I’m gonna show you a fun workflow for generating a ton of variations on a beat using Follow Actions. Even if you’re familiar with Follow Actions, you might have never stumbled on this one before.This technique works best for an IDM or possibly Dubstep context where a lot of syncopation and variation works well. First, […]
FOLLOW ACTION FREAKOUT, pt. 2
Ain’t no party like a Live Tips party. Just sayin. Once you’ve got your beat variations dancing around using Follow Actions, the next step is to Extract Chains: In the above example, I’ve created a fairly simple beat using only three drums – you don’t need anything complicated to get great results with this technique. […]
FOLLOW ACTION SOMETHING SOMETHING
Ok, I’m gonna back up a step, explain a few basics about Follow Actions and cover a few details that you might not know, even if you’re familiar with this technology… The first thing to know is that Follow Actions apply to a group of clips. A group is simply a set of adjacent clips […]
FOLLOW ACTION FUNDAMENTALS
Ok, over the next few tips I’m gonna back up a step, explain a few basics about Follow Actions and cover a some details that you might not know, even if you’re familiar with this technology… The first thing to know is that Follow Actions apply to a group of clips. A group is simply […]
FOLLOW ACTION FLIP
What makes follow actions really interesting is the fact that there are two possible actions (Action A and Action B). So far we’ve just been looking at one of them. To get the second action into the mix, you need to specify the Chance that it will occur. Chance is represented by the numeric ratio […]
ABOUT LEGATO
A key part of the drum variations tip from a few days ago is the use of the Legato switch. If you create a similar set of clips, but don’t turn on Legato, you’ll still get the contstant variation of clips being launched, but musically the result will be quite different. This is because Legato […]
FOLLOW ACTIONS: ANY VS. OTHER
Most of the items in the action menus are pretty self explanitory. However, a few deserve special mention. For Follow Action randomness, you have two choices: Any and Other. Both launch a random clip from the current group. Any is a true random choice because it includes the clip that’s currently playing as a possible […]
FOLLOW ACTIONS: CUSTOMIZING THE RANDOMNESS
You can come up with some very specific strategies for random behavior by using both Chance A and Chance B of a clip’s Follow Action settings. There’s also one particular gotcha you have to look out for. Let’s say we wanted to modify the eariler beat variation tip so the main beat plays most of […]
FOLLOW ACTIONS: NEXT!
If we carry on the example from the prior tip, it’s still necessary to set follow actions for the variation clips. The idea is to have a group of clips that heavily favor the main beat, with only an occasional variation. It’s not going to work to use the original Follow Action for the 3 […]
FOLLOW ACTION FREAKOUT: THE SEQUEL
Here’s a more advanced version of the beat variation workflow that this whole Follow Actions series started off with. Here’s we’ll get a little fancy with MIDI routing, both to make a point and also to get some nice easy to manage results. After you’ve programmed your beats and set up the Follow Actions, duplicate […]
