noizZze

Work by El Buen Matador

The original post on this is at wesen’s where you can pick up the idea and hear some samples. In this post I simply show the Ruby implementation of the algorithm. It doesn’t work with lists, but rather does simple math to achieve the same effect.

The idea of distributing pulses is curious. It lacks one important aspect though — shifting. Currently all patterns start with “1″. Thanks wesen, for sharing this. Here comes the Ruby version.

Spent a good deal of yesterday’s evening working on another piece for my future live set. Several amusing ideas came in the process.

Analog sounding. Why they still continue to argue about the digital vs analog sound. Where the hell can you still hear it in the original analog form? Almost everything that is recorded these days is distributed on a digital media, which is bits and bytes in its essence. Having that, it all comes down to creating the “correct” analog-sounding sequence of bytes to reproduce that unique sound that you still want to hear on your iPod. Am I right or am I right? What about vinyl records? What about them? I love vinyl and have the collection of my own. Nothing can beat a great grind and especially in techno domain, but… from a producer standpoint, hey, you still need to get the sounds to someone who cuts the plates. Do you use magnetic tapes for that?

During the last few weeks, largely inspired by the banks of sounds concept behind the hardware machines (thanks wesen and 909techno for the monomachine and machinedrum video), I came up with an entirely different setup for my Ableton Live session view when I’m working on a pieces. I now use a couple of Drum Racks that represent some branch of sound (minimalistic, synthesized sounds etc), but never write clips directly for them. Instead I use several MIDI tracks for each individual sample or a group of samples that I route to the channel holding the Drum Rack. This way, I can program patterns for the sounds individually. Let me illustrate it with a picture:

What I have here is the Drum Racks on channels 1 and 5. They are holding my custom kits. The channels 2 through 4 are routed to the first kit (channel 1) and the channel 6 is to the second (channel 5).

If you read attentively, you probably noticed I said I never use the Drum Rack channels. Well, it’s not true. It’s very convenient to create a clip there, play with it and once it’s finished, move it to a separate MIDI track. It’s like a sketch book.

What are the benefits of this layout:

• You keep all your related (kit) samples in one place
• You don’t duplicate kits in multiple channels just to keep things separated
• You do keep things separated, but in more natural way, like how would you do with the hardware
• Thanks to the flexibility of the Drum Rack (and Instrument Rack), you can add effects to each individual sample as well as to the whole channel. In other words, if I need to add some reverb to high hats, I no longer need to take them on a separate channel, I just open the rack and add it. Rarely do I need the same sound with different effects in my tracks. Even if I do, I can easily duplicate the sound in the rack for that.

And by the way, here’s how the piece sounds at the moment:

Several days ago I was totally bedazzled by Wesen’s openness and the willingness to share information when he laid down all tiniest details of his techno music construction workflow to the readers of his blog. He posted a carefully crafted PDF file with textual information accompanied by the set of loops, samples and sysex data ready for immediate action. You can take it all, play with it, feel it the way he felt and get all inspiration you can.

I had several awe moments, and in this writing I would like to attempt to share my own experience. It’s not going to be as nicely put, but still may be interesting to read and compare to your own views and techniques.

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Two weeks ago my dad has finished another project for me — Monome clone. I wanted it to be different from what’s offered by the respected authors in some ways, and it is obviously cheaper to build it than purchasing the read-made piece from them (of course if you have all necessary tools to carve nice rubber buttons, case, face plates etc).

For those who don’t know, Monome is a USB device with 64, 128, 256 etc number of buttons with LEDs inside each. Buttons can be lid and key events (presses and releases) are sent over the USB to a computer program that does something useful. Classical applications are:

• Controlling a MIDI device (synthesizer, sequencer, sampler etc)
• Visualizing data with LEDs

Here’s what we’ve got as the result:

Features:

• Red wood polished case
• Plastic buttons of increased size (to match the size and spacing of faders on my mixer)
• Soft rubber pads under the buttons for pleasant touch
• Ultra-bright blue LEDs
• Modified firmware to support hardware blinking

And here’s the device in action:

Additionally, I wrote a simple but nice Ableton Live driver to talk to the device, and now enjoying the creative potential of this little thing fully. Currently working on my live set.

THE OFFER

And now something really exciting. It’s probable that we will be building this on demand. Currently there are plans for 64 and 128 button models. We found that the same components are cheaper here and every part of the body is produced in-house making the overall cost visibly lower.

If you have interest in ordering one, leave a comment with a note. Currently we need about 10 orders of the type to launch the production cycle. If there is necessary demand, I will put together a page with the counter and some other helpful info to keep all interested parties informed.

You have to see it. I’m quite used to technological “miracles” with magnetism like that, but let’s face it — it’s absolutely gorgeous.

And another one…

What adds some oil to the fire is that it wasn’t developed in super-secret laboratories by an army of rocket scientists. It’s the artwork form of a mere mortal like you and me. To me it proves the concept — far not everything is already invented and, what’s more important, a single mind matters.

