ModeAudio Magazine articles

I've recently done four interviews for the ModeAudio online Magazine about how I explore the more unusual side of sample use, mis-use and manipulation in Ableton Live. Here's a quick index to all of the articles:

Exploring 'Found Percussion Bundle': Part 1     

Exploring 'Found Percussion Bundle': Part 2

Exploring Float's Guitar Samples: Part 1

Exploring Float's Guitar Samples: Part 2

There are accompanying blog entries here as well:

Winning was only the beginning...   

Drums - using layers in a rack...

When is a guitar not a guitar?

The DAW as synthesizer...

I'd like to thank Niall from ModeAudio for all of his support, help and enthusiasm for this project.

The DAW as synthesizer...

The fourth part of my 'playing with samples and loops' series has now been published in ModeAudio's online magazine. As always, I'm fascinated by the way that finding alternative ways to look at things is a two way process - a new loop triggers an idea, or a 'what happens if I do this?' turns into an interesting variation that opens up different possibilities. But this time, I managed to put into words something that I've been trying to express for some time - the way that modern DAWs, sequencers, host software, audio workstations, or whatever else you call them, are more than just digital tape recorders.

The blurring of the distinction between sound generation as in synthesis, and performance capture as in a recording, has been ongoing for a long time. A modern DAW now allows me to change the pitch of a synthesizer by modifying the MIDI data at its input, or by processing the audio output of the synthesizer through a frequency shifter - or both. And any of these can be captured, edited and replayed, or even added live. Effectively, the synthesis engine is the whole of the sound production chain, from sound generation, through performance capture, to live playback and interaction.

In one example in the ModeAudio article, I take a guitar-based audio loop, separate out the individual notes and stack them together, into a big, gorgeous-sounding bass synth sound. Actually, there's quite a bit more fine detail involved to do this, and this is where it gets interesting. I'd argue that the facilities that a modern DAW like Ableton Live give you to work with sound are a lot like a modular synthesizer, but with a few freedoms that modulars don't have, plus faster trying out of ideas (sometimes). The downside is that it can be just as difficult to figure out exactly what someone has done when they've stacked samples, edited them, added effects, velocity switching, and more, as it can be to work out what is happening in a modular synthesizer patch.

In the spirit of making ideas and tips more widely available (4 parts so far for ModeAudio!), then here's another one that arises from this. Why don't software modular synthesizers provide an alternative 'straightened-out' view of a patch? Instead of showing all those patch-cords linking modules, why not shorten the patch-cords, remove the detail and just show the linkages, and move the modules into a sensible order, so that you can see the generation and then the flow of the audio through the processors, and the way that the controlling modules (LFOs and Envelopes, etc.) are influencing things.

Kind of like the way that the London Underground map doesn't actually show where the lines go, but abstracts the lines so that you can understand how to get to Mornington Crescent without worrying about where it is, or how the lines bend and twist on the way. This doesn't just apply to a modular synth - it could be a complex Rack in Ableton Live as well. This type of 'abstracted view' could make it lots easier to comprehend how a sound is produced and controlled, and I'd say that that's a new feature that we should all be clamouring for! 

Why not ask your current DAW manufacturer if they are planning to do this type of view in their next release? You can always tell them I sent you!

When is a guitar not a guitar?

One answer could be: 'When it's a sample of a guitar!' Samples, or their 'here's one I prepared earlier' cousins: loops, can be rich sources of inspiration, new sounds, and more. Previously, I talked to the nice people at ModeAudio about mis-using a percussion pack. but since then, they offered me a chance to look at another of their packs.

The ModeAudio 'Float' pack contains 'Chillwave' guitar samples and loops, and so it isn't what you might immediately associate with a synthesist like me, but exploring something 'out of your comfort zone' is often very good at nudging you into making new discoveries.

As you might expect these days, this is an idea that is also available in a formalised form on the 'Interweb': http://www.oblicard.com/ (Olique Strategies: originally a set of cards by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, but now available via browsers and mobile apps too.)

