I’m wondering what hardware contenders are out there that are good at/designed for finishing a track. There’s lots for generating ideas, and I guess the DAW is the go to place for recording, arranging and finishing tracks. But is there any gear that people have found particularly good for arranging and finishing music? I guess a sampler with good arrangement features like an MPC, maybe 1010 blackbox? Roland MV1? Old digital multitrack recorders with basic editing features? Or maybe robust sequencers like the yamaha qy700?
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Dead horse here, but the Maschine+ is my go to for sequencing finished tracks.
I’d say the Push 3 is excellent to make a rough arrangement in session mode. Easy to make small variations of clips, to copy stuff, automate things, etc.
Personally I am very interested in a good comparison between Push (standalone) and MPC 3.
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A couple of other threads that might have useful information -
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Depends a lot on the genre -
Octatrack is my personal go to when I want to create performance ready live set music that uses a lot of gear and usually is in the Electronic music category (be it techno or ambient or anything primarily electronic, tbf it works well for some instrumental stuff as well)
Push + Ableton for pretty much everything else.
Ah nice thanks for sharing these
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Drum machines for me because I can jam out and get an entire arrangement recorded with 10-12 tracks right there. This is very dependent on what music you are making. But I am not sure what finish tracks actually means in this case. If you can’t arrange and feel when changes need to happen, you will not have much luck with hardware. The daw is the master of arranging or you will need a machine or mpc which are basically daws in a box.
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laptop and a DAW
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MPC Live seems like candidate
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This generally TBH
However it depends on the genre and some people use song mode on various boxes or something dedicated like a tracker to create full arrangements and do so very successfully (like Jeanne). Others do it more like a recorded live set and use that as the pre-master
Really all depends on ultimately what you are after
The deluge has a really good timeline arranger where you can sequence clips. It’s been quite a while since I sold mine but I remember that being easy to use. Other people seem to really like the m8 for this.
I think OT works really well for arranging. Especially once you start really making use of additional patterns and parts per song.
I started this thread on a similar topic
I think there’s a real market for a device that can capture quantised audio clips, quickly and easily with a single click; then let you play them back; with the ability to create an arrangement.
I say that because I find I make fun fragments on various devices (some have song mode, some don’t). And then I want to arrange those fragments into a longer piece with begining middle and end.
Easy quantised audio clip capture and playback could be added in to any number of existing sampler devices, or be its own thing. A few devices come close, but it’s always a bit of a hassle and workarounds. It’d ideally be in a device with ok EQ fx etc.
(I guess MPC live 3 kind of does it now, as of very recently. I’ve not tried it yet, and I will, but to me modern mpc is a horrible UI generally, it’s neither touch screen nor buttons but a tiresomely unpredictable mix of the two, moving back and forth so much and so inconsistently that I’d rather just have an iPad and be done with it… Also mpc live is rly big…)
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Another vote for Push 3. Pair it with a couple of MIDI controllers to fade tracks in and out and it is a great start to finish box of tricks.
It does mean embracing the Session view way of working in Live not the linear Arrangement view but that works for me somehow.
I say hapax, it essentially allows a similar but faster workflow as abeltons clip matrix. Its only a sequemcer, so you technically need hw to record it in a daw, but the workflow is really great to arrange tracks.
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maybe
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Of the ones I’ve tried:
Maschine Mk3 because you can quickly get a very full arrangement going. Bounce clips out to arrange in the DAW: done. Very quick from start to finish.
Polyend Tracker+ because it’s so streamlined, samples and synth based workflow. Decent song mode, export the stems super easily. It lacks some mixing tools, but that can be made up in the DAW, as long as you don’t mind doing the last step there (or take the stems into another sampler like SP404 or TV and mix there.
And Push+Live of course. All in one ecosystem etc.
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Perhaps worth a look -
Omg that looks amazing, like my dream solution.
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