Looking for suggestions for your “easier method” for doing things that people tend to over complicate when working in a DAW. I always have the feeling that I can do what I need to do with 2 stock plugins instead of 5 paid ones.
Example 1: In ableton, you can use an envelope follower + EQ 8 to quickly fix those clashing frequencies between 2 tracks. Put those 2 in the lead melody track and “eye” the peaks then set the envelope follower accordingly. then move those 2 into the secondary track.
Example 2: You need to have 2 pad like sounds but everything sounds like mud? isolate the 2 tracks and high pass the one you want to be in the background till they are not in the same bandspace.
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Hmm, I don’t know what to contribute but I feel like I could.
Since I only have headphones, one simple thing I do to review a mix and to listen to it at all comfortable volume levels, even super quiet ones. A volume at 1 reveals interesting things that a volume at 5 or higher doesn’t. No need for fancy headphone calibration plugins, or plugins that mimic other environments, and whatnot. That said, the better the headphone, the better the results.
Does that count?
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Templates for me.
Go nuts assigning midi controllers to fx sends, master fx chains, etc. and have it recallable as a little sonic world at anytime. Only have to worry about the complexity of it once.
I really enjoy having a bunch of these worlds to choose from.
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Depends on how you look at it and what you want to breakdown. You can make your own Channel Strip if that helps for example.
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If you need deeper bass but otherwise like your bass sound, just add an Operator (in Ableton) with a sine wave on another track/parallel chain. I learned this from the Moog Grandmother, where using the filter resonance trims too much low end.
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I actually like to plug my Digitone and Syntakt thru Overbridge and play them thru Ableton Live. Not because I do anything with it DAW-like, but because it saves me connecting Digis to mixer or interface and I can keep my 1/8th inch headphones plug to my laptop without screwing on adapter.
I also have Pigments ready to join and SSL X-Delay that was bundled to my BiG SiX, because I have that thirst for multitap delays. So in a way it is hybrid ready, even if I don’t use hybrid setup all that much.
I imagine that tomorrows coming of Digitakt to that stable might complicate my setup a bit, if I decide to utilise Digitakt’s compressor, but I will worry, when and if I arrive at that point (I am constantly checking, if SSL drops price for their G3 MultiBusComp - if that happens, my Digis probably will be played only in that setup from that moment).
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I do the same, Ableton as a usb mixer. OB is so cool for this. I should probably try the same setup with the Push involved.
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For those using hardware with a DAW - if you want to record a rough mix but don’t want to track the hardware parts to the DAW separately yet, you can use Melda’s free plugin MRecorder. Stick it on any channel and it records whatever goes through it to a wav or flac (IIRC). E.g I’ll put it on my master channel and activate monitoring from all hardware audio channels on Ableton, then play my track through it.
Learned this one from another Elektronaut at some point and its been super useful for making rough mixes to listen to without tracking all the hardware invovled and thus using less disk space!
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As we seem to be talking about ableton, mostly, something I’ve done in the past is pre-make ‘useful’ racks.
Such as a standard dry/wet (chain for each) rack, a rack with 4 lfos, etc.
Trouble is, I forget I’ve made them and am halfway through setting one up, mid session, then I remember 
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Just using an audio track and setting the input source to be ‘master’ would achieve the same, no?
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Haha yes you are right! But that does mean you have to play the DAW sequencer to record the resampled audio, whereas with MRecorder, you can just leave it stopped if you need to. Also, some DAWs don’t have an easy resampling workflow, so it might be helpful for others - also avoids any chance of nasty feedback loops.
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I am actually constantly scratching my head, why wouldn’t Elektron cooperate with Ableton on integrating their tools more and making clips with Overbridge into full blown Elektron’s patterns, with p-locks and what not. ;]
So, yeah, only mixer. But what a mixer! Until then I don’t see use for Push, while playing with my Elektrons that way, until a reach for other instruments; and I should be encouraged, because I have two Push’es - 2 and 3. Just leaving you food for thoughts. :]
Cordially!
You can do this already via PGM change messages sent from Live’s clips - which changes patterns on Elektrons. Write your patterns include p locks and what not on machines, and then use clips in live to change patterns.
In terms of p-locks written in Live, if you’d like to do that; you can of course automate in clips any parameters you like on the Elektrons, and each MIDI CC can have an ‘unlinked’ length, so the Clip could be 4 bars long, and then filter cutoff could be 64 bars long, snare decay 48 bars etc etc.
Powerful and essentially how I work with my Elektrons but via a hardware sequencer instead of DAW.
But if wanting a DAW/virtual reproduction of the whole Elektron machine for p locks and trig conditions from Overbridge - I would imagine that would fall under ‘ideas for Elektron to include in Overbridge’ to make the UI the same, as Live already offers a way to do exactly that as above, albeit in a more generic fashion as is possible for all hardware and MIDI CC-able synths connected to Live.
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I shall try that next time. Although I always struggle a bit with MIDI, because it isn’t as consistent between all my devices, so in order to avoid confusion, I avoid all non standard related MIDI messages (only notes for me, thank you, I always change presets manually). But this one looks like interesting idea.
You are right though, that I would love to see Overbridge’s interface expanded to Ableton’s clips, with Total Recall like functionality, where clips are patterns on itself, without consuming patterns in devices. That would make Elektron boxes work as a sound devices with all their strengths utilised via DAW. But that’s - like you implied - for different topic.
Right now the idea with recalling patterns might be the way to go. I need to look up the manuals for that. The only doubt that comes to my mind right now is: what happens, when clip in Ableton doesn’t match the pattern in terms of its length? That could make some desynchronisation. Or is switch instantaneous and in sync with clip? I also need some tutorial for this, as reading thru manual doesn’t give me any ways to do this, being sure, what I am doing. Will come back, when and if it’s done. :]
Cordially!
