I am so happy to add a controller to our next meet up!
Mark Mosher (Modulate This!) will be joining us on Sunday to present Audio Cubes. Click here to read what Mark has to say on the topic.
In my mind, Audio Cubes, from Percussa, are like a 3D reactable table after shedding several thousands of dollars and pounds.
This page will get you in-line pretty fast (great stuff).
And some informative video:
Tell us about how YOU control your electronic music so we can keep the demos coming!
The controllerism show is on the horizon! RSVP Now! FaceBook
I missed some emails this weekend as POP email crashed for my provider (I aggregate). So if there was something crazy interesting/important/similar – resend! I will be going backwards through emails.
On other news – we are having fun! I will be releasing a review** of the NIIO Analog Iotine Core in the next week. We teamed up with Chase to get some instructional videos on the unit. We are currently editing.
We got some good tape from Darwin on Max, I am open to ideas on how to get them online. YouTube limits are 10 minutes. The 10+ minute videos are a special feature I just don’t see how to get! Vimeo? Hosting on my server will probably get me some heat (because the bots will trigger mass bandwidth, plus there is not sharing/embed).
I have been spending time with Final Cut and Celemony DNA. Nothing too impressive to talk about in Final Cut, just another software package. But DNA is SICK!
Don’t forget Cache Flowe in March!
As for the summer – thoughts (feed back very welcome!). Our summers in Denver/Colorado/Boulder are some of the best anywhere in the world. I am looking to scale back the meet-ups after April (through the summer) so we can enjoy our evenings. Hell, even I want to ride around town with my wife on our cruisers. Instead of larger formal meet-ups I would like to invest in smaller gatherings all over and include our community in festivals (supporting) and do various levels of out-reach before shows and to similar groups.8
**On the topic of review – the term “review” is not totally correct. As there are a few companies looking to work with Ableton Colorado already, another round of “cleaning the air” is called for…
Our goal is to extend the use, functionality, and overall exposure of gear that is not on the radar (cough***Guitar Center***). There is a certain “departure” from journalistic integrity (if that is still a thing anymore). Our goal is to build community and knowledge in an academic manner with users (producers) and producers (of gear in this instance). The policy is simple:
If it is crap, send it back
Don, in the context of this “review” has a “filter” that is so freaking cool we need to help get the word out (I am using some bass sounds I generated in my standard set). So great.
Helpers wanted!
That is it, more soon.
–M
This is the a Controllerism special we are calling “The Petting Zoo“. Here is what we got:
Following the presentations stick around for some great hands on work with each unit and presenter. (okay, now you get the petting zoo reference?)
When : February 28, 2010 7pm
Where : The Walnut Room located at 3131 Walnut Street in Denver.
How Much? Not a single penny – FREE! Just the way we like it!!!
Our evenings sound track is provided by Circle Six via his Ardionome! Next Month Cache Flowe!
Our (new) friends at Curious Inventor are so kind they are loaning Ableton Colorado Stribe Duo and Midiator.
The Stribe Duo needs little explanation. I would sum it up with”pretty lights, crazy control, and great feed back”. If Neanderthal don’t cut it go to the site.
Kicking it up a notch – the Midiator converts video game energy into MIDI. Yeah, that is a PS2 controller. (think of it as Doom to MIDI conversion)
If anyone wants to help present and learn these great pieces form Creative Inventor send me an email at inf [at] abletondenver.com. I would love to hear from you!
