by djnarrative | 5 Apr, 2015 | Reckorder Tutorials
I meant to post this 12 months back but had major issues with my hosting. Now i'm on a different hosts here is a few tips from Resound on staying productive, and a wespin interview he did on the subject, and a nice debunking of marketing myths I also use the gtd methodology, coupled now with evernote via afterthebook.com and the pomodoro technique...
by djnarrative | 3 Jan, 2015 | Reckorder Tutorials
Regular readers will have seen a few posts from music software training which is a blog from Jason Ward aka Innerstate, and houses a load of useful tips. Here are a few posts on workflow which i think contain some nuggets to keep in mind My music making resolutions & the art of keeping them - http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com/blog/resolutions/ Are you a creative consumer or producer? - http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com/blog/are-you-a-creative-consumer-or-producer/ Creative procrastination - http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com/blog/creative-procrastination/ How to Stop your Social Media Addiction - http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com/blog/social-media-addiciton/ A minimalist approach to songwriting - http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com/blog/a-minimalist-approach- to-songwriting/ Put your Brain to work - http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com/blog/put-your-brain-to-work/ Organizing your presets, samples, songs & essential tools in Ableton Live...
by djnarrative | 26 Dec, 2014 | Reckorder Tutorials
Merry Xmas folks. Hope you are enjoying this festive time. Here is a great selection of tips to improve your workflow in Ableton Live here from talented producer AK - who produces quality content regular so definitely worth following via his facebook page. Table of Contents 1. Use unlinked clip envelopes for sound design 0:20 2. Place 3 identical LFOs in one rack for a quick mod source; slightly offset them 1:42 3. chop before duplicating 2:33 4. deactivate all resampled channels; bring in clips to write sequences 3:50 5. default audio track on 'resampling' 5:10 6. instrument racks + chain selector for morphing synths 5:40 7. sidechain as external input for envelope follower 6:57 8. OS level macros for repetitive keyboard presses 9:35 9. playback scrubber with a muted clip to find cool parts of a clip 10:52 10. warping with the BPM slider 13:13 11. perfect high/low split (using phase cancelation) 14:16 12. empty midi track for project organization 16:42 13. audio buffer rate and CPU resources (and you!) 17:37 14. cleaning up session clips to free resources 18:16 15. using folders named '--------' as dividers 18:43 16. audio follow is cool 19:06 17. recording against a loop forever 19:41 18. using a muted chopping block track that you can solo to find parts 20:53 19. duplicating effects in a row 22:18 20. slice to midi + randomizer + short midi clips + skrillex (or whatever) 23:23 Video 2 Table of Contents 1. Using automation AND modulation, together: 0:21 2. Using silent clips in a follow action block: 3:00 3. Record follow actions while changing timing intervals: 4:20 4. Default Templates... for days: 5:15 5. Random melody generator: 6:16 6. Looped playback scrubber for resampling: 9:07 7. Using Symbols in tracks names: 10:25 8. Muting things with...
by djnarrative | 22 Nov, 2014 | Reckorder Tutorials
Ive been on a huge organisational sweep recently - starting at the end of september and involving every single part of my setup. Halfway through said sweep my hard drive crashed - for the first time ever (of any computer) - and ironically the day after reading this article! It was my own fault - i was reading something on the hard drive - deleting something out the trash, moving something and then the computer stalled. After 3-5 mins of waiting i turned the macbook off by the power button and that was it. Had to buy new hard drives, couldnt recover the data - despite trying various software, and basically have been rebuilding ever since. This wasnt actually as bad as it sounds as i had a backup from a month before and was able to pretty much get back to where i was. Plus it encouraged me to do a fresh install and explore the things i wouldnt have looked at like cloning, and firewire hubs for my backup drives. Now i have a carbon copy cloned hard disk, 2 backup drives and everything is a lot more organised. Time it has taken though, but i feel a lot more setup and secure which was something i didnt know how to address before. The only thing i want to add to the excellent article by resound is using free file sync to backup externals (i dont use cloud backup and have 2 externals which are synced and used for video work now with firewire hub). And the replacement drives i bought are toshiba 1TB 5400 rpm sshd...
