stuff, and put together stuff that way..
• I want to use ReCycle to create REX files out of some of the results.. to use as building blocks that way.
• A rather central thing I want to explore is.. vocals. These vocals will probably be ether.. me speaking into microphones and vocoding the hell out of it.. / Melodying the hell of it.. or Cantor stuff.. somehow creatively mixed into the music.
• I’m actually thinking of the possibility that this album project could feature some sort of a narrative / lyrical whatever.. that might sit at the center of the album.. which would be a really huge jump for me to take.
• I see a part in the process where I jam away on guitar and bass to construct.. well… something or other.
• I imagine a part of the process where I have all kinds of content loaded up into Ableton Live.. and use the MIDI controllers / Mixers to kinda improvise out something…

 Of course, in the end, all this stuff must me integrated into one giant process… so, wish me luck…

Hmm… I’m not even sure if this is my first post on the subject.. but a while ago I started talking about the project of bringing lyrics to my music. 

I’ve been writing lyrics, at least, since I was in high school.. but have never done too much to bring them into my music.. or at least never felt terribly successful about it. At the moment.. it seems the tools I need to properly bring lyrics to my work is in the neighborhood of a few grand.. depending on how you want to slice it.. no puns intended.

One solution came out of an issue of electronic musician monthly.. which involved using a free open source voice synthesizer.. so I used it.. threw into it some lyrics.. rendered out the audio files.. processed the hell out of them.. started playing with them in Ableton Live.. and eventually just sorta left it on the back burner for a while. But then last weekend I bought a copy of ReCycle.. and started playing with them inside of a ReCycle / Reason kind of context.. 

My first little go at this is talked about here and here. The first “here” having, at least for a short time, a bit of audio that shows this first experiment. In that project I was playing with one of the lines to the songs I wrote as of that much older post.. some of the renderings out of the processed voice synth.

This brings us to the issue of musical linguistic adventures. 

Musical Linguistic Adventures 

Sometime ago I read a book of… well lectures given by Leonard Bernstein at Harvard.. which was…. largely on the subject of linguistics in music. There’s a series of ideas.. I believe Noam Chomsky is the guy responsible.. about an organic basis of language.. that its hard wired in our brains.. You see this in.. the names of “mommy” or “daddy,” that there’s melodic parallels in the words across languages.. as well as for water.. and it seems that childhood taunt songs.. and all the rest of it.. are pretty universal.. And on some level.. when we hear music, we do hear it the same..  Here’s a bit of Bernstein from those lectures:

Ok, so how about we now venture forth into an interview with Noam Chomsky, talking about lingusitics?

Danger Will Robinson, this one could be getting long… 

I want to break in here and bring up a couple of things..

1. There’s been huge break throughs in brain imagining since the time of this interview.. so now many of these investigations are a lot more feasible… so such things are, no doubt, being explored now.
2. The nature of the nature versus nurture thing.. a modern understanding of the subject is that its not really nature versus nurture but nurture via nature.. which is to say that our genetic make up defines to what degree nurture influences our development.
3. This issue with Kant.. the limitations of language.. did you catch Bernstein sorta talking about music speaking the unspeakable? I’ll try and get more deeply into this latter as.. this is really the heart of what I want this entry to be getting to.. and has everything to do with my aims.. but.. well.. I wont say much more about it other then to try and hold this in your mind as we venture further into this interview:

Ok, a few things I want to get to here…

1. I could defend Freud psychoanalysis here.. but it’s a little too complicated.. in that it would take us away from our main thread.. of what’s already looking like a long blog entry.. I will, towards the end.. talk about this stuff in Jungian terms.. which will go along way in answering this.. however I will go so far as to say that in the history of psychology.. there’s a trend where in people are very good about talking about there own stuff.. and not so good in there criticism of others in the field.
2. My impression is that Heidegger does a pretty good job of dismantling the sorta metaphysical presumptions that are at the foundations of cognitive psychology. Heidegger’s interest in language, I think, makes him of special interest to this subject.. but.. we’ll skip on over that for now.
3. I think the Kant stuff is pretty central in Jung’s psychology.. in a certain way.

So I had a rough time finding part 5.. but here we go.. 

Ok… so now we’ve gone a bit deeper into Chomsky and linguistics.. and the larger implications..