The Arduinome
The Lemur
The Manta
The MIDI Fighter
The Livid DIY / Brain
The Monome
The Launch Pad
Darwin Grosse is an artist, producer, media software developer, and the Director of Engineering for Cycling ’74. He is also a prolific writer, having authored more than 120 articles for Recording magazine, several product manuals, and countless product tutorials. Formerly the editor of CreativeSynth.com, he now focuses on bringing his Beginner Mind to music and media production. [credit]
Darwin’s Play site : http://www.20objects.com
Darwin’s Blog : http://www.darwingrosse.com/
Darren Kramer is an Edwards Trombone Performing Artist and Ableton Specialist and is in demand as a freelance trombonist, composer and educator throughout the United States. Kramer graduated from the University of Miami and moved to NYC where he toured with Matchbox Twenty, Tom Jones, Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies. He has also recorded with such artists as Michael Brecker, Eric Marienthal and Jerry Hey and his original composition “Not Far From Here” was a finalist in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Kramer is now the President/CEO of his own music company, DKO The Darren Kramer Organization, whose inspiring concerts, educational clinics, five exceptional recordings, and over fifty challenging arrangements (Available Now for small group AND big band!) have helped modernize the trombone and expand its role in contemporary music. The 2010 DKO CD release is entitled “Beyond The Boneyard” and features an inspiring one man band performance utilizing electric trombone, keyboards and computer loops. This cutting-edge project is also being presented by Kramer throughout the country as a music software PowerPoint Presentation “Creating Music Using Software and an Electric Trombone!”.
Find Darren at ElectricTrombone.com
[bio pending]
Catch up with David at http://www.dhenderson.com
[pending]
Take a listen via MySpace.
Well, they are not coming here in person, but they will be with us in spirit. Digital spirit that is…
“We’re a few mechanical and electrical engineers from GaTech trying to make it easier to make and sell inventions. We write how-to guides, sell cherry-picked parts and tools, and also manufacture kits…”
Pay them some support here.
Hey, that is me! If I launch my website I will put a bio up.
No forest fires! MEDIA AND PRESS
As I prophesied months and months ago, we are now gaining full crossover between Ableton and Serrato.
Here is info from Ableton Central.
The press release:
Ableton and Serato present The Bridge at Winter NAMM 2010
Berlin, Germany, (January 14, 2010) – Ableton and Serato are proud to announce The Bridge at NAMM 2010 in Anaheim, California. The Bridge spans the gap between music production and DJing, creating a natural link between Ableton Live and Serato Scratch Live/ITCH. The Bridge provides a powerful fusion of DJ and production tools, opening a world of opportunities for DJing, remixing and live performance.
The Bridge works in both directions:
Ableton to Serato
The Bridge provides Ableton Transport Control (ATC), giving DJs turntable-style control of their own multitrack productions. DJs can simply drag an Ableton Live Set onto one of the decks in Scratch Live or ITCH and use their turntables, CDJ or ITCH controller to control the transport.
Serato to Ableton
The Bridge provides the ultimate mixtape creation tool. DJs can perform mixes in Serato Scratch Live or ITCH and save them as an Ableton Live Set. This way, the DJ can still perform the mix—better than cut and pasting it together in a DAW—but also has detailed editing options.
Reactions to The Bridge
“For DJs who don’t make beats yet, that turns into ‘Hey, I can make beats in here, too.’ For the guys who are beatmakers already as well as DJs, it’s great because it’s almost like you’re DJing with multitracks. And the mixtape feature was probably the best thing I’ve ever seen. People are going to get really creative, I know my brain is working already, there’s stuff that I’m going to do that I choose not to disclose right now because it’s top secret.” – DJ Jazzy Jeff
“Seeing where Ableton is at this state of technology, and all the stuff that’s in there, and thinking about Ableton and Serato together is mind boggling. I know there’s a lot of stuff that can happen… we’re all producers, we’re all DJs, your mind starts to wonder what’s coming. Everybody’s gonna get excited.”
- Kenny Dope
I hope everyone had a good New Year. I am still battling a sinus infection (or alien experimentation gone wrong).
We are still excited to have Darwin speaking at the next meet up. This will be your #1 opportunity to get you Max for Live off to a sloid kick. The details for that evening start here.
Two days Extended to Jan 10 – get DEEP discounts from Nick’s tutorials. Go here to get the whole scoop: http://nickstutorials.com/archives/585
Our studio at Colorado Music Lab is moving along. Yesterday I invested a nearly complete 8 more hours doing wiring and minor details. We hung a ton of pictures as well. The place is looking good! Photos and video coming soon! Open house 23Jan2010!
