#ableton link

Groovebox: Σχεδίασε γρήγορα τις μουσικές ιδέες εν κινήσει More: https://hqm.gr/groovebox-a-beats-synths-studio

Το Groovebox είναι μια δωρεάν studio εφαρμογή "Όλα σε 1" για το iPhone και το iPad και μόλις κυκλοφόρησε.

One can never have too many Gadgets! =D

The QUT music production students involved, James Day, Moss McGregor, Will Briskey, Brad Columbine, Sam Bennett, James Gatling, Jorell Villanueva and Ben Goulter all contributed significantly to the project and I thank them for their hard work and dedication.  As a part of my role as music production co-ordinator at QUT, I work on creating projects and activities that try and mirror real world environments.  This wasn’t necessarily a real world environment, as I’m unaware of any recording project that has worked quite like Flow did.  However, the pressure, along with the communication skills and technical efficiency required to keep track of several ensembles (often made up of inexperienced high school students), the tempo changes throughout the day and the recording and editing, on the fly, of excerpts from each session, necessitated a high degree of focus and technical know-how from everyone involved.

In essence, the project was a cross between a recording session and a live performance.  It was a live performance of a series of recording sessions, with the added complexity of synchronising and connecting several disparate spaces together.  As well as a learning experience for the students, my intention was to make it a learning experience for the audience; to deconstruct and demystify the music production process and show an audience how a piece is made up of a sum of component parts.  We also gave them agency over altering several of these components, via intuitive touchscreen-based drum machines and pattern sequencers.  While the proliferation of such apps has allowed more people to access electronic music production tools than ever before, technical complexities associated with modern music production practice still seem to intimidate many young musicians.  Ableton, with Link, have done wonders in allowing cheap, accessible and intuitive apps to seamlessly integrate with their more comprehensive computer-based DAW.

Flow attempted to place the creation of music through iOS apps into a broader studio context, breaking down the wall between professional and consumer music production technologies and techniques.  

Flow was a collaboration between staff and students from QUT’s music program.  Final year production students were tasked with running the project on the day, as I was occupied downstairs performing on the Garden of Minuscule Delights show.  The concept behind this project was the idea of making the flow of music and sound analogous to the flow of water.

From the outset I wanted to see if Ableton’s Link technology could be used on a large scale event.  Link is amazing.  Whoever came up with the concept was having a really good day in the office.  Unlike previous iterations of sync, wireless or otherwise, there is no master/slave arrangement.  Instead all devices lock to a single clock.  If one device changes this clock, all others change with it. This meant we could have:

Two large control rooms with large format analogue consoles recording microphone captured material from four live rooms.  We also captured performances from Indian group Filter Coffee via a skype connection in one of these control rooms.

Four iPad apps running Patterning, Fugue Machine, TriqTraq and Borderlands, with the first three apps wirelessly synced to Link. Patterning and TriqTraqs provided rhythmic material, with Fugue Machine responsible for all the sequenced synthesised sound.  We sampled various water sounds, and then placed them in Borderlands, a granular sampler, for textural atmospheric sounds.

A Make Noise Shared system.  We clocked this modular synth system off a metronome output fed from an iPhone connected to the Link network and running Maschine Jam. Not perfect, but it worked and kept the Rene sequencer in time with the rest of the building.

These eight elements (2 x mono feeds from each control room capturing live material and 4 x mono iPad feeds) then fed into our SSL AWS desk on the other side of the studio complex.  We took direct outs from each of the channels and daisy-chained a series of small format desks in the large live space.  Audience members could then put on a pair of headphones and individually re-balance and create their own unique mix of the current state of Flow.

We used a hidden, password protected network that used the existing QUT network infrastructure to run Link.  This prevented any member of the public from joining the session and being able to change the tempo.  Early tests with ad-hoc networks demonstrated the difficulty in running wireless sync over a large distance and through concrete walls, but the custom network in place worked flawlessly throughout the day.

Each of the two main recording rooms had an Ableton template set up.  This allowed students to capture long recordings on one track, and then edit, trim and warp them into time, process them with effects (e.g. reverbs, delays, EQs, pitch shifting, etc.)  and create a series of clips that could then be sent downstream to the final workstation room.

A student in each of the two control rooms was responsible for capturing performances, communicating with the performer or conductor and ultimately deciding which recordings were then processed and looped before being sent downstream.  Each performance group was able to play through a few times or, if they were improvising, spend a little time working on ideas.  It was the job of the production student to maintain communication and let them know when they were being recorded, and how long they were going to be recorded for.  The performances hinged on people feeling comfortable, and knowing when they’re being recorded.  Groups were giving headphones with rhythmic loops to perform to; we felt this would work better than a simple click track. 

Once a loop had been captured, this process repeated.  This maintained variety throughout the day; if you were to visit the room three times during the eight hours it ran, you were likely to hear quite different material each time.  Students could send a captured loop downstream, while then working on additional loops.  I call them loops, but this meant any piece of musical material that was captured so that it could be repeated.  It may have been two simple guitar chords, a reversed piano note, a full choir droning for two minutes, whatever.  The operator needed to be making musical decisions based on the material they were being provided with.  This also meant that the output being sent to the final workstations could change even when the audience group were in the final room, with each room’s operator moving between different Ableton clips, made up of these newly recorded loops.  This created more movement in, what was otherwise, quite a static overall piece.

The video below is a walk-through of the event, demonstrating the live rooms, iPad room and final workstation room.  There’s also a video demonstrating tempo changes on an iPhone that would change the tempo on all Link-enabled devices (3 x Ableton workstations and 3 x iPads) across the entire floor.

Propellerheads Figure Ableton LINK finally and I am super excited! At last we can now sync Figure to any app or software via Ableton LINK. Woo HAH got you all in sync!

GET FIGURE ►https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/figure-make-music-beats-collaborate/id511269223?mt=8&uo=8&at=1l3voJz

JAKOB ALLIHOOPA ►https://allihoopa.com/Foona

Audiobus Ableton Link integration – I find there is nothing to complain about when I am getting paid to do what I love doing. I was hired by Audiobus to communicate what Ableton Link integration means for Audiobus, and how to use it!