first look at the Play! Framework

I've used Pylons for personal stuff for awhile. I like it's modularity, MVC architecture, and debugging. But I have to use Java at work so I'm always on the lookout for simple Java web frameworks. Recently I discovered the Play! framework and after playing with it for a few days I really like it.
Skipping the compile step is great for development and the whole framework encourages stateless HTTP which I prefer to managing sessions. The documentation is pretty good for a project this young and I'm really excited to see where they go from here.

multi-touch screen as control surface?

These jazz mutant guys have a multi-touch display that can be configured as a midi controller. It looks really cool but I think I'd still rather have good ol' knobs, sliders, and buttons.

neat video demo using Live and a single sample

I was reading the Ableton forums and saw someone mention this video as a good example of using simpler. This guy samples a single acoustic guitar note and then plays with it to create lead, bass, and drums sounds. He then puts them together into a couple of clips and it sounds pretty good. It doesn't go into a lot of detail though but if you don't use simpler you might be surprised how interesting it sounds to vary the sample start time and length in real time.

sync jamming in Ableton part II

I tried syncing three laptops at the same time again, except this time with different equipment than before. Last time we had a midi adapter with 4 outputs so all the slaves had their own dedicated out from the master. This time we didn't have that so we decided to try to chain together the laptops in this order:

firewire410+Mac   -->    x-station+Win  -->    Axiom 25+win
 midi out            midi in --> midi out         midi in

As soon as we had configured our midi sync preferences in Ableton and hit play, the last synth in the chain started playing double time. The tempo was actually double the value set on the master hooked to the FireWire 410. The culprit turned out to the be x-station in the middle. The keyboard was set (by me) to echo midi from the hardware in to both hardware outs. Ableton had also been set to send sync on the hardware midi out. I disabled midi echo on the x-station and left Ableton to send sync.

After fixing that problem we still had sync issues so we decided to run the metronome sync routine I wrote about earlier. this involves taking turns playing our metronomes and adjusting the midi clock sync delay in midi preferences.

The timing still seemed off! Certain notes in midi clips seemed to have heavy swing despite nothing set to swing. I decided to try using the x-stations midi echo instead of Abletons but everyone agreed that was worse. We went back to letting Ableton send sync signals to the Axiom.

Our timing still never seemed to be as tight as it had been before so I'm thinking that a star topology is preferable to daisy chaining laptops running Ableton Live.

There are lots of adapters with loads of outs for fairly cheap. I'll have to pick one up for myself to get a real Ableton laptop orchestra going.

Read my first post on midi syncing multiple laptops with Ableton Live here.

How to swing

Here's a little tip on getting your swing to sound right in Ableton Live. make sure all your clips are set to the same groove setting! If they aren't, your swing will sound wonky. If you want to set a bunch of clips to the same groove just drag a select box around everything on the clip view and you'll get a clip properties box below where you can apply the groove across all selected clips.

I actually like using swing 16 on most songs so I set this in my global preferences and now all new sets I create default to that setting.

By the way, there is no ideal global groove amount, just play with it till you like it. That said, I keep ending up at 64 to get that Kompakt-like micro house swing.

Book Review : Ableton Live 6 - Tips and Tricks

In an effort to jump start my understanding of Live I recently read the book Ableton Live 6 : Tips and Tricks by Martin Delaney. Its a fairly quick read at 142 pages with pictures and made easier by the fact that Martin writes with great passion for his subject. Its pretty obvious this guy loves Live and he should since he teaches it.

I read another book on live and it was a bit of a struggle, but Martin makes a smart move with this book and skips the whole intro to Live thing and gets right down to dishing out tips. He pretty much assumes you've done the tutorial and skimmed through the pdf manual (you have done this right?) and starts giving you a real world breakdown of how he and other musicians get stuff done in Live. Its like having your own friend, who has used Live forever, sit down with you and school you on fundamentals.

There are a few chapters I skipped like "Using Live with other software" but thats because I only plan on using Live. ;)

So I would recommend this book to anyone who's looking for more tip goodness that they can read about from the comfort of the couch. Right now its only $13 on Amazon and I'm not making any ad money on this referral so you know I'm for real.

Ableton on Youtube

Ableton Inc. is really into live video demos on youtube. They probably realize that seeing Live in action is one of the best ways to demonstrate its virtues. There's an official channel with tons of howtos and demos.

This video has a very excited Robert Henke demoing Sampler. Now I don't own any of the additional instruments but these videos (and part II) make me want to get Sampler now.



btw, in case you missed it, I added my own video to Youtube demoing the rockband guitar to Ableton hack I blogged about earlier.