I thank that should be the ultimate guide to what you use or ditch. We tend to overlook this factor when a new shiny toy with lots of features arrives. But in the end, it’s 90% about whether the workflow makes me make a song or just noodle around.
@djst: Thanks for illustrating the MPC + Ableton method, I wasn’t aware of that at all. Especially having the option of committing to audio if you want to, but also replacing MIDI data/FX with other plugins, if you want to keep possibilities more open. I don’t think I could make a good track this way, since I’d miss a bunch of dedicated controls to perform with devices that have a limited sound/toolset. But it sounds like the ideal production/songwriting center for a lot of people.
Still thought of you as the Syntakt guy btw, interesting to here you’ve reached an end there. I agree that it’s a downside to Elektrons that every box is lacking something. While I think it’s often a good thing (limitations to keep focus), some limitations seem a bit arbitraray (all boxes could have retrigs and arps, for example). And I hope Tonverk or whatever’s next offers us a more workstation like box that can do it all, if you’re willing to pay the price of 2-3 Elektron boxes.
Just to be clear, I haven’t reached an end with the Syntakt - in fact I’ll be publishing another jam on it later this afternoon on our channel.
But I have definitely become more interested in the MPC ecosystem lately and there’s no denying that the sounds I’m able to make with Jura, OPx4 are at a level above what the Syntakt can do. More smooth, sweet and lush, whereas Syntakt’s proclivity is in the more harsh and raw territory. I like both, and will continue to use both. Syntakt can sound amazing, it’s more about where my preferences are at the moment: I enjoy pads with rich polyphony (e.g. 4-note chords) drowned in dreamy reverbs. Those types of things tend to eat up the 12-voice polyphony a bit too fast unless you commit to melodics only and drop the drums altogether - which is incidentally what the Syntakt jam published later today is about. The other thing I really enjoy is to resample things like an arp and use it to layer atmospheric textures. It really makes a difference when the ears are getting a little bit tickled. I find those things to be incredibly easy to do on the MPC - and much, much harder on the Push 3 Standalone in comparison. And obviously on the Syntakt you have to use synthesis for it, which is pretty fun, but more limiting.
Besides the jam we’ll publish today, I have at least three more very promising songs in the works on the Syntakt, and then another five or so on the MPC, plus a couple on the Polyend Tracker +/Mini and two on the Push 3 Standalone. Things are starting to pile up because we don’t have enough time to meet up face to face and finish our projects. Meanwhile, my music making buddy keeps sending new ideas over that he’s sketching out on FL Studio Mobile. I see that as a luxury problem that creativity is just flowing at the moment. We tend to make decisions in the moment of the initial idea if we believe that this should be a Syntakt project or if this needs the full breadth of the MPC.
I don’t know that I’ll ever commit to just one device to rule them all, but I’m definitely only using one at a time - with the exception of sampling some keygroups from the Syntakt into the MPC as a springboard for coming up with new ideas.
But, following your advice above on the ultimate guide to what to ditch, if I was pressed to sell everything but one device, I’d choose to stick with the MPC - and probably really miss the Syntakt… so I’m glad I don’t have to sell it.
Update on this fwiw just in case I accidentally mislead anyone - turns out that Push in standalone doesn’t allow the iPad to access its sound card and midi io over USB3. Afaik it does do midi io over Usb A, but for me it means that I’ll still have to use the SP404mkii as an intermediary. Doesn’t bother me unduly … seeing as I have one and it fills a different niche to either of these boxes and it was how I was planning on using the setup anyway, but it doesn’t really help in terms of streamlining the amount of boxes. But, again, Push is more than capable of recording a bunch of ideas on its own anyway. Also just to mention that I find the buttons … fine? Bit stiff sure but I’ve never even thought about it as an issue.
On the MPC, I probably have a quite different view - I think it’s very good at what it’s good at, i.e. chopping samples and jamming out loops and basic arrangements, but I personally would rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon than try to go much beyond that in terms of trying to do full or even 80% finished tracks on it. I don’t enjoy or really ever use the plugins and I don’t like trying to compose melodic ideas on it much beyond a sampled sub bass with 16 levels or at a push the basic outline of a bassline/melody. This is on the Live, maybe with the extra controls on the flagship ones it might be different.
But the DAW integration through the plugin does work well, usually I’ll just get a few sequences together, bring them into the DAW in that way and take it from there.
I hear you on this, but there are sounds the Syntakt makes (and fast) that would be hard to get out of the MPC without a good amount of work/time. That’s the beauty of the ST in my mind, it’s relatively small/compact for what it offers, and it’s different enough to keep alongside an MPC.