So to curve back into music.. and a kind of linguistic basis of it.. what I’m trying to point out is.. language.. verbal language.. has a musicality… timber, pitch.. repetition.. all the principles of musical composition are present in verbal language.. and so there’s a connection here.. 

Ok.. so how about a fun little user generated video.. playing with the Bernstein lectures? 

Sorta highlights the musicality of language, doesn’t it?

Ok, onto the psychedelic:

Linguistics, Neuroscience, Jungian Psychology, and the Psychedelics

I think it makes sense to start out here with a little Tom Wolfe.. In part because he wrote the Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test, in part because his notion of “New Journalism” in part influences how I think about new media, and in part because he’s dealing with many of the subjects we are on in this entry… 

There are two other parts to this interview.. which we can’t embed here.. can be found on the National Review website here, and then here. For the full take on this stuff you really want to view these videos.. 

There are huge areas in which I disagree with Tom Wolfe.. as it relates to this topic, but for our purposes lets jump into something I can’t find any videos on… which is his views on psychedelics, which he borrows from modern brain research.

As nearly as I can tell.. the theory works something like this.. under the influence of psychedelic drugs.. the brain is unable to attribute causality in the usual way.. and having a nature of always trying to attribute causal connections.. starts making them where..  from an empirical point of view.. there are no such connections to be made…

Err.. let me put this in plainer english.. psychedelics causes you to attribute cause and effects relationships to things where there are no such relationships.. from a factual point of view. Going this far, I do not disagree.. but Wolfe goes so far as to say “this proves you don’t get enlightenment from psychedelics,” in the “ultimatereality” sense.. that this mythology has grown up around psychedelics is.. really attribute able to this principles.. and to the brain’s functioning working on a very slow kind of less functional sorta way, while under the influence of psychedelics.

Well everything we’ve been talking about thus far leads up to my argument as to why Tom Wolfe is wrong… to say nothing of some of the psychologies / schools of thought he’s regarding in such high esteem.

How Psychedelic enlightenment works

Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious could be, kinda sorta, boiled down to… “its an expression of instinct.” Religion is an expression of instinct.. its more complex then that.. but its good enough for now..  And let us not forget here.. that in talking about linguistics.. from Chomsky to Wolfe.. we are talking about mental faculties.. not blank slates.. We are.. in fact, talking about instincts, are we not? Instincts by another name?

All right.. so if we are attributing cause and effect relationships to things that do not factually have cause and effect relationships to them.. on what bases are we making them? Well.. on the basis of the structure of the faculty / instinct…..  We are moving from objective truth to subjective truth.. from object to subject.. from the external material world to the internal psychological world.. and so the truths we discover are true in a “psychological sense.” In essence.. what I’m arguing is that psychedelics bring about a “meta cognitive experience.”

So.. if mystical / religious / ultimate reality.. is an expression of instinct.. and a meta cognitive experience is one that’s essential an experience of cognition its self…  that it brings us into contact with “the experience of experience,” to put it a certain way..  and if we understand that.. subjective truth is a kind of truth.. and that we are now moving beyond the Kantian limitations.. well, now we are in the world of what Jung calls “the transcendent instinct.”

It speaking about.. that which is unnameable… that which is beyond our Kantian categories..  we are in fact talking about God.. for God, by definition, is a symbol of the mystery which holds up the world of the known.. it is the ultimate context of the world of the known.. which, as it turns out.. is the subject of both my most recent release.. and the music I’m working on now.

Aesthetic Implications

So in essence what we are saying.. if we complicate the attribution of causal relationships.. we will create something like a mystical experience? So with this.. lets move onto a short film.. that explores the concept of the cut up.. something we find in the work of William Burroughs.. where we see our linguistic faculties making these connections.. in the world of film grammar.. as well as on the literary level.

We of course see these kinds of ideas in dada and surrealism.. so how about a little film made with Marcel Duchamp.. Man Ray adding something here.. and of course a John Cage Score (what could be more perfect?)

How this relates on a process level to my work

On a kind of core foundational level to my thinking and process is this idea of aesthetic experience is a cognitive event.. having something to do with how we perceive and process experience. In earlier stages of my artistic and musical development my work was very often a kind of critique of this process.. It was very much dealing with the problems of Immanuel Kant and the transcendent.. and very similar, in someways, to what Chomsky is talking about..

