I recently moved and no longer have a studio so I have no space to set up all my equipment. This lucky coincidence forces me to operate only one device at a time and to record it in Ableton, thus compressing my arrangement.
In the evenings I like to sit on the sofa or in the garden with one of the devices and do a kind of micro finetuning.
I am much less overwhelmed than in a Dawless setup where everything has to happen simultaneously.
I am currently finding results faster because I can record tracks and then continue to process, which is much more potent for my sound design. My sound signature, so to speak.
This move and being without a studio is a happy accident for me.
I just did the same, I was buying too much hardware and ableton was set aside…I am going to keep just the 6U104hp eurorack case and the Lyra8, I also own a monostation and Volca Drum but I will use them more when jamming.
I only have a couple of boxes, but I find that recording the loops into Ableton is just perfect. It’s like the best tape recorder ever. I work on an idea on the Digitakt, then, when I feel I can’t go much further, it goes into Live.
Live is so much better for arranging and combining than any hardware, but for me, the Digitakt is much much better for coming up with ideas and developing them.
And Overbrige marries them nicely. I only use OB for audio routing and sync right now, but that’s plenty.
I had the same issue. I moved from my Appartment with Studio and everything hooked up nicely, back to my parents and now i only have my Octatrack, Boog D, Rhodes, Guitar and Ableton. It is minimal but way better for me as i do everythin on the Octa. When i feel the Beat and dont want to mess and loose to much time with the Arranger and Parts, i move to Ableton.
I sold my Digitakt and other stuff, tough I regret selling my Digi because like @Mistercharlie said, Digi is just so fast with getting Ideas and record via OB to Ableton. This is so nice.
But yeah, nice to hear, that there are some other folks who make music a bit more minimalistic.
What’s interesting about this is I think there’s a benefit to abandoning the computer, going all hardware, then returning to the computer.
I found a hardware setup forces me to slow down and gives my mind time to process sonic choices making the most of what’s available vs. slapping on plugins to remedy problems quickly.
Arranging with ears as oppose to eyes as well. When you return you can do everything faster, but with the hardware perspective and “wisdom”.
These are just things I noticed personally. Congrats on the new place and the new workflow!
Good point. I find my use if ableton is very focussed. I have something specific I want to do, and then I work out how to do it. I don’t just sit and audition the fx.
Well, I do, but that’s a separate activity, done in a test project. The fx jamming stage, I guess.
The difficult thing for me is always integrating the elektron synth into my Ableton setup. I have to give up the freedom I had in the elektron environment to arrange everything in Ableton. Overbridge doesn’t work reliably enough for me to rely on it.
PCs naturally cause enough problems.
In addition, I can continue to work on an arrangement a little bit every evening and get a bit further. Dawless jamming is nice for brainstorming but for deep tracks I need serious arrangement with layering and proper sound processing.