thawkins
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Posts posted by thawkins
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Well it's a drummer that can play in impeccable timing but has trouble hitting the correct part of the drum kit.
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On 4/16/2021 at 10:23 PM, TubularCorporation said:
I can't find a good online reference, The Elements of Typographic Style has a whole short section on it.
The basic idea is that sometime in the 16th century they started correlating the ratios of page dimensions to musical intervals, i.e. a 1:1 page would be an octave, etc.
Airwindows Chris has his own system:
I guess I get what you mean, even though it is getting slightly time cubey. I notice that Airwindows list tends to have a lot of oldies and classics and really not enough cutting edge electronic music.
I think they have a point but the delivery/explanation is
Basically I don't think there are these tempo nodes or ideal BPMs in of itself, but I am totally on board with the idea that the whole body of published music (especially widely acclaimed classics) has these emergent characteristics. Like for example if the vast majority of people made their house at 120bpm (maybe theyr sequencers bpm knob was broken ok!) and you put out a 119bpm track, it would sound slow and sluggish maybe, because everyone is used to house at 120bpm. But this is not because 120 bpm is a magic cosmic ideal tempo, it's just what people are used to listening to.
And one thing I also am 100% sure happens (at least to me): pick a track at like 130 bpm, then listen to a bunch of stuff at 120 bpm, listen to your original track - does it sound way too fast or agitated? Probably. Now listen to a bunch of tracks at 140 bpm, really get into it, maybe do a DJ set or something. Once again, listen to your 130 bpm track and I bet it will feel ugh so slow and sluggish.
What I mean by this is how can I even judge a track by the tempo if it all depends on what mood I am in and what is the music I am comparing the track to? I feel like each listener's own personal listening history and preferences play into this a lot.
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2 hours ago, Claudius t Ansuulim said:
Very pleasant! Like staying up all night and walking out in the morning fog as it’s lifting
Thanks, I get what you mean by that comparison. This reminds me that I should get out more. Glad you like the track!
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Trouble with that is if you have a monophonic synth or a limited amount of voices then you do not want the same MIDI note-on/note-off pair to be sent at the same time, because while glitches are cool, they can also make a note ring out forever (unless you send a CC 123) on an external hardware device. So to have a robust and smooth "cross-fading" with MIDI, you need to somehow ensure that this kind of cross-talk does not happen.
That's my armchair theory at least, maybe I will get a chance to try it out later on because it seems like a really cool thing to try.
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26 minutes ago, Nil said:
What about setting 2 empty MIDI tracks (each playing a clip) which outputs are routed to a 3rd MIDI track (with all the instruments and effects you need), and using Live’s built-in Crossfader to blend both to taste ? I don’t know if it’ll work (can’t test it now) but that could do the trick.
I am not sure how this would work with MIDI events. I would be very surprised if Live allows to add MIDI tracks to the crossfade groups.
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9 hours ago, user said:
Does anyone know if there is a way to crossfade/blend between 2 or more MIDI clips in ableton? Vaguely recall this being possible with Clyph-x but I'd like to avoid diving down that rabbit hole again. I'm not entirely sure based on which rules such an operation would decide which note gets blended in/faded out at what point, but I'm sure there would be some musically pleasing scenarios thinkable depending on the pattern. Or it could just be linear I guess where the first note in clip A gets added, which then replaces the first note in clip B for example. Or something based on velocity or note duration, or occurrence.
Thought it might be cool to blend drum patterns and make melodies this way.
I would start with Note Modulator by Robert Henke (https://roberthenke.com/technology/m4l.html). Stick a Velocity device after it that does not pass any notes that are too silent.
Set it up on both MIDI tracks that you want to crossfade so that each of the knobs is modulating/muting all notes in the 1st 2nd 3rd etc sub-measure. And then just hook up a MIDI controller to both of the modulators to be able to flip whether the 1st quarter note is played from clip A or clip B. This way you should avoid any problems if both MIDI clips want to play the same note at the same time.
