Celemony Releases Melodyne Editor

After a year of waiting I got an email this morning that Celemony released Melodyne Editor to the public today! If you are not familiar with Melodyne, you should be. And the new “Editor” takes things to a whole new level!

I am working on a “first impressions” review of Apple Logic later today and will shortly do the same for Melodyne Editor. Be on the watch. Until then, behold all that is Melodyne Editor:

Free Ableton Live Packs

If you are not subscribed to puremagnetik.com already… you need to be. Every month they roll out a new sound set (instruments, loops, presets, etc) for Ableton and Logic. There have been a couple let downs, but for the most part these guys hit it straight on the head!

A great way to see what Puremagnetik is all about is their free packs. They just released a couple new artist packs you can download here.

Most recently addition to the free artist packs is:

MtTP Guitar – offers two variations on a multitimbral tuned percussion instrument inspired by the acoustic-piano preparations of John Cage.

Format: ALP
System Requirements: Ableton Live 8

The Current Set Up

Macbook Pro 13″ 2.26GHz

Ableton Live 7

Reason 4

Logic Studio 2

Pro Tools 7.4

‘Ol Faithful Trigger Finger

X-board25 (Small Keys MIDI Controller )

M-Audio 1814 Interface

SSL XLogic Channel Strip (What I run all my real instruments through)

Ultimate Ears IEM’s

Barron Youn “Ability” Footcontroller

Great Article on Worship & The Visitor

I read a great article this morning By Gerrit Gustafson on the Catalyst Space blog. It’s worth the couple minutes to read. The part that jumped out at me was;

“We shouldn’t assume that the visitor is incapable of apprehending spiritual phenomenon.  After all, each one is made in the image of God, and, as Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, He has “set eternity in the hearts of men.”  The worship experience corresponds to that universal “itch.”  That explains the finding of the largest study of American congregational life ever undertaken — the FACT report conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research: “vibrant worship is at the heart of church growth.”

I’ve been wrestling with the concept and idea of “vibrant worship” all day. How would you define “vibrant?”

Read the article here: http://www.catalystspace.com/content/read/worship_the_visitor/

Coming Back

I am making a venture back into the world of consistent blogging you could say. I started this blog a couple years ago to help other worship leaders see how I was using Ableton Live in worship.

After spending time working on a couple other blogs and creative ideas… I have decided to return to my roots and expand the digitalworship blog… once again with my musings on Ableton Live and now so much more!

So be on the look out…

Baron Youn Customworks “ability” Midi Foot Controller

The newest addition to my habit. I have been on the search for a midi foot controller that 1) wasnt huge like the Berhinger FCB1010 and 2) and was reasonable in cost. Designed from the ground up for Ableton Live, this foot controller is exactly what I was looking for. Baron is a killer designer! I’d recomend the pedal for sure.

Optimize Your Computer For Ableton and Running Audio Out

In advance, I’m strictly a mac guy so this is mainly for people running on a mac. I assume though these apply to PC somehow…

1. Turn off time sensitive functions such as screen savers, sleep mode, changing desktop backgrounds automatically ever 30 minutes (or what ever you have yours set to), software update, etc. As I am typing it hit me you could program a automator script or apple script to disable these features and also re-enable them when your not doing audio stuff… mmmm, anyone good at programing those?

2. Turn off airpor when running albeton

3. Disable/turn off dashboard. big one here. (here is a good article on how to do this )

4. Run your sets off an external hard drive… needs to have 8MB Buffer, and 7200 RPM – this is a BIG one!

5. Minimize the use of other programs while running abelton

And there you go… couple get ya started tips on optimizing your mac for ableton/audio.

Ableton Live and Reason

In the begining… well… I really wasnt a fan of Reason… mainly cause of its price tag. I saw no reason to shell out the cash when ableton could do everything reason could (if you know how to use ableton that is) and a whole heck of a lot more.

But in recent days (thanks to a friend who hooked me up with Reason for a stupid price), I have been experimenting with how the two programs interface. Rather than me ramble on about this, Ableton has a great article with some of the high points… feel free to check it out.

CLICK HERE TO READ

Using a Trigger Finger with Ableton Live

I’ve been hit up a couple times and it seems I notice on the back end of this blog people who land her are looking for how to set up M-Audio’s Trigger Finger in Ableton Live.

Here are a couple quick tips…

1. The trigger finger ships with its preset of Ableton Live as P10. Access this by pressing Memory/Recall and then p10.

2. Use the Midi map function to map specific pads and faders to ableton clips, effects, etc.

3. The Ctrl/Note Mute Button changes the message sent… if you need it to be note on/off or just controller message… this applies to the rotary and faders mostly.

Once you get it hooked up and your sure that your computer (hopefully a mac, haha) is receiving messages then load up preset P10 and map away.

Happy Triggering.

Ableton Live in Worship (Part 7 – Changing Time Signatures In A Set!!!)

A problem I have run into during sets is needing to change the time signature between songs. Mainly this is for the click track. Now you could just record your own click and route it just like you would any other track (which still has transition problems of its own), but I still am amazed that Ableton hasnt created a feature similar to the their BPM title function that allows you to change tempos between master slots by simply renaming that master clip 100BPM (or what ever the tempo just replace the number). The only way to accomplish this (that I know of) is to manually reach over and type in the new time signature via you laptop keyboard. This can be pretty annoying! I’ve talked with Ableton and they say this is an issue they are addressing in future releases, but nothing for the time being… well… here is my fix (with its own drawbacks)…

Change the sound of Lives built in metronome. Instead of an accent on the downbeat, have a static click sound (the same tone each click). By doing this you can transition between songs and as long as your BPM is set you wont need to change time sig’s. OK, and now for the DISCLAIMER – this really is only useful with the “play along” method I have mentioned before. If you are triggering clips on the fly in a set (see previous posts on how to do this) your “1 bar” (or how ever many you have your grace period set to) is thinking in terms of that actual time signature you have set. See the problem? So this really, as far as I know, is only useful if you are using live to compliment and existing layout of a song (meaning you dont change the way you play it).

How do you change that sound? Here ya go (thanks to some friends on the Ableton forum):

To find them on your Mac…
1. Right-Click (option click) on Live.app
2. Show Package Contents

3. Contents
4. App-Resources
5. Misc
You will see two files of interest… “Metronome.wav” and “MetronomeUp.wav”

Rename your “MetronomeUp.wav” to “MetronomeUpBackup.wav” (so you keep that file if you want to change it back). Next copy the “Metronome.wav” and paste it to your desktop. Change its name to “MetronomeUp.wav” and move it back into “Misc” folder you just copied it from. Whaaa-La. Now your click will be a static sound.

If you want to change it back simply delete the file you created and rename the backup file to its original file name.

And that is how you change time signatures in a set. Pretty simple eh?

** Check out previous “Ableton Live In Worship” posts for certain techniques mentioned above.