The MIDI Fighter has arrived! I am working on a review right now. It is pretty awesome!
Mark over at Modulate This! has a great year in review, check it out! He is not only a great guy, but super knowledgeable. We are lucky to have people like him in our Colorado region!Mark has alos done a good job at wrapping up some recent debate on sound quality.
Ableton 8.1 was recently release (we tweeted). Here is a point of entry at Synthopia. Also, as fo 28Dev2009 Live 8 development Halted due to bugs, read more on the forum.
Event : Basslab presents Siren
Livid Block Ne – inrto:
livid block NE Intro from Livid Instruments on Vimeo.
Richard Devine’s GrainCube Reaktor Ensemble via Synthtopia: (when did music production turn into a video game screen from the 1980’s?)
Sharpen your Launchpad Skills:
Video Shuffler / Max for Live Device Demo:
Hell Yeah – Jeep Techo!:
Quick Demo of Video Shuffler – my MaxforLive Device from digital funfair on Vimeo.
Of Note:
Free Patch Library For Harmless Synthesizer from Modulate This
Free Reason ReFill – Monologue
(via Synthopia) All Xoxos Plugins Now Freeware!
Here we go, the first announcement :
Ableton Denver is proud to announce and evening with Darwin Grosse from Cycling ‘74 discussing Max For Live.
The event, is FREE! (21+)
Prepare yourself for graphical blasts of information with color and crazy subliminal messages. For now, I provide an image form the interwebs.
This is pretty exciting! I will post more information and pictures. As for graphics, well, I my current favorite quote is from Myth Busters:
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth over doing.”
More on that real soon. Back to Darwin.
Darwin Grosse is an artist, producer, media software developer, and the Director of Engineering for Cycling ’74. He is also a prolific writer, having authored more than 120 articles for Recording magazine, several product manuals, and countless product tutorials. Formerly the editor of CreativeSynth.com, he now focuses on bringing his Beginner Mind to music and media production. [credit]
Darwin’s Play site : http://www.20objects.com
Darwin’s Blog : http://www.darwingrosse.com/
Darwin’s Work: http://cycling74.com
When : January 24, 2010
Where : The Walnut Room located at 3131 Walnut Street in Denver.
Max for Live is an important evolutionary step for both Cycling ‘74 and Ableton. When you factor in Moore’s Law, my brain should finally melt and ooze out the nose sometime in 2015. All a result of finally gaining total control on all audio to finally engineer the perfect song, not too dissimilar to the Funniest Joke in the World (YouTube version).
In preparation for “the Final Track” bring a taiko drum, fourteen airplane vomit bags, and a goat on January 24, 2010 for an evening with Darwin Grosse and Max for Live.
Final accommodations for goats has not been worked out. Stay tuned.
C.DB.SN will be providing the evenings sound track. (SoundCloud) Imagery and telepathic suggestion to follow real soon!
Well, thank you to everyone who came out Sunday night (22Nov2009) to our meet up. There were a BUNCH of great new friends made. I will be presenting more links and information real soon.
Like I said in the beginning of my (attempt at a) presentation – my relationship with Novation has always been choppy [note 1].
Right now I want to talk about the Launchpad failure. Over the night I talked with one Ableton user who had great success, I could be an isolated incident.
Regardless, I will document my travel through the Launchpad and provide my feedback and analysis of the situation. This is only my personal experience from an editorial point of view. This is, in no way, a formal endorsement or otherwise on this equipment. Just an audio geek (junkie) not having a good time…
My Equipment (as pertaining to the situation):
Other Applications I am suspicious of:
Back story:
I put a Launchpad on hold on the release day (I am one of those geeks, I was at Guitar Center on May 30 10am to get my APC on release day – it was also my birthday). Like most any purchase I read the instruction manual a few times, and there really is NOT very much at all on that topic. All you get is a quick start and this support:
Before 22Nov2009 I watched about 20 YouTube videos on the unit (where I think I learned the most). YouTube is a great resource. Two of the best tricks I learned in Ableton came from others tutorials.
