Henry …love my TR8s, excellent fun for jamming with, but I’m not using it in production work at all.
Really loving just firing up a drum rack loaded with samples triggered by a MaxforLive sequencer, then editing the shit out of whatever audio comes out.
Really need to circle back to the hardware at some point tho.
Henry Good man, isn’t it fantastic? The only problem is that when I pair it with the digitakt, my other hardware goes pretty much unused. So easy to get ideas down and it all sounds so good. You can maybe argue with the hats, but a little layering goes a long way.
Just starting the ground work for another album and spent this morning sampling from the ST into ableton, adding fx, and resampling. We may have a line on a dub vocalist too, which would be amazing if it pans out.
Also, nice work on this one 
Henry to kick start the old creative process again
Excellent.
I bought d16’s Lush 02 as I had a heavy crossgrade discount really, SH101 based synth. Of course I didn’t need another synth - but it sounds great and has pushed me in another direction, which is just what you want from a new bit of kit.
Henry I understand that I am talking to myself and no-one will read this.
Has everyone seen the new feature on soundcloud which pushes your music to 100 accounts which should have a similar interest. Is an interesting concept - though I’ve only read the holding page on it and not seen it in action.
It usually autoplays some trap / rap when I’ve been demo-ig my own private tracks on there so am not overly optimistic of the accuracy of their data.
Mad_Cyril It’s for tracks of up to 10 mins and doesn’t guarantee plays. But is recognition that most of the content posted to it gets no or very little engagement.
If I’m looking at AI from a what can it do for me perspective tools with the aim of creating engagement are something that’s more interesting than something that will mix a kick and bass for me.
303abuser
Still in the very early days of learning my way around it. But really impressed so far. So easy to generate polyrhythms and adding variation. I just want to focus on learning this in the short term and then start putting stuff together in Ableton. My only gripe is that the sound quality sounds slightly muffled vs my Arturia and NI VSTs. Maybe there’s something I need to change in Overbridge to optimise it.
Looking forward to hearing your new stuff. Vocals will be a nice touch. :
apyssjw
That’s an interesting synth. I can’t justify another VST, although I do have a demo of Plasmonic which is basically Absynth from the same developer. If they drop a chunk off the price off for Black Friday I could be tempted. I really miss Absynth since I moved to Apple Silicon.
Henry Polyrhythms, conditional trigs, trigless trigs, it’s all just endless possibilities. I love it for kick and bass especially, I find layering is really helpful with sound design.
Not sure about the muffled sound, mine comes out clean through overbridge. Is there a difference in the sound between the headphone output and overbridge?
303abuser
Thanks for the layering tip. Will have to have another listen for any sound quality issues. Only run it through Ableton very briefly to make sure that there were no issues with Overbridge.
I have to come clean and say that I even like the Syntakt so much that I have bought a wooden stand for it. So even if I get bored with it, it will look great on my mantelpiece and compliment the nest of tables from IKEA in the corner.
apyssjw
Absynth is the most creative synth I’ve ever used. Think it was one of the first synths I used when I started out with Cubase way back. Was gutted when I heard that NI no longer supported it. Plasmonic is great. But from the demo it’s not going to fill the void.
Henry So, I’ve gone and bought a Syntakt. 303abuser was right all along, it is absolutely fantastic. Never really got on with creating drum patterns in either Ableton/Push or with Maschine. And this little box of tricks is really what I needed to kick start the old creative process again. We’ll see….
I’m intrested. Also had Maschine but never got along with it. How would you say Syntakt is easier/more user friendly in comparison?
Does it work more like a step sequncer? I like that type of work flow.
Henry You’ll find the levels that come out of overbridge a little low, they did that on purpose to keep headroom. I put utility on each overbridge channel coming in with a 5 db boost as the default.
I bought a two tier stand for the DT and ST, looks good and is super functional. Now I start a project on both boxes, match up the patterns, and spend 15-30 minutes putting a jam together on A01, then move on to A02, A03, etc. and do the same. Write everything at 120 bpm in Gm so I can mix and match any of the sounds. It’s so quick to get ideas down and has really sped up my workflow.
mono-stereo Does it work more like a step sequncer? I like that type of work flow.
It does exactly that, I almost write exclusively with step sequencing.
mono-stereo
Syntakt is much more immediate for getting ideas down. With Maschine and Ableton Push, you are faffing about with plugins, getting patterns, variations etc down. Whereas as soon as you switch Syntakt on everything is more direct. A few taps here and there and you’ve got something going in no time at all.
303abuser Nice one.
Henry Good stuff, I thought Maschine was pointless with all the faffing about, will give one of these a go i reckon.
So with Black Friday deals starting to show up, are there any tools (software or hardware) you guys are keeping an eye on?
…just bought Arturia’s EFXMotion, had been limiting myself to Live’s effects while I got my head around them, but fancied trying something a little different that gave movement without the need for mammoth FX chains. Quite fun so far but haven’t really deep-dived with it yet.
Am also quite tempted by DS Audio Tantra 2, as it sounds wicked for reshaping rhythmical stuff, but wondering if its a little too similar to the above?
I may upgrade to ableton 11 soon, so I’ll watch for that sale, otherwise Morph 2 is the only other sale I’m really watching for. I’m sure I’ll impulse buy something, although I’ve been pretty restrained recently.
Will pick this up (when I get round to it).
…and Reason Bassline Generator if it goes on sale.
