by djnarrative | 16 Dec, 2012 | The Reckorder Project
A few years back i found an awesome piece of software called Native Kontrol. It enables you to control ableton with a range of midi controllers and adds a whole host of really useful tools to your arsenal. The main reason for getting this £20 piece of software was so that i could play drum racks with my new launchpad, but that is one of many features, and they're all expertly described in these three short videos from Stray. It took me a good while to get used to them, and i had to make my own overlay for the ableton functions as theres so much you can do, but once i got my head around it, it made real improvements to my workflow and made it a lot more fun as i didnt have to use the mouse. The main things i turn to for it are mpc style triggering in clip mode, working with the scale mode, and step sequencer, and controlling ableton. I had to revisit it to refresh and one of the things that i didnt understand was the scale editor on the step sequencer. After playing around with it and a few support emails (Stray's support is awesome) i realised that the 40 or so scales arent replicated in step sequencer, but you can make a major or minor scale and then program your arpeggios within that scale, which has created really different styles compared to playing them in on the keys. It led me to investigate scales, keys, and the circle of fifths, which i'll stick in a seperate blog post. I highly...
