Sunday, 2 August 2009

Behind the Scenes - My Studio Setup


Hi guys,

My set up is on a mac with a padkontrol (running farmpad) an APC40 and bomes and lucifer vst....

Anyone else got a similar set-up?

So far i've remapped all of the scene launch buttons to either glitch the audio (like steven vankoffs video) or whilst shift is pressed to choose the launch quantization and then visually display with a lit button what state it's in....

The track selection buttons light up in sequence and allow beat mashing as they allow you to jump (as long as the button is held down) to each individual beat in a 2 bar sequence....

I have all 8 tracks summed to either a A or B track which contains all of my effects and some loopers, when pressing shift and track select one it fires a looper to record then play a 1 bar loop, 2 = 2 bar, 3 = 4 bar and 4 halves the loop.....

To show that the loopers are in action i've used the clip grid buttons, when recording a beat the pad flashes red and when recorded it stays solid red, when the beat is playing the button changes to green, as such you see how long the looper has recorded (up to the first two rows) and where in the loop it's currently playing... When you halve the loop the clip grid changes to represent the new size of the loop being played until eventually you are down to one rapidly flashing green/red button.......

Because this colouring may stop you seeing which clip is actively being played i've programmed it so that the clip stop button lights up oif there is a clip playing in that channel, pressing stop obviously still stops the clip but when shift is held down at the same time it plays the clip last played from the beginning (this is very useful when your trying to play other clips that aren't included in the same red box!)

Activator switches are now hard mapped to select the first rack in each channel, I'm using a rack per track that includes Tarekiths 4 knob eq along the bottom (the allen and Heath emulating one) knobs and then on knob one i've got the twister filter, phaser on two, fade to redux on three and a gain with a compressor so that it doesn't get out of control on 4.....

When when shift is pressed with an activator switch it reverts the controls in that track's rack back to their original state, eg. at full for the eq'ing controls at half for the twister filter controls and at zero for the phaser, fade to redux and gain controls.... This means at the start of a set i can quickly reset all controls back to zero and when playing can bring the track that's been filtered and eqed out of a mix back in bang on a beat.....

solo cue switches do as advertised but with shift pressed they select the clip playing in the track rather than the clip that's highlighted..... I currently split all my tracks up into sections and pre-prepare my loops but i'm sure someone else who plays whole tracks would be able to use this function to implement some in clip looping functionality....

Finally the Track arm buttons are mapped to light up when the track is routed into A or unlit if going to B, i've got A and B mapped to the crossfader as well as i find it hard to give up my old habits! I'm probably going to add a shift function to these buttons to be a quick stab on a send that's got a ping pong and distorting effect rack in it to get some crashes going in sync with the audio......

I've not really touched the buttons on the right hand side of the APC yet (bar the shift button) so has anyone else got any ideas for what i might use these for?

I'll try and record a little video later to show what i mean but for now i'm really missing a tape stop effect that i want to map to the stop all clips button!! Mac anyone???

Cheers
D

EDIT: Video now online!

MY STUDIO SETUP VIDEO

ps feedback always helps!

posse

102 comments:

deeflash said...
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Darren said...

No worries man, got a few other requests so gonna do some last minute tidying up and get it out to everyone that asks in the next few days! Thanks for the feedback it's much appreciated!

Cheers
D

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ToToM said...

Nice video, I'd be interested by the presets as I'm planning to buy an APC40 as soon as I've got the money.

¯`·.¸.×±ËÑ Ð©×.¸.·´¯ said...
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MM said...

Darren,

a quick question from a PC user, what exactly are you using the farmpad for (are you using a padkntrol?). I know you mentioned something about sysex messages - just want to understand its role in your setup. Thanks again!

Darren said...

The track is by SebastiAn called Motor (TUNE!)...

Farmpad puts the padKontrol into Native Mode whereby every pad, switch and button outputs midi data which can be programmed by using a config file, it's been a staple of my setup since i first downloaded it and led to me learning Bomes indirectly when i wanted the same control with other controllers...

Those who've left me an email should have had one back, thanks for coming over, much easier for me if your all in one place!

Cheers
D

Darren said...

The track is by SebastiAn called Motor (TUNE!)...

Farmpad puts the padKontrol into Native Mode whereby every pad, switch and button outputs midi data which can be programmed by using a config file, it's been a staple of my setup since i first downloaded it and led to me learning Bomes indirectly when i wanted the same control with other controllers...

Those who've left me an email should have had one back, thanks for coming over, much easier for me if your all in one place!

Cheers
D

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Ronald said...
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TiGiD said...

(tune)Thankz, for the reply. I found SebastiAn - Motor but it's not the same track. Is this a remix?

Great setup btw. Think I'll wait for m4l to my own setup with the apc40.

Darren said...

Hi man,

I think it's the Motor One remix, can't check until i get home though....

I'm sure i'll be MAx4Living as well but i just couldn't wait until then without any firm dates on either the beta or launch it could be a year and i'm already restless in wanting to change things....

Cheers
D

dstroud said...

Hi Darren,

Apologies if this is answered elsewhere, but do you have to change the Live MIDI prefs to route to an alternate "virtual" MIDI port for incoming or outgoing data? I have a simple MidiPipe patch to change the colors of the clip-launch pads that requires that I send the outgoing MIDI data from Live to a virtual MIDI port, for example.

I ask because this is no longer an option in Live 8.0.5beta 4 and higher. Perhaps Bourne's has the ability to "swallow" unused MIDI data and then send modified data out on the same default MIDI port?

For more info on this, you can check out the Ableton forums: http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=121477&p=956283#p956283

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