BassTame from the KVR Developer Challenge 2023 is purported to be a bass compressor, yet level-independent. The blurb about it says the energy of the bass signal is compared to the overall signal to determine the bass reduction. lkjb‘s ReFine and QRange plugins are oft used and much beloved, so I was intrigued to find out what this new one had to offer. I’ll break it down based upon my experience testing the plugin out.
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When applying dynamic effects, we are rarely going to need the entire timing ranges available, depending on the tempo, right? The new Tempo Dynamics pack provides go-to racks with minimum and maximum values hard-wired to ranges most potentially useful, given the chosen tempo — avoiding values that are likely too fast or too slow to be helpful.
Want to limit, squish, groovify, level, expand, or gate something? Reach for one of these racks in the nearest available tempo, and with handy knobs available to fine-tune, then dial it in quickly without worrying about the numbers or graphs… all while retaining the human element of your personal touch still in place. The macro knobs are also useful for automating in an arrangement, say to let something breathe more during one section and then clamp down during another.
I started devising these effect racks back when Live was still on version 9, so I’ve been testing them quite a lot over the last few years. They can be quite handy!
PACK CONTENTS
• 23 Tempo Compressors ranging from 20 to 240 bpm in 10bpm increments.
• 15 Tempo Expanders ranging from 25 to 235 bpm in 15bpm increments.
• 8 Tempo Gates ranging from 30 to 240 bpm in 30bpm increments.
• 12 Tempo Gluers ranging from 20 to 240 bpm in 20bpm increments.
• 23 Tempo Limiters ranging from 20 to 240 bpm in 10bpm increments.
• Bonus for Live 11: 23 Tempo Multibanders ranging from 20 to 240 bpm in 10bpm increments.
The Tempo Dynamics pack costs a paltry $12.
Grab it here from Isotonik Studios.
“WTF are Loudness Units?” you may ask. Well, they are simply a measure of loudness, just like decibels.
One LU actually is equivalent to one dB. However, an important difference is that Loudness Units are “shaped” according to the human ear’s proclivity to hear certain frequencies more easily than others. Effectively, LUs tend to feel more consistent to our brains than dB will when measuring varying frequency content, and therefore LU meters are preferable to use (compared to, say, RMS meters) for assessing the overall loudness of music.
Below are shown six free LU (aka Loudness Unit) meters, listing features of each. The most important value when matching the loudness of songs is IL (Integrated Loudness), which is the average loudness over the entire course of given time (with very quiet material gated out).
These devices are available as VST effect plugins for any capable VST host (such as Ableton Live, for example).
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Continue reading[Almost] all of the PerforModule sale packs (and some of the freebie packs) have been updated for Ableton Live 11 (finally)!
Primarily, this means that racks which had less than eight mapped macros (resulting in some blank controls) have been tidied up to make use of Live 11’s ability to customize the number of macros shown.
Occasional effect racks have also had some macro variations (aka presets) added to them.
The following PerforModule packs have all been updated for Live 11. If you own any of the sale packs, you can download the updated versions from your account at Isotonik Studios, either now or at any later date when you acquire Live 11.
Everyone is welcome to grab the free packs!
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FREE PACKS UPDATED FOR LIVE 11
Emphasizers
ParallAux
Sweetie Pies
Turboencabulation
Utilification
SALE PACKS UPDATED FOR LIVE 11
Advanced Splytterz
Amplitude Operands
Bussification
Dephaultz
Drum Enhancerz
DynaMixing Ultimate
Empathy
Guitaritis
Harmonicality
Note Range Setters
One Knob Wonders
PMX FX
Testful Mastering
Uno Plus
I met Aaron Holstein (aka VibeSquaD aka Backpact aka the bassist/keyboardist from Zilla) at the 2007 Sonic Bloom festival in Colorado, where my wife Lore and i were supplying coffee and tea backstage for the artists. I remember chatting with them after their awesome set with Sporque (one of my favorite live acts to dance to ever which also had Ooah from the Glitch Mob on beats and Jamie Janover on percussion), wherein i mentioned noticing that a certain bass synth note they kept hitting happened to resonate with the stage, causing this extra delicious rattle. “It was a C sharp!” Aaron told me later backstage. I’ll always remember that.
Continue readingPackification
So i recently helped our mutual friend Brian Funk reorganize his Live Pack Archive, a $10 massive grab bag of Ableton Live goodies assembled from the freebies that he’s been steadily churning out over the years, all the way from the very first pack in 2011 to the contemporary 200th. It’s a lot of stuff! Judging by the plethora of 5-star reviews of the product on gumroad, it seems like people dig it.
