Ableton Live

https://sonicbloom.net/en/products/push-the-envelope/

Only three tunes for the repetoire, extended to nearly ten minutes each and filter out to make room for an eclectic, chaotic glitch techno set. Some nice breaks downs heavy use of vcvrack randomness and plenty of squelchy noises form the Mother32 and MS20.

I'm thinking about making every tuesday a #dawless session.

I'd need to be able to switch form Ableton live being the master clock to something else. I'll see what options I have.

New Week New Theme. The Ableton Push 2. I haven't really used it since I upgraded from the original. So I'm dedicating this week to learning a few more of its functions. I also want to check out some of the built in midi fx that come with live.

Played a lot of my rendered tunes layered with the live instruments. What worked especially well is working with works-in-progress that are nicely mixed but missing a few instruments. Working off the cuff, with a small element of panic and the need to keep things simple because it's live, leads to things like using a volume fader to skip drum hits. I would never do this in a mouse and keyboard session, but live it is magical.

VCVRack is working great (the sum of the parts and all that), as it blends into the rest of the studio.

Added the RPS (phrase sequencing) from the jp 8000 into the set. I pre-programmed some phrases, all uninspired but a repetitive process that became second nature over an hour or two. Could easily record phrases live if I could repeat happy accidents. But I reckon I forced the technique and I was not comfortable with the results.

This is one of the classic, early VA synthesizers of the late '90s, together with Clavia Nord Lead, Yamaha AN1x, Korg MS2000, and Access Virus.

First Live Collab

Lisa worked the drum machines while I focused on the synths, primarily the jp8000.

Two people working the live rig is a lot more fun, easier to react to changes and keep things moving. We used some of the WIP projects for soundcloud into the mix, relying heavily on the prepared funky basslines, allowing us focus on the drum grooves and the sugar coating.

Week 3

Focus on the jp8000 my oldest synth and my go-to bread and butter piece of kit. Will re examine the librarian vst plugin from Mystery Island music I bought last year with this project in mind.

New week, new mix template. This time 100 bpm. Rendered some old tunes expanding them form 3 minutes to 6-8 minutes.

I've made some folders and will be copying and pasting jp8000 presets to come up with an approved set of sounds that I can expand on and eventually turn into a sample bank.

Why?

• To put into practice a series of concepts that I've been thinking about for a while that most djs, producers, musicians might not be comfortable with.
• To stream an hour of original (mostly), non-copyrighted material every day at the same time, five days a week.
• To turn the studio from an instrument into a live instrument.

In essence, instead of finding the perfect kick for a tune my job is to find several kicks and ensure they are easily accessible in a live rig over the period of a week or more (before moving onto the next drums et).