If you’re saying this, there’s absolutely no chance I could be one box…
But, I am currently on a mission to consolidate my ‘crossover’ duplicate gear, especially with the synths I’ve amassed, and that feels good. I don’t like the stress owning gear that’s not being used brings.
I know Live pretty damn good and can do anything I imagine in daw except one thing, finish tracks…
no approach I tried made it happen for me, no controller, no anything.
hardware does not sound as clean or as “good” or whatever I can do in a daw, nor is as flexible, but it’s way more fun and way more expressive, so you can be daw expert but still use hardware, not everything has to “make sense”, it’s a personal thing, either you flow with it or you don’t.
Maybe you haven’t found a way or learnt how to finish a track in a Daw. Its worth the time learning Mixing/Mastering.
When i say it makes no sense. Its because software has come so far in the last few years the only justification for hardware is twiddling knobs. If you can overcome the excitement in doing that then you can move on.
I haven’t, tried for many years, had thousands of shiny polished loops, zero finished anything.
so? just because software is good, does that automatically make it an instrument? artistic expression? it’s like saying “photoshop exists, why would anyone draw on canvas with paint?”
move on to what? if you’re not excited about the art you’re doing where should you move on to?
what if that’s the other way around? what if daw has zero excitement for me but hardware has all of the excitement?
again, the way I see it - expression is a very personal thing, either you like what and how you’re doing it or you don’t, and no software will fix it.
except for them generative things, so ditch your daw, just go prompt some stuff and it will automatically render it for you, no need to be expert… if you overcome the need to be expert then you can move on to prompt
I think you have answered your questions. If its expression you want buy the best Aftertouch expression keyboard like the Osmose. There is nothing left to do. Twiddling knobs you can assign to a controller.
What’s been working for me is to separate the arranging part of the process from idea generation. I go all the way with this and bounce audio / midi out into folders and from there into Logic usually, although sometimes other gear/software, but there’s no reason in principle it couldn’t be just as effective separating out sessions between experimentation, then building loops, then arrangement and adding final touches all in Ableton.
Personally, I think it’s more so that different mindsets are required for each part of the process and it’s not easy to just flip a switch between jamming ideas and rigorously pulling everything together. Granted, Ableton is at its best for just throwing together loops and melodic ideas to see what works and the toolkit in Logic is great at the more linear part of the process, but in principle each can do all of these things, I guess it’s a luxury to have multiple tools for this stuff.
“once you set it up”
been there so many times, templates, presets, chains… I switched to my mac studio I copied zero things over because I have way too many templates and presets that I will never use.
you turn on your device, you hit a button, you have sound. you sequence sound, tweak it, you make something out of nothing in seconds. that’s expression for me, not the emulation of acoustic instruments playing capabilities in midi controllers.
if I have a pencil and a paper, the second pencil touches the paper I’m already creating things, if I try doing that with one of the ipad apps or whatever I need to select a tool, select a width, select a color, select that select this, it’s different.
it doesn’t make one or the other better or worse, just the better for you as individual.
doesn’t have to “make sense”, just needs to make you feel good and excited about what you’re creating.
Haha. Yeah, like you, I do think there’s a threshold where it starts to feel stressful when you have too much gear that just sits unused. So I definitely will be downsizing soon. But I have zero problem keeping one device per “category” as long as those categories are reasonably distinct.
For me, those might be:
Main production groovebox, my desert island do-it-all device: MPC Live 2
Fun analog synth groovebox scratching my “Elektron workflow” itch: Syntakt
Portable, on-the-go music making handheld: Polyend Tracker Mini
This means I probably should sell the Push 3 Standalone, the Digitakt and the Polyend Tracker+ since my made-up categories are already filled.
This thread is actually…
Making me consider getting rid of my MPC (wild, right?!)
My Push 3 SA will never go, until they one day do a revision.
I understand the critiques of push 3, and my main gripes are…
No direct sampling into the sampler devices and the the stiff buttons.
I almost always use it in controller mode, but used it in standalone when performing live.
I think perhaps the more things it takes to get from point A to B can be a distraction and a hinderance. 2 Production ecosystem workflows may not be the best for me in the long run.
I really just need to get organized in Live and truly learn it and establish a workflow.
Set templates and build instrument racks, fx racks, max devices, etc.
The constant change in hardware set up is a distraction.
Just talking out loud here…
Any advice on how to stay focused and get organized in Ableton?
I do have some thoughts on that - positive and negative. I’ll rewind a bit - see what you think…
As we were mentioning above, I think Ableton can be seen in 2 ways. 1 way is as a full ecosystem of “stuff” including the packs, instruments and effects. Many of them are excellent but as you say you have to commit to setting things up. The 2nd way is to use other sound sources (many examples here) and then use Ableton where it excels, creating FX chains, messing with your audio - chopping, resampling etc.
