|  | 
        
         |  | 
        
         |  Hyperflake
             from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-12 21:37 [#02507524] Points: 31541 Status: Lurker
 | 
| 
     
 
 | i had no idea 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:47 [#02507539] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | simultaneously sad and hilarious that this reads exactly like the history of anyone else into this stuff. i'll use my
 own for the sake of example: i was a rather ham-fisted
 keyboard player and being able to play back things on the
 computer immediately made a huge difference. i hated
 notation, though, and so i switched from performer to
 cakewalk to fruity loops but when i tried to load up the
 piano roll in cakewalk the software would crash, it was
 really irritating
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:49 [#02507540] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | last i left software music, i wanted so much to have ableton's "performance" view carefully extracted and glued
 into cubase so i could have the whambam that ableton does
 with non-linear editing usable by someone not on cocaine.
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  Hyperflake
             from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 00:52 [#02507541] Points: 31541 Status: Lurker
 | 
| 
     
 
 | yeah your right, 
 whats great also is that infocom call him on the phone mid
 interview
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  Hyperflake
             from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 00:53 [#02507542] Points: 31541 Status: Lurker
 | 
| 
     
 
 | is albeton anygood, it looks like something that people who are interested in music would use but without going the full
 hog
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:55 [#02507543] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | ...and, yes, i did try using ReWire for that, but the program crashes if you try to use that part of it. that's
 the kind of program it is at the moment, but i don't want to
 do them down, because i know that it's in a fever of
 re-writing, and they keep on sending out newer and newer
 versions to the IRC XDCC bots in #musicwarez
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:58 [#02507544] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | imagine a hyperactive, nerdy teenage kid who spends his lunch break in guitar center discovering it was possible to
 download synths off the internet. it was so cruel to me that
 the Access Virus was available as a plugin, but it was TDM
 and hardware-only.... i think there's also a Propet VS
 TDM.... dicks
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:59 [#02507545] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | so, sorry, i'm not sure what you mean by "but without going the full hog"
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  Hyperflake
             from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 01:00 [#02507546] Points: 31541 Status: Lurker | Followup to EpicMegatrax: #02507545
 | 
| 
     
 
 | sorry yeah what i mean is it looks user friendly, too user friendly sort of
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 01:01 [#02507547] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | if you'll compromise and hear of a terrifying machine that consumes hogs by the truckload, however, i'm your man
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  Hyperflake
             from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 01:04 [#02507548] Points: 31541 Status: Lurker
 | 
| 
     
 
 | idiom 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 01:05 [#02507549] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | ableton live is aptly named. it's not called ableton edit. it's good for live midi routing, audio mashing/stretching,
 loop munging. it's what you want on the other end of your
 8x8 grid of square buttons as you do your daedaelest on
 cocaine. that's the view in ableton with all the tracks
 going vertical.
 
 press tab, and you go over to the "arrangement view." this
 is pretty much designed so you can chop up stuff and drag it
 around live, on stage, also on cocaine.
 
 anyways, the "performance view" is great fun to riff around
 with. once you get to know it, it's a faster way of doing
 many things. faster than any other bit of software i have...
 then, though, i want to take a live jam that's vaguely what
 i want and carefully edit down the mess into what i actually
 want. the "arrangement view" is not designed for this.
 cubase is. the two pieces of 'ware should talk, but don't.
 the program crashes if i try to use that part of it
 
 is it what you want? i dunno. torrent it and find out. or
 maybe bitwig studio. anyone tried that? does it program
 crash?
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  Hyperflake
             from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 01:06 [#02507550] Points: 31541 Status: Lurker
 | 
| 
     
 
 | ah yeah, this is what i thought it was for,  tanks for description
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 02:40 [#02507562] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | whenever i type up something like that it loads the nuances into my mind and the nuances generate nuances. peter
 molyneux as a funcional concept generator... just, you know,
 remember to get out before it expands to the whole stack and
 your thread segfaults.
 
 point being: this is one of those fractal patterns. the
 journey and roadblocks "douglad adams" describes are just
 uncannily similar to my own story. probably similar to the
 story of anyone who's into synths 'n seqs. adams was doing
 this stuff ten years before me, and it feels like fill in
 the blank. the problems, his solutions. one software has
 this, the other has that... they should work together,
 but...
 
 it gets even crazier. i started on digital performer, which
 is what adams landed on... and then i switched to cakewalk,
 but left that because i hated staff notation; preferred
 piano roll....
 
 it gives me this sense that i could sit down and explicitly
 chart all of it out and find out where one is apt to get
 stuck in a loop of technical goulash and lose sight of the
 music, so to speak.
 
 it is very reminiscent of that thing where you wind up
 fiddling with the same two-bar loop for four hours straight.
 
 
 vibert said, in some interview, he's seen aphex get stuck in
 that same loop himself. it's one of those things that's
 simply human nature -- we all have moments when we get so
 lasered in on what we're doing that we lose perspective.
 
 chris vrenna said he has approximately 37 different kinds of
 distortion and he avoids fussing over the nuances because
 it'd drive him insane and he'd never get the real work
 done... the overabundance of options makes it easy to get
 lost.
 
