Ableton forum members are abuzz on this latest hack for Ableton Live: a specialized plug-in now enables a “bus group” that routes audio to a MIDI track for effects. Now, of course, group folders are a feature present in some competing DAWs, but it’s still nice to see it working in Ableton Live. (And if this is something you’ve wanted to do, I think you’ll probably spot it immediately – whereas, likewise, if it’s not your response is likely to be, “huh”?)

There’s already a free Windows plug-in download. It looks like someone will have to do a Mac plug-in for this to work on the Mac. Thoughts?

gbsr writes:

Basically, it’s a way to get an infinite (or at least until your CPU gives up) [number of] submix track folders, with the ability to show/hide the folders. Take a VST instrument that only has a MIDI input and an audio throughput and rack it up. Send the audio to the midi. Voila.

You can read the whole thread on the Ableton forum:

solved: submix group folders. :)

Let us know if you try this out or have other tips. (And if you do this already in another host, by all means, enjoy your bragging rights.)

I wondered if anyone else had used calculators as music controllers. The answer? But of course. Here’s a classic Russian calculator model controlling arrangements in Ableton Live. It appears in this example as though this is working as a USB (QWERTY) keyboard substitute, rather than as a MIDI controller, but you get more of the same potential from all those wonderful buttons.

This find comes to us from Toyo Bunko of Noise.io – themselves lovers of mobile technology, having built a sophisticated soft synth for the iPhone. Toyo writes:

The page (in Russian) : http://diver.net.ua/page-id-124.html

And the video (instant download link) is here: http://diver.net.ua/page-id-124-a-dl.html

([Credited as] created by Zinus of "Diver Group").

The calculator model is Elektronika MK-52, it’s quite famous. More info on this calculator can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK-52

He managed to connect the calculator via a USB interface which he took out from an old USB keyboard. So it basically acts like a keyboard controller.

If you’re out there, we’d love to hear more (or from anyone who can translate the Russian here). I expect I’m not the first to point to this, but the calculator music – by popular demand – continues!

Sound designer, technologist, and remix artist Francis Preve sends us some gifts of techno and technology to celebrate his first solo release. For your brain, we’ve compiled the tutorials he’s been working on for Beatportal, which together provide a really great look at some basic music production skills. For your ears, we have his new Ableton-produced single “Caboose” which, coupled with a Josh Gabriel remix – and a free iPhone ringtone exclusively provided to CDM by Josh’s label Different Pieces.

Being a technologist often makes actually finding time to make music a big challenge. But I’ve always been impressed at Fran’s ability to do both. Whether this is your type of music or not, it means that when he talks about techniques, he’s talking about stuff he actually applies in his work – and he has eight Billboard Top 10s to prove his remixing skills, including one for Justice. Here’s what he had to say to CDM about making Ableton Live into a way of reimagining just two samples into a whole track:

The interesting thing about the production of Caboose is that - with the exception of the drums - it was made entirely from two very short vocal samples, entirely in Live 7. There were no third-party plug-ins or softsynths. Every sound was either looped and effected, or placed in Simpler and sequenced, or ‘Sliced to MIDI’ and manipulated. Even the bass is that same vocal sample, tuned down two octaves, distorted, then filtered and compressed. The process itself was so much fun that I’ve since incorporated aspects of it into the follow- up tracks I’m working on now.

In the meantime, Francis has compiled for us a complete index to the tutorials he’s been developing for Beatportal, including synthesis, sampling, effects, Reason’s new Thor synth, and other skills:

slicedbread, on behalf of The Covert Operators, has released a free Windows utility that generates “endless harmonic oscillators” for Ableton Live’s Simpler and Sampler instruments. (Since this was a released, a Mac build has been made available, as well; see link below.) Even if you don’t intend to use the utility directly, pay attention – The Covert Ops already have a sample pack up full of oscillators, and you can bet the presence of this utility means more will come. (Even Robert Henke was impressed on the forums.)

Live 6 introduced the file format for “Ableton Meta Sounds.” Bjorn Vayner is currently breaking down how the format works, but the short upshot is that you can make oscillator sources that won’t alias for sound design in Simpler and Sampler. The AMS File Utility does more, too – export tunings (even microtuned stuff), and make oscillator variations. It’s sampling for people who like synthesis. In fact, not only is it fun to make additive synthesis-style oscillators dragging individual harmonics, but it’s a total breeze to change the offset and make equal-tempered stuff, negative scales, and other tunings.

