“Perfect” Tuning
With the modern era of digital capabilities to re-tune recorded material, almost all music you hear nowadays has “perfect” tuning on all of the instruments and vocals. But what does this mean, exactly?
Generally, this tuning is based on equal temperament. But is equal temperament the most “perfect” tuning for absolutely all musical situations? I say… nope.
This week we’ll be sharing with you an Ableton Live set used for impulse response creation.
Requires: Ableton Live 9 or 10, MaxForLive, MaxForLiveEssentials pack.
It allows you to quickly capture IRs from effects (software or hardware) by dropping them onto a track and pressing a couple of keyboard shortcuts. Using the template skips the setup time, avoids having to fiddle around with routing, and prevents accidentally sending bursts of audio through your system, with the option to listen to the process if curious. Continue reading
Brand new plugins… promotional sales on plugins… they are SO tempting. But do you really need that new compressor plugin that just dropped?
In order to assess which plugin types are lacking in your toolbox, i recommend making a spreadsheet of all the plugins you own by category. You might discover, as i did, that you have such a vast variety of compressor options to choose from, it’s likely that you won’t benefit a whole lot from purchasing any more of them. You also might discover, like me, that you’re somewhat lacking in gate plugins, and could indeed benefit from picking up a few new models. Etc… Continue reading
So i found myself slightly annoyed that Ableton Live’s Ping Pong Delay effect always starts the first echo repeat on the left side. Sure, you could flip the stereo field after applying it to reverse the direction—but that also reverses the stereo field of the source audio. What if i want the source audio to stay the same, but have the echo repeats reverse direction?
Well now, it’s easy..
We know that the new(ish) circuit models for Ableton Live’s Auto Filter effect add some tasty analog-modeled distortion, but what about their characters? Which of the circuit models adds the most aggressive distortion?
Continue readingThis is just a quick, simple tip.
If it takes forever to scan plugins every time you open Live (due to certain poorly-coded plugins taking longer than others and bottlenecking the process), you can set it up to skip plugin scan. Keep in mind that if you do this, you’ll want to perform a manual scan (from preferences) any time you install or update any new VST plugins.
How to do it?
Add “-NoVstStartupScan” to your options.txt file
But how to do that?
To familiarize yourself with Ableton’s options.txt, i will point you towards sonicbloom.net’s awesome article and series of videos on the topic.
That’s it! Live will no longer do a scan every time it opens.
Ever since i applied this option, the stupidly vast size of my plugin collection doesn’t adversely affect my workflow. Live startup time is way snappier. When i occasionally buy or grab a free plugin, i just run a scan after installing it. Every once in a while you might have to do a “deep” scan (hold alt while clicking the scan button) if something doesn’t show up when it’s supposed to.
Note that from Live 10.1 onward, the plugin rescan button is located in the new dedicated plug-ins tab in Live’s preferences, rather than under file/folder, as previously.
Hopefully this nifty tip is inapplicable to you, as that means your plugin scan is not bloated. However, for those of you that are having issues with slow startup of Ableton Live (or in case it eventually becomes an issue) this may be a viable solution.
Hi!
PerforModule has got a new Ableton Live pack available.
What makes this one special? Well, it’s the first in a proposed series of “Binaural Textures” instrument packs, which include the unique feature of built-in binaural surround panning.
Binaural Surround Panning? What the heck is that!?
(listen to the video below on headphones to hear for yourself)
Continue readingThere are not many controls for digital plugins where i prefer stepped options as opposed to continuous values, but the Q factor of EQ slopes is one of those that generally i do. Not really sure why i prefer them that way; i suppose there are a few reasons.
Regardless, i made myself (and you!) up a nifty spreadsheet of “Go-To Q Values”, based on logarithmic steps between the basic Q value (0.70607) and the minimum or maximum ranges. These Q values are optimized for Ableton Live’s EQ Eight, but can be applied to most any parametric EQ, when you want no-brainer go-to Q values to fall back on.
So this one is super simple, but definitely helpful as a workflow enhancer. Applies to any VST-capable DAW.
It’s always annoying when bringing one plugin GUI into focus obscures another GUI and then you have to shuffle things about.
This tip applies when you have too many plugins open to fit them all onscreen without overlapping or when you’re not sure how many more plugins you might need to add in a project; it’s not needed when you have few plugins and enough screen space to comfortably them fit all.
Continue readingThe PerforModule Pack Collections at Isotonik Studios have been restructured.
There are now 3 main collections which together comprise every one of my sale packs. These are by far your best deal ever at accumulating PerforModule goodies:
This consists of a single “mega” pack which contains a consolidated collection of ALL the racks from 6 entire previous packs: DynaMixing One through Five plus Ionic FX.
All devices from those packs are now accesible from a single browser location. Convenient!
These are tools designed for enhancing your workflow for mixing, allowing you to sculpt your sound with robust, innovative capabilities quickly. Many of them include “artificially inteilligent source reactivity” using envelope followers listening to different parts of the input signal to “automagically” modify parameters in real time.
Currently totaling 88 awesome effect racks!
Personally… i use racks from this pack all. The. Time. For mixing. So many of the tools are just the fastest and easiest way to get to a refined result i’m looking for. Down below you can check out some personal favorites and what i might use them for.
These include packs which are of a technical nature, giving you a huge range of tools for very specific tasks. Be all scientifical about stuff!
Includes the packs:
Here reside the fun, wacky, and creative batch of oddities providing instruments and effects for “niche” purposes, great for when you want to be spontaneous and just make stuff.
Includes the packs:
PerforModule 