Ableton Forum

I got that and I agree with you, just went a little further. sometimes i think this whole controller music thing deserves it's own genre and that from someone who doesn't like labels but these type of artist are starting to remind me of classical musicians, you know you see the violin, the cello, and the basoon and you expect the same thing to come out of them each time.

yeah for sure i feel you on that... and in some respects its already happening... like when you see a monome you kinda expect that weird melodica that sounds like random notes magically in tune... or a mpd means someone is chopping samples...

just for the record you say just an mpc... but the mpc is a fairly complex piece of gear capable of doing almost everything sample wise that ableton can... just differently... prefuse is a fucking genius if you ask me... never would i have dug so deep into the mpc's timestretching and played with micro samples... never. when i first heard that sound it blew my mind... same thing when i heard edit's crying over pros for no reason... his glitches and ability amalgamate electronic music with organic and found sounds so well has yet to be outdone in my opinion... i mean he made his own max patch for those glitches... crunk master 5000 it was called ... at least thats what someone told me... pretty sure daddy kev still rocks it in his live show too...


i mean there is a wealth of amazing music made by super creative imaginative people... much of the showman ship in any electronic genre is in the production... the rest is just smoke and mirrors on stage... when you try to get to tech onstage you lose the crowd... no one wants to see some dude molesting buttons for an hour without looking up.... they just want alot of bass, a dope light show and songs they can identify with...

which is probably why edit went and made air raid material right after crying over pros... so he could rock crowds...

i mean if you want to talk about people not doing anything look at the glitch mob... three dudes.... three laptops... three lemurs... just a bunch of throwing thier arms in the air... some cool drum flipping and of course the effects are sweet but damn... lots of gear and performers... not much musical performance... just dancing

i was dissapointed... i saw both the glitch mob and pretty lights at this fest called trinumeral this summer and the glitch mob was just a huge bumout for me... so much potential... so little delivery...

If you go watch EOTO you can visually see pretty much EVERYTHING they do will directly effect the sound, cause it's all live improv, nothing pre-sequenced or pre-recorded.

All I was saying is that I really can't tell what he is doing on those pads, other than pressing them and holding them down.. I can't SEE what that is doing to the sound.. Doesn't mean he isn't the nastiest producer out there right now, and I love the fact that he gets tossed into the jam band scene at festivals because they all love that shit. When he shows up anywhere, shit goes down.

If I knew how he did everything it wouldn't be nearly as interesting to me, so even though I like to think I can at least figure out how "controllerists" hook there shit up, or what they've got things mapped to, I still really don't know how he works his shit. Besides the monome stuff which I have pretty much no knowledge of.

Similar groups/people to check out: Alex B (of pnuma trio), Eliot Lipp & Leo123 (Dark Party), and of course EOTO kills it every time.

I wasn't bashing him at all, I can't even fathom what that dude does in the studio, and how that translates to the stage. I'm gonna rage hard as fuck at his show on the 23rd!

najrock wrote:yeah for sure i feel you on that... and in some respects its already happening... like when you see a monome you kinda expect that weird melodica that sounds like random notes magically in tune... or a mpd means someone is chopping samples...

just for the record you say just an mpc... but the mpc is a fairly complex piece of gear capable of doing almost everything sample wise that ableton can... just differently... prefuse is a fucking genius if you ask me... never would i have dug so deep into the mpc's timestretching and played with micro samples... never. when i first heard that sound it blew my mind... same thing when i heard edit's crying over pros for no reason... his glitches and ability amalgamate electronic music with organic and found sounds so well has yet to be outdone in my opinion... i mean he made his own max patch for those glitches... crunk master 5000 it was called ... at least thats what someone told me... pretty sure daddy kev still rocks it in his live show too...


i mean there is a wealth of amazing music made by super creative imaginative people... much of the showman ship in any electronic genre is in the production... the rest is just smoke and mirrors on stage... when you try to get to tech onstage you lose the crowd... no one wants to see some dude molesting buttons for an hour without looking up.... they just want alot of bass, a dope light show and songs they can identify with...

which is probably why edit went and made air raid material right after crying over pros... so he could rock crowds...

i mean if you want to talk about people not doing anything look at the glitch mob... three dudes.... three laptops... three lemurs... just a bunch of throwing thier arms in the air... some cool drum flipping and of course the effects are sweet but damn... lots of gear and performers... not much musical performance... just dancing

i was dissapointed... i saw both the glitch mob and pretty lights at this fest called trinumeral this summer and the glitch mob was just a huge bumout for me... so much potential... so little delivery...

oh no when I said 'just an mpc' It wasn't to belittle the mpcs prowess you couldn't sing the mpcs praises loud enough for me, it amazes me that people understand what ableton live is capable of yet so many live users can't fathom the power with-in an mpc, it's like there is some mental block preventing alot of them from getting it, if the mpc came out today and was
advertised as a midi controller with all of the mpc features there would be doors banging on nuts to get one and on top of that there still is no tighter integration between computer and instrument after all of these years

I've got a love/hate thing goin on with the glitch mob, I appreciate their music and highly regard their production skills but when I see them live they remind me of a minstrel show or one giant trucker hat.

starving student wrote:I've got a love/hate thing goin on with the glitch mob, I appreciate their music and highly regard their production skills but when I see them live they remind me of a misntrel show or one giant trucker hat.

Agreed. The music also isn't all that danceable so the place is one big head bobbing fest lead by the masters of head bobbing, the Gltich Mob themselves. And there's also a solid amount of throwing hands in the air. Each show could easily be pulled off by just one of their members. They even do shows with 1 or 2 of the members missing and I'm sure it sounds exactly the same. I think they should just rename themselves edIT and the Leg Riders.

beats me wrote:

starving student wrote:I've got a love/hate thing goin on with the glitch mob, I appreciate their music and highly regard their production skills but when I see them live they remind me of a misntrel show or one giant trucker hat.