Description on the forums:

AMS File Utility for Microtonal/Traditional Tunings

And from the very awesome Covert Operators site, some of the behind-the-scenes action, plus the Mac build (updated with additional links!):

Meta Files: Uncovering the .ams format, Part 1

Meta Files: Uncovering the .ams format, Part 2

Meta Files: Uncovering the .ams format, Part 3

Mac OS X Meta Application

Thanks for reminding us of this, Tony. I’m a bit behind on all this, but better late than never. Since I am lagging, has anyone made some AMS packs since this came out in September?

Serato announced yesterday that they’ll be joining Ableton in a “creative partnership.” It’s not too hard to parse what this means from the announcement, which notes that Ableton Live’s strength is production and real-time remixing and beats, and Serato Scratch Live is about digital vinyl control, library management, and scratching. (Or, to say it even more simply: Serato is built around digital vinyl metaphors, and Live around remixable digital clips.)

Serato and Ableton announce a creative partnership [Serato News]
Ableton and Serato to work together [musicradar.com]

In fact, Ableton CEO Gerhard Behles spells out what this will mean fairly explicitly:

“Ableton and Serato take different approaches to modern musical performance”

Okay, so, Ableton fans worried that Live is going to just become a DJ tool, or Serato lovers who don’t want Scratch Live assimilated into Ableton, fear not.

Ableton has never had an answer for the DJ who wants vinyl control, and rather than try to emulate what Serato do so well, we simply make sure that our products work well together.

If you could control your music with all of your digits, and get interactive feedback on a display, what would your setup look like? Expert Lemur user and software engineer Bryant Place has one such answer. It shows off just how much the Lemur’s software has evolved over a series of revisions, and reveals a bit of what can go into performing with Ableton Live.

Photos/screens: Bryant Place. Used by permission. (Click for larger versions.)

Side note: for a look at live touch interfaces with Native Instruments’ Reaktor, see our story for our NI minisite. To really understand how touch is impacting live playing, I think it’s helpful to see what’s going on with different software platforms.

Multi-touch, Lemur, and Going Live

Part of the appeal of Ableton Live is that it behaves as a hybrid between arrangement software and musical instrument. Early versions even carried the tagline “Sequencing Instrument,” but that sums up the problem: instruments generally aren’t sequencers, and visa versa. To “play” your sequencer live is challenging enough, but added to that is the fundamental mouse-pointer interface that’s been in the marketplace for over twenty years. To really control live, you need more direct access.

The Lemur multi-touch hardware promised just such control when unveiled. In an early review, I saw this as promising but cautioned that the custom software the Lemur runs was overly rigid. Since then, firmware updates have gradually added more custom features.

On a recent trip to Los Angeles, I got to watch as Bryant showed off a set of templates he’s been developing that exploit these features for deeper, more interactive control of Ableton Live. Bryant’s session was brief enough that you could blink and miss it, but an awed crowd of assembled Live gurus revealed that he’d showed something really special. It’s a dream multi-touch setup. He’s using the new v2 firmware for Lemur, which we see in a screenshot from Jazz Mutant has also been used in their own template for Live. Not all the features come from v2 firmware, but those tabs make a big difference, and I can imagine continuing to go hog-wild with envelopes and such.

The basic idea: set up effects for live performance and make them readily accessible from the futuristic-looking, multi-touch, colored Lemur control surface. With a few compact screens, and interface elements that respond dynamically to what’s happening in software, it’s possible to use touch gestures to control elaborate effects arrangements in ways that would be very different than the results you could get from conventional knobs and faders.

Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation saw this coming – computer display interfaces were destined to allow direct touch from all your fingers, with no mouse or stylus or clunky single-point interface intervening. Jazz Mutant’s Lemur multi-touch hardware was arguably the first widely-available commercial solution to enabling this kind of control of music and performance. Now, several years after the launch of Lemur, multi-touch is mainstream. Apple’s iPod touch and iPhone already support it in hardware costing as little as US$200. Microsoft promises built-in support in Windows 7. HP says computers and displays are imminent. Many others will follow.

