JuanLittleDevil

APC40 users!!!

This weeks post is more of a thank you for the great work that Hanz Petrov is doing with his python remote scripts for Ableton Live.These are by far the BEST mods to the APC40 I’ve tested so far, reason being that they’re rock solid! Furthermore, they do NOT require maxforlive at all. The two device chains for download here are “Sequencer Aid” and “Chords”. I will get into detail further in the post. But first, if you haven’t already installed the latest version of his script be sure to head to his site and download it: http://remotescripts.blogspot.com/p/apc-64-40.html.

LittleDevil – Sequencer Aid

Sequencer Aid is a little device chain which makes live easier to work with when using the sequencer mode (shift-master) on the apc40 script. It is used to select the pitch for each of the 5 sequence parts in the loop. Each voice is mapped  as follows:

Each of the voices has a +/-36 steps or (+/- 3 octaves), so if you have a drum rack following this device, macros 1-5 will allow you to select the drum part for each of the 5 sequences. Additionally, I’ve mapped some pitch change and chord devices to macros 6-8. This is useful if you are using a synth instead of drum racks, or if you want to layer your drums.

Macro 6 is the root key of the chord, this also acts as an additional pitch changer which applies to all 5 parts. If you were to put this in front of a commercial drum machine plugin and your pitches don’t fall in the same scale, then you can shift all the parts by an octave (+/1 12 steps).

Macros 7 and 8 create a chord so up to 3 parts can play for each of the voices. Now, I undertand that you may not want to have chords play for all 5 parts. If you need to disable this functionality for a particular part, all you have to do is expand the detail view of the chain for that voice, and disable (click on the off button) the chord device inside that chain.

LittleDevil – Chords

Chords is a harmonization tool based on basic music theory principles. The idea here is that you press a key, and the key plays a chord. This device is capable of playing triads, first inversions, second inversions and 7th chords for all the notes in a given key.

Chords is designed to work with “MATRIX MODE 7 “ of the script by Hanz. To engage this mode press “Shift” + “Track Select 7″.

The image below shows how the chords are laid out on the matrix keys:

“key scale” – Use this macro to select the key 0 = Cmaj.

• 0 – C
• 1 – C#/Db
• 2 – D
• 3 – D#/Eb
• 4 – E
• 5 – F
• 6 – F#/Gb
• 7 – G
• 8 – G#/Ab
• 9 – A
• 10 – A#/Bb
• 11 – B

If you want to move the scale up or down an octave you need to add or subtract 12 steps to the values above. Although, I suggest adding a pitch device after and shifting by 12 steps instead.

“arpeggiator” – There are 3 controls mapped to the arpeggiator, the gate encoder also functions as an off/on button. At 0 value, the arpeggiator is OFF.

“velocity” – Velocity controls, including random range.

“note length” – You can fix the note length here if you like. The note length dial also works as an off/on button at 0 value (10ms) the device is bypassed (OFF). At 1 or 11ms the device is on and ranges from 11ms to 60s (127).

NOTE: The devices above are somewhat finished, but still could use some improvements. “Chords” for example still has room for one more set of chords. Be sure to check this site again, as I will be replacing the current files with new versions once I’ve had more time to make some changes. If you have some suggestions or requests please be sure to contact me. I check my comments all the time.

Enjoy!

Download the plugin here:  APC40 Aid.alp

As usual to install:

1. download file
2. unzip
3. double click on the APC40 Aid.alp
4. the above command will create a project folder in the location you specify, so open that project.
5. from the “File Menu” select manage files
6. click on manage project
7. click on import into library

Harmonizer II is not just an update to my previous harmonizer attempt, it’s actually much more! It now has 2 modes for shifting pitch on the 3 signal chains. The concept is still the same; split the signal,  pitch shift it, place it in the stereo field, and apply some delay. This version also includes a reverb. Harmonizer II is a chromatic harmonizer device chain for Ableton Live, unfortunately I have not been able to find a way to shift the harmonies based on scales (Bummer! Maybe Ableton will come up with some new device in the future which can do analyze and re-pitch signals based on a ratio). Here is some interesting reading on pitch and frequency. http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/sound/u11l2a.cfm

So how does this work?