I freely admit that my experience with Automap was, well, none. But I don’t think this should be a major hurdle for someone who had been deep in MIDI for over a decade and is a programmer by profession.
Automap, during my experimental week changed version quickly.I do not know if this is the norm? Version 3.3 is out as I write, I was originally bleeding edge on 3.2, and I think I started on 3.0. This does not really matter because Automap is NOT compatible with the Launchpad (my bad – am I wrong?). See the image below.
Notice a lack of Launch pad support in this Novation marketing image (pulled form Novation site 23Nov2009)
So, there is not a heck of a lot of information included or available with the Launchpad. I am damn good on the APC, seriously and that unit is not a major mind-melter out of the box.
So I upgraded Ableton and my Mac (non-Snow Leopard) before starting with a week available to fix problems [note 2]. Typical wise move. I installed the drivers. I then went through about 7 hardcore lock-ups on my Mac – one after another. When I am running on a Mac I play “dumb” and generally let things install as they want unless I see something flaming wrong. I feel Mac’s are safer to play stupid with, unlike PC where you should read every dialog box.
So the install was default. I downloaded Automap, tried to get it working for quite a while before a combination of giving up and learning that Automap does not support the Launchpad.
So I dropped that line of thought.
All in all I spent just over a week on the Launchpad. A few full days and a little bit every night (check the tweets). All in all I considered the unit “normal”, or more specifically “flawed like everything else”.
Then I get brave. I installed the Ableton version on my Windows box. That is a 64bit running a current 32bit install. Everything runs great on that box (much better than Mac in my opinion). That unit is my “work” box where I program, edit, video, Ableton, you name it (this was the first Ableton Install on the unit, my Windows 7 install is fresh).
On Windows 7
Windows was running just fine for a while. Then, with no error messages or similar, the Launch pad failed to fire up at all. A few reboots, a quick uninstall and reinstall changed nothing. The Launchpad was not powering up any more (the USB bus is strong) with no changes to configuration. I figured Win7 in combination with my 32/64bit mismatch was the problem. So I moved back to the Mac.
Back on the Mac
Having concluded that Win7 was not happy on the first day I knew I was Mac only. I chugged along for about 7 more days. No problems at all. Once I got over the hump everything ran smooth. I took my notes, pushed the unit in practice performances, etcetera. I even did a little programming in Ableton and generally had good success.
I left my Mac on over night once to make sure everything was still okay the next day, that passed just fine.
Moving on I built MIDI demos, learned how to do what the promo video outlined (watch the video). I was able to get all of this done over the course of a few nights.
The Saturday before the Meet Up I had a good 5+ hour session refining my set and trimming out fat so I could fast load a new set while holding the crowd. Smart huh?
The Sunday (before the Meetup) I spent the afternoon practicing and refining my notes. I went over my presentation practicing. All was running fine. Having performed live for well over a decade I always go over my gear carefully before a gig. Event when I was playing out several times every week. I am very much a boyscout (be prepared) at gigs. I usually have 2+ levels of redundancy allowing gear to fail (not with laptops though). Additionally, as my band mates know, I usually have extra cables and plugs as well as other goodies to help out.
So I pack up and go to the meet up. All was fine with the pre 7pm check. This remained the truth until I did the presentation.
When I picked up the Launchpad to show the kind audience (like I was doing in my preparation work) I *think* the USB cable moved a little. From there all hell broke loose.
My TC Electronics was getting kicked offline (outside of Ableton) at first. Something that NEVER happens. It was a first. Then the Launchpad was either not powering up via USB or working for one button push, or in other words it booted and once a button was pushed it seizes (with LEDS on).
I also lost MIDI out on my TC Electronics as well as 2/4 audio outputs. I reviewed my set up and all is normal. No changes, with Automap off I am recovering form the damage.
Mike (thank you) then took the unit and downloaded the drivers and could not get the unit to work.