But if you want multi-touch to work for music, what’s the best approach? The dedicated multi-touch Lemur controller (and its Dexter sibling) has won over support from some musicians and multimedia artists for specifically catering to their needs. Various celebs have been spotted using them – recently we saw Justice rocking a pair in Rio.

What defines the Lemur is that you don’t use it like a conventional display. Instead, you create interfaces from pre-defined building blocks – the virtual equivalent of adding physical faders and knobs to DIY controller hardware. To me, that’s been paradoxically both its strongest and weakest point. The strength is, the display focuses on controls that make sense for performance and can be easily manipulated with fingers. The weakness is, you’re limited to these widgets – and, increasingly, the Lemur has to compete with mainstream hardware displays that have no such limitations. As mainstream hardware grows, it puts more pressure on Lemur.

In the meantime, though, Lemur’s creators keep improving the available widgets. The biggest firmware update yet, v2 has just hit beta, with the finished firmware available by the end of the year. It’s a free update for Lemur owners, so a no-brainer there. New in this release:

• Breakpoint object for manipulating multi-segment envelopes
• Gesture object: gesture recognition, pinching, rotating, and finger tracing
• Tabbed container: Now, instead of switching endlessly between control pages, you can fit different sets of controls into tabs
• Mouse/keyboard remote control: keyboard shortcuts and mouse movements now become possible directly from the Lemur

In addition, it’s easier to edit Lemur pages more quickly, aliases of objects save memory, and multi-line scripting beefs up custom options.

It’s really good stuff, which makes me wonder: does Jazz Mutant have the ability to support other third-party hardware if it becomes available?

In the meantime, there isn’t actually any direct equivalent for the Lemur, at least not with this screen size. I imagine those with the cash who want to use a futuristic interface rather than just speculate about it will continue to snap up Lemurs. For the rest of us, it’s interesting just watching the development.

Jazz Mutant [Company Site]

Sure, we may live deep into the future. High in our Blade Runner apartment studios, we use androids for all of the vocals. Yet we still have that occasional need for good, old-fashioned compression. Like the soy-based dinners we microwave and the synthehol beer we wash it down with, it has to be simulated.

Audio Damage has earned its cult following thanks to inexpensive plug-ins with no-nonsense controls that just seem to fit into projects. So it’s nice to see his new, free Rough Rider compressor. Simple controls, a slight vintage tint, and crankable parameters – not the “careful with that, too far, total destruction!” feeling you get from, say, the unpredictable compressors included with some hosts.

I see on Twitter that Tom from Music thing likes Rough Rider, and he’s a hardware guy, so that’s a good sign. That means he didn’t just eBay some ancient, slightly irradiated piece of Russian equipment.

Rough Rider Download Page @ Audio Damage [Mac, Windows – yep, a free Mac plug-in!]

Via the Ruin & Wesen blog, here’s another way to approach compression in Ableton Live. Live may instantly make you a remix artist or loop addict, but it can’t turn you into a mastering engineer. That means you can either apply science (blech!) or complete voodoo. We choose a culture of voodoo.

Reconstructing The Eraser with the monome from makingthenoise on Vimeo.

Via Monome virtuoso Matthew Davidson (aka Stretta, the man who has built a lot of the patches that give the Monome its unique personality), here’s a video that really demonstrates how the Monome turns a set of buttons into a way of arranging and performing music. Adam, aka makingthenoise, covers Tom Yorke’s “The Eraser” using a Monome 40h, Ableton Live, and the SevenUp Live software setup.

(You may remember makingthenoise from the East Coast Monome Jam, a Princeton convergence of Monomes and the musicians who love them.)

The killer ingredient here is Adam’s SevenUpLive, a Java application that combines 8 different Monome apps in one and integrates more tightly with Ableton Live.

SevenUpLive

On the software page, you’ll find a full file pack to recreate The Eraser as in the video.

It’s AES this week in California; I won’t be there, because I have a family engagement. But what I find interesting is that this homespun way of controlling music is very different from the typical studio/mixer paradigm you’re likely to see at a trade show. It may be a better model of the actual music.

Monome on CDM