In my case, taking some guitar loops and playing with them yielded some very interesting results - and in many of the cases, I worked with the samples as if they were raw material for synthesis, not specifically as 'guitar' loops. As a result, I didn't do much in the way of realistic guitar sounds, but instead I found a lot of very unusual and interesting sounds. One synth bass sound, made by reverse engineering a loop and then stacking the individual notes, is a sound that I'd pay good money for - just that one sound! 

I'm increasingly aware of the lowering of the barriers between synthesis and production in modern DAWs (sequencers, host applications, whatever your favourite term is!), and my whole experience with 'Float' reinforced this view. Back in the days of analogue tape, people experimented a lot (using tiled bathrooms or big suspended metal sheets as ways of creating reverb spaces is just one example), and whilst the technology may have changed, the scope for going 'outside the box' seems to be undiminished, and if anything, better than ever. 

You can see the first part of my 'guitar sample-based synthesis in ModeAudio's magazine.

Drums - using layers in a rack...

The second part of my exploration of a commercial sample bundle is now available on the ModeAudio web-site. This time I actually used the 'Found Percussion' sounds for their intended purpose - drum sounds.







Actually, what I really do is just do layering of samples within a Rack, plus a bit of tweaking here and there. I find that this is one of the most useful parts of Ableton Live - the ability to be able to put together sounds into composites easily and quickly, and to have pretty comprehensive control of each sound layer. In many ways, the Ableton Rack is very similar to a modular synthesizer, but presented in a way that leads you to a specific way of doing things. This has the useful result that analysing a Rack is straight-forward: you just open it up and then look at each layer in turn. On a modular synthesizer I tend to have to work backwards from the output when I'm trying to figure out what someone has done in a patch...

The beauty of layering is that you can copy a layer and adjust the copy, or you can switch things in and out as required. In the article I do a couple of variations of a snare sound, and show how they have different spectrums (you might have a gap in the overall spectrum that each fits into, for example) - and of course, you can switch Spectrum in and out by using the power button too. A lot of my audio paths have stuff turned off using the power button that were used during development, and so they are ready to be included again when I need them.

The time it takes to become familiar with the possibilities of using Racks creatively is time well spent, in my opinion. I encourage all Ableton Live users to spend some time with Racks!

Related articles

• Humanizing Drums With Velocity Effect in Ableton Live

Winning was only the beginning...

I won a competition recently! (This is a rare event for me.) ModeAudio is an interesting web-site that combines informed articles on DAWs with thoughtfully curated audio packs, and two randomly selected people got to choose a bundle from their catalogue...

So, ModeAudio sent me a bundle of samples called 'Found Percussion': 4 Ableton Live packs containing an interesting and diverse set of 750 samples, plus kits, instruments, etc. Clear install instructions and neatly separated samples in named folders showed attention to detail, which matters more and more as you work with large numbers of samples. The 'UnderCover' set shows the thinking, with folders named: Woods (19), Metals (63), Plastics (29), Snaps (12), Lids (11), Glass (16), etc. (=number of samples in the folder), and containing named samples like: Bottle Rattle, Jewel case, Calculator Button, etc. 

First off, I auditioned all of each of the audio packs, then listened to the samples on their own, and then I explored deeper, adjusting the instruments and using the samples in ways that were probably slightly outside the intentions of the creators! It was great fun, and I found that the samples were a great trigger for creativity.

You can read more about my explorations in the ModeAudio magazine.

Pitch Progression MIDI Effects

Pitch Progression Grid and Pitch Progression Follow are two MaxForLive MIDI Effects for Ableton Live. They provide control over the transposition of bar-length sequences, and so can quickly produce progressions of transposed sequences.

Pitch Progression Grid

Pitch Progression Grid grew out of a simple transpose control that I created. It allows semitone or octave transpositions, and I thought that it would be good if it could be extended so that it was more flexible, and the result is a mini-sequencer that runs at the 'bar-rate', and which allows whole bars to be transposed according to the settings on the grid (pitch or velocity).

