Ableton Forum

Hello!
A little detour from the technical aspects of music making to the more organizational stuff. Here are some musings on what perfection is and how to get more tracks made! Hope you guys find it useful.

http://lostinmusik.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... erfection/

After reading the blog there is one big question.

How do people estimate their skills? I think, the ones who are realistic and blessed with enough ambition are on the right track. Usually we are not able to qualify what is good and what´s not.
In music and arts in general we don´t operate with measurable units.

It would be a large improvement when there was a self-reliant filter system within us that says "That´s good enough." But making music is not a javelin throwing competition.
Often enough hobby musicians instinctively try to prevent themselves from self criticsm because then the outcome would be to stop the hobby.
Yet they present their efforts to the public with fairly big promotional efforts and expect then to be treated like an amateur when it comes to the musical content itself, with all due respect
because they couldn´t invest enough time as pros have at their disposal to make it a decent sounding piece of music.

Well, not true. It´s time to take enough time to finish something which can stand the test of time. I consider myself an amateur but my partners consider me as a pro.
I often times don´t like to realize that, but I get enough positive feedback to come to this conclusion. The secret behind this reward is my willingness to meet a certain standard
and not to demand to be treated as an amateur.

I´ve learnt over the years not to look so much at other artists in the songwriting phase. But when it comes to mixing and mastering I totally like to compare my mixes to established artists.
At least in this part of the creative process we are able to adapt to certain standards.

http://www.groove3.com/str/mixing-electronic-music.html This is my next purchase. This guy offers a lot of infos without being self-assertive and he has become a role model for me in work ethics.
While the music Tim does is very different from the stuff I do, I still like to be inspired because I feel the dedication he puts into his music. In addition to his skills he presents his wisdom in a very cool manner.
Before you shell out 100 bucks for a new magical plugin you should take this on top of your to-buy-list.

Here´s the last one for today.
What about combining different elements of genres by design? HipHop beats with Steve Reich mallet like stuff garnished with a minimal click´n´cut mille plataux experimental approach in the background.
That´s at least a start of being different yet it is an orientation aid.

It seems obvious that no one is realistically believing to have ability to create something unique. This is sad yet contemporary stigma.

Check what sells, copy it, add a flavor of something else, mix n master professionally and voila, artist career born.

Stagnation FTW.

Parametex wrote:It seems obvious that no one is realistically believing to have ability to create something unique.

To create something unique is easy. Getting other people to listen to it is a whole lot worse.

The question is: Do you dare to walk where no man has walked before you, and to keep walking until you find whatever you are looking for? Even though you may never find it..

I find starting less tracks helps me finish more tracks - it's a paradox, I know.

As has been said before many times, getting over to the arrangement page and out of constructing parts helps.

Also, not getting hung up on sound design too much during the day. I'll often start a tune at night while doing sound design at night, and start really writing & arranging it the next morning.

Lock all the created tracks and then cut unrequired tracks

Moody wrote:I find starting less tracks helps me finish more tracks - it's a paradox, I know.

Something I need to learn more.

I hear Steve Hillage (System 7) is good at this, somewhat an idle.

A bit of topic.

But I saw a nice Tom Cosm video the other day, One of his 'Top Tips' for ableton, is to just have a rack of 6 simplers set out on impluse key's (Drum Rack) with all your variations of a beats, i.e breakdown loop, variation loop, timing variation looop, High Hat's n Perc loop, etc. then use this single instance to create all your beats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j6HZnHBxvc

Quite nice to have everything in one chain, plus you can choose to slice the loop up one more time, as you know, just for your glitchy stuff.

For me it's good just to focus for the night on beat creation, remember the preset, but put the vst away at night and have all the audio renders for the next sitting. saves on obbvious cpu and clutter.

That's my hang up, clutter and un labled parts (Sort it out Me!!)

Gregory Wells-King wrote:A bit of topic.

But I saw a nice Tom Cosm video the other day, One of his 'Top Tips' for ableton, is to just have a rack of 6 simplers set out on impluse key's (Drum Rack) with all your variations of a beats, i.e breakdown loop, variation loop, timing variation looop, High Hat's n Perc loop, etc. then use this single instance to create all your beats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j6HZnHBxvc

Quite nice to have everything in one chain, plus you can choose to slice the loop up one more time, as you know, just for your glitchy stuff.

For me it's good just to focus for the night on beat creation, remember the preset, but put the vst away at night and have all the audio renders for the next sitting. saves on obbvious cpu and clutter.

That's my hang up, clutter and un labled parts (Sort it out!!)

And coming to the Ableton user forum, when I should be working on my tracks (Get of the internet !! Now)

Yeah it's good to label & color code everything. Saving different versions of sets (I just number them as I go) and delete/deactivate clutter as you go helps. You can always go back to a previous saved version of the set or grab from it's session folder in the browser if need be.

The all in one chain or sampler etc. workflow techniques are helpful and necessary for people who are able to make a living churning out tunes, remixes & projects. Definitely useful techniques, but just one part of how those guys seem to approach workflow & time management in a wholistic way. Whatever the method, even just a folder with your favorite kicks can't hurt.