by djnarrative | 15 Aug, 2014 | Reckorder Tutorials
Old video but contains some decent advice i found useful when first watching it from Vespers, so thought id post it...
by djnarrative | 8 May, 2014 | Reckorder Tutorials
Nice couple of posts here from Music Software training which talks about allowing yourself to fail and getting out of your own way. http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com/blog/improving-music-results-by-getting-out-of-your-own-way/...
by djnarrative | 6 Feb, 2014 | Reckorder Tutorials
Nice little video from The Dj Podcast sharing some useful keyboard shortcuts to help speed up your workflow >
by djnarrative | 22 Dec, 2013 | Reckorder Tutorials
I mentioned a couple of years back one of the most useful online courses i'd found, which was called the Ill Methodology by Ill Gates. Have been hoping he'd release another one and yesterday he did just that. ill.METHODOLOGY Workshop 2 Chapter 1 from illiam b gates on Vimeo. The expanded workflow course looks to go into some of the more studio based aspects of the Ill Methodology, and from the first video and the overview looks as good as the last one. Both courses are well priced at just under 50 dollars and i'll update the post when i've had the opportunity to go through it. Suffice to say im really looking forward to finishing my current projects and getting into these courses. The first one really did change the game for me, and it's a nice synchronicity that some of the key approaches were instrumental in getting my worklow together in building up to my first release, which came out...
by djnarrative | 3 Jun, 2011 | Reckorder Tutorials
Recently I've spent weeks going through each of my samples in order to create a database that i could really use. For too long my ever growing sample library was becoming increasngly more of a hindrance to the workflow having to listen to too many samples and found i tended to go to the same sounds for e.g kicks, as there was so many to look through, despite being in their in their own "Kicks" folder) On retrospect i think the reason was the time it would take to listen to them all and because i was still building the library and didn't know how the sounds compared with each other. Now though, having 200 high quality kick drums as opposed to 3000 kick drums is a big step forward for my workflow and made a massive difference to my music making (and workshops) so i thought i'd share my own method and couple of tools that can help organise large sample libraries. The first thing is that i have always used is to create a folder structure and then browse within the DAW. The structure has gone through many revisions but the current one is working really nicely and well worth the time investment. I think its the one i'll be sticking with and while its based around my own sample collection it may provide a solid starting point for anyone looking to create their own. So after much time and consideration my folder structure looks something like this. Bass / Loops folder - Samples folder Drum Hits / Broken down into different percussion folders Drum Loops / Broken down into...
by djnarrative | 5 Apr, 2011 | Reckorder Tutorials
So our first studio session of 2011 was with the hugely talented Mike Freear of Alphadrive fame and was a thoroughly enjoyable and very productive few weeks in the studio which resulted in the aforementioned Slamboree. Things are looking like they will be getting increasingly more hectic in pushing forward with Slambo, but i wanted to drop a short post about a few of the things i learnt in the studio as this was one of the main ideas for the site and initial reckorder project. As i mentioned in first slamboree post - the music and set came together incredibly quickly within the first 3 days and that was largely a result from using existing material, working creatively with loop manipulation, and having a set goal to make tracks that could be adapt to live musicians with minimal rehearsal. Our 2 ways of working were really different with Mike on a laptop and acid pro and me on a ableton with various midi controllers. I'd also been getting heavily into sound design and synthesis and Mike was a ninja at manipulating loops. Regardless of the difference of approach the first thing that was essential to workflow was to : Maintain a well organised library This seems like such an obvious thing to say, but its amazing how out of control and therefore unusable libraries can become. Like a well groomed music collection, It can take days or even weeks of listening, naming and editing samples, sounds and patches, and getting rid of all the sounds that just aren't up to scratch for whatever reason. Both of us have...