There are two modes, “Grain” mode and “Shift” mode.

In grain mode pitch shifting is achieved with the use of a grain delay plugin. Here the changes in pitch happen in terms of steps. This mode is very useful for creating harmonies which are for example 7 steps appart (5th). However, because it’s based on grain synthesis it can easily get stuttery and sound like a robotic voice, so it’s a little harder to get truer sounding harmonies. This was a concept which I took from my first attempt.

Shift mode is a lot smoother because the shifting happens with the use of the frequency shifter. Here pitch is changed by shifting the signal frequency by +/- 500Hz. In this mode you more or less have you use your ears to tune the harmonies, but the results are much smoother. and believable.

NOTE: In Grain mode some the dry signal gets through regardless of whether you’ve changed the pitch for that chain. I was not able to get around this, it seems to be the way that grain delay deals with the wet/dry signal, even at 100% wet some of the dry signal is still audible. Shift mode is different and will NOT allow the dry signal through unless you’ve set the value of the harmony to 64 which is dry. All of my macro’s have been documented so make sure to check the text/info window when hovering over with your mouse on the dials.

Understanding the signal path:

The signal coming into the device gets split up into 3 chains, and gets processed with the following:

1. pitch shifting – controlled by macro 1, 2 and 3.
2. delay – spreads the voices apart along the timeline.
3. format/gender – (depends on the selected mode) grain: changes the frequency which the granulation happens around. shift: changes EQ settings which are tuned for male or female voices.
4. level – by changing the setting on the chain display you can set the volume for each voice.
5. pan – by default I’ve put the first chain in the center position and 2 and 3 in opposite sides of the stereo field. You can play around with this for different results.

You can set additional parameters for each of the voices by expanding the device chain.

Some of the other things you can do are:

1. frequency flux (both modes) – sets a sort of randomness or fluctuation in pitch. In shift mode the rate is controlled by the “RaTe” macro.
2. feedback (grain mode) – the amount of grain delay feedback.
3. flux rate (shift mode) – sets the frequency at which the modulation or “FLuX’ happens on the pitch.
4. grains (grain mode) – granulation amount for the grain delay. With this you can get some sci-fi type of effects.

The voices then get merged together and fed through a reverb plugin which helps put it all in a space. I’ve mapped two setting to the main macros: reverb (wet/dry), and delay. I did this so I could use the hot-swap button on the reverb and easily change between different patches or settings.

Ok that’s it! Enjoy! Oh and hey, if you happen to modify this and add something cool to it. Do share it with us!

– Juan

Download: Harmonizer II.alp

Installation instructions:

1. download file above,
2. unzip the Harmonizer II.alp.zip file.
3. double click on Harmonizer II.alp
4. select a destination for the project.
5. open the Harmonizer II project
6. from the File menu, select “manage files”.
7. click on manage project.
8. click on import into Library.

So it’s been quite a while since I’ve shared any of my tools with you guys. This time around I want to share a very cool and powerful device chain which I use in my arsenal of sound design tools all the time. I created this tool first as a proof of concept, the idea was to create an analogue style synth using simplers and some basic sine, saw, triangle, and square wave samples. With Live’s ability to create device chains and assign macro mappings gave me the idea to expand my synth and create a more complete version of synthy using the devices as modules. The result is a very wicked synth which is incredibly light on cpu usage, and best of all the possibilities are endless.

I’ve since added several modules to synthy, it now has the following modules:

Master Mixer:

Finally we come the master section, these macros contain the master volume, pan, and effect. It’s highly possible that you might want to edit these macros and map the filter controls instead for example. The point here is when you have this device folded these are the 8 macros you’ll have available to use during a performance.

Midi:

Some synths have arpeggios built in to them so I’ve added one too, additionally I thought it would be fun to try and stick the midi notes re-triggered by the arpeggiator to a specific key, so I added a key mapper. This key-mapper however is very experimental and I even sometimes find myself trying to figure out how exactly to get it to work with my music. Still I find the results pleasing so I’m passing the info along to you.

