It turns out that saving and loading presets is a slightly more interesting topic than you might imagine. Today I’m going to pick up where I left off yesterday with some basics – we’ll get into a more customized approach later in the week. When I’m talking about saving a Rack as a preset (like […]
OK FINE, DON’T USE THE MOUSE
In theory, the easiest way to remote control the parameters of an instrument or effect device is to set up a MIDI controller as a Control Surface and take advantage of Instant Mapping. (see Get MIDI Set Up Right for more on setting up control surfaces). In particular, I’m referring to controllers that have a […]
USE THE FRIGGIN’ MOUSE
So, I’m back into plugging away at a remix today. Didn’t have long to work, so I just pulled my computer out of my gig bag and setup in my studio as quickly as possible, taking no time to reconnect MIDI controllers, except for an Oxygen 8 that stays on my desk at all times. […]
GRAIN DELAY AS PITCH SHIFTER
I got to play a bit more ambient guitar this weekend, and have some more fun with my Live effects box/looper setup. One effect I get a lot of mileage out of in this setup is the Grain Delay. I use several of them for a few different purposes, one of which is pitch shifting […]
RETURN OF THE SESSION VIEW
So, as I was saying yesterday, after I’ve laid out the basic arrangement of a track I return to the Session view for all sorts of things. In particular, I love being able to listen to my song play back while I compose new loops against it. For example, while the song is playing […]
START IN THE SESSION VIEW
For most of us, the production process begins in the Session view. Even in the remix/stems context that I was talking about yesterday, a good chunk of my work – creating new MIDI parts and editing audio loops – is going to happen in the Session view. So, it may seem like I’m stating the […]
START IN THE ARRANGEMENT VIEW`
Today I’m working on a couple of remixes so I’m dealing with a bunch of stems (individual parts from another song). Since these files are each the full length of the song, getting them ready to work with in Live requires a different approach then starting off with loops – namely, starting off in the […]
DUPE THAT LOOP
Since I’ve been talking about the MIDI editor for the last two days, I’m going to take this opportunity to answer a question that a reader asked about the best way to duplicate loops during MIDI editing. When programming parts, it’s very common to start with a 1 bar loop to get the basic feel, […]
OK FINE, SHOW THE VELOCITY LANE
Of course, as with any proposed Best Practice, there are always going to be exceptions. When editing velocity for certain types of parts, the velocity lane may be just the thing. For example, let’s take a simple hi-hat part. Assume you want to create a velocity curve that moves up and down with slight variations […]
HIDE THE VELOCITY LANE
I really like MIDI editing in Live. Over time, I’ve developed a workflow for programming MIDI that is faster and smoother than I’ve ever achieved in any other environment. I create a lot of parts by drawing them directly into the MIDI editor. In fact, I’ve made entire songs without ever touching a MIDI controller. […]
