DROP THE WARP

Another way to make tempo jumps is to simply turn off the Warp switch on a clip that is currently playing back. For example, bars 89-105 in the song below are a perfect place to jump to a new tempo because the song drops down to an ambient interlude. So, when the song gets to […]

REFLECTIONS FROM THE ROAD

Hey everyone! As you know, the summer schedule has been a bit hectic and the tips have been coming on a somewhat more erratic schedule than usual. Well, hopefully that will improve a bit over the coming weeks…I played my last date of the tour on friday  (which included a tag-team workshop with the unstoppable […]

PRODUCING FOR THE GIG

Lately, I’ve been doing a fair amount of “speed production” while on the road. This just means producing tracks with only my live set in mind. Rather than try to create something that develops over 4-7 minutes and is ready to release, I’ll create material that works really well for two minutes during a performance. […]

ARRANGING FOR THE GIG

OK, so where were we? Before I went on that little Group track tangent I was talking about “speed production” or creating music on a short timetable, specifically for live performance. Once I’ve got the basic ideas together, the next step is to create a quick arrangement. The purpose of the arrangement is not to […]

MASTERING FOR THE GIG

Before you export the arrangement you’ve created for your performance set, you’ll need to do a little basic mastering. Here, we are getting into one of those subjects where no matter what I say, someone will shriek with horror that I would ever suggest such a thing…so first off, lemme tell ya: I’m a pretty […]

EXPORTING FOR THE GIG

How you export your minty fresh grooves for your upcoming gig depends on how your performance template is set up. If you use a straight up DJ approach, it’s very simple – just export the output of your Master track and you’re done. My set is a little different. At any given moment, I tend […]

(RE)ARRANGING FOR THE GIG

Now that I’ve got the exported files, it’s time to get back into my performance set and get the my clips organized. Once I’ve dragged the new files into my set, I’ll set up several cue points and loops as described in One Song, Multiple Clips. In the prior tip, the track Polly was broken […]

AAAAAND, WE’RE BACK!

Hey everyone! Back in the saddle here at the Secret Tips Laboratory, ready to Bring It, Tips Style. As I mentioned before I took off, I recently spent a good chunk of time reconfiguring my performance template so I could play it with the diminutive Korg NanoKontrol while out in the desert. Results were excellent […]

SUPA-TRIGGA: ONE BUTTON GLITCHA

In the tracks that I use for my vocal and old time music samples, I use the excellent free plug-in SupaTrigga, which slices up audio and then rearranges, reverses, slows down or silences the slices based on various probabilities. I’ll momentarily turn it on with a MIDI button for a blast of glitchy goodness. I […]

SUPA-TRIGGA: THE RACK

Like pretty much everything I use in performance, my Supa-Trigga lives in a Rack. There are two particular reasons for this. The first reason is that SupaTrigga is a buffer-based effect, meaning that it has to have a bit of audio stored in memory before it can begin processing it. This means that it won’t […]