The Syzygryd is this giant multimedia art piece consisting of lots of metal, arson art, audio, and a wonderful user interface so YOU can make the music. My part is well complicated, for this project I wore mostly my sound designer hat. 99% of the sounds you will hear were created by me either 100% using purely generated sound from synths and other sound design tools, or from basic harmonically rich waveforms like sine/saw hybrids. You may also hear some speak’n'spell samples in the form of easter eggs.

The projects have been heavily automated so even with a one bar sequencer, the sound generated will feel more like a complete song, with phrasing, buildups and breakdowns, even chord progressions.

If you are one of those lucky ones to play with it this year be sure to stop by and post a comment about your experience. Also contact me if you guys are interested in learning how this was all created, I’d be happy to break somethings down into some useful tutorials.

Lastly, I sadly will not be attending burning man this year but I have asked the Syzygryd crew to record the the set. If and when I get the project back I plan on recording the audio and posting it here for you to download your performance.

For more info on the Syzigryd project visit their site at:

http://www.syzygryd.com

8. Clicking on the loop box located on the explorer bar will loop the selected region or regions until the end of your project.

7. You can loop any midi region, audio region, or folders even just by dragging the upper right corner of the selected region or regions.

6. If you repeat groups of regions over and over again, why not make them one loop? it makes your project much less cluttered and easier to manage. You can achieve this in two ways, one simply “glue” them together, or two, pack them into a folder. Folders are a great way of looping sections of audio which have been split up into regions.

5. You don’t HAVE to work with loops all the time, in fact one great trick to do is loop your region over the time of a phrase, then right-click and select “Convert loops to real copies”. By doing this you can chop up or modify which ever one of those copies you want in order to create fills, drop-outs, or simply add some movement to your phrases.

4. You can apply automation to regions by using the hyper-editor rather than track automation. Doing this is great for ensuring that you control changes are always carried with you when you copy or loop your regions.

3. Creating apple loops can be as easy as right clicking on a region and selecting “Open in Loop Utility”. The process is easy and self explanatory. One thing which sets Logic above Live, is the ability to keep your content organized. So be sure to enter/choose relevant information about the loops you create then add them to your library.

2. Apple Loops can be converted to real audio simply by right clicking on the region and selecting “convert to real audio”. This creates a new copy of the audio so you can modify as you please.

1. Dragging the right corner of a region while holding down option will will apply the time and pitch machine to the selected region. It will also snap to your grid. This to me is one of the most powerful tools yet. It means I can time stretch ANY audio.

Ok good! now go Loopy…

More info here:

1. record the sound you want the effect on.

2. reverse the original sound and apply reverb to the reversed audio.

3. record the “wet” sound from the reverb.

4. discard the original dry reversed sound.

5. reverse the wet recorded audio from the reverb.

6. align the reversed wet audio with your original untouched audio.

Reverse Reverb from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.

If you found this helpful I encourage you guys to check their site and check out some of their other tutorials. They have some nifty things to say with regards to music production in Ableton Live.

OK so let’s think about this. How do I keep my “data” protected and by data I mean all the audio projects and it’s associated files, and how do I recover from a disaster as quickly as possible so I don’t compromise inspiration? I know some of you are already thinking “what about time machine?” I have one answer for you IO!!! Have you tried scheduling time machine? That’s right it has no schedule, you cannot control when it runs! and when it does it SLOWS DOWN EVERYTHING! Thus not a good solution. I personally want to run my backups when I tell it to! So. Let me show you guys how I solve this problem, keep in mind that there are many solutions and you might know best what yours is. The key point is make sure your data is protected!

I have a dedicated studio machine, it is really kind of a one trick pony. Thus, it only gets turned on when I’m actually making music. This is great for me because that means that everything on that disk is music related and relatively clean. I also make sure to split up OS from the rest of my data. This means that if my OS dies or I upgrade my OS, my data is still on a separate drive so all I have to do is reinstall apps and attach my data drive. But what if my data drive then dies? Well I have a REALLY large drive which I backup to when I startup my system. I use a freeware backup software from LaCie called SilverKeeper. You can get it here: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10097

My OS drive is protected by creating a “clone” of the drive on a regular basis. This can be done with “rsync” or even better SilverKeeper which basically does the rsync but gives you a nice user interface. The drive is copied entirely on boot. This means that if my drive dies, all I have to do is pull it out and restart from the ‘cloned copy’. Additionally I can use this to try out OS upgrades without committing to it simply by stopping the backups while I test so to have a way to rollback. My data drive is backed up to an external disk which I use for archival. That disk is then detached and kept with me outside of the studio.

The cost for doing this is  a couple of hundred dollars if but totally worth it. I should also point out that keeping your data on a separate drive from your OS will help you in terms of IO as your media files won’t have to compete with the OS for scheduling read and writes to the disk.

Moral of the story is… Backup your shit! Keep it handy so you don’t have to re-install and end up wasting time and loosing out on those moments of inspiration.

This is a remix I did for my buddy playdoughboy the track is available for download from various online shops. I’m really exited about this one as it’s my first commercial appearance!