Thanks to Sachiko Kodama for several minutes of aesthetic pleasure!

Here are the amazing “Techno Is Not A Joke” series on YouTube from The Pod: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

I share their views to some extent. Techno is a universal music that you can use to express yourself, make people dance or make them think about the past / present / future, or do other magic with minds and souls.

Links were found at Music Thing.

Finally, it’s here in my hands. I’m very excited about it as it took 2 days to come to Kiev from Germany and long 2 weeks to travel a fraction of that distance to my city. The negative side is that customs took another $360 (given that the box cost $999) to give it to me, and UPS got $10 to perform a radiology test that never happened (just a rubber stamp on a paper). That’s the sad part about this country I’m going to leave with a special pleasure very soon. Everyone is robbing everyone else on the legal terms here and it’s fine. No one cares. Even those being robbed.

Anyway, it’s here and it’s what matters after all. Thank you Ableton for a great product!

Here’s a little nice video from their office in Germany:

• Inside Ableton

Finally, the Ableton Live 7.0.3 is officially installed and running on my laptop. No, the package hasn’t come yet if you wonder, but they were generous enough to send the download link (for the app only of course) and a bunch of the serials along with the order confirmation to get me started immediately upon charging my credit card. So, I spent 10 minutes downloading all the latest while they packed the boxed version for me.

The Ukraine is famous for its unreliable postal services (well, as many other distant corners of the world), however, I believe UPS or FedEx (still not sure are we in the EU or outside it) will do its best to save some silver hair to me. Hopefully there will be no problems with customs and everything. Even 5%-10% tax would be a LOT given the price I paid.

You may wonder, why am I drawing so much attention to the fact of the purchase? It’s easy to understand if you are in a music geek circles, and almost impossible otherwise. Long story short, (a) it’s the best music production workbench with all sines and saws world ever seen, (b) the fact that you purchased any software product in this country (and bordering Russia) is kind of … extraordinary and deserves attention by itself, and finally, (c) it let’s me immerse deeper into the creative part without a stupid thought “do I deserve to use this, or am I a smelly thief”.

Happy.

Many of you know me as a music geek. That would be a correct assessment of my attitude to everything composing / hardware / software related. I like experimentation, layering sounds, playing with tune structure and working on tiniest sonic details that are so subtle that affect the listener only on the subconscious level, like ghost notes and other miniature stuff.

I wrote before about the hardware MIDI console we built with my Farther for the live performances (and also see here). Not that I do lots of these lately, but we both enjoy building things and it was an excellent opportunity to create something beautiful and particularly useful.

Today I finally made a decision to make a purchase of the boxed version of an excellent Ableton Live 7 Suite — the best sequencer, sound editor and live session tool I’ve used over the years of my composing geekery. Not that I’m a pro in a $1.5M studio, but my personal taste says that neither Logic, nor Cubase, nor anything else works for me better. Now what the package includes (just to tease you and myself a bit):

• Ableton Live 7 itself
• Sampler — impressive multi-sample playback instrument with everything open to automation
• Operator — simply my latest favorite in the world of synthesizers
• Electric — instrument modeling classic electric pianos
• Tension — synthesizer modeling stringed instruments
• Analog — the analog sound beauty unleashed
• Drum Machines — huge collection of vintage drum samples in superb quality (Roland 606/707/808/909, Linndrum, Oberheim DMX and many more)
• Session Drums — 29Gb library of acoustic drum samples in multi-mic raw and processed versions ready for production
• Essential Instruments Collection 2 — massive set of instruments from drums to pianos and basses.

As you can see this even sounds massive. Having some experience with Ableton products and knowing who is the main visionary behind everything (yeah, you are right, it’s Robert Henke aka Monolake), I have no doubt it’s a money well-spent deal and will definitely pay off if not in the financial sense then simply as an excitement booster.

At the moment I mailed the request for the invoice (if you don’t pay VAT, you can ask them to subtract it from the price, which is really nice of you guys) and waiting for the response. My plans are to keep you posted on the progress and results. I believe It may be interesting to my fellow composers here in Ukraine to learn about the experience with the Ableton customer care service, prices and delivery times.

By the way, in case it reaches you Robert, I saw you didn’t know (during the Melbourne workshop) if there was someone in Europe playing live using the home-made MIDIbox controller and Live. Well, I do.

Today is a BIG DAY for the crimusic.info — our local Crimean Modern Music Portal. That would be two Birthday celebrations:

• 4 years of the portal itself
• 1 year of the Aestetics (”Estetika”) radio program

It’s pointless to mention that the show is going to be spectacular. Crowds of clubbers, creative folks and fellow composers — everyone is going to be there. Amazing! I’m in anticipation of long talks on hardware, MIDI, 8-bit madness and recent electronic world music trends. Hey, it’s going to be magical.

The place is almost 100 kms away from where we live, but nevertheless we are going to join our friends on the long 2-hour drive and have a great night.

Hope to see you all there!