…anyone have the Soundtoys bundle? wondering how cheap it gets!?
apyssjw …yeah, the fella that helps with my mix/mastering says they are the one essential FX package he couldn’t live without.
I got Little Plate as a freebie recently, and Soundtoys says to download the bundle as a trial for a ‘special’ Black Friday deal, but they ain’t that cheap to begin with!
Unbroken1 I bought the entire bundle a few years ago, can’t remember what I paid, but it was definitely a Black Friday sale. I can’t imagine working without it, echoboy is on every track I make, as is little/super plate, panman, and tremolator. If you have the money and the need for some of them, don’t hesitate.
Can’t see any BF deals yet that persuade me into buying. Thankfully. I should make due with what I have (which is more than enough). As having a plethora of choices does no good go my creativity honestly.
In synths In have:
EQ:
FX Racks:
DONE! All quality tools and a handful of those is all I need. Note to self: stop looking for deals you procrastinating moron..
Yup. 12 out next year.
Have to say that 11 has been the most disappointing version to date. Didn’t even make it to 11.5. I’ll probably upgrade to 12. But have to say that some of the functionality that Bitwig has, puts pressure to make 12 a more substantial update than 11 was.
Henry The additional Midi tools look interesting. I have a ridiculously large sample collection so the sound matching could be interesting - if it’s able to scan your collection and match from there.
But they’ve left me behind at the moment. I’ve mentioned (about a million times before, sorry) that I’m running windows 7 on my music PC which works flawlessly. I’m not going through the pain of a new system or faff around with dual booting systems for a some midi tools which a max for live device could probably replicate.
apyssjw Will Ableton 12 only run on a particular Windows chipset?
As for browsing, this looks like nice upgrade to the previous. Finding samples has always been a pain. I was using a plugin called ‘Atlas’ for a while which is supposed to match similar sounds, but quite often failed. Hope the implementation in Ableton 12 works better.
The ‘flagship’ updates for 11 were things like MPE and comping, which they were really marketed hard during the release campaign but are actually overrated. The only other memorable update in 11 was a synth called ‘Drift’, which was memorable in that I can recall only ever using it once.
12 seems like a proper update to me. It looks to me like they’ve taken a look at Bitwig and decided to focus on improving time spent browsing and looking for stuff, adding better ways to view plugins in arrangement/session view etc. And it looks like they’ve added a decent synth this time.
I still think from what I have seen of Bitwig, they are still behind some basic functionality. I would love to be able to open multiple projects up in Ableton and copy ideas seamlessly between them. Or have contextual menus, to avoid having to hunt for plugins. Having said that. I am too old to start learning another fecking DAW.
Henry Will Ableton 12 only run on a particular Windows chipset
11 was the first to be windows 10 only. Its the operating system which isn’t necessarily hardware dependent - but if I upgrade I’ll lose incompatible software, drivers etc. it’s just not worth it when my machine runs like a dream. A tipping point will come at some point, but I’m not at it yet.
That said I have a laptop running Windows 10 so could buy the update to run on that…
Upgraded to 11 yesterday, my template looks like a ghost town of plugins that won’t load. Guess I’ll be spending a day on software housekeeping to get it functioning again. Really looking forward to the midi/piano roll updates with version 12 and roar looks interesting too (despite the awful name).
303abuser
Which plugins are causing issues? The only issues I had were because I was going from Intel to Silicon, and anything that was VST2. But I know you are already on an M1 chip so that won’t be the case.
Soundtoys are doing the big bundle for $239. I would go for this, only that I bought the Arturia FX Collection a few years back, and apart from a few things here and there I generally haven’t used many of the FX. Echoboy looks really good, but can get this for $49, so might just go for that. I got the freebee Littleplate this week which is really good.
Still in two minds whether to get Plasmonic or not, now that is has been reduced to $99. Trackspacer also. Although I managed to find a decent dynamic EQ which probably does the same job with a little more effort.
Henry Not sure about issues, just lots of vst2 instances apparently. I think I can get around some of the non-m1 compatibility via AU versions, but we’ll see. I suspect voxengo span is going to be a problem and I use that one constantly. Basically my entire master channel chain is greyed out. 
And the soundtoys fx are so much better than arturia. I use the spring reverb and the space echo emulation, but if I had to pick one or the other, it’s soundtoys every time.
I’m watching for a discount on morph2 still, but I think I’m done spending.
303abuser I’m using Span as a VST 3 no issues at all. I have it bunged on my master track too.
Yeah, the VST 2 thing is an absolutely pain in the hoop. All of my work before moving to M1 was done using VST2 plug ins. Which basically meant that if I wanted to use any previous work, I would have to save each plugin as a VST 3/AU or bounce the audio. I had hundreds of tracks and as you can imagine this is impossible to do. My back up is my Intel iMac which is at the back of my wardrobe and I fire it up once every 6 months when I want to recover something.
The Soundtoys bundle sounds tempting because, like Syntakt, you are always banging on about it. And you were right about Syntakt, so I should probably pay attention.
Henry Good to know with span, I’m going to start tackling it all this afternoon, hopefully it isn’t so bad. And luckily I’m just starting a new album project and I typically don’t go back to borrow from old projects, so hoping that’s not a huge thing going forward too.
If you’re looking for creative colour, then soundtoys is it. They’re not designed as clean mixing tools, like fab filter for example, so be aware of that. When I installed 11 yesterday, it scanned 350ish plugins (for perspective) and I go back to soundtoys over and over again. The only ones I use as often are pro q3, novatron and blyss from kush audio, and modnetic.