An Oscillator/Amp Section:

This section consists of 2 oscillators, you could convert it to a 3 oscillator or more if you wanted by simply duplicating the device chain in the section. The main oscillator section acts as a mixer for OSC1 and OSC2. Additionally this section acts as the amp section. I’ve mapped the ADSR for each of the Oscillators to the first 4 macros so that both ADSR envelopes will act in unison after all this is how 90% of the analogue synths out there work.

The actual sound from the oscillator is coming from basic (sine, triagle, square, saw, white noise and pink noise) waves. I’ve created these ways using a tone generator which allowed me to save the tones to a file. I’ve created the tones at 440Hz, which is the frequency of A4 or the A above middle C. If you’d like to learn more about how frequency relates to pitch, here are some good reference links:

http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html

http://www.intmath.com/Trigonometric-graphs/music.php

http://www.techlib.com/reference/musical_note_frequencies.htm

Whenever you work with loops you need to remember to always loop at the zero crossing. For those of you who don’t know what that is, the zero crossing is the point at which amplitude is at 0, that means there is no positive or negative amplitude. Looping at this point will eliminate any possible pops and clicks from your sample loops.

Filter/Mod Section:

I could have used the filter from the simpler, however I wanted to have the ability of moving this module up or down the signal path as needed. For example say I wanted to have the filter before a delay, all you have to do is re-arrange the modules. Also I wanted to be able to use the device macros only if at all possible. The reason being that with the use of auto-mapping encoders like those found on my APC-40 this becomes extremely easy to edit realtime and without the use of a mouse.

Effects:

I’m grouping this here since there is little to say on these. I’ve added a chorus, delay, and reverb section. The reality here is that you could add any kind of effect you want. This is highly editable and it’s what makes this so powerful. I went with these because they are the effects that are most commonly found on analogue synths. Each of these modules have their wet/dry and feedback/time mapped to the main synth mixer section. The idea here is that you only have to expand these devices when you’re doing micro edits and have control of the amount from the main macro controls during play time.

Well boys and girls, I do hope you make some good sounds with this tool. Hey if you make something cool in Live why not share it with me? I’m always looking forward to seeing what other people make. We can even feature it here for others to share

Download File here: LittleDevil-Synthy.alp

– Juan

I recently responded to a post on a forum which I am a part of and I thought that this was such a great and important question that I felt i really should make a post on my site..

Original post from user:

Hey

I’ve been playing drums for 12 years now (yes, since I was 2) and most of the time I do play without ear plugs. Since I started to make music on the computer (with headphones, I don’t have any monitors/speakers) aswell I’ve been having problems with sleeping at night due to a high freq tone that’s impossible to get away. In the last couple of days I’ve been hearing this tone 24/7. I will of course start playing drums with ear plugs from now on, but my question to you is how much does headphones hurt my ears? Should I buy monitors now or can I wait for a while without being scared of this becoming much worse?

My response to the post:

Let me give you a word of advise…

I’ve been DJ for around 15 or so years, I have tinnitus and have been living with it for about half the time I’ve been DJing. I also get my hearing checked once per year at a local hearing center.

When the tinnitus first started I was concerned because I also suffer from a bit of hearing loss which I thought could be hereditary. My ENT had recommended I get my first hearing done the results were rather disturbing. I suffered from hearing loss at a VERY specific frequency range of arounf 14K (which also happens to be the range where women’s voices have most of their overtones and thus making that much more easy for me to mishear them which also doesn’t help my relationship with my wife) The odd thing however was that I had more hearing loss on one side than the other. My ENT was very concerned about this of course and had me get an MRI to ensure it wasn’t a tumor (I’m still alive btw so it wasn’t that).

It was pretty obvious to me that the hearing loss came from playing music loud with headphones (not to mention clubs).

I suggest you get yourself some good quality monitors, ideally something which is comfortable to the ear over extended periods of time. Monitors as opposed to headphones allow you to pull yourself away from the sound source thus allowing your ear to be less subjected to the harmful frequencies. If you are worried about getting punch then get ones with plenty of power so to be able to recreate some low end frequencies which btw you cannot reproduce with most headphones.

Turn down the volume! the human ear can listen to dB values of about 80 normally anything over that and you start stressing your ear drums. My ENT has told me plenty of times that once you experience ringing in your ear, you have experience hearing loss. The reason for the ringing is that you can no long her hear those frequencies so your brain tries to compensate, which is the ringing you hear (or think you hear).

