• Music

  • the production thread

303abuser menu diving can be an issue, there’s a bit of it with the a4. the elektron learning curve is as much hype as anything else, it’s really not that bad, but that’s your call. if you want one function per knob, it probably isn’t for you.

You’re recommending Elektron gear to a guy who hasn’t touched a hardware synth since the JP-8000?! Bwahahaha. You’re barking mad. Elektron kit is all about key combinations and memorizing them. You either love it or hate it. There’s no in between. Plus it’s bloody expensive.

I wouldn’t say it’s really at the level to which Damo should be looking to get back into things. Not that I think Damo is stupid, but it’s got a huge learning curve associated with it and is largely meant for DAWless application - even if you use one.

If you want poly Damo, the XD is a good look for the price. Otherwise the only real competitor is probably the Deepmind. Beyond that for a poly and you’re looking at spending north of $1,500 CAD (not sure of the conversion these days to the UKP) - at which point the competition heats up a great deal and comes down to the ‘sound’ of the synth you want versus what it does on the panel.

      Amps Re production in general: absolute kick in the nuts when you don’t really know what you are doing and you know the only remedy is to spend more time poking yourself in the eye.

      Hire me. Seriously. I’m happy to show you the ropes via Zoom/Skype/etc. I won’t charge you a tonne of cash and you’ll be able to make the latest Drum Code banger before you can speak Swedish.

        Amps On that same point, once something is the Arrangement, I can double click it and edit it, but those edits and changes are not then applied to that track in the Session view, it just becomes its own instance within the Arrangement view? Any way to change that?

        You may find it easiest to just choose the traditional DAW way of working and start and finish in Arrangement view. Sod Session view. I frankly don’t use it to do anything in it beyond DJ or if I were to play live.

        Now that said, I’ve seen people jam out ideas in Session view and then plop them over to arrangement thereafter, but it seems like adding an unnecessary step. That aspect of the program really is where Abelton Live gets the live portion of its name. It was designed so that people could play over top of themselves or fire off clips of MIDI and audio in a live situation with an easier way of controlling the way they happen sequentially.

        You want to keep things simple when learning, so I suggest doing that from the outset instead of creating an extra layer of complexity.

        Ping me on Facebook Messenger if you’d like to organize some lessons. 🙂 I’ve got a tonne of free time at the moment because my contract expired a couple of weeks back.

        • Amps replied to this.

            hugopal you should prob get yourself one of these Amps, best not to try and run before you can walk:

            We could get him a BlipBox. It’s a fully fledged synth but also meant for kids. It’s not exactly cheap mind you!!

              loopdokter i’ll argue against all of that all day. my second synth was an a4 and it’s easier to use than the ms20 mini i bought first. yeah you have to figure out the key combinations and the file structure, but it’s really not that hard; i think the whole elektron learning curve is overblown. and you can get a used a4 for $8-900 CAD, which is very reasonable for how powerful it is. you could buy no other gear and make great music for years with just the one synth. plus with overbridge, it’s certainly not aimed only at dawless set ups.

                  303abuser Make sure you register all of your tracks released (and not released) so far. Typically upon completion of a track, I go ahead and register it on the site.

                  Make sure you set up auto-debit with your bank. Then you wait. Typically SOCAN deposits into your account every quarter, but that’s all subject to whether or not any of your tracks have generated income yet or not.

                  Don’t expect to break the bank, but every year I get a bit of cash from something of mine that’s been played by someone somewhere. Lately it’s been decreasing because I haven’t had my stuff out there as much.

                  Back ‘in the day’ I used make about a grand a year through SOCAN.

                    303abuser i’ll argue against all of that all day. my second synth was an a4 and it’s easier to use than the ms20 mini i bought first. yeah you have to figure out the key combinations and the file structure, but it’s really not that hard; i think the whole elektron learning curve is overblown. and you can get a used a4 for $8-900 CAD, which is very reasonable for how powerful it is. you could buy no other gear and make great music for years with just the one synth. plus with overbridge, it’s certainly not aimed only at dawless set ups.

                    As someone who’s been in the game for nearly thirty years whose first synth was a JX-8P, I have to disagree. It’s one thing starting out with that - which is what you essentially did. It’s another coming from the more traditional ‘one knob per function’ of the JP-8000.

                    The whole Elektron deal was for people to play live a la ‘groovebox’ style. Overbridge came after. Yes, you can use it via Overbridge with a DAW, but Elektron stuff isn’t simple. It takes a lot of mastering those key combos and such to pull the power out of the boxes. So while I get that you love your Elektron gear, the users of that gear are very dedicated and drink the Kool-Aid. My point to you is that you either are or are not an Elektron workflow lover. It’s very polarizing gear. You either jive with their workflow or you don’t

                    Is it powerful? Absolutely. Is it generally expensive? Absolutely. Is it easy to use? Debatable. They’re sort of like Apple of the synth world. They have a rabid fan base with an equally as loathing group who despise them. Hehe.

