After a 2+ year hiatus, I finished a song!

[m00dawg]

After a 2+ year hiatus (partly due to building my MB-SID, at this point, a few times over :) ), I finally managed to finish a song, complete with a MB-SID cameo :) Not a very good cameo but it's there (can you tell which one it is? :)

I called the song Hello World because it's a song with quite a few firsts, both musically, and personally. I originally came up with the name because it was my first song to finish using Ableton Live (after moving a way from my old and busted version of Cubase that was about 5 years old). The name ended up encompassing more.

But don't worry, it's not a heavy song. It's simple electro-piano song with good mellow overtones. Hope you like it, but it's not that's ok too.

[fussylizard]

Just gave it a listen and I like it, esp. the percussion, the melody starting around 1:45 (SID I'm assuming?), and the arp starting around 3:15. I need to knock out a few songs myself, it's been too long w/ work, bulk orders, MB-SEQ, etc.

BTW I just got Ableton myself. It won't replace my beloved FL Studio but I was so jealous of baconjuice's monome in our last jam session that I got a Launchpad, and ended up getting Live to go w/ it. If you get Max 4 Live + a Launchpad you can get Novation's sequencer app that totally rocks. I'd love to tweak it to work w/ the MB-6582 bassline sequencer (may have to hack in some firmware changes so I can control steps from MIDI), but time is limited. Darn that irritating little thing called work...

Anyway, nice work and thx for sharing!

[m00dawg]

Yep the first simple synth lead is the SID. The fast arpeggiator is actually my Virus. I wanted to use the SID for that but was having a hard time figuring out the clock stuff. I finally figured it out using the Wavetable stuff (with help from TK) but I'm still piddling with that. I really like fast arps for fills though. Sounds so cool!

Ableton Live owns face. There are a few things I don't like though. You can't record MIDI CC events in the Arrangement view outside of a clip. That's annoying when I want, say, my cutoff to span multiple clips. You can get around that with VSTs though. So for those that have an Access Virus TI, I'm envious :P but you can use the VST to control it. Using or another VST to MBSID bridge you can do that as well.

That's really the only thing I don't like. I do wish I had more drum loops though. I was hoping Live (standard) would be chock full of them but their weren't quite as many as I hoped. If you can, getting Live Suite would be best but I just couldn't afford that all at once. I'll probably upgrade to it eventually though.

In short, I still highly recommend Live. It has had a dramatic change in the way I make music, and for the better!

[m00dawg]

Yep the first simple synth lead is the SID. The fast arpeggiator is actually my Virus. I wanted to use the SID for that but was having a hard time figuring out the clock stuff. I finally figured it out using the Wavetable stuff (with help from TK) but I'm still piddling with that. I really like fast arps for fills though. Sounds so cool!

Ableton Live owns face. There are a few things I don't like though. You can't record MIDI CC events in the Arrangement view outside of a clip. That's annoying when I want, say, my cutoff to span multiple clips. You can get around that with VSTs though. So for those that have an Access Virus TI, I'm envious :P but you can use the VST to control it. Using or another VST to MBSID bridge you can do that as well.

That's really the only thing I don't like. I do wish I had more drum loops though. I was hoping Live (standard) would be chock full of them but their weren't quite as many as I hoped. If you can, getting Live Suite would be best but I just couldn't afford that all at once. I'll probably upgrade to it eventually though.

In short, I still highly recommend Live. It has had a dramatic change in the way I make music, and for the better!

[fussylizard]

Not enough drum loops??! Time to hit the sample CD stores. :-) Though these days I usually roll my own from individual hits, with the occasional hi hat loop or something. That works great for dance-y stuff that I like.

I also recently got Audio Damage's new drum synth Tattoo which is loads of fun, and I just got it outputting MIDI to my 888. Good times ahead on the drum front!

[m00dawg]

Hmm I'll have to check out Tattoo it looks pretty cool! Live ships with *some* loops, just not a lot. And it's true I can build them but I have always found it hard to reproduce the full sound of a real recorded dancey loop. Not sure how they work that magic :) The instrument pack that comes with Live box-set, though it is also a bit sparse, is really good. I used the piano from it for this song, but it also has some nice strings and brass ensembles.

[fussylizard]

If you're into dance stuff get some of the Vengeance Sound sample CDs. Airwave Triloops is pretty good also.

I'm getting better at programming dance drum loops. Still have a ways to go. The Jomox 888 helps a bit since you get a nice, full sound with little processing (though a little pumping compression helps). You need a little swing as well. And just start adding in quiet little accents here and there as well as some toms or little clicks or bleeps. I often will add in a loop for a shaker or extra hats or something which helps. I made a pretty good loop the other night using Tattoo and some other little bits and I'm still not 100% sure how I got there, but the main gist is practice, practice, practice...

Hopefully I won't have to work this weekend and I can get in some music time!

[m00dawg]

Hmm yeah I'll have to check it out. Not a bad price though I wish there were some previews (didn't find any on the site I went to). I'm a pretty big Airwave fan, at least when I want to listen to something deep.