Hey everyone,
as the title says, I keep struggling with finding a good workflow for arranging and mixing that suits my needs and keep me creative.
For the last years I tried different setups and workflows, but nothing was really good in the long run.
I started my journey with an Octatrack as my main MIDI sequencer and sampler, with several synths and a Mackie mixer as the audio hub. Most of the time I created several patterns on the OT and jammed my songs live, with track mutes and automation by hand (OT fader and synth knobbing). Those jams where recorded onto cassette tape thru the stereo output of my Mackie mixer. I was quite happy with my work, but since I often switch between different projects it was hard to recall some of the synth settings and mixer values of course. The other downside was, that I couldn’t fix small errors or instrument settings, because I didn’t record any MIDI values in a linear timeline. So I was limited to recording a single stereo master track.
This led me to trying out a hybrid setup, where I still use the OT as it was as a sequencer and sampler, but at the same time have all my instruments hooked up to a Motu 828mk2 interface. Then I was able to monitor them live and at the same time record them into my PC. On the PC I ran Ableton Live and tried an approach where I record small clips of different OT tracks into Ableton. Then I could use these audio clips to use the linear arranger view and build an arrangement out of the clips. It was kind of great because I had separated audio tracks that I could easily mix. But at the same time I lost the former spontaneity of a live jam and ended up duplicating clips and building coloured blocks (like in a spreadsheet) instead of “making”music.
Finally I decided to replace the OT with a MPC Live 2. This change helped me with a lot of things, like the sample track amount or 4-note MIDI limitation of the OT. But it’s still not perfect.
I usually work with the One Sequencer-approach, where I build a single 4-bar sequence with a combination of MIDI and sample tracks (around 16-20). With this setup I can create a “jam” via track muting. But from now on, the real problem begins, where I don’t know how to transform this jam to a linear arrangement. One way I tried was duplicating the bars of my main sequencer from 4 bars until I have 128 bars. Now I have a kind of long linear sequence, where I can record track mutes as automation into the sequencer. The downside here is, when I want to edit specific bars in a track, I can’t see where the track is muted and where not. The grid view gets kind of useless, because the mute automation is only shown in the list edit view and not the grid view.
So, I have to record the track mute automation in a perfect take, because editing those in the list edit view is very tiring. That’s where the Force Arranger would be really great to have on the MPC…
Another approach would be to copy my source sequence and build several smaller sequences out of it, where I can edit track parts more easily. That is a viable possibility if your song has a simpler structure and can be build up by switching between 4-6 sequences. But at the moment I’m making mostly 90’s DnB-inspired music, where the arrangement can get quite complex and you have several layers.
And if I suddenly notice I want to change something in my source sequence, I have to copy that track to every other sequence I want to have that exact track.
I hope some one of you can understand my frustration. It really hinders my capability to finish tracks, because I stuck with that one sequence where I mute tracks and play around with. I could also multitrack everything via my audio interface into a DAW, but that only would work for mixing, not arranging and editing parts. I still wouldn’t be able to edit details for MIDI tracks.
Seriously, the Force Arranger would probably be the solution for my needs…
but it’s a lot of fun.