                    As for your MS-20, I can see why that might be a bit intimidating but that’s a great synth to learn traditional subtractive synthesis on (and if I recall correctly, I recommended purchasing). I love mine and strangely, don’t find myself doing a lot of patching on it!

                        ArchimedesQ Thanks man. Appreciate you, and anyone else, taking the time to listen - it’s really hard to get people to do that let alone digging it!

                          loopdokter i get everything your saying, i just don’t think it’s that difficult to learn the elektron gear. although i haven’t tried the octatrack, so that maybe where that comes from too. either way, it’s an option, nothing more or less.

                          as for the ms20, yeah, i think you may have recommended it. it’s been good to learn on, the filters are amazing, and i really like the sound, but i find it a bitch to tame. all of my favorite patches are really tough to get to sit nicely the mix. i’m going to give it a real shot over the next month before i decide if i’m going to sell it or not.

                              loopdokter Thanks Jay, I may well come back to you on this, should I ever get meaningful employment again 👍️

                                  deleted my original post, i figured out the problem.

                                  Amps Thanks Jay, I may well come back to you on this, should I ever get meaningful employment again

                                  Ahh, sorry mate. You and I are in the same boat. Hence, why I’m offering up production.

                                  I’ll do you a favour and do a little YouTube tutorial for a few things.

                                  • Amps replied to this.

                                      303abuser as for the ms20, yeah, i think you may have recommended it. it’s been good to learn on, the filters are amazing, and i really like the sound, but i find it a bitch to tame. all of my favorite patches are really tough to get to sit nicely the mix. i’m going to give it a real shot over the next month before i decide if i’m going to sell it or not.

                                      You’d be a fool to sell that thing. It’s a classic synth for a reason.

                                      Compression is your friend, as well as subtractive EQing. Roll off the bits you don’t need in EQ. …Or use a plugin such as Soothe2 to smooth out the resonant peaks. Add a bit of limiting too to even out the sound variation. The filter is a dirty evil beast of a thing, but you can also coax more tamed sounds out of it too. I mean, the keys player from Arcade Fire uses one all the time and their stuff doesn’t exactly scream and squelch. Using the MS-20 for bass alone is a no-brainer.

                                      Good synths take work to get to fit into mixdowns properly. That comes with time. I really didn’t start becoming adept at mixing until about ten years into the process - even after I’d actually released music on vinyl. These days that can be reduced drastically by all of the information available online.

                                      There’s some really good tutorials on the YouTubes about patching ideas for it. That may give you some more inspiration. Where it gets really wild is when you patch in something through the External Signal Processor section.

                                          I’ve not joined MPCS or PRS (yet…!). There is a £100 set up fee to join either, so £200 if you want to join both, and they recommend that you don’t consider joining until you believe you will exceed that threshold. Their examples being

                                          for prs

                                          _To earn over £100, your music would need to have:

                                          one play on a BBC 1 primetime show
                                          six plays on Sky 1
                                          two plays on ITV
                                          three plays on Channel 4
                                          five plays on BBC Radio 1
                                          150 plays on an independent local radio station
                                          200 plays on an MTV Music Channel
                                          For live performance, your music will need to be performed at:

                                          twelve small-scale venues that are registered in our Gigs and Clubs scheme, such as a local pub
                                          two or three larger venues, such as Barrowlands in Glasgow or The Deaf Institute in Manchester_

                                          £100 is a long long way away on that basis.

                                          MPCS more relevant if I was releasing on a label that I don’t own. I’ve only done that once before so again it’s not that relevant at the moment.

                                          Bit of a piss take if they are claiming royalties for playing tunes in the deaf institute, the mercenary cunts…

                                          loopdokter it comes down to workflow for me, which is why i’m going to really give it a shot over the next month. it’s not that i can’t do that stuff, the lead in ‘departure’ that i closed my album with was done on the ms20, i just find i can get the same result with diva as an example, much more quickly.

                                          i’ve watched every tutorial, many of them twice and i’ve tried a variety of setups from standalone, to sequencing with the electron gear, running the drum brute through the esp, feeding it back on itself for distortion, etc. it all sounds fine once it’s dialed in, but it’s not fast enough for me. i find my best work is done quickly, before i get sick of listening to it. i can sit down with the digitakt or a4 and sketch out a track in an hour or two and i like that immediacy.

                                          we’ll see. i’m still hesitant to sell it as i’m sure it’s a great box, i just don’t get on with it as well as i could.