Rosko wrote:Angstrom wrote:Would you say that all musical styles could enjoy M4L library devices equally, or would you say that M4L devices favour a certain kind of music?.
Just interested in knowing why you choose live over other sequencers? I can understand that features will hold little of no value if you aren't going to use them but live is to sequencers what a 909 is to drum kits. I'm sure there is a good reason you choose live but surely you can see my point, you will probably rarely be happy with the direction ableton go. M4L is great for people who make a broad range of electronic music not just one type, what it offers me personally are some great integrated midi effects & utilities that i would not be able to get outside of live/M4L & all this is now for free.
I chose Live for a few reasons.
Firstly - flexibility
because by working in session I could try different parts with different lengths against one section of a song. By using session to try out variations on a part I could quickly and easily determine the right part and apply it. I found that very difficult to do in other applications.
Secondly, - immediacy
because Live offered immediacy and intuitive control over complex functions. For example - Routing from one track to another, or sending sends back on themselves - these things are often possible in other apps but tend to be convoluted processes, difficult to find or control. Whereas Live offered an immediate access to powerful functions through an interface that used repeated learnable interaction patterns (learn it once, reapply it everywhere) and to obtain complex results. Everything is intuitive and learnable through experimentation, nothing "fails silently".
Thirdly power.
Lives racks and macros allowed user creation of complex synths and presets which are Lmost modular in nature, using simple drag and drop of "Devices". To make powerful user synths, effects, midi controls etc. please look for my
generative music tutorial on this forum to see what I mean. Native power!
I'll not dwell on why I think M4L breaks that pattern, because people see it as an "attack" on them, their music, or their preferences. Only that FOR ME I feel Live could have become more modular in a way which continued with the Intuitive & Learnable strategy they originally attracted me with.
For me,
and me only, yes it is a shame, and yes I am now looking around for another intuitive, learnable creative and musical application. Please though, I am allowed to express a preference for my own musical creation. And my preference is for intuitive interfaces which build upon prior models, simple but powerful. I respect that others fully love and enjoy Max and find it amazing. That's good for them.
Please respect that for me it is a process of watching a tool I loved head down a path I do not love. I love modular, I love routing one thing to another, I love powerful control over the creative process in a musical way. But I do not feel that this solution is a good one. I re-try Max once every six months. I would love to love it. But so far, I find it obtuse and non-musical, or the presets are determinedly designed for music which is not mine.
I respect other people's right to enjoy what the program, does and how it behaves, and how it benefits their music. I still wish a route had been taken which was more musical. FOR ME.
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