Chris

thanks mate! I need to bone up on genres again I think, it's all a bit blurry to me at the moment!

A bit embarrassing - I have already broken my resolution for a multiple track practice tape a month because I'm never going to finish this one tonight! I was happy to get the first one out but I really wanted to get actual honest-to-goodness-beginning-to-end songs out this month, and by the time I'd shortlisted some ideas into a 'make these' category I hadn't given myself enough time to finish them all. I figured rather than half-arsing all of them I'd do one and then make a beat tape as well, but the tape will have to be tomorrow unfortunately I'm happy that this one has a proper structure and that it sounds better than the stuff from last month, and whilst both could do with substantial improvement that's what the rest of the year's for! Interested in what you think, and also what general genre category you'd lump this into...?

I have tried a teeeeeny bit with looping, but only Traktor and ableton based. The advantage is you can have a properly synced loop right from empty and have a click track in there too. Actually that's a thought - perhaps recording a loop to a cue tracks timing will help you ensure you get the perfect loop. I've never used a boss pedal, that non perfect timing sounds like a bitch.... the advantage with Traktor and ableton is that the signal is midi so it's immediate. There are plenty of disadvantages with being computer based tho I guess, but if you use Traktor for DVs then a Traktor loop setup could be a very interesting way of doing things..?

Ditto. This was crazy

That was reallllly nice 👌

If for any reason the dmc world champion can't persuade you, my vote is also the Stanton str8-150. I have to admit the 2.5ish torque of the Vestax and the midi appeal of certain decks appeals to me, but flat out great DJ deck goes to the str8-150.

Not as tasty as a dickie

All this push and pull! I can tell you're warming up to me 😘

SOMEBODY HELP!!!!!

Nice! I like the foot pedal note control. 👊

Yes I'm being deadly serious! Look at my serious face! 😐 How could I not be grown up looking that serious and being that serious about things! Seriously! 😐 I mean come on, that's a serious look. A grown up, serious look. It's important. Seriously important. 😐

That's awesome, cheers deft!

Thanks psychedelic and jb! Means a lot!

First time you save a project, type in a name. Done. After that you can save on the unit. I didn't realise we were being quite that pedantic to be honest!

Thanks Jon 👊

Yeah maschine is great - and I barely ever use keyboard and mouse either. I wouldn't say you need them at all in fact if you're using maschine for the same things an mpc does!

Sounds good freshcuts, post a link!

My process takes various different forms, I've not been super involved for quite a while but these have been some of the usual ways I'd do something Get some new vinyl, load up maschine and listen, if there's something that grabs me sample it in, chop it up and figure out a tempo and a pattern, then add drums, bass, sfx Load an electric piano on ableton and play some chord loops in, then add drums and bass If I'm doing something more dancy, often I'll start with drums and then pull up a synth and try and get the most simple hook in. Invariably at this point with all those methods I start something else. Creating something new is addictive, but I've traditionally struggled with the discipline to actually arrange and finish a track. When I do though, I drag stuff from session to arrange view in ableton, or as audio out of maschine into ableton, and start putting things together. I quite often set up the basic processing chain up right away so that I get some thickness as it keeps me interested - channel eq and compression and a master compressor perhaps. Ive cursed myself with too much equipment and too much software in the past, and now I'm running much leaner - push2 is going to more or less replace maschine for me I think, although the pad size isn't as nice. I have a komplete kontrol s61, and I use ableton and komplete 11 ultimate and that's more or less it. Oh, i got uhe satin, the tape sim and I have perhaps one or two other things I quite fancy. There's way too much stuff in komplete though, so my next hurdle is organising proper user libraries in both komplete and ableton so that I can come away from the preset scrolling mentality that I absolutely never used to do but has completely taken over me - I think not having a single synth or whatever so that dials are all over the place and creating your own patches or at least tweaking something isn't intuitive is often a detriment...

Cheers Phology and Darcy! I think the mentality of pushing harder than 'feels' reasonable is the only way forward with a lot of stuff - I guess if you're framing your goals in terms of what you can already do then youre not pushing yourself to progress beyond it... or something. Excellent tip Sy. I might get one of those 'you're listening to' v/o s done ironically by a drive time radio voice artist as well, I think they're pretty hip.

Mine go back to the charity shop when i run out of space or get round to it. I tend to keep everything I've sampled, though...

Thanks gents, I really appreciate it! Pete - I'll post in the process thread in detail when I get a sec. this one has been a scrappy mess of pulling audio in from maschine patterns, bussed ableton patterns, salvaging an mpc loop in one instance... then importing into Traktor and messing with pitch and eq of finished tracks and recording semi live. generally I used to have a fairly solid workflow and one thing I need to do if I'm going to complete something monthly is get things in order!

Ah yes, they changed how this worked and I can't remember off the top of my head how to do it. I'll have a look when I get a chance if nobody's solved it, I think rockwells suggestion of 'apply to' a new group is potentially on the money...

I decided in the first week of January that either I start making music again or I stop properly, because that uncomfortable feeling of unfulfilment from not doing something you tell yourself is a part of you was starting to get to really get to me... So I decided to set myself a bit of a challenge, and I'm going to make some kind of 'thing' every month this year - whether it's an album, ep, beat tape, live performance, whatever. Not just 'a song', though. The point, I think(? I'm not sure myself) is to set an unrealistic goal and improve by failing. This month has definitely felt like exercising after a long period of sitting on my arse: painful and tiring and difficult, but not without satisfaction of having actually done it and looking forward to doing better next time..! The main failure this month, apart from missing my own deadline by a few hours, is sound quality - it's truly awful. I'm hoping next month I'll be able to improve on this by being more mindful of what I'm doing as I'm doing it. If nothing else this has really made me realise how long it's been since I actually finished anything, and how slack those muscles get when you don't actually have a finished product in mind. Other than that it's a bit higgledypiggeldy, I had a bit more of a flow in mind but I ran out of time. Anyway here it is, let me know what you think if you listen! Month 1: Month 2:

It's possible you're on power saving mode in energy saving preferences?