Anyone using Nerve?

[The Leveller]

I'm not really sold on Nerve....

Well, I am. I bought it - but now I'm not using it much at all... don't know why really.

Its got some really cool features, but I just don't quite click with it. Maybe its because, for my purposes, drum racks are more than sufficient...

Or maybe its because Nerve doesn't have a browser...

Yes, I'm glad I didn't buy now. I'm too much of a tinkerer with layering and tweaking and separate EQing and FX chains for each sample in my kit. It suits me to have individual tracks in Live for each sample which I drop into simplers. I don't favour Sampler for drums it's more of a sound design tool for me. Simpler has some lovely features which suit my drum programming.

I think like Guru, I find that Nerve is the kind of thing i would turn to to get an idea for a beat together but then I want to build it up block by block.

It's just me though. I enjoy the long way round. and the control and production element. I even find drum racks too fiddly...I want to get to my snare, bang, open up the snare track and tweak and fiddle away. I do want to hear some more experiences of Nerve though, it is fun, thats for sure.

[necho]

Yeah - the tinkering and layering potential of drumracks is what does it for me. And I find more and more that floating plugin windows and different GUI designs just get in the way.... I guess I'm more of a Live-whore than I thought.

Nerve is really cool - if I was still using Logic, I'd be all over it. But I find that it seems to be more geared towards people who have large banks of drum samples (you can flick through a folder of samples using back and forward arrows). I have a fairly small bank and I like to layer and tweak a lot.

That said, you can do some serious twisting with the precalc FX!

[Lazos]

Yeah - the tinkering and layering potential of drumracks is what does it for me. And I find more and more that floating plugin windows and different GUI designs just get in the way.... I guess I'm more of a Live-whore than I thought. ...

That said, you can do some serious twisting with the precalc FX!

I'm pretty much with you on this. Nerve isn't worth $200 to me when I have drum racks and an interface I can already work quickly and effectively in. The precalc FX are excellent, true. The only other major thing that I liked about Nerve was the "click and sweep" velocity and gate editing and such. More intuitive than drum racks for velocity editing especially. But my preferred method of electronic drum programing really is live entry via pads.

I'd probably be totally on board with Maschine, as it really does look phenomenal, except it has a dedicated controller, and I'm in the process of designing my own live drum pad controller and I want to keep to a minimal setup on stage and in my home studio. It's good to have a wide choice of tools as long as one doesn't depend on the tools to do the job for you.

[[email protected]]

Hi all,
I Just was alerted by a customer to a Nerve thread going on here! cool Very nice to see as I am an Ableton Live junkie (I just found my Ableton Live v1.5 NFR CD the other day when cleaning)

(warning, obvious bias will follow) I use Nerve both in productions and in my Live set (when doing Live/DJ sets, I use a special build of Nerve with OpenSoundControl communication to my monome256, and I send the MIDI from Nerve to several drum racks which I can crossfade between on the Lemur).

Of course everyone has preferred ways of working / what works for them, and in software/GUI design, you can't please everyone. For instance I think Ableton Live has a wonderful GUI, amazingly simple and uncluttered for the amount of power you have, yet I have had several people complain to me in person about Live's GUI which completely shocks me, one even calling it complicated (!!). Each to their own I guess!

Ableton Live is fantastic software, by far my favorite music environment (and the only one I could consider for live performance at this point!). Nonetheless, I use Nerve religiously in all my tracks and live shows, inside of Live specifically... partly for the sculptability/features in Nerve, partly since I enjoy it since I spent so long coding the thing, but mostly because I get results real fast this way, much faster than shift-tabbing between drumracks and MIDI clips)

Anyway I'm more than happy to answer any questions about Nerve if you have them.

It may be a kit thing, but I note the slight reduction of snare crack and cymbal hat high frequencies

As you probably know, a compressor will attenuate all frequencies evenly, maybe the attack is faster than you would like - you can adjust the ratio, attack, and release in the VSTParams (since starting with Live 8 you won't see parameters if a plugin has more than 32, Nerve will specifically detect if you are running Live8 or greater and adds additional menu-items to Menu->Commands, one reads "Publish Global Params (Live 8 )" which if you have "CONFIGURE" enabled on Live's plug-in container for Nerve, will make these parameters appear for you). Also there is a parametric EQ per-pad (precalc) in Nerve 1.01 which helps you alter frequency content for sounds, if you so desire.

maybe its because Nerve doesn't have a browser...

browsers in 90% of plugins which have them always leave me unhappy.. You can drag+drop directly from Live8 browser to Nerve pads, and use the load arrows on Nerve to advance through the sounds.. this is easier for me than even using Live's built-in mechanism for advancing sounds (which involves downarrow-enter repeatedly, only one extra keypress, but I prefer a single mouseclick to get to next/previous sounds).

I'm too much of a tinkerer with layering and tweaking and separate EQing and FX chains for each sample in my kit. It suits me to have individual tracks in Live for each sample which I drop into simplers. I don't favour Sampler for drums it's more of a sound design tool for me. Simpler has some lovely features which suit my drum programming.