Alternative way with the notemodulator device - and how I use it sometimes - is to keep it running in the default mode so that you have 8 or 16 modulation steps, and each note passed through the effect is modulated accordingly (this explanation sucks, just try it out yourself). So if I have two clips playing on two tracks, both have a modulator on them, then I can gradually decimate all the notes playing on track A, while fading up the velocity modulation on track B. This is super cool with instruments that have good dynamic velocity response.
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7 hours ago, auxien said:
edit: that does suck tho thawkins, losing recordings is always painful
I would not give a damn if it was just the recording - I crashed straight out of our weekly livestream. We'll never make it big like that!
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Most of my stuff has been 120bpm for the past year since that ensures that I can mix and match loops from my different tracks and build something more out of it.
I also like 90bpm (essentially 180bpm) for faster stuff, and there is a cool trick where if you have triplets on 90bpm, the beats are 120bpm so you can transition really neatly. I am not very good at math so I have not figured out how to "get back from 120 to 90". This will also mess with your head if you have a metronome on.
Generally BPM is like a chicken-egg problem: I need to set it before I start my jam session, but then depending on the BPM I might tend towards different rhythms/melodies.
I feel like BPM is not really in a direct relationship with "how fast" the track is. It's just this mechanical heartbeat that drives loops and sequencers and it kind of determines your "grid" of melodies and rhythms that are easy to sequence/quantize. I think it would be great if there was a mathemagical trick to find a good BPM/quantization/looping combination that allows you to pull off whatever you want so that things loop easily and you do not have to be super good with timing how you record your parts (or when you quantize, it does not destroy the microtiming groove).
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3 hours ago, rhmilo said:
You immune to GAS or something?
Unless they get their kick from a spectral analyser, the set up better include some good monitors or headphones too. Not to mention a good computer to run all the janky M4L.
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F***king piece of s**t software, deleting a MIDI track in the middle of arrangement record should not cause the whole computer to freeze and crash. Also who is the brain genius who wrote that auto-updating script to do it's thing while I am recording stuff?!?! Yup let me air gap the laptop I do live streams from like a aluminum foil hat paranoid person in order to prevent this from happening.
Sorry, just needed to get this out of my chakra system.
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Damn nice view, really nice.
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Another week, another livestream, another Ableton Live crash at the most crucial moment I swear it was autoupdating itself in the middle of me doing the jam. Accidentally deleting a MIDI track should not crash the whole computer.
Also earlier I uploaded an edit of last week's jam:
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Really considering getting a smaller Presonus rack unit after I had a huge crash right in the middle of that livestreamed jam session and having read a bunch of posts from two posters with suspiciously similar avatars.
Hope they don't work for Presonus or anything.
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1 hour ago, TubularCorporation said:
This is the first time I've actually gotten a tax return in years, might as well blow it. it's either that hing or a new computer, and that thing will stay relevant longer than a new computer would.
It all depends on how long they keep updating the drivers. Of course even then you can still maintain an old beater computer that runs the last supported operating system and drivers.
I think if I sold my Track16 and the M-Audio Profire 2626 I could justify getting the 16 track version of that though. I like that no frills 1U rack unit form factor.
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On 4/9/2021 at 11:56 AM, pizza said:
i get this, however ableton recording midi in the background without having to press record which was introduced a few versions ago is extremely useful if you're using ableton as a sequencer
I thought that function was for recording some MIDI that you forgot to set arrangement record for, not for catching full multitrack jam sessions. Like before you start play, set arrangement record and then hack away and edit all the MIDI and automation down later.