Personally there are days when I quite enjoy grabbing a blank wavetable and messing around with that. I’m no sound designer, but I enjoy throwing a whole song at Granulator and seeing what it can do - and I much prefer the new GUI. It’s quite fun to play in there. But doing that over and over is damn tiring if you want to start with some instant inspiration. That’s why I (and I think this is just me- I’m weird) have an issue with that tiny GUI bottom left for anything that takes more than a few minutes. That’s awesome for throwing a compressor with 4 dials into but not a multimodule synth like most of the Ableton ones. Because of that I’m like “I want presets damnit!” and Ableton’s like “hold my beer while I make you click and drag different racks into the thing at the bottom. Dropdown preset lists are for losers…”
I will say that despite the browser improvements, how Ableton handles presets for native devices is shockingly bad. There’s no dropdown to like switch from preset A to preset B, which I still think is a bit of an obvious one to miss. Given the choice, I’d rather use a preset, than spend 20 mins on a sound that I end up ruining and then not writing a song if you get me. Ableton wants you to do things modularity and from scratch which I why I can see for a lot of people that they prefer using VSTs, where preset browsing and instant starters are more of a thing.
In terms of focus, I watched some interesting tutorials by a Youtuber who has some of my fav content for sound design. Their approach is less is more. They say that these are complex things and if you try to use it all you’ll get lost. So just start by turning a couple dials and not trying to use it all. This genuinley got me making my own patches in a way that I felt I could do stuff and not get lost - so this is a resource I return to a lot to remind myself how simple it can be. Check it here. (An important aspect of this is to collect your patches somewhere for quick and easy access - more on that in a mo…)
To be fair, I’ve started to notice that somehow the Ableton previews don’t quite do the built in sounds justice. I first noticed this when I was playing around with Note, I ended up finding a bunch of presets that were hidden in plain sight. But I do think (even with the new browser) it can be tough to find the right sounds. I think ultimitley Ableton wants you to sit there for a while and work out which bits of it you want to use. I love the concept of the packs for example, which have the idea of being like 6-8 packs you’ll mangle and reuse instead of just going on Splice or whatever and getting a genre specific. One tip I got with Ableton presets is to imagine them with a bit of filter on them, because the audio previews are often pretty harsh sounding.
Anyway, where were we? Organisation!
In terms of organisation, I changed my approach as soon as the new browser arrived. I do have quite a few 3rd party sample packs that provide Ableton drum racks and instruments and some dedicated pack makers too (shoutout Subscoial and F9!) My Collections are now solely for sound selection from those packs, presets I’ve made and racks. This is seperated out into things like drums I use, preset packs, the Ableton Native packs etc, followed by creative effect and mixing effect racks (I spent far too long collating all the Abelton packs into one place!) Then underneath there’s the Library. I have reduced my plugin collection a lot, so I now use this to categorise the Ableton devices, 3rd party plugins and M4L devices by type. Finally, right at the bottom I have one folder which links to my master sample folder. Of course, Ableton picks these up in similar sounds now, so there’s less need to head down there once it’s scanned them. And of course this should improve in Live 12.1 because we’re due to have Live scan all the samples and tag them. But tbh hot swap for similar sounds is pretty cool as it is.
Anyway. Ramble. Rant. Make of that what you will - maybe somewhat useful?
I know exactly what you mean, and I have the same thoughts about gear, the best gear for me is usually what I can physically manipulate… that feeling of creative and performative connection to an instrument is a huge factor for me, and I know it isn’t for a lot of people… you only have to read the forum to get how many people are ok with laptops and ipads, which is cool, more power to them for feeling inspired/productive with that approach.
yeah exactly, for me too that’s why I don’t get the “make no sense” argument, if that works for you great but it makes perfect sense for those who can’t deal with neverending template/preset/chain tweaking, I had so many templates I endlessly tweaked eventually it drove me crazy…
when I have a physical instrument under my hands - this is it - that’s what I have, this is what I’m working with, and that has a yyyuuuuge impact on what eventually I do with it, and the fact that I’m forced to “print” my performance - whatever that is - made me reach a point where I actually achieve something besides templates/presets/loops/whatever.
Photoshop is that good, you don’t need a darkroom. And it’s true. You don’t need a dark room. But a dark room is amazing and the workflow is amazing, and it influences your end result. (Is dark room proper English, or is it only like the dark room in Berghein ), in Dutch it is a doka, the dark room they used to use in analog photography)
), in Dutch it is a doka, the dark room they used to use in analog photography)