In any event.. my work was in someway about this process.. and played with the process.. if we are now saying that mystical experience has something to with the challenges to cognition.. you can see how this could be central to my work.

Some of it is as simple as how you recognize patterns.. classic IQ test stuff, right? If you work in web usability you’ll no doubt recognize an early problem with game theory as a tool for understanding human behavior.. which is to say we don’t operate from a rational perspective so much as we muddle around with incomplete information..

What I say in relationship to patterns is that…  you have two distinct things going on “the pattern its self” and “the pattern recognition.” In any pattern, lets call them patterns of cause and effect.. there are infinite possible ways of understanding the pattern.. of seeing patterns in it: if you see a series of numbers, and are asked “what’s the next number going to be” your job is to understand organizing principles of the pattern before you.. and you will start out with the most simplistic possibilities.. going out to more complex ones.. what I’m saying is that.. in the deep end of complexity..  you have that infinite possibility, that we never see, because of how we approach the problem…. kind of how we are wired.

So.. if our process is impaired.. we are going to go into the deep end of that complexity.. or to put it another way.. that’s what mystical experience is…

Without digging much further into this stuff.. I would just say there’s a range in my work.. of simple to complex patterns.. to even chance and chaos.. and effort to make a continuity between the extremes.. I mean its interesting that if you look at serial atonalism… It can seem as if we need a mathematical PHD in order to appreciate the organization.. and somehow the results are very similar to that of John Cage.. who’s music is the product of chance.. 

Here’s a clip of Leonard Bernstein talking, among other things.. about the beauty of ambiguity in music.. where we see chromaticism (which is basically what serial atonalism is all about) inside of a diatonic framework… He talks about music theory which.. if you’re not already aquatinted with.. might likely be a little above your head.. but basically we are talking about organizational principles in music.. which has to do with harmony and counter point.. which is pitch relationships.. which have to do with the physics of sound.. and perhaps psycho acoustics fits in here somewhere as well.

Ok, now I wanted to dig in deeper into the process of what I’m doing right now in my sound work.. the project I’m on right now.. but it seems that the underlying theory and ideas.. have taken up all our space.. so I’ll have to get to that next time.. what I want to leave on is.. a little more on how this stuff relates to the philosophy of religion..

Philosophy of religion and other connections 

In the history of Christian theology there is this kind of.. well an idea that is perhaps not as well known as it should be.. which is to say the Bible is God’s second book… the creation his first. If we look at the philosophy of science at, around, perhaps before.. the American Civil war.. there is this idea that creation.. or the universe we live in.. is custom made to our minds.. sciences exploration of the universe is in fact an exploration of God.. There is also these ideas of natural and.. I want to say divine.. revelation.. The law we find Moses bringing down, the commandments, is said to be imprinted on the inside of our skin.. or to put it another way.. it is expressed in our biology.. which of course accords well with Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious… and these ideas of there being faculties, as Chomsky is saying.. that are built right into our biology. If we look to eastern philosophy and religion.. God is often thought of in a rather unipersonal sorta way.. God is a kind of personification of the forces of the universe.. and.. if we look at the various strands of Buddhism and Zen.. where the inward mystery of our beings is explored in great depth.. how we “really are,” which is something different then who we usually identify our selves with as.. is in fact… the universe.. as the mystic saying goes “I and the maker are one.”I wont go any deeper into this here..,.. but I hope you can see how this is interesting to contemplate in light of the ideas presented in this post. 

As I read through the DP manual to try and get Melodyne working, I notice that DP would seem to have the same features as Melodyne.. How these compare is not obvious to me… surely Melodyne’s up coming ability to work with polyphonic audio sets it apart.. and one expects a tool so specialized to.. well be special. Still, looking through this feature in DP is enough to give me second thoughts. What’s more.. DP’s features will no doubt integrate with my DP work flow a good deal better! 

It does seem that melodyne does have a number of special features.. and surely its nice to have the ability to work with a program like Ableton Live in this way… or other such programs. If I ever go back to Cubase, which I do harbor many thoughts of (I’m way faster with Cubase then with DP after all)… this will prove helpful..

So as I try and say in this blog.. I’m not an expert, more someone struggling along his path, and we look at stuff inside of this context..  which strikes me as valuable.