 so, yes, there's a really deep and satisfying moment of,
 "huh... i could probably flowchart this all out and debug
 it..." and i love the sound of my fingers typing; my
 pleasure to reply
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 02:45 [#02507563] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | so, yes: dear douglad adams. younger, backwards in time. less dead. you should ditch digital performer for cakewalk,
 because it will do the things you want without program
 crashing.
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 02:46 [#02507564] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | only after i post the above does it dawn on me that "cakewalk" is also a carnival game that involves walking in
 a loop. to music. rad.
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  steve mcqueen
             from caerdydd (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-14 20:23 [#02507599] Points: 6639 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | how the fuck is notation related to anything pretty certain stepsequencers were the reason for all that
 mental music we all listen to!!
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  steve mcqueen
             from caerdydd (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-14 20:23 [#02507600] Points: 6639 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | Wkd link cheers Hyperflake 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  steve mcqueen
             from caerdydd (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-14 20:32 [#02507601] Points: 6639 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | dear younger Douglad, don't get on that fuckin treadmill 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-15 03:04 [#02507615] Points: 25602 Status: Regular | Followup to steve mcqueen: #02507599
 | 
| 
     
 
 | douglad adams stated that he felt most comfortable sequencing with classical notation -- staff notation.
 
 i stated that i found "staff notation" suffocating and the
 "piano roll" style was what i wanted.
 
 completely opposite preferences, yes? then this: i dumped
 cakewalk as a sequencer because it was geared towards "staff
 notation."
 
 then the familiar grind: digital performer? cakewalk? pro
 tools? renoise? cubase? all of them have slightly different
 angles. different features and problems. anyone getting into
 electronic music production has to wade through this mess of
 options and get it wrong a few times before it starts to go
 alright.
 
 i read this archived article and said to myself: douglas
 adams wants cakewalk! too bad i can't tell him!
 
 that's a bit amusing, right? but, what interests me more is
 how everyone in electronic music has to crawl through this
 mess. one guy wants piano roll, the other wants staff
 notation. then one sequencer is supposed to do both, but
 crashes when you do one 'em...
 
 then i ask you -- steve mcqueen -- what if we were to
 sit down and chart it all out? could we perhaps work out a
 way to get all newcomers through that minefield faster? even
 if you have little success with that, working through that
 decision field will land you on some deep revelations about
 production 'n' process, right?
 
 or maybe you still don't get it. perhaps it'd make more
 sense if i said it like, "everyone who learns to sing has
 certain problems eventually, no matter who they are, so
 let's write them down and try to see what it says about the
 architecture of learning to sing."
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-15 03:33 [#02507616] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | writing that was enough to get me thinking: piano roll, staff notation, step sequencer, tracker... are these all
 getting at the same thing, even?
 
 i used trackers exclusively for a stage, and i've barely
 used them since. they are fantastic for the same reason
 venetian snares is a fantastic name. drag your
 fingers down a stucco wall and connect the larger bumps with
 drum noises in your mind. this is the sort of thing i'll do
 when i'm bored, and sometimes it'd give me a good idea for a
 "sequence." just, like, yeah, that's a good drum thing,
 let's go do that... though weird, i figure that makes sense
 enough.
 
 what's strange is that i have a lot more trouble doing that
 horizontally. my brain most easily maps the bumps to the
 samples when i drag straight downwards. i can do any
 direction, really, but i have to take a moment to orient
 myself.
 
 it reminds me very much of every time i've contorted and
 twisted to reach into some equipment rack, or hung upside
 down by my knees to adjust something i can't reach any other
 way.
 
 i have to take a moment to visualize what i want to do. is
 that still counter-clockwise when i'm hanging upside-down
 into a server rack? does this question even make sense? i'd
 have to visualize it to tell you...
 
 trackers are vertical. up to down. they are for rhythm.
 piano rolls are horizontal. left to right. they are for
 melody and harmony..... perhaps. i'm just letting it
 free-run into deep goulash.
 
 is a sequencer that only accepts staff notation still a
 sequencer? is a tracker a sequencer? what is a
 sequencer? it's poorly defined. some people want a staff,
 some people want a step seq, and a word like sequencer is
 the eris in your apple, wasting all your time, as you say:
 well, digital performer should do staff notation, but
 the program crashes when you use that bit...
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-15 03:45 [#02507617] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | out on the porch, smoking a zigguraut, still chewing on this. if you're j. average caveman, out of control, sliding
 down a muddy slope, grabbing for something to stop the
 slide... well, yes, the brain has probably evolved to deal
 with rhythmic pulses rather quickly, in this context. then,
 horizontal? feeling your way along a cliff face in the dark.
 knowing it by touch, unable to see, poking your way along
 according to a memorized progression...
 
 i have no idea if i'm on to something with that or not. it's
 item one of a zillion this line of questioning could have me
 into. it's a good thread to tug at, pretty much.
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  EpicMegatrax
             from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-15 04:26 [#02507619] Points: 25602 Status: Regular
 | 
| 
     
 
 | why? why care? 
 adams spent a presumably significant quanity of time wading
 through all this muck just to get to the music he wanted to
 write. if he hadn't had to spend so much time on that,
 perhaps we'd have gotten two or three albums out of him we
 didn't. the guy who wrote hitchikers guide... yeah, two or
 three albums that could have been from him, deleted from
 reality. because we didn't have our shit together. now he's
 dead. and this situation is actively repeating itself over
 and over, over the whole planet. until it gets fixed.
 
 as a software engineer, i take this sort of mess pretty
 personally, because i feel i'm at least somewhat in a
 position to do something about it. until it explodes in
 O(n), anyways... "wow, this is a bit of a big topic. how
 much can i do myself? how much am i obligated to do? what's
 realistic?"
 
 when i get lost in the math of a question i didn't have on
 my agenda, i turn the "leechblock" plugin back on and quit
 xltronic until i do the things i am supposed to do. because
 i can't debug the obnoxiously shitty architecture of
 electronic music metaphors if the bills are unpaid and the
 dog needs walkies
 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         |  Hyperflake
             from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-15 15:19 [#02507626] Points: 31541 Status: Lurker | Followup to steve mcqueen: #02507600
 | 
| 
     
 
 | Cheers Glad you found it interesting! 
 
 
 | 
        
         |   | 
        
         | Messageboard index
 
 
        
 |