Is a track my nephew and I made.

We are going to call our little project “the_reverse_legacy”

Please feel free to: listen as you like, download as much as you want , and even share with everyone you know and love!

This entire track was recorded, created, mixed, and mastered in ableton Live. If you have any questions or even a request for a blog post please feel free to share!

cdanbot@bellsouth.net

Dan

A super important part of being able to create and recreate music. I feel that it is impertinent to find good music that pushes your mind and creativity.

Hillsong United’s Aftermath

Did just that for me. push me to continue to try to think outside of the box.

If you know whats good for you listen to it, especially if you are interested in synth sounds and development.

The track “Bones”……

Is a great example of what some basic 808 and 707 claps and kicks would sound like in a “modern worship setting”. the retro-styled synth is also uber prevalent in the beginning. I love it!

B.E. (Instrumental)

Although there is not a very obvious melody or hook there is definitely a really cool thing happening in the synth department. I’m really enjoying this CD.

Please

contact me about posts you would like to see in the future!

Email: nddesign@me.com

I did a laptop set recently to use as a an accompaniment with an acoustic guitar and singer. Our setlist was

Your love never fails

Blessed be the Name- redman

Beautiful- phil whickham

Here I am to worship.

Here is a screenshot of the set and the audio I used for Beautiful…..

I put every instrument into an applicable group.

This basically maximizes space and makes the workflow in Scene mode much easier to view. (To group instruments in ableton live 8.0 or higher, select more than one track and press ctrl+G) If any of this is confusing, ask and I’d love to clarify and explain.

Here is the original version of Phil Whickhams song.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Zg4cYdP1ngw?fs=1&hl=en_US

(just check the audio….)

Here is an excerpt of Beautiful from the laptop set I did.

Hope you enjoy! I’d love to hear what some of your thoughts are!

I start to feel somewhat as if I am running out of ideas and I need help to be revitalized, and even, have all of my ideas rejuvenated by some interjection of creativity and freshness.

There are various things called “live paks” available to download into live to “enhance” ableton. Many people/ businesses/ companies make them.

One of my favorites is Puremagnetik

I love

to download various “paks” to enhance my live experience and even give me some cool sounds and effects to mess with. one of my favorites is “Blip”. This pak is a really cool one and has really unique sounding instrument racks with some really nice drum racks that have a good amount of 8-bit nintendo/ atari samples.

Ableton has provided……..

An interesting “live pak”  available for download. You can download the pak here

this one is really cool, because it also includes “read-me’s” that explain the thinking and ideas behind the various artists inspiration and ideas.

Here is a link to Abletons website to see an instructional video that explains how to use the effect “Beat repeat”.

I will post shortly on how I used this effect in my set, but for now, I will suggest this video to explain the effect itself.

This is the video that taught how to use the effect.

This past weekend was…..

Awesome!!!

I played laptop and triggered loops, samples, the whole 9.

This set that I made will be a really fun thing to share with you guys.

First Things First…….

Let me show you my set up and I will walk you through some of the stuff I did.

This was my setup, minus my audio interface.

-Macbook pro

-korg padKontrol

-oxygen v2 25 key midi controller (the link takes you to a killin’ deal on this kontroller)

There was a lot going on but lets just start with an audio example…..

I used My….

padKontrol to trigger some of the “electro sounding” swells you hear in this song. However, I used that mostly for “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”.

most of the stuff I did on Cannons happened mostly on the oxygen8v2 25 key controller. I assigned the knobs to control all sorts of parameters from, volume, filter sweeps, and even “beat repeating” effects.

here is a rough rundown of how I approached using the knobs to control the effects on the drums and beats.

First, make sure………..

Your controller is set up properly.

open up your preferences and……..

select the oxygen8v2 (or whatever your controller is) from the menu.

Make sure you toggle the track and remote settings to the “on” position. We will explain this in further detail at a later date.

Now that we got that going……

Enter “Midi Mode” (command/apple+M).

Navigate

Throughout ableton until you find something you would like to control with your controller.

In this case, I chose to assign the effect “Beat Repeat” to the pitchbend knob on my controller.

To do this “Assigning” thing simply, select a device or knob (in midi mode) and turn/engage the midi controller on the button you would like to control ableton with.

This opens up a world…….

Of possibilities! you could do anything! assign anything, your imagination is the only limit!

As I continue to blog, I will revisit this set and these songs to teach you the techniques that I used.

I hope you enjoy and well,

Godspeed!

I am using ableton to play samples and trigger scenes and loops.

This was so much fun! I spent a good amount of time editing my set and preparing for the weekend, I wanna walk you through some of the stuff I did.

I bought this killin controller!

check it, in……..

-White

-Black (I wish I saw this sooner….. so cool)

I am using what is called a “Drum Rack” and I am specifically dedicating my padKontrol to this “instrument”

By doing this I can play other instruments/controllers and the padKontrol simultaneously.

I’ll post more about that later this weekend.

Our set for the weekend is

-Your love Never Fails (I forget who by…)

-Cannons (Phil Wickham)

-A Mighty Fortress is our God (Christy Knockles version)

-You Are Here [The same Power] (Hillsong)

I will….

Post more this weekend to show you some of the things I did and give you some ideas on how to use a “laptop musician” to compliment a full band.

See you soon!

I showed you how to trigger a loop and get it to play. However, we haven’t actually approached how to hook up our  computers and produce sound into your P.A. system/house mix.

There are only a couple of steps to get going in the most basic setup for a live setting.

1) Configure audio out in Live then

2) connect and run appropriate interface

Lets get started!

First, open up Live and notice in the bottom right-hand corner that we have a “Cue out” and a “Master out”.

Cue is the channel where we will hear the click and any samples we preview.

Master is the actual send of audio/ the “Master channel”

Set the Cue to “2″ and the Master to “1″.

Typically we will run the sequence/laptop in the left channel and the click in the right channel.

lets configure our interface to run this setup.

If you use the keyboard shortcut [Apple(command)+, (comma)] you will bring up the preferences menu in live.

Select Audio out and select the interface you are using (we will discuss this a little later). If you are using the built input, select built-in input.

Now That we have Live set up…..

Lets discuss interfaces.

A music Interface is….

Defined in the dictionary in reference to computers as “equipment or programs designed to communicate information from one system of computing devices or programs to another.”

Here is the interface I use.

It’s the Pro tools software interface called an “mbox” and its pretty good. I like it, its flexible and it gets the job done, it has two 1/4″ outputs. The only thing is, it is quite pricy.

Here is another interface that seems to be much better, flexibility wise (6 outputs), and in doing so, opens up a lot of possibilities in the future for various configurations for our live setting. For instance, this sort of interface will be great for running multiple outs to different sources.

This is the same thing but a lot smaller and portable.

These are just some…..

Suggestions. You could also get a 1/8″ to 1/4″ cable and run from your headphone jack out into the appropriate direct boxes or inputs into your mixer or soundboard. these are just suggestions but please feel free to look around and find something that works for you and your needs/applications.

Remember.

1) connect your interface

2) set up your interface in Live and its preferences

3) configure your outs (Cue/Master) in Live

Of course,

Ask if you have any questions!