Nerve does allow for Multi-outs of audio, as well as MIDI out in realtime, so you can layer as many sounds as you want externally. Each to their own, really. For me nothing is more rapid than Nerve to get a good beat quickly, and getting the MIDI or Audio from Nerve in to individual tracks in Live is just a drag away.. But each to their own, really - some people have a workflow they are already happy with, some people will find Nerve to be perfect, and some people (like me) enjoy having a schizophrenic number of different workflows to stumble upon new results frequently

But my preferred method of electronic drum programing really is live entry via pads.

Nerve does have a realtime record feature and in 1.01 it will also record note durations (to the gate graph) optionally, if desired!

if anyone has any questions, I will try to come back to this page, also feel free to contact me (my email address is my username, or contact me through the contact form on xferrecords.com website!)

Best Regards,
Steve Duda

[The Leveller]

[/quote]

Thanks for popping in Steve

Thanks for setting me straight on the settings for the compressor settings in Nerve, I need to play around with it more and get under the hood.

Can you give us more info on your relaying of midi to drum racks etc. You touched on it in the Ramirez video and it left me wondering how exactly you go about working that. Is that a production thing or just a live tool you favour?

[[email protected]]

Can you give us more info on your relaying of midi to drum racks etc. You touched on it in the Ramirez video and it left me wondering how exactly you go about working that. Is that a production thing or just a live tool you favour?

Its a live thing, I like to blend various sets of percussion/drums, mostly for the ability to crossfade and/or layer. Some songs call for a different sound-set of course. I simply route the MIDI from Nerve to a couple Drum Racks MIDI tracks (in Live, using "Midi From", and setting monitor In). I also send the same MIDI to QuartzComposer for 'visualising' the beats - I'm playing tonight at Vanguard in Hollywood if anyone's in LA and wants to see it in person..

For studio stuff I would tend to use the drag-and-drop export of MIDI, which works well for my typical workflow - however I have used the realtime MIDI as well, since you can get interesting results from drumsynths and such. I routed Nerve to Sonic Charge MicroTonic the other day and had good fun using Nerve's patterns and repeater triggering using the MicroTonic as the sound source

You can also send a CC out from Nerve for each pad (its the cutoff destination value, so you can use Cutoff Graph and/or LFO->Cutoff), which is good fun as well, was getting some pretty unexepected results!

Best
Steve

[starving student]

hey steve any plans for integration with maschine, I saw what you did with the padkontrol, what about the massschineeee?

[Lazos]

But my preferred method of electronic drum programing really is live entry via pads.

Nerve does have a realtime record feature and in 1.01 it will also record note durations (to the gate graph) optionally, if desired!

I noticed the realtime record . I honestly like the interface in many ways. I'll see how I jibe with it some more.

[The Leveller]

Can you give us more info on your relaying of midi to drum racks etc. You touched on it in the Ramirez video and it left me wondering how exactly you go about working that. Is that a production thing or just a live tool you favour?

Its a live thing, I like to blend various sets of percussion/drums, mostly for the ability to crossfade and/or layer. Some songs call for a different sound-set of course. I simply route the MIDI from Nerve to a couple Drum Racks MIDI tracks (in Live, using "Midi From", and setting monitor In). I also send the same MIDI to QuartzComposer for 'visualising' the beats - I'm playing tonight at Vanguard in Hollywood if anyone's in LA and wants to see it in person..

For studio stuff I would tend to use the drag-and-drop export of MIDI, which works well for my typical workflow - however I have used the realtime MIDI as well, since you can get interesting results from drumsynths and such. I routed Nerve to Sonic Charge MicroTonic the other day and had good fun using Nerve's patterns and repeater triggering using the MicroTonic as the sound source

You can also send a CC out from Nerve for each pad (its the cutoff destination value, so you can use Cutoff Graph and/or LFO->Cutoff), which is good fun as well, was getting some pretty unexepected results!

Best
Steve

Great, thanks Steve!

[audiosync]

Hi, i would like to see the Nerve pad names in midi editor instead of notes names (like drum rack does)
is there any chance to get that option activated in live?

[timothyallan]

Hi, i would like to see the Nerve pad names in midi editor instead of notes names (like drum rack does)
is there any chance to get that option activated in live?

Unless Ableton buys out Duda, I'd say no.

[RD444]

I love NERVE

its fast to knock up something that sounds good and then slap it into the arrangement as a WAV or MIDI.

check the videos

[OBD]

I have litarily just brought a padKontrol to use in conjunction with Nerve for my live set. I have not purchased nerve just yet - just learning the demo still.

But think I will buy it one my padkontrol arrives!!!

[ambientidm]

I am---I think it's great. I also use Maschine, Guru and Stylus...they all have their strengths and Nerve is just one more great tool to have access to. I mostly use it in conjunction with Maschine. I like the tweakability more than anything, and I like how you can throw a Rex file onto a pad and really f**k it up.

please describe to me how you use it inside maschine and what the benefits are to you with that combo

thanks
jack