I’ve been continuing on my project of building tracks with predefined arrangements using only Operator and FX, while tweaking my Live template for performance - and had the face-palm realization that I could use the Octatrack as a MIDI sequencer/controller for Live rather than just an audio processor.
I’m embarrassed it took me this long to figure that out, but I am very excited because in the most recent iteration of the template I have 8 channels of drum instruments I’ve been building for use with a UC4 that I can now sequence, plock, and LFO from the Octatrack.
Put together a track that I’m quite happy with in the DAW. But then I had this crazy idea that if I can program it, I would like to be able to play it.
So now I’m in the process of adapting it for piano, which I then plan to transcribe to sheet music. Quite interesting to look at a section and see “my hands don’t actually work like that”. And then after fixing it, it sounds a whole lot better.
Maybe if I get good enough, the drummer that lives inside my computer will let me play with him. I should prolly find an appropriate hat though.
Edit: Dorico SE (free verion) seems to be working quite well for notation
At the moment i am/should make a mix tape on a suggestion by one of elektronauts members. So it’s gonna be a push towards quality and concept from what I already made so far.
I’ve been making good progress on my 404 sample based drone project, and I’ve pretty much nailed down 9 or so pieces that are now split into two banks and roughly volume matched and limited. Need to do more tweaks still, some of it might need a bit more development, but I’m reaching the stage now where I need to step away from it and just revisit to listen closely every few days to keep my ears fresh.
As a result of that, I’ve moved back to another project I’ve had on the back burner since getting the Analog Keys, which is to do the serious work of turning it into a high quality drone synth through experimentation and practice. I’ve come to the conclusion that what a lot of people mean when they say drone synth is large clusters of oscillators stacked on top of one another and detuned through an infinite reverb. I’m going for something very different to that, much more spare and sparse, few voices playing off one another, gaps in the spectrum, very small changes in sound producing delicate alterations in beating. The Analog Keys is one hell of a deep instrument with a million modulation possibilities, and I’m finding if I don’t use extreme restraint I end up with a wall of sound, which I do not want at all.
I also need to spend a few days just working on the performance macros for a few different kits to test what sorts of number ranges are relevant for what parameters to enable me to move the sound on without transforming it into something else, unless of course that’s what I want in the moment.
phewww! What a ride. Progress, finally (lol) reinvented the Pianoroll again.
This time for Max4Live to allow editting 6 Voice 64Step Sequencing similar to what someone would expect from a pianoroll… na na don’t eat CPU, make it work in browsers too (who knows where this is going, Sequencers are in high demand, still) and controlling the thing with mouse or keyboard and hey feed it with live data from sysex. I know - i am crazy.
What goes in, must come out somewhere… means next: working on sending changes back to the OB-6. But quite happy with the responsiveness of my coding - so far. Notice it picks up the presets from the machine in realtime and displays them not after receiving but while receiving with a double buffered (kinda like GPU coding) receiver buff. Ah i forgot to mention, this pianoroll shows notes that are longer then the sequence end at the beginning with its tail, in other words shows true 64steps loop sequences.
Recording some ambient techno tracks as next project using Virus and Hexdrums. I sent output to mixer to audio interface. I MIDI clock Virus from Hexdrums. Create some tests.
lately I’ve been employing the method of dreaming of sounds as I start to fall asleep at night and then the next day slapping my ipad around trying to form them into something real . also I believe in fighting with Steinberg’s library and download manager apps for weeks at a time as a means of atonement with the computerbox
Very cool thread, lots of interesting processes and projects in here!
I’ve been doing the whole everything-in-one-box thing lately, and it has been eye opening. Currently loosely working on three different projects depending on my mood. I’ve also been contemplating an artist name change and/or alternate alias for these projects, the music I’m making doesn’t feel so much like an evolution of my previous sounds as it feels like a radical departure due to the very different sound palette I have access to currently.
