I've become quite intrigued reading about how musicians put tracks together. Lots of different approaches. Currently reading two different issues of Computer Music magazine: June 2010 - The Beginners' Guide to Mixing and Dec 2023 - Make AI Work For You. The latter is quite scary. You basically get computer software to do everything - come up with the beats, melodies, chord progressions, get AI Drake and AI Taylor Swift to sing on top (this vocal modelling seems very in demand actually). Mixing and mastering by AI too and that's it, seemingly making the whole process of being a musician pretty much redundant.
So it's good to read the different approaches musicians are taking in their attempts to come up with new and innovative music. That, and also perhaps imbue the music-making process with some meaning. I particularly enjoyed this article by Gregg Kowalsky where he talks about kind of misusing the Ableton audio-to-MIDI conversion tool to stimulate new sounds - turning melodic sequences into pad sounds. It's a strange conversion tool that doesn't work very well, anyway, I've found, and the artist has utilised that to create new ideas.
I've been watching YouTube instruction videos too - there's a few of them about! Ned Rush's Complex Drum Programming with Ableton Live is lots of fun. There are so many options for achieving similar effects or sounds in different ways with computers. The ears are ever important, I think, and one's preferences for what one likes to hear. It's... yeah, it's become quite fun to read, watch and puzzle my way through this strange environment of programmed sound.
There are many gadgets or at least small add-on software programs. The humble plugin. Your local newsagent mightn't bother but the music software developers go a bit crazy for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I got a bit involved in the sales and purchased some plugins.
Scaler 2 and Melody Sauce 2 came in a bundle from Plugin Boutique for £63. I've quickly integrated both into my compositional workflow. Scaler 2 performs a number of functions and the UI is not the most intuitive so it did/still does require a little study. It can detect the key/scale of an audio clip, then suggest chord progressions that might work in that scale depending on genre or style of music, and can perform or play these chord progressions in a variety of differently expressive ways and tempo. You output these performances as MIDI back into your DAW and soft synth/preset of choice.
That's nice because chords were always difficult for me as I'm unable to play keyboards. It is (cheating but) liberating to not have to work out either where I place my fingers on the keyboard or count out intervals in the MIDI editor. So pretty useful and inspiring for my music-making. Melody Sauce 2 generates melodies in different keys. Both applications have really strange and unfriendly user interfaces.
Infiltrator 2 by Devious Machines has been on my wishlist since it was awarded MusicRadar reader's best new plugin of 2022. I think I paid something like £75 for this. It's a multi-effects plugin incorporating 54 separate effects modules with its own sequencer so you can chain these effects together in myriad ways (for glitchy stuff perhaps). Has some great presets. I have hardly used it to be honest but I'm looking forward to doing so. Live almost certainly contains numerous FX devices capable of such magic if you know where to look (and I don't find Ableton's Browser set-up very intuitive or inviting) but here it's all tidied up, in its own box and easy to navigate, with lots of flashy colours.
Buoyed by these new plug-ins (particularly Scaler 2), I released a new track on SoundCloud which is coming to Spotify soon. Haze House is generic, sort of washy house music and I'm not sure about the drums. It's a pretty middle-of-the-road track but I'm content with it, happiest with the chords (Scaler 2) underpinning the track. Working on a track can get quite intense and I lose my ability to step away from it and hear it objectively. I end up tinkering away on a piece for nights but very little really changes. It's at this stage, I guess, when I realise I'm ready to tidy it up and publish.
No guitar for ages. A bit strange. There are reasons - a neighbour who doesn't like music, and I'm currently getting few free daytime hours to play in. I bought a cool multi-effects plugin unit from eBay (£30-ish; bargain) though. It didn't work until I bought some crazily specific AC adaptor but it's pretty fun actually. Works better than my silly (faulty?) loop pedal.
Oh yes and Live 12 is coming! A new iteration of Ableton Live, which looks good. A lot of new features. I'm most excited by the changes to the MIDI editing tools - the introduction of tools for generation of new melodies and rhythms and a host of new methods for quick edits to MIDI lines. Plus an AI feature to scan for similar sounds in the browser looks pretty good.
But I'll hold off from upgrading to Live 12 for a while. Live 11 is confusing enough really and some aspects of this update seem a bit worryingly Bitwig-like (such a complex variety of sound design options that you don't know where to start). I don't know where to start generally but at the moment it's fun trying to figure it all out.
Good post. Having used and tested the Beta for 12. I would recommend upgrading as soon as you can. It is a more inviting gui and is less confusing than 11
Thanks Mal 🙂 Yes, I'm looking forward to Live 12. Should be coming soon (I have some idea it will be available to all this week).