Hey everyone, hope you’re doing well.
For those into composition and production, you might be interested in a recent activity of mine: I recorded a full production session I did in Live, using mostly Ableton stock effects, but plenty of my usual techniques.
I went pretty exploratory in it, not really having much of an idea of where I wanted to go with the track at the start. Instead, I had a loose idea about some initial sounds and structures I might want to explore, but was mostly just ~going with the flow~. You can hear a preview of the track at the opening of the video.
I didn’t get the chance to fully arrange the sounds, just to put them together into an initial foundation. I’ll get to arranging it down the track — I usually (but not always) keep those stages separate.
I also kept everything within a single drum rack — a technique I’ve used quite a bit recently, after watching a great video by User Friendly Sounds on doing this sort of thing. Working this way definitely reminds me of making music with Elektron gear — going really, really deep into a small unit/device and staying focused within it. The difference, of course, is that with Elektron gear, you’re restricted (in a good way) by the limitations of the machine, whereas on a drum rack in Live, you can just add and add and add devices: LFOs, processors, instrument racks. So pretty quickly, things can get pretty complex.
I haven’t done too many of these recorded sessions before, besides small process demonstrations I’ve recorded for students (none of which I’ve posted publicly before).
But I really enjoyed it. It was an interesting feeling, knowing that all the choices, techniques and mistakes made were going to be available for all to see (beware — 14:04” gave me a good fright! Definitely was not the right effect chain to load up). But it did create some good motivation to do the session and see where it went. I’m a big advocate in sharing my ideas and techniques, so you can expect more of these in the future. (I went ahead and recorded another two separate sessions in the days after doing this one.)
I hope you find something useful!