Composer workbench defaults

by dmmaus

The more I think of my music creation process, the more frequently I return to the thought that the most productive environment is when you have all your tools and samples strictly limited. By this I mean that the process of putting the tune together should be simple and constrained at the same time.

Simplicity comes from the notion of having many aspects of the environment standardized to a reasonable extent. One example is having the blank Ableton Live environment versus having some meaningful template with a customized drum-kit and favorite synths loaded, effect channels pre-configured etc — just like when you are dealing with the hardware synths and music creation stations — everything is in the memory of the device and is easily accessible.

This take is pretty constrained as you can see, but not insanely. You can go from the default setup anywhere you want, still you will know that synth patch #45 goes well with the kick on C-3 from your default drum-kit. This is supposed to ease the pain of looking for the right combination of sounds while keeping your new motive in mind in the effort not to let it slip away. The latest versions of Ableton Live let us do many wonderful things with racks and drum tracks.

A little clip for your listening pleasure. Hope it’ll become a tradition in the coming year.

Ableton 7 Suite Box Received

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

Purchased the One and Only

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.

Upgrading my Toolbox

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.