Check out the full release:

I know it’s a bit premature, but it’s mostly functional and it IS my first maxpatch so… I figure some of you may benefit from it and some might even be able to help me improve it…

What it is:

LittleDevil -SEQ is a Roland style drum machine sequencer, thought don’t let this full you you can certainly use it for on synths as well. The concept is simple. there are 8 patterns represented by the orange round buttons. Each pattern controls a single drum or key which is assignable via the “Pitch” knob. This means you can put this in front of any drum machine you can control with a keyboard and and use this as a sequencer.

There is also a shuffle section which can setup the style of shuffle and amount all of which is mappable since I’m using M4L objects.

Each step has a velocity/volume knob which is used to set the level of each of the 16 steps. Additionally I’ve put some mute buttons for each step which are mappable also so you can potentially yam a sequence if you map each step mute to a keyboard whatever midi controller.

Overall it’s a simple interface with a simple concept in mind…

KNOWN BUGS: OK here is the catch. Only run one instance per session… it tends to act weird if you add a second instance don’t ask me why, it just does. For some reason if I map the pattern select buttons I have to hit them twice don’t know why it works well in Max but in live it’s all funky. And lastly this tho more of a design flaw (I’m new to this) muted parts reset to 0 value for the velocity/volume knobs if you reload or switch a pattern, while the un-muted steps are fine.

It is still a very useful tool and fun to play around with. I’ve made some really amazing sequences with this little thing and it’s definitely fun to play around with. If you are a Max guru and would like to help feel free to contact me.

– Juan

Download:  LittleDevil-SEQv0.8.zip

]]> http://juanlittledevil.com/JLD/?feed=rss2&p=295 0 http://juanlittledevil.com/JLD/?p=263 http://juanlittledevil.com/JLD/?p=263#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:33:49 +0000 Juan http://juanlittledevil.com/JLD/?p=263 *** UPDATED! ***

* Cleaned up the interface up a bit to make it pretty -enjoy.

* The stop and play buttons under the arrow keys have to be mapped manually to the “Stop Clips” and “Launch Scene” buttons on the master track. If you know of a way to do it using just startup scripts please let me know.

Last weekend I found myself on flight to Seattle working on a track and wishing I had the same kind of control I get from my APC40 with my iphone. One of the great things about having a control surface that Live recognizes is that you don’t have to map your controls each time you load a new set. So I did some digging around and found some great articles on using user configuration script with Ableton.

The idea is simple really, since Live 6 Ableton has given users the ability to write configuration files for auto mapping devices to live. Though what you can auto-map is somewhat limited compared to my APC-40, it sure is a HUGE benefit when all you have is an iPhone or iPod touch and your laptop as I did. All you really have to do is edit one file… Well sorta. They trick is Ableton expects midi devices. Luckily for me I already owned a copy of TouchOSC for my iPhone and OSCulator so this was a no brainer.

I created a template for TouchOSC which takes advantage of most of the mappable controls in the UserConfiguration.txt file. The template consists of 5 panes, one for drum pads and transport, one for device control with up to 8 sets of 8 controls just like the APC-40, one for volume and arm buttons (unfortunately no mute or solo), the one for send1 and one for send2. The device control pane is dynamic and works with whatever device you have selected. I used sliders rather than rotary as I find that the sliders are easier to control with your fingers. So far I’m fairly happy with the results, and let me tell you I’m looking forward to my next trip

Drum Pads

Device Control

Mixer (Volume, Master, Arm Buttons)

Sends

Transport

Here is how to set it up!

What you need:

1. TouchOSC (iphone App)
2. TouchOSC Editor
3. OSCulator
4. AbletonLive 7 or higher. (I’m currently running Live 8 and it works fine)

Installing the TouchOSC template:

1. Using the TouchOSC Editor open the file LiveControl.touchosc. You’ll need to make sure that your iPod Touch or iPhone is on the same wireless network as the Editor.
2. One the template is loaded on the editor “Click the Sync Button”
3. Launch the TouchOSC app from your iPhone.
4. Go into “Layout” -> “Add” -> “Computer name” your computer will show up automatically. If it doesn’t then you are not on the same network.
5. Once it’s been copied to your iPod Touch make sure the layout is selected “LiveControl”

OSCulator:

1. Launch OSCulator.
2. Open the file “LiveControl.oscd” (You may want to copy the file to your OSCulator template folder)
3. ensure that OSCulator is working, green means it’s working red means it’s not.

Ableton Live:

The Live mappings live in a file called “UserConfiguration.txt”, the file must be placed in a folder with the name of your device. This device must be named with the same name as it is seen by Ableton Live. To install:

1. Place the folder named “OSCulator” to your “/Library/Preferences/Ableton/Live 8.0.5/User Remote Scripts” Note that there is a folder for each version of Live installed on your system, so make sure you place it in the correct location. At the time of writing this document I was on Live 8.0.5 so that is what I used.
2. Launch Ableton Live.
3. Open Preferences.
4. Click on the “MIDI Sync” tab.
5. On the control surface pane select your control surface “OSCulator”
6. Select “OSCulator Out” as your Input.
7. Select “OSCulator in (8000)” as your Output.

Download the supporting files:

LiveControl

Enjoy.

– JuanLittleDevil

http://www.di.fm/mp3/minimal.pls

These kids have some other great minimal djs playing some great sets. Be sure to check them out!

http://www.ensonic.fm/ensonic.m3u
Thusday 2pm EST