So, at this time, through public embarrassment, I deem the Launchpad a NO GO. The data bleeds on note data,the several admissions from Novation-Land of tricky areas (no, plain old broken items), and a long laundry list of things that were almost working I formally have to declare my experience BAD. Very bad.
The unit no longer powers up. Nothing, dead, 1 week, probably 30 hours of use. OUCH!
So, for those of you looking to get a Launchpad I advise against it. Save up twice the chedder and get an APC40 or a OHM controller, or similar.
I was going to outline all the funkiness that I have in my notes, but that is not going to happen. My list was long. I was looking forward to putting a smile on a new product that has a few bugs and welcoming another controller to the world of Ableton. Those notes, photos, and other information will now rot on my drive. I wish to spend NO MORE time on this unit. Period.
Now what? Looking at getting an Akai MPD24 for my second / Max4Live controller.
[note 1] – The build quality has steadily been declining in my opinion since my first Novation products in the late 1990’s. Most recently was a XIOSynth where they keys were built incorrect and would stick “down”. 100%, beyond any reasonable doubt, bad engineering. But I did love the Bass Station back in the day.
[note 2] – My rule of thumb is to have a week available on your computer for any major upgrades and / or changes. Do not upgrade right before the gig.
Abletoin Denver is proud to announce that c.db.sn will be providing the evening sound track for us. You can preview his work at the Three Kings Tavern with Munimula, PH-10 and I-45 on Saturday 21November2009.
c.db.sn’s blog is located at http://cdbsn.wordpress.com/
Listen to a few tracks at http://soundcloud.com/c-db-sn/tracks or below…
Ableton Denver invites you to join us on November 22, 2009 at the Walnut Room in NoDo (Denver) to go to a special place where Reason flows like wine from the Lake of Ableton. We will make a quick stop in the land of Rewire and focus on cross program collaboration with a focus on Reason under the control of Ableton.
MEET UP RSVP NOW! Free to all and very helpful resource!!!
James Tobin puts Reason into Ableton.
The evening demonstration and discussion will highlight the power of the Ableton sequencer and the sound engine of Reason working in perfect harmony.
Who is James Tobin? Besides sharing his name with a great American economist he is a premier Ableton guru, Reason ninja, electronic musician, and audio artist.
With old school roots in warehouse parties in and around Chicago James is a consummate vinyl connoisseur (with time spent at Wax Trax here in Denver), established DJ, recording technician for film and audio, and currently enjoying work with Alien Logic providing sound design for game development.
James is weeks away from completion of a masters with Berkley Music after already gaining a specialist certificate in Composition and Production in New Media.
Musically James Tobin is 1/2 of Sound Logic Sound Logic, also known as DJ Radioactive, and the man steering Dorje Records since 2003.
Reason (wiki link) is a powerful product for music production produced by Propellerhead that accepts control from external devices as well as other DAW and similar programs. Ableton, as many agree, has taken sequencing to a new level with one of the most amazing MIDI sequencers and editors on the market. With these 2 programs combined you go somewhere special. (enter James)
We have included time for questions and answers from James and a demonstration of the new Novation Launchpad.
Novation formally launched the Launchpad November 4 2009. That very morning, at 10:05am local time I put one on hold. As of this writing I still need to pick it up and learn the sucker. No complaints here! I will do my best to get a grip on the device and provide time for everyone to mess around on this great new device.
There should be quite a bit of shop time after our hour + of talk and demos, so we would love to get everyone trading tips and and cards.
Background information on Reason (wiki link):
Reason 1.0 was released in November 2000.
These modules can be controlled from Reason’s built-in MIDI sequencer or from other sequencing applications such as Ableton
Some Reason contents (wikipedia links):
ReWire is a software protocol, jointly developed by Propellerhead and Steinberg, allowing remote control and data transfer among digital audio editing and related software.
Originally appearing in the ReBirth software synthesizer in 1998, the protocol has since evolved into an industry standard.
Media files and press information is located here: http://abletondenver.com/press-kit/2009-11-meetup/
Now with more c.db.sn click http://abletondenver.com/meet-up-this-sunday-now-with-soundtrack/