If you are out and about i.e. clubs, wear ear plugs.. Most clubs have audio well beyond the comfortable decibel levels try over 100dB which you really should only have exposure of say about 10 minutes. Musician ear plugs cost about $140 and sound amazing. You could also get some high quality earplugs online for about $15.

Here are some dangerous dB levels:

Continuous dB | Permissible Exposure Time

85 db | 8 hours
88 dB | 4 hours
91 db | 2 hours
94 db | 1 hour
97 db | 30 minutes
100 db | 15 minutes
103 db | 7.5 minutes
106 dB | 3.75 min (< 4min)
109 dB | 1.875 min (< 2min)
112 dB | .9375 min (~1 min)
115 dB | .46875 min (~30 sec)

Trust me I feel your pain. I’m a much more careful person with audio now. I limit my production sessions to 6 hours max at a time, taking breaks in between. Also I produce with low volumes and only turn it up occasionally when I’m mixing down, or mastering.

hope this helps.

– Juan

The other day while in the studio working with a friend he said to me, “I just can’t work with Logic man, warping loops just sucks!”. I have to agree that to some extent other software might be better suited if working exclusively with loops, i.e, Ableton Live, or Fruity Loops, or Acid even. However, I’d like to give a few tips on how you could speed up your work flow working with loops in logic.

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…

The other day I found this old tutorial from by the covert operators, it’s probably one of the best described examples for making a reverse reverb effect. The steps are quite simple:

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.

One of the things I hate the most about backups is not having one when you need it! When it comes to my studio setup, I need to make sure that it is somewhat fault protected, and that I have some kind of archival process. What do I mean by that you say? Well… Let me explain… Imagine the following scenario, you’ve had the great idea floating in your head for the last who knows when but you finally get some time in the studio you loose your main drive. If this is the only hard drive on your computer then, you my friend, “is fucked!” Not only do you not have copies of your “data” but you also need to re-install not just your OS but ALL of your applications, plugins, etc. I recently upgraded from a G5 to an intel based system and trust me I’m still re-installing my software. It is a real pain in the behind to do this!!!

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.

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

*** 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

(originally published Saturday, February 23, 2008)

I recently upgraded to Leopard and tho I love the new interface it has been rather of a pain in the ass to get some programs working happily with it. So I decided to write this entry to address some of the key issues I encountered.

1. Dimension Pro had some install issues. Neither the VST or the AU plugin worked! However, after much frustration cakewalk updated the drivers and got it working as of 2/13/08. So be sure to download and install the latest drivers: while you are at it be sure to update Rapture too looks like they released a new driver for that as well.

http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/

2. MultiMix12 Firewire: Audio crackle which was so frustrating has also been fixed I had to download and install drivers for that as well. Installation was straight forward and I have not had any issues since.

http://www.alesis.com/support/index.php

3. SH-201: The most frustrating time I had was upgrading these apps. The issue I had here was not with the driver, that installed just fine, but rather with the Librarian and plugin set. The issue here was that the install script from Roland is looking for the installer.app in /Applications/Utilities/Installer.app and apple has moved it to /System/Library/CoreServices/. The Fix was rather simple tho a bit of a hack.

Symptom: Librarian installer fails with the following message:

The following install step failed: run postflight script for SH-201 Script. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

After looking at the log files I discovered the following:

2/23/08 10:07:50 AM runner[350] postflight[369]: The file /Applications/Utilities/Installer.app does not exist.

I checked this an what do you know it isn’t there. Apple has moved it.

Solution: To fix this open a Termnial and type the following:

1) Create a link to the application. By creating a link rather than copying the app it will ensure you that the Utilities version is the same as the on in CoreServices.

ln -s /System/Library/CoreServices/Installer.app /Applications/Utilities/Installer.app

NOTE: if the commands fails rerun the command with the word “sudo ” at the beginning of the line.

2) Then run the installer again.

The installers can be found here:

http://www.roland.com/PRODUCTS/en/_support/dld.cfm?ln=en&dsp=0&iCncd=1076