An EP (maybe album, we’ll see) of lofi hiphop and/or jungle video game covers. Video game covers are something I’ve always had a fondness for, and I do a few every year. I know this isn’t exactly the most novel idea, but it’s fun. Doing this entirely on the OP-XY. I’ve got 3 of these going.
An EP or album of jungle tracks entirely composed on the OP-XY. That sample slicing update is incredible. I’ve currently got 3 tracks in the works and a couple skeletons.
a collection of songs written entirely on the MPC Live 3. This will be a much longer term project probably simply due to how new the Live3 is.
As if 2025 wasn’t challenging enough because of a product development project in my j.o.b. thats consuming almost all of my energy, I decided to make 128 Serum 2 Dub Techno presets + a bunch of bonuses. All to be released around xmas.
Why? Well, for my latest sample pack I added 20 presets for Serum 2 which were the whole reason for some to download the pack.
Stuff like that always gets me thinking.
Here is the link btw, also with 20% off
So, yeah I dared myself to make a full Serum2 pack and also I always back things up with some planning to see if this is even possible in the set time frame and life circumstances.
Seemed doable, so here I am now
The goal are 128 presets, 2-3 midis per preset, all presets as samples, some of the presets will have custom waveforms and be using samples from my gear.
The process is simple: Make 8 presets 4× per week for 4 weeks, then do the bonuses, record a bunch of ‘behind the scenes’ material for youtube.
If you have any wishes what else could go into the pack send me a dm to keep the threat on topic.
I am currently building up a patch and sample library of drum loops, bass loops, synth patches for various genres of electronic music. Once complete, the goal is to offer these to others. Hence why I have so many types of synthesizer and drum machines. It has been a really fun albeit expensive journey this far.
Just finished working up an OT project that let me select, beatmatch, loop and crossfade tunes on the fly without being forced into a static predefined running order. Worked a treat for a couple of DJ sets at a friend’s birthday party on the weekend. I posted the setup here for anyone interested in the process:
After the practice and result of working with long samples for my drone work, which I’ll now be using regularly as a process in all my work, I wanted to move on to using what I already have (mostly) in the studio for synth based drone work. The aim is to be able to combine the two approaches at will.
After a lot of experimentation, I’ve landed on a combination of my Analog Keys and my previously retired PreenFM2. By adding a Launch Control XL3, I’m hoping to use custom templates to both program a patch on the Preen, and then to control a performance using the performance macro capabilities of both devices. Both devices are modulation monsters, but I am trying to seriously limit automated modulation in favour of manual and subtle changes to get a pacing similar to what you can hear in Eliane Radigues long form pieces using synthesizers.
That means recording individual sections to ‘tape’ (Ableton or the 404), and then constructing a larger piece by cross fading between the sections as a second performance afterwards.
The reason I previously retired the Preen was how much of an ordeal it is to program standalone. It’s actually a quite intuitive interface design, but that doesn’t make it any less slow to dial in an envelope, split over two pages, when you can have 6 operators for a patch, each with their own envelope. It sounds fantastic though, and with a controller with NRPN functionality, all of the essential parameters can be remotely altered without switching pages with a degree of precision and resolution that 7 bit CC control couldn’t manage. Also, the filters are an added bonus on the Preen, and not the main event, with the design looking somewhat to the first wave of FM and PM synth, but are essential for my purposes. Thankfully, putting the Preen through one of the AK’s tracks allows me to use 2 good quality filters instead.
I’ve done a first pass on the LCXL3 templates, created a project on the AK with all the midi and voice routing setup sorted, and I’m in the process of making a ‘starting point’ patch on the Preen. I’ve also, for the immediate future, limited myself to only 6 possible algorithms on the Preen, with a maximum of 4 operators, switchable using the push buttons on the LCXL3.
Now I need to just practice working with what I have and seeing where it takes me.