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On 4/10/2021 at 1:18 AM, TubularCorporation said:
Another thing about getting that Presonus that would be a really helpful is that I record on a pretty old computer, 2009 I think, but it was a pretty beefy server in its day and still holds up fine for mixing in Reaper. The CPU is only something like 2.2gHz bu it's dual quad core Xeons so even on a pretty dense mix my CPU load hardly ever breaks 10%. Thing is, live monitoring through effects isn't multithreaded in Reaper like playback is, and I never do that when I'm recording but now that I livestream regularly I need to. And it only takes a few EQs and compressors spread across a few channel and the master buss before I start having all sorts of buffer underruns. Being able to offload all of that to the mixer in a StudioLive, record my stems with no monitoring in the DAW at all and rout the monitor mix to the livestream without having to use any ITB mixing or processing would buy me at east 2-3 more years with the old computer, maybe more. That and being able to count on getting $400-$500 minimum by selling my old interfaces makes it seem like an even better idea. It's just getting the money that's the problem. I've got quite a bit of gear but only $300-$400 of stuff I'd be comfortable selling off right now, and the old interfaces would have to stay until I got the new one. Going to be a bit of a long haul.
EDIT: I totally forgot that the one tiny upside of losing all my freelance work last year is that I actually get a tax return this year instead of owing money. Sooo... looks like I'll be able to save up enough to get that StudioLive 32R in a month or two instead of next year! Goddamn!
I think a huge rack unit is what I need too, but that thing is too insane.
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26 minutes ago, xox said:
What books do you use for a monitor stand?
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There is another slightly smaller pile that I can not be bothered to set up for a photo now.
I am happy that the new place is forcing me to downsize (or organize it better). I could feel my happiness increase the more cables and junk I packed away. That's got to be a sign.
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Yeah I think this is a nice procedure for setting things up, and I hope they do not require a specific kind of measurement microphone so I could use the MEMS mic I got with the IK ARC kit.
Honestly I would consider setting up a dedicated hardware DSP box for this on my main studio monitors, but I am worried about having more latency in my system. If I get one box for the separate stereo system then I can test if there is a big latency gain or not.
All this is armchair posturing as of now, because I don't even have a separate living room setup, just sketching out how to best build one if needed.
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Well, I wanted a small correction box so I could stick it between speakers and the vinyl turntable / aux cable / airplay device in the living room so I would not have to run a laptop or a computer in between and would not have to set up a correction EQ thing on whatever is actually playing the audio, be it a phone or something else.
So for this scenario, the MiniDSP looks ideal, except I am not sure how easy it is to load a "standard" IR into it - from the description it works with some RoomEQWizard format. This is purely a convenience thing as I think I can use my IK ARC 2 MEMS microphone with RoomEQWizard as well, it's just one more calibration thing to learn.
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2 minutes ago, rhmilo said:
No, I think it's very important that it has fewer buttons than a laptop and a smaller screen than a phone.
I've been looking at the Polyend and at this thing with great interest and desire and to talk myself out of spending money on one I've decided that putting a piece of software that was specifically made for a large computer screen, a mouse and a full computer keyboard inside a box with a small screen and a limit number of keys is Stupid (tm).
I am kind of mixed on this.
On one hand, these small things for small fingered people have something like a toy feeling to them - after all, Gameboy and Nanoloop are probably sources of inspiration here. Want some more hands on control for some functions? Good luck, start mapping MIDI or OSC or 5v control voltages.
On the other hand, I spend my day working on a computer, and I guess a lot of people do that nowadays. I feel it kind of messes up the brain's creative abilities if you have mentally associated the computer and the keyboard with work. This sucks and it should not be like this, but for some people the best way to break this mold is to pick up a different device. Even though there is a computer in most digital/analog gear, the different user interface is enough to force your head to work in a different creative mode, and that's were all the "hardware is more intimate" impressions also come from.
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Actually those guitar pedals look like something I could use. It's not necessarily something I would instantly put in my monitoring chain, but for broad strokes room correction for a living room listening situation it might be good enough.
I wish there was a stereo pedal with some ADC/DAC that looks like hi quality. Not sure why I don't think a 50 bucks pedal can't have a high quality signal chain.
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36 minutes ago, auxien said:
maybe one day, perhaps...probably not ever on the CBA stuff at least, it goes for stupid prices second hand. i made somewhere between $50-$100 profit on that MOOD when i sold it...and i bought it at MSRP.
Yeah but how many people buying these things on a whim have any idea of the resale value? Admittedly Reverb and other search engines make it easier not to sell your things too cheap.
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Swapped the tumble dryer with the Lyra8?