Ah, Convenience
Sure, you could go download all this stuff one at a time methodically blog post by post. However it’s much easier to just pay the convenience charge and get all the stuff in one bulk download. This collection has been on offer for a while now, but they were basically presented in a big pile of folders. Fun to scout around for sure, but not exactly optimal when it comes to workflow convenience.
Power Up!
Aha! See, now the collection is even more splendid, as all the devices come consolidated in two mega-packs with similar categories of sounds, effects, and clips sorted logistically for quick perusal and easy implementation directly from the Live browser (including signal previews). Find, grab, and use the stuff you want instantly. It’s very handy and nice. But… the price is still the same? What!? Crazy, i tell you!
Partake
Sound intriguing? Well then why don’t you pull up a chair, situate your ass real comfy, and grab yourself some.
Brian Funk’s Live Pack Archive 1-200.
click that▲
▼or that
[Pack 1 works with Live 9 or later, pack 2 with Live 10 or later.]
Synchronistically, this happens to be my 100th PerforModule blog post. Neato.
Peace, y’all! 😎
⠀⠀⠀I haven’t performed as a DJ in years, focused on raising my son and home studio work instead, but i was pretty active as one around the Colorado Springs area from about 2010 until 2014. One of the my favorite toys to use to manipulate beats live on my laptop was Alexkid’s Instant Haus, which “instantly generates drum patterns to craft into your own house track” (available free via Ableton). It’s great way to add variation to beats in an organic fashion.
⠀⠀⠀Well, i’ve been inspired lately because we now have available the freshest incarnation of beat juggling voodoo in the form of the 501k Creatives new Beat Shaker device, crafted by the very same Alexkid. It’s a similar concept, but greatly expands on the potential and flexibility.
It’s Time
I’ve decided that it’s time to write a post going over all the multiband dynamics processors in my audio plugins library. For me, this includes both multiband compressors/expanders as well as dynamic EQs, because i tend to use them for the same general purposes.
Sometimes i forget that i’m a musician. I spend so much time in Ableton Live but most of it is working on things for other people, or working on PerforModule effects or instruments, or refining templates, etc…
But i’ve somehow managed to get my shit together enough to finish off some tunes. It’s my first new music release since 2016!
The Fayt EP‘s basic theme is a journey through time, enacting your own story which is eternally burned into the record of existence and which you can never undo.
𝓕𝓪𝔂𝓽 is a 15-minute epic (built from a hypnosis-inducing fingerpicked guitar lick i wrote around age 16) which i’ve attempted various renditions of over the years, always falling short of my imaginings. The latest version is vastly closer to what i’ve always had in mind for it and is now presented in its “definitive form”. This lengthy piece meanders through various moods and styles, taking the listener on a mysterious adventure.
𝓒𝓻𝓾𝓶𝓫𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓡𝓸𝓪𝓭, also mostly written long ago, other than the lyrics and vocal melody which were more recent, has never before been released, and is in a more straightforward “rock n’ roll” style than typical for me. The idea is a road which is crumbling behind you with every step, forcing you to continue onward without the ability to go back. It features lead guitar by Dave Irmo, who originally taught me to play guitar back in the day.
I recommend grabbing the music from bandcamp rather than some other service because you can download pure, high quality, lossless, 24-bit tracks, song lyrics are available to peruse, and artists get a higher proportion of the dough. And you’ll also get some super nifty free Bonus Goodies!
The bandcamp release of the EP (just $3) comes with extra bonus instrumental and 5.1 surround sound versions of songs, as well as (for the first hundred EP buyers) a direct download of the premium Guitaritis effects pack for Ableton Live 9+ Suite by PerforModule (worth $35!).
Here’s the HyperFollow page instead, if you prefer Spatoofy, Oople, or whatever: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/animusinvidious/fayt
One of the cool things about the internet has been the decentralization of education that has occurred, in large part due to sites that allow people to upload and share their own content with viewers directly.
Back in the day, it was much more difficult to find resources for learning, generally being limited to whatever happened to be available at the local library. As a teenager, i checked out every book on guitar that my library had, and quickly ran out of resources for developing further musical understanding, having to resort to a very limited selection of magazines, instructional VHS tapes, tablature books, etc, to advance my knowledge.
Nowadays, there is no shortage of content being continually created and easily available for instant perusal via the web—so much, in fact, that the problem is now one of sifting through the vast amount of material available, to find what is actually worthwhile. If you just choose at random, the quality is likely to be of sketchy credibility. Rather than squandering my time copying people who are mimicking other people who are copying something they read in a forum, i’d rather focus on sources that will provide more a raw investigative slant.
So which Yootoobz does PerforModule officially recommend? And whyz? Read on to find out! (Headings are links to video pages.)
PerforModule 