ZW Buckley runs a fantastic channel and I’ve learnt a lot from this chap over time. I have to say this video opened my mind up to a whole load of ideas and that I’ve been using this method - sort of. Not to is fullest potential though.
I never properly understood the meaning of the different signal flow modes. Anyway the idea of using a single MIDI clip with just four notes to generate a beautifully deep beat, was kind of obvious, a classic, “Oh yeah! That makes sense now!” moment.
I’m going to share quite a few of these technique videos on this community because if I found them useful, I hope others will too.
Plus watch out, I’ll demonstrate this method in one of my next videos.
Each track in Ableton Live has a Midi routing setting, you can choose to receive MIDI from any connected instrument or any of the other tracks in your project. The monitoring option is what confused me for ages as you’ve a choice of In, Auto or Off. Auto is the default and is reliant on tracks being armed in order to allow signal to pass to the main recording bus. “In” on the other hand allows signal to flow, so in other words if you are feeding the MIDI signal in from track 1 to 2, 3 and 4 for example you’ll hear the output of them all. I don’t think you need to arm any of the tracks.
This means you can have different instruments on each track, that could be Ableton software devices or external hardware instruments with different characteristics. One track might receive the four basic MIDI notes and convert them into chords, another might arpeggiate them, then the last might use the notes to trigger different samples in a drum rack.
I’ll do a video of my own, writing the above had “given me ideas”
Have a great weekend and keep on geeking!
Most people jumping into music production won't have a clue about things like this. I used to teach stuff like this at Apple for Logic Pro X and a certified training engineer. But when I was learning, back when I was on Ableton, we didn't have awesome video tutorials like this, so people wanting to learn DAWs, we were basically just all learning as we went and teaching each other. That's why you see a bunch of EDM 'collaborations'. LOL... Basically a few dudes in someone's bedroom trying to figure out how to produce and come up with something together, lol.
Exactly! We are spoilt these days, we really are. Hope you’re doing well mate?
But it took those of use doing it in the early days to pioneer what it has become, and unfortunately, I am not a fan of how things have gone, but is what it is, lol.
And I am doing good my good dude. Thanks for asking. Hope you are as well.
I’m very well thanks
I've not done much with MIDI, but I expect other apps can do similar things. I need to get back into Ardour on Linux. I know they added stuff to loop samples so it may do MIDI too. You need to use these features as you learn about them really.
That’s the thing, never shy away from those features because gaining an understanding of them really changes your workflow beyond all expectations.