Agreed. The music also isn't all that danceable so the place is one big head bobbing fest lead by the masters of head bobbing, the Gltich Mob themselves. And there's also a solid amount of throwing hands in the air. Each show could easily be pulled off by just one of their members. They even do shows with 1 or 2 of the members missing and I'm sure it sounds exactly the same. I think they should just rename themselves edIT and the Leg Riders.

Wanna hear something hilarious? Check out Edit's music before "crying over pros"...

Someone put the last album up for album of the year, maybe 2007, on these 'ere forums and I dabbled due to that and was mighty impressed.

I have dl'd this latest album and also saw that it was good.

najrock, your insight into his workings is most welcome, your posts therein, a good read. Thanks.

I like it.

The MPD pads trigger samples, usually the lead part of the song. It's really clear here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mg3jqgenNk, although I think the video starts to not be synced with the audio after the beginning. For a while I thought the drummer was mixed so low you could barely hear him, but it turns out he's using drum triggers so he blends in better (there's an iClips.net video where you can hear the two samples out of phase).

Basically though he's a dude with a really tight live show, beastly productions, and an organic sound. I think he does more on stage now than he did a couple years ago, so hopefully the trend will continue.

UKRuss wrote:Someone put the last album up for album of the year, maybe 2007, on these 'ere forums and I dabbled due to that and was mighty impressed.

I have dl'd this latest album and also saw that it was good.

najrock, your insight into his workings is most welcome, your posts therein, a good read. Thanks.

I think it was 2008 it was nominated on here for album of the year and I'd have to agree especially given it was free. Actually I think he released 2 albums in 2008.

I checked out the new album, and although it does have his sound, I also found it mostly forgettable. I didn't hear any track I wanted to hear again and again, unlike the 2008 releases that had some stellar tracks that stick in your head. Still his easily forgettable tracks are 10 times better than anything I release. I just think he's getting a little too formulaic in his style which happens to a lot of artists. Same can be said for Glitch Mob. They get their signature sound and get in a rut just doing it over and over cause it was new and cool at some point, but it does get old...enter the entire Electro House genre.

Word Najrock. "to point out that he is doing something live and well" It's all academic beyond that point. They had the crowd going absolutely bananas when I saw them last Thur.

Ableton exposure, crowd moving, what's not to like? My housemates boyfriend manages them so I'm a little biased.

beats me wrote:

starving student wrote:I've got a love/hate thing goin on with the glitch mob, I appreciate their music and highly regard their production skills but when I see them live they remind me of a misntrel show or one giant trucker hat.

Agreed. The music also isn't all that danceable so the place is one big head bobbing fest lead by the masters of head bobbing, the Gltich Mob themselves. And there's also a solid amount of throwing hands in the air. Each show could easily be pulled off by just one of their members. They even do shows with 1 or 2 of the members missing and I'm sure it sounds exactly the same. I think they should just rename themselves edIT and the Leg Riders.

ouch hey not trying to turn this into a glitchmob bash we're talkin about electronic musicians and skills

Its great to find an internet forum that actually can have a conversation with respect to those involved without traditional "forum banter" haha...


ive been stalking around here for years but never really posted except for a few idiot questions here and there mostly about controllers...

Eoto is pretty dope... they just played at the abbey pub here in chicago and they were killer from the video i saw. when i lived in montana they always got kids goin nuts...

that drummer is like on some serious shit... he never drops the beat AND he is triggering his own beat repeats and dubby effects... its pretty awesome... the only critique i would have is that some of thier sounds/production is a little old school... not "played out" but kinda like on the cusp of being cheesy... I saw reason running on a laptop and im assuming that is why... haha... but that is just an personal thing... i am pretty sure i am the only one at the shows thinking in my head "you should use massive instead of thor for all you bass sounds when you play live! the new randomizer is killer!"

yeah im a nerd...

but seriously if you took the drummer and actual live instrumentation of eoto... put pretty lights bass chops and filter skills under it and gave it to edit to glitch out you would have one serious beast of a track on your hands... all those guys are nasty...

so is alex b... now that you mention it... that chiptuney appregiation thing on the first or second song he has up there on his myspace has been stuck in my head for days...

if you want to see some other really good kinda "jammy" live electronics that band big gigantic is amazing live... the sax player is top notch... they got that kinda big beat crunk thing goin on and i would bet that they will get pretty popular sooner than later... \

kind of slept on producers who probably hold the most talent award for me goes to lorn and that kid St.Andrew


go find thier myspaces... really really good melodies and just serious skills... lorn uses reason mostly i think ... dont know much about st. andrew...

i think its important as a producer to try and learn as much as you can about the other acts that you enjoy. whether you aspire to create the same style music or not the deeper you dig into their choice of gear and especially their selection of parts to play live the more you will be able to personally set yourself apart from them while at the same time staying true to what crowds are looking for/ accepting at the moment...

djing since i was really young is really the reason that you will often find me trainspotting my favorite acts... even acts i dont like... if you look at what is popular at the moment and what is about to be unpopular you can usually kind of tell what is " future popular"...

electro / blog house is dying... people are really vibing on acts like nosaj thing, the glitch mob, pretty lights... all dubby glitchy, hip hoppy stuff... i have my bets placed on the next "cool" genre

I wasn't previously aware of Pretty Lights, downloaded all three albums and really like all of them, particularly Filling up the city skies.

Thanks for posting.