(You can see the remains of the original transposer on the far left hand side... Note also that this is a MIDI Effect, so it is on the left hand side of the track area, and requires an 'Instrument' to be on the right hand side, otherwise you will not hear anything from the track. The 'Lectric Piano' from Simpler is shown here just as an example - you can use any Live Instrument.) 

Moving across, the next vertical set of controls are the LFO, which normally runs in 'Sync' mode for this effect. (If you run the LFO free-runnng, then the transpose is not tied to the bar boundaries, which can cause hanging notes and other problems. Please leave it in Sync mode at first!) The transpose amount is shown in the large box. The transposition in this first version is crude - it transposes chromatically, so for a transpose setting of 1 semitone, then every MIDI note input will be transposed by 1 semitone. Future versions may be more flexible and do more musically useful transpositions. 

The next vertical set of controls are for the 'Position'. The transpose change normally takes place at the end of the bar. You should not have any notes in the last part of the bar - the 'Position' control sets where the transpose changes. If you set it to 50% then it will happen in the middle of the bar. The normal position is at 99.2%, right at the end of the bar. The 'Position' of the transpose change is shown as a percentage of the bar (0% = start, 50% = half way, and 100% = end) as well as more conventional beat and unit (480 ppq) notation. The block of presets allows the storing and recall of grids of transpositions. Click to recall a stored grid, and Shift-click to store a grid.

The next vertical set of controls allows the number of Repeats to be set (1 gives one bar of this mini-sequencer per bar of the sequence in the track, 2 repeats the transposition twice before it moves to the next bar, so you could think of this as being a rate of half a bar, etc.) The 'Steps' control lets you control the number of steps in the mini-sequence. This is limited to 32 (Max allows 64, but the UI becomes too small for the layout I have used!) The steps that are not in range are still available, so if you set up an 8 step transposition, and then reduce the steps to 2, then you can always increase the steps to 8 and the mini-sequencer will loop around the 8 steps. So you can control this as part of a sequence using the unlinked Envelope section of the sequence controls. 

The grid is the next and largest section. Notes rise in pitch vertically, and horizontally, the sequencer runs from left to right, and loops when it gets to the right hand side. The higher the number of steps, the shorter the notes appear, but remember that each one is still one or more bars long (unless you are in async mode). You can also transpose the velocity of the notes in each bar by using the Pitch/Velocity button at the top right. 

For anything to happen then you need to set up a sequence (one bar in this version) in the track. When you play the track, incoming MIDI notes are transposed per bar - in the edited screenshot above, the end of the bar is inverted, and this is where the transposition change will happen - this is where the 'Position' control points at. So the first bar might not have any transposition (and the sequence will play as you see it), but the first repeat could be up a fifth (as shown in the top screenshot), the next bar might be up by a fifth again, and then back down a fifth and back down a fifth again, and then it repeats. The top screenshot shows exactly this transposition grid. 

Here's a diagram that reiterates the operation. Remember that this is not a conventional 'sequencer' - it advances by one step for every bar when set to 1/1 and Sync. (It advances less slowly if you set the Repeat to more than one bar.) The sequence itself is not transposed - only the notes that are passed through the MIDI Effect to the Instrument are changed. So if you want to edit the sequence, then you need to be aware that there is only one sequence - the untransposed one. If you edit the sequence, then all of the transposed ones will be altered as well. Also recall the previous note: the transposition in this first version is crude - it transposes chromatically, so for a transpose setting of 1 semitone, then every MIDI note input will be transposed by 1 semitone. Future versions may be more flexible and do more musically useful transpositions.

The Max For Live 'code' for this is pretty straightforward:

Incoming MIDI Note messages are filtered out of the stream, then unpacked into the note number and the velocity value. The note value is then transposed (r trans) from the mini-sequencer section, flushing for held notes is attempted, and the transposed notes are clipped so that they can't go outside the 0-127 allowed range. Then the transposed MIDI Note messages are passed to the rest of the track processing - normally the Instrument. This code doesn't show the velocity transpose, because that's made slightly more interesting by release velocity...

