I use an MPC for 99.9% of my music and I hardly use the computer at all outside of mixdowns and using midi-synths but I also have Ableton Live and out of all the programs I've tried it's hands down the best. It's what I would use if I could commit to making music with the computer (maybe i'll incorporate both that and the MPC one of these days). From my experience with it, it's extremely user friendly and has a million different ways to make music.
Bsides you've been bugging out lately.
its so incrediblly easy to slave live to your MP... there is a bit of latency, but its kinda easy to fix.
as far as the bsides hate-down is concerned, i see where your coming from man. i love making music with spontenaety like the rest of them... but the best thing about live is that its easy to use and doesnt sacrifice its capabilities in being easy to use.
you can still make mistakes in live that end up changing the whole vibe of your song.
1. its an instrument. - you can practice at it. you can get better at it. you can learn to master the feel of the machine. You can do this until it becomes second nature to you and you feel as though there is nothing separating you from the music. In a sense, learning the feel of the mpc is always going to be different from learning the interface of a piece of software. It responds to your abilities with it, and it forces you to improve, not just the software.
2. It has a live feel to it - you might accidently hit the pattern you are trying to do wrong but it comes out doper than you had originally intended. I cant see that happening with a software sequencer.
3. Its rigid and limiting - In the best sense of the words. The mpc is harsh. the swing is unatural. But thats what makes it good.
I think all these things also apply to the asr10, or the sp1200 or any of the old sequencer/samplers that people today wanna say are outdated. They have a certain feel that cannot be reproduced. Its like having a moog or having a moog emulator. sure the emulator sounds good, but its all about the knobs, and the real physical control. the physical process of making music which computers are divorcing people from to a degree and i think thats somewhat unfortunate.
im sure it is all my bias, but i was on fruityloops for years and i cant tell you what a difference its made to actually have the hardware in front of me.
although i dont have an MPC...i like this angle. seems like everybodys looking for the easiest possible way to make music (the invention of time-stretch AT ALL comes to mind), and although in the end its the music itself that counts, it still really bothers me. not all people think like that though and im just saying what i think. sampling in general is obviously much easier than actually learning instruments, and the MPC (from what little experience ive had with one) is probably the closest thing to bridging that gap that there is.
however...
i use a computer, and really i wanna get something better than cooledit...is there a place where i can try out ableton live? can you get it for mac (not that i have one)?...it sounds good to me.
$400? also sounds good. website?
actually it sounds amazing. i want to try it now.
wow. maybe you should scratch everything i jsut said earlier. i want this program and i havent even looked at it yet.
I think Live is in a weird spot right now. I was a beta tester in the 0.5 to 1.0 era, and what I liked about the program was its simplicity. It was for performance, not composition - you would track in something like Logic or Protools then export audio loops for live use.
I thought that was hot. In a full-featured DAW (I use Logic) you've got so much stuff going on. It was nice to get away from that to something simple, clean, and slick for arrangement & performance.
After 1.0 it turned out that a substantial portion of users were using it as their only tool. Bit by bit they started tacking on the features of a full composition suite - MIDI sequencing, the integrated drum sampler, some software instruments.
Also they ran out of money around 2.0! So they threw a bunch of stuff in and hustled 3.0 out so they could pay salary to their employees.
I find it kind of cluttered & weird now. Once you get into the 'Live mentality' it's cool, but I think a lot of users find themselves working for the tool rather than the tool working for them.
And humor value: check out these pictures of Robert Henke, one of the lead developers / designers of Live, doing his thing at a techno store in Berlin. Dude is seriously the funniest German man I've ever met.
this is essentially my impression, and thats kinda what i didnt like about the software. Like I said, I do own it, and I think its a cool little tool. I shouldnt have said toy i guess, but I mean in a live setting it could be a dope way to perform stuff using prerecorded material and still incorporate variations on the fly. I just think it falls short if you're looking at it as your primary tool to compose music.
Now, if you are using it as a DAW and recording live instruments and whatever, then thats something else. It is quite easy to use in that aspect. But something about dragging and dropping little sample loops together and having a program match them up for you doesnt qualify to me as making music.
Everyone has different goal sand different methods, if one dude prefers the MPC then stick with it but others prefer working on the computer, both are still making music its just they are using different tools to realise they vision.
Ive messed with Live 4 and I blatantly know there are alot of things u can do with that software that would b a real long process to do using hardware setups.
But the trick is not to get lost in all the options when working with software.
