the production thread
Dubman Cheers, it’ll be free or pay what you want through Insectorama (https://insectorama.bandcamp.com/music). I’ll link it here when it’s out too.
Forgot to share this earlier, updated Paul Stretch including iOS and m1 compatibility, still free.
…Reason 12.6 announced today with Apple silicon compatibility.
40% off with ‘126-MAYSALE-40’.
New album is out now, we’re proud of it and curious to see what people think. The digitakt and syntakt are all over most tracks, some live horns, tons of sub bass and trippy dub sounds.
303abuser First off .. let met congratulate you on finishing and putting out another body of work!! I know how satisfying that feels.
Don’t know your first name, but I find your work ethic inspiring and one I like to follow as an example. I can’t seem to finish a song the pas two months to save my own life! Due to (in part) some mental fuckery and other areas of life taking time and energy away.
About the album: Some great sounds in there and, to me, it feels like an excellent piece of dub plates. Cohesive. And you weren’t kidding about the subs! 
Morty-C-137 Thanks, that means a lot. 
I don’t even see it as work ethic, I just finish what I start and I really enjoy doing it. It’s more like muscle memory at this point. And I know what you mean about life getting in the way. I’m starting a 2nd business, so it’ll be a miracle if I finish anything in the next 6 months. I do find I come back to it with new energy and ideas after a break though, so it’s not all bad.
…yeah, well done man! To echo Morty’s sentiments, inspiring to see you getting projects finished. 2nd album is a proper achievement. Look forward to checking it out.
For what it’s worth, have completely changed my workflow recently and am feeling much more confident about taking projects to completion now… have a couple of studio sessions with someone I have a lot of respect for coming up, so hoping that will push me over the line into self-sufficiency on the production front.
Unbroken1 Cheers! That’s 2 solo and 2 with Stephen now. Finishing albums with someone else doing half the work definitely makes things easier. We just finished a remix for another Canadian producer, took maybe 3 days all together.
Good luck with the new project, once you get your workflow sorted, everything becomes so much easier.
New ones 
Push 3 out. The MPE expressive pads look useful. Not sure how useful the other elements are but I’ve only seen a brief vid this afternoon.
apyssjw Paid about £499 for Push 2. And it isn’t that great. Push 3 has added a some additional MPE sensitivities. A few more buttons. And slightly better graphics. And they want £899 for it. The standalone looks nowhere near as good as Maschine + which is around half the price of the Push 3 Standalone.
Ableton 11.3 is out today too. A worthy addition is Drift which is a simple subtractive synth (do we really need another) with some nice ambient sounds. Can’t really see anything else worthy of note in the upgrade. Probably is some small improvements here and there. If I could be bothered to look.
I think if I was working completely ITB, I’d probably own a push. Every time I look at what they want for what it offers, I’d rather spend the money on hardware or creative plugins. The cost for v3 seems insane to me.
Henry Paid about £499 for Push 2. And it isn’t that great.
Oh yeah agree. For clip launching I prefer my original apc40. I do like doodling melodies with the pads, but everything else I could do before. Honestly I barely use either at the moment.
No way am I arranging or mixing using a stand alone box. I need a bigger screen not a smaller one.
Still happily on live 10.
Snagged Mixbox for $29. A fun little fx rack for all kinds of duties that completes my fx rack collection next to Guitar Rig & Snapheap. Each having their own sound. Mixbox leaning towards “analog sounding”.
Eventide Quadravox for free at Plugin Boutique using code: 3sMZIDk3
Morty-C-137 Nice one, thanks.
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I have experience in writing “club” tracks and ambient works.. but mainly the former could no longer interest me much the past two years or so to a point where I could just not be bothered to make one.
About a month or two ago I sat down to write a more “electronic” pop of the EDM persuasion (I guess.. I’ll leave the pigeon-holing up to others). I’m leaning more to the pop side for this because of the short sections and getting to the point quickly.
After it was done I let it rest for a month or so and listened back and decided there was nothing more I could do at this point in time to improve upon it (till the next track).
Side note: this is prob the worst demographic to pitch this stuff to though 
Free dynamic EQ from Melda. Usually £49 or something. I had been waiting for Track Spacer to drop in price, but this looks like it does something similar, when trying to deal with frequency masking issues etc
If you haven’t installed any of the Melda stuff before, the install is something like 600Mb. But you basically toggle off everything you don’t need so it’s not really bloatware.
https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/16-EQ/1102-MDynamicEq
Morty-C-137 I’ve been working on shorter 4/5mins style tracks, with perhaps a more traditional ‘songwriting’ sytle arrangement. All helpful to grow the arrangement muscle.
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and ..
released the album I’ve been mentioning for a while. Still not got to 303s latest yet (but I will!).
Should probably mention that the arrangement of a couple of tracks were ‘mentored’ by Funk D’Void during lockdowns - tracks 4 and 7.
apyssjw Very much so yes.
apyssjw Nice one. Congrats the the LP.
Cheers both. Definitely think its my best / most interesting. Am laying the groundwork for the next one - no doubt coming 2025 at the earliest
apyssjw how much did you pay for mastering, ball park?
mono-stereo https://begin.lhaudio.com/preise
I always use the more expensive analogue mastering and get a little discount for volume.
apyssjw That seems like good value. What are the main differences you notice after mastering?
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mono-stereo I ask the mastering engineer to tell me whats he thinks needs correcting before they do their job. You hope you are getting better when there are less and less requested amends.
The your confident you can ask for a specific character for the master. There’s a little blurb on it here
https://begin.lhaudio.com/mastering
You do sometimes hear elements which you didn’t actively hear post master which you then want to either remove or drop in the mix.
Probably the most positive difference, for my ear, is a widening of the stereo spread.
All my factory pack files are missing in Ableton - they’re listed in the collection element on the left hand side, but says “The file could not be read. It may be corrupt or not licensed”. I’ve re-authorised at Ableton.com, but that didn’t work. Everything worked fine a little while ago, I’m currently working on a project with files from the factory pack like 909 Core Kit (and they all work fine), but it won’t let me start a new track with the 909 Core Kit, or anything else. I’ve sent a ticket to Ableton, but if anyone has any ideas, I’d appreciate it. Really annoyed.
Along_the_Wire ‘Organic Acid’ project Grant?!
Mad_Cyril my mate wants a mild banger - his choice!
I resolved the situation by uninstalling and re-installing.