The next time you sit down to play with some new effects, or an old synth, or pretty much anything that can be expected to make some crazy sounds, try this: sample everything. Record the entire sound design session into a new audio clip. Say you’ve gotten inspired to check out some of the Max […]
MAX FOR LIVE: BIG PILE OF EFFECTS
OK, so once you’ve got your Max For Live demo all fired up, what to do? Well, the first thing you want to do is explore the stuff that comes pre-made and ready to use. So for today, we’ll look at MFL as if it were just a plugin bundle for Live. In Live’s device […]
MAX FOR WHAT?
If you’ve been wondering what all the Max For Live fuss is about, the release of Live 8.1.3 makes it easy to demo it and find out for yourself. First, head over to the Cycling 74 website and download Max/MSP. It’s a demo version, but not to worry. You’ve gotta have Max/MSP installed for Max […]
INSTRUMENTEMPLATE
Now that we’re all up to speed on using the External Instrument device with multi-output virtual instruments, its worth while to take a look at creating templates for these instruments. For example, here’s a set of grouped MIDI tracks that I’ve created to manage my Virus TI: Here are the External Instrument devices inserted in […]
EXTERNAL INSTRUMENTS – INTERNALLY
Any VST/AU instrument with multiple outputs can be accessed by Live’s Exernal Instrument device. For example, let’s say you want to use NI Battery, but you want one MIDI track to play the kick drum, another track the snare and so on. Or perhaps you want to use SampleTank for several sounds simultaneously, one track […]
EXTERNAL INSTRUMENTS
So, while we’re talking about working with elements outside of your computer, we better get to discussing the External Instrument device. This one has uses for almost all Live users, whether or not you have any external synths… Let’s cover the basics first. In the old days, sequencing an external hardware synthesizer required two tracks […]
DRY/WET? MAYBE
If you get into processing your sounds with external hardware, you may be tempted to experiment with the Dry/Wet control on the External Audio Effect device: As you turn it down from 100%, you’ll be blending the unaffected signal with the signal from your hardware processor. If you’re using an external reverb or delay, this […]
RENDER IT REALTIME
When using Live’s Export Audio/Video command, the default behavior is to render offline, faster than real time. In most cases this works just fine, however, there are some cases where you’ll want to force live to Export your song in real time, playing the audio as it goes. For example, very often, I want to […]
EFFECT IT, PRINT IT
If you’ve been doing all of your audio processing “in the box” lately, today is a reminder to try sending audio outside of your computer to process it, even if you don’t have fancy studio hardware. Guitar pedals are a great way to go here: if you don’t have any, borrow a few from a […]
GO EXTERNAL
Even if all of your synthesizers and effect processors are software, there are a few things you want to know about Live’s External Instrument and External Audio Effect devices. First, a few words of introduction… External Audio Effect is a handy utility that allows you to route audio out of your computer, through a hardware […]