Sustained notes longer than a bar may not work correctly (remember the 'no notes in the last part of the bar' limitation.) Basically, the effect works well when there are notes or chords in the main part of the bar and there is a gap at the end of the bar. 8 or 16 staccato note sequences work nicely, and I leave the cliched transposition progressions up to the user!

The right hand set of vertical controls allow editing of the contents of the grid. 'Random' is not a very useful option to choose, but some may like it!

Pitch Progression Follow

If you want to transpose another track in sync, then use the Pitch Progression Follow MIDI Effect in that track. This will receive the transpositions from the 'master' Grid Effect track and apply them to the notes in the 'Follow'ing track. There is some delay in the transfer, so notes at the start of the 'Follow'ing track may not be transposed until the following bar (try moving the position to a lower value...). Again, you can see the simple roots of this project here - this is very similar to the original 'transpose' MIDI Effect where I started.

Summary

This pair of MIDI Effects are very much a work in progress. They are not finished, they may well glitch, the transposition is crude and limited musically, and they are definitely not 'production-ready' in any sense.

As usual, they can be downloaded from http://MaxForLive.com . Enjoy!

Making noise

I needed some noise, and whilst there are many ways to create noise of various colours, none of them quite met my need (I wanted '11' and the noise I got only went up to '10'!). Instead of exploring the available resources further, I decided to think about my ideal noise source...

In the past, I've been guilty of using the very predictable 'noise with LFO'd filtering' patches that are often used to make surf and train noises. In my defence, whilst some of the synths in question were obvious examples like a MiniMoog and 'white-top' ARP Odyssey, I've also done much the same on slightly more unusual examples like the Oberheim OB-1, Synton Syrinx, Korg PS-3300, even a Yamaha GX-1 (I also repaired it) and others. But enough of the past...

Adding a phaser and some panning and you get a pretty versatile surf, wind, rain generator. As with Comber V0.3, I had the intention to make some sort of complex multi-filter section, and maybe add this to the phaser in Comber.

But then I stumbled upon fffb~ in a quiet backwater of the Max Help pages, and I realised that with a bit of tweaking, it could make a pretty useful dynamic filter bank. The Max Help pages tauntingly say: 'This object is more efficient than using a number of reson~ objects, but for the sake of speed does not accept signals for parameter changes.'. Well that was it, it looked like I'd found my versatile filter and I just needed to find a way round the control limitation.

fffb~ is quite a monster of a filter. You get 8 resonant filters by default, but you can go up to 50 if you want to, and I decided that 16 was probably enough for a first attempt. You can control the centre frequency of the lowest frequency filter (F in the diagram above), and then the spacing between the other filters as you go along the frequency axis (I've called this 'Spread', S in the diagram above). The Q of the filters is global, but still a useful control, and the F, S and Q all duly got separate LFOs to control them. The individual Gains (G) of each filter can be set individually - so I used a conventional multi-slider controller for that. Although you can't drive everything directly with signals, you can update the parameters in real-time, and this has much the same effect.

The Q control has some problems at low values, and whilst the jerkiness that this produces in the output audio can surprise you the first time, it can also be used to provide exactly the sort of chaotic uncertainty that you get with wind sounds. There's a red indicator to warn you as you go into this mode.

The Spread control is best left near the middle (= '1') at first. This keeps the filter stable - and NOTE the 'Reset' button for when things get out of control!

Because two noise sources are better for doing wind and rain, or surf and wind, or rustling leaves and howling wind, then I doubled everything, and added LFO-modulated panning too (that's 8 LFOs in total). There are colour-coded White/Pink noise selection buttons as well.

The three LFOs provide lots of control over the filtering, and you can make lots of wind, rain and surf effects - use a phaser after it ini the chain for better surf sounds. I recommend that you use the excellent built-in 'Spectrum' display to see the output of the filter, and turn it off when you don't need it to save processing power. I've included the Spectrum display in the screenshot below as a 'serving suggestion'.

So that's the mundanely named 'Noise Generator mr 0v01'. As usual, you can download it for free from MaxForLive.com. Enjoy!

Related articles

• Korg ARP Odyssey Coming Jan 22, 2015
• Behringer plans to revive the classic ARP Odyssey synth, too