AdmiralBumbleBee

Live's Plugins: A series of miniature reviews

Fri May 10 12:49:48 2019 Reader — PDF

Drum Rack

Here we go with the fun part where I talk shi…. review the native effects included with Live.

Before I start here I ask one thing of you: be impressed with my screenshots. I had to write some software to take, crop and fix the corners. Bonus points to anyone that can spot the artifact of the corner fixing algorithm in some of the screenshots. (It’s really subtle)

This time I won’t be going into technical detail, but instead talking about how I “feel” about the products. Somewhat like a normal review I suppose.

Without further ado…

Other parts in this series:

VALID FOR LIVE 10.1. Future updates may render some of this information invalid.

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Live music with Ableton Live: An Overview

Sun May 5 15:57:48 2019 Reader — PDF

You need to play 'amb synth stem' quick... where is it?

This is a post where I’m a bit out of date, and my abilities to properly test the software are somewhat limited. I have toured and one of those tours was with Live in the backend. I played drums and used Live to control lighting, control vocalist effects live, trigger loops and live sample replacement on drums. This was in the era of Ableton Live 6-7.

I will do my best to cover Live as it pertains to its use as a Live music platform, but I don’t make any claims to an attempt at high-quality coverage.

Other parts in this series:

VALID FOR LIVE 10.1. Future updates may render some of this information invalid.

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Mixing music in Ableton Live: An Overview

Sat Apr 27 09:06:51 2019 Reader — PDF

The Mixers

I’ve not been friendly to Live so far, and this post isn’t going to convince you otherwise. (hang on though… more coming still!).

This is the article where I discuss the mixing process in Live, which I’ve found to be the most painful of the 3 main processes in the modern music making process.

Other parts in this series:

VALID FOR LIVE 10.1. Future updates may render some of this information invalid.

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Editing music in Ableton Live: An Overview

Sun Apr 21 12:01:15 2019 Reader — PDF

MIDI Clip Editor

It’s time to cover what I consider “editing” in Ablteton Live, and by ‘cover’ I mean: “become excruciatingly frustrated with”.

Welp. On with it…

Other parts in this series:

VALID FOR LIVE 10.1. Future updates may render some of this information invalid.

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How I review a DAW

Thu Apr 18 09:46:48 2019 Reader — PDF

In the comments section of the last article, someone asked: “How do you spend the 45 days? How much of it is by-the-books feature evaluation and how much is actual real-life music making scenarios?”

So let me walk you through how I go about one of these “30 days with…” reviews.

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Writing music in Ableton Live: An Overview

Fri Apr 12 18:01:15 2019 Reader — PDF

Looper

Today I’m going to cover the act of getting sound into Ableton Live. Not editing things, but just getting the basic sounds in.

It’s a surprisingly large article for the topic, and surprisingly… well, you can wait till the end.

Other parts in this series:

VALID FOR LIVE 10.1. Future updates may render some of this information invalid.

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45 Days with Ableton Live Suite

Sat Apr 6 16:48:40 2019 Reader — PDF

Ableton Live 10

Anyone that’s familiar with me, or the DAW Feature Chart, probably thinks that I dislike Ableton Live.

You’d be right. I try to be as fair as possible in the DAW Feature Chart, but I personally have had a history of issues with Live.

I toured with Ableton Live (5-8) and was invested heavily in their products and third-party products, and over and over and over and over and over I was either let down by the stability, or met resistance when trying to work with large projects or ‘large tasks’.

I will be using Live 10.1(beta and release) for at least the next 45 days. I will be using it for personal music creation and indulging my own curiosities. I will try to be as fair as possible, and I strongly encourage anyone reading to speak up if you think I’ve made a mistake or have represented the product unfairly.

I hope to make this an interesting series. I’m going into this with fewer positive expectations than I’ve ever had.

Other parts in this series:

VALID FOR LIVE 10.1. Future updates may render some of this information invalid.

Tracktion Waveform - Version 10.1.0

Fri Apr 5 14:28:59 2019 Reader

Track Editor

Waveform 10 has been out for a little while, but I’m just now getting to it. Lucky me too, because it’s been a rough launch for them.

The release is pretty huge though! One of the more significant updates to a DAW recently, at least in terms of workflow changes and added products.

Let’s get on with it.

Other parts in this series:

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Kilohearts Carve and Slice

Wed Mar 27 11:28:47 2019 Reader

SnapHeap integration

Kilohearts is known for their Snap Heap product, which is quite is perhaps another review in itself, though it will feature here.

They released two Equalizer products a time back: Carve and Slice.

There will only be cursory testing of the DSP itself to make sure it’s operating as presented in the GUI… unless I find something interesting.

I will be mostly focusing on the workflow in Carve and Slice, along with the Snap Heap integration.

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This Week

Sun Mar 24 16:38:47 2019 Reader

I’m not going to make a normal post this week, but I’d like to let readers know what’s happening.

It’s not exciting, just life things.

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