Made a disappointing discovery yesterday, and that is that the PreenFM2 is too noisy for my purposes here. I want it for delicate sine wave fm, focusing on picking out the harmonics with filters. Unfortunately, that means that the output is much quieter than if I was using it with more harmonically rich waveforms, so I have to max out the volume and boost levels in Ableton, and the noise levels are unacceptable as a result.
Looks like it’s going back on the shelf of shame, and will be swapped for my Digitone 1.
I’m working a lot in Ableton Live on dance music for myself and for other artists. Mostly other artists right now. I have two artists currently “active” with songs in production.
My process is:
I get a rough vocal demo from the artist, hopefully with some underlying chords and a lyric sheet.
I rough out an arrangement in Ableton Live with some basic sounds that are kind of in the ballpark.
3a) If the vocal demo is good enough, I use AI and elbow grease to separate and clean the vocals of that demo, then import them into the Live project for slicing and dicing.
3b) If the demo is really rough and pitchy (sometimes even great singers will half-ass their personal demos), I record my own guide vocals into the project instead. Sometimes I’ll process my vocals with AI like Audimee to make them sound more like the artist. I tend to work with women singers (nature of electronic dance/pop music biz) so my voice isn’t exactly in that ballpark.
I lock in the overall sound of a couple of major parts of the song, like an intro, a chorus and a musical drop. I tend to mix as I go because it reveals early if particular sounds aren’t working for a particular part.
I keep iterating until I have what sounds like a “final” track, minus her studio vocals, ready to play for the artist. I don’t like to show too much WIP because the artist will usually start second-guessing the production process or get upended about mix issues or “missing” stuff that I was going to do anyway. This is also where that AI vocal stuff comes in handy because often the artist wants a preview of what it’s going to sound like with THEM singing in the context of the finished song. Taking the time to polish the vocal sound, even on reference tracks, goes a long way toward keeping the excitement going.
Get signoff from the artist/label, then bring in the artist for vocal tracking.
Do all the vocal processing and editing to make the artist’s voice shine.
Final mix and master, deliver to client.
I have a singer coming in starting Monday next week to do vocal tracking on two tracks. I have both of them finished, except for final vocals.
Except I don’t. I just found out a couple of hours ago that there is a second verse AND pre-chorus she forgot to include in the supposedly complete demo she had sent. Oops.
Luckily, I make a habit of creating additional musical parts to mix and match, so I banged out a new arrangement with the additional sections. The new second verse/pre-chorus adds an additional musical synth layer and ups the energy of the bass/drums compared to the first verse/pre-chorus.
Setting aside the final vocal recording sessions, I can go from a vocal demo and a blank Ableton Live project to a finished track in about five days. Any faster and I feel like I’m compromising something.
I’ve been redoing a lot of old Digitone projects while updating videos on my student-play-along website. In the last year, I have gotten more conservative about my approach to designing audio tracks on the Digitone. Which is both good news and bad news. Good news because I’ve found certain approaches that “work”. Bad news because I’m detecting a “same-ey” quality to my tracks and losing opportunities to try new approaches.
I’ve started writing a score for my upcoming Cyberpunk Red tabletop campaign. I’m still in the early planning stages of the game and learning the rules. I have a defined list of 16 tracks, and there are about 8 I’m prioritizing, so if I burn out I’ll at least have the important ones finished.
As far as process - MPC Live 3, Microkorg Mk2, Sh4d - sampling the latter two into the MPC when necessary, but trying to keep as much internal to the MPC as I can with the goal of having the whole arrangement finished before recording, unless something is way too hard on the MPC itself. When it’s time to record, I’ll run the individual stems over usb into Ableton and make my final polishing choices using my preferred plugins there in the event that the MPC ones don’t quite hit what I need (dblue glitch, valhalla reverbs, etc).
I played in a Cyberpunk 2020 campaign a few years back (might very well have been in 2020), and our GM required playlists from each of us as part of the character creation process. Creating a score for your own campaign is peak vibe, hats off!