But something about dragging and dropping little sample loops together and having a program match them up for you doesnt qualify to me as making music.
thats a pretty big can of worms that isnt necc. dependent to live. every midi/daw program has its quantized/pitchshift/soundreplacer function that has the ability to make shit to gold.
the reality is that you dont have to use those funtions. logic, DP, protools, neuendo.. and yes even live can work without this idiot proof way making music.
its a pretty slippery slope to start calling out on what can and cannot be qualified as making music. if you ask me.. i dont care if you how you make (or "not make") it... the importance is the quality of the sound and the song. that should take precident over everything.
i've had the newest version of Live for about 5 to 6 months now and it is definitely a cool piece of software. I have not gotten into it as much as my other outboard and software components mainly because of its unique interface. There's just something about the program's interface that doesn't click with me. Maybe I'm just used to doing things the hard way, or that I havn't fully gotten comfortable with it's nuances.
But yeah, to me it's really dope for live* use, but for studio production, i'll stick to my other gems for the creation process.
Like some other heads previously said, it's all about the way you create. We all do it differently, so for some, Live is the all in one source, for others it's the mpc, for me it's all about the......
i just tried messing around with live on my laptop now. didnt really pay attention much to the sampler possibilites cus i fell in love with the way it handles vst plugins. loaded up a funk guitar loop and used amplitube on it. used that xy matrix thingy to control it. wahwah-position on x and delay-feedback on y, i thought i was hendrix for a sec! also tried to do some tape-echo fx using the xy matrix.. delaytime on x and feedback on y, but i didnt have any plugin that supported realtime delaytime change, it just sounded fucked up. you guys got any?
Comments
its so incrediblly easy to slave live to your MP... there is a bit of latency, but its kinda easy to fix.
as far as the bsides hate-down is concerned, i see where your coming from man. i love making music with spontenaety like the rest of them... but the best thing about live is that its easy to use and doesnt sacrifice its capabilities in being easy to use.
you can still make mistakes in live that end up changing the whole vibe of your song.
although i dont have an MPC...i like this angle. seems like everybodys looking for the easiest possible way to make music (the invention of time-stretch AT ALL comes to mind), and although in the end its the music itself that counts, it still really bothers me. not all people think like that though and im just saying what i think. sampling in general is obviously much easier than actually learning instruments, and the MPC (from what little experience ive had with one) is probably the closest thing to bridging that gap that there is.
however...
i use a computer, and really i wanna get something better than cooledit...is there a place where i can try out ableton live? can you get it for mac (not that i have one)?...it sounds good to me.
$400? also sounds good. website?
actually it sounds amazing. i want to try it now.
wow. maybe you should scratch everything i jsut said earlier. i want this program and i havent even looked at it yet.
sweet, ill have to check it out. is it fully functional, like a trial or something
this is essentially my impression, and thats kinda what i didnt like about the software. Like I said, I do own it, and I think its a cool little tool. I shouldnt have said toy i guess, but I mean in a live setting it could be a dope way to perform stuff using prerecorded material and still incorporate variations on the fly. I just think it falls short if you're looking at it as your primary tool to compose music.
Now, if you are using it as a DAW and recording live instruments and whatever, then thats something else. It is quite easy to use in that aspect. But something about dragging and dropping little sample loops together and having a program match them up for you doesnt qualify to me as making music.
Ive messed with Live 4 and I blatantly know there are alot of things u can do with that software that would b a real long process to do using hardware setups.
But the trick is not to get lost in all the options when working with software.
thats a pretty big can of worms that isnt necc. dependent to live. every midi/daw program has its quantized/pitchshift/soundreplacer function that has the ability to make shit to gold.
the reality is that you dont have to use those funtions. logic, DP, protools, neuendo.. and yes even live can work without this idiot proof way making music.
its a pretty slippery slope to start calling out on what can and cannot be qualified as making music. if you ask me.. i dont care if you how you make (or "not make") it... the importance is the quality of the sound and the song. that should take precident over everything.
(off my high horse)
i've had the newest version of Live for about 5 to 6 months now and it is definitely a cool piece of software. I have not gotten into it as much as my other outboard and software components mainly because of its unique interface. There's just something about the program's interface that doesn't click with me. Maybe I'm just used to doing things the hard way, or that I havn't fully gotten comfortable with it's nuances.
But yeah, to me it's really dope for live* use, but for studio production, i'll stick to my other gems for the creation process.
Like some other heads previously said, it's all about the way you create. We all do it differently, so for some, Live is the all in one source, for others it's the mpc, for me it's all about the......
recognize fools!