7 Skies Blog

Djing with your iPad

David 7 Skies — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:00:42 +0000

If you own an iPad and if you are reading this blog, you are probably always looking for some music app review here and there on the net, so I’m happy to write the first of many upcoming app articles in this blog.
Due to the very hyped week for Dj apps I feel that there is no better subject for today’s post.
I’m going to talk about 2 apps out there which are for me the top iPad app for djing, Dj Player and Djay.
Let’s do a quick review of both apps and then I will tell you which over the 2 I would recommend.
Dj player : I’ve been a Dj Player user for quite sometime now, in the past I also gave the developer a few suggestions to improve the app a little and they surprisingly listened to me and improved the app.
This app comes very close to be a small 2 cdj + mixer setup that fits in your iPad, it won’t replace the feeling of using a cdj but it will definitely make you come back to it again and again whenever you feel like mixing some new music that you can’t be bothered burning on a cd( I’m and old school cdj 800 user, so no USB stick for me).
The interface is relatively simple, very clean and minimal design, excellent use of the iPad display space, with BIG buttons that you hardly fail to push, you have the basic play/pause, cue, hot cue (that will take you back to the cue point you set an automatically play the track from that point) bend +/- that will allow you to speed up or down your track till you release the button, this will help not loosing the beat matching, pitch +/- step, this will increase the master pitch by 0.05% every time it’s pressed, the way that your speed setting will be as precise as possible, pitch bend is precise but sometime when released, your finger make a tiny movement that could cause a wrong speed setting, those step buttons will avoid this (this smart idea comes from yours truly :p )
Also we have a vinyl display where we can see what’s going on in our track, if there is a break or a full on part coming, time passed and time left and of course bpm.
Keep in mind that we have 2 different decks for playing 2 different tracks so what mentioned above is on deck A as well as deck B
The mixer page it’s pretty classic and definitely something any Dj would be familiar with, also who has never seen a mixer though could figure out how the whole thing works within 5 minutes.
But worth to mention you will have a cross fade control, 2 main fader controls for Deck A& B, gain control and a 3 band EQ for both decks
Of course you can browse and import music from your iPod library so if you are picky like me with that adding new tracks to try transitions it’s just a pleasure.
Last but not least Dj Player let’s has built in efxs which is something that doesn’t really touch me as I tend to keep me sets as clean as possible, won’t deny I played with the filters and delays a few times anyway, lot of fun!
Djay, probably the most hyped Dj app ever, and since apple made a little promo with it during last week’s keynote (or whatever that is) it has been reviewed everywhere.
The app interface works on a single page as opposite of Dj Player that has something like 6 or 7 pages, this is a great thing in therms of accessibility but of course sacrifices the size of the buttons which are extremely tiny and sometimes you push something you didn’t want or fail to push what you wanted.
We have pretty much the same controls a Dj app should have, cue, play pitch band and bend +/- buttons, what we have extra here, are 2 nice spinning vinyls that let us scratch with a fairly realistic result, also the cover of our mp3 (if embedded) is displayed on the label of the cd (like a real thing) this makes it easy to identify your tracks, but I believe it really add some extra work to the iPad CPU, surely is cool to watch but I judge things related to their usability in a pro/semi-pro contest and if such a thing could be turned off and make the app a little bit more stable (I’ll talk about this soon) I’d be happier.
On the volume control and transition side, again we have a cross fade, and 2 main faders, one for deck A one for deck B, 3 band eq and gain per deck (a pop up window comes out to show these controls).
We also have an auto mix option but again, let’s be serious and focus on what a REAL Dj should do.
No efxs in this app, but we have some looping options instead, we can decide the length of our loop, if automatic or manual (with punch in and out). And we have a really cool function that will let us record our set, now this is really cool and useful but I’m afraid the recorded file is wav format and my almost full 16 gb iPad doesn’t really like that, so I used it a few times to record some nice transition that then I can use in my radioshow or during one of my gigs, but never to record a whole set.
Now let’s get to my final judgment.
Djay has been released in November/December 2010 and since then, the maximum amount of time I was able to use it without a crash has been something like 15 or 20 minutes, as I said the interface it’s filled of cute little things that are undoubtedly appealing at first but quite useless and CPU heavy when you need something which is more stable than good looking.
The interface is certainly very easy and straight forward and many option will make the mixing work extremely easy for anyone, eventually will make the user itself quite useless as the app does everything on its own. I can understand the success of it anyway, the graphic and all the functions make it a product for anyone especially who has no idea about how to Dj.
The record option again, its a great thing, but I would feel more comfortable using it on an iPad2 as the app itself is extremely easy crashing and adding more operations to the CPU doesn’t help for sure.
Dj Player is certainly more advanced and definitely more stable, not for nothing I’ve seen this app used for some Dj sets already, used it myself for a couple of hours during a few flights and never had a crash or a little let down, the only moment this app will really put the CPU under stress is while loading a track and generating the vinyl view, but you won’t get anything more than a few graphic problems (but that doesn’t even happen all the times), audio will stream perfectly, nothing will crash.
Interface here is a little bit more complicated(but still very intuitive), sometimes you get confused with the pages, but hell, those huge buttons are so sweet to touch, you literally won’t miss a push, and if this is the price to pay, I’m happy with it.
Cue and play response, which is something I’m really fussy with, both apps are great with this, both quick as a real cdj (great work both of you on this).
Price both apps are pretty expensive Djay is 19.99$ and will ONLY work with your iPad, if you want it on your iPhone/iPod touch you will have to spend 9.99$ extra. Dj Player is even more expensive, it’s indeed 29.99$ but comes as universal app so it will work on both iPad and iPhone/iPod touch.
In conclusion, I think I made it quite clear that for me Dj Player is the go to app, if you want a stable software that won’t let you down and that will give you plenty of option to get the mix right and still have control on what’s happening this is the right app.
If you want something cool to show your friends like spinning vinyls and scratch sounds, if you want something straight forward or something that will also mix for you Djay is the perfect app, can do the pro work as well, but the experience is not as cool and certainly is not as stable as it would be on Dj Player.

Daniel Kandi : Breathe (7 Skies Remix) Video & Review

David 7 Skies — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 21:35:25 +0000

Hey guys, finally an update on the blog.
So this time the content quite juicy and hopefully interesting, in this page you will find a link to a video I just posted on my YouTube channel, on the video you will be able to have a look at the Logic project of one of my latest remix, you will also see a few plugin settings and see how I mix elements together and how I create percussions etc.
The rmx in question is Daniel Kandi : Breathe (7 Skies Remix) which is out now on 10 years of Anjunabeats compilation, you can check iTunes if you ve never heard the track.
So enough with promotion and let’s get to the point.
1st have a look at the video :

Liked it? I’m sure you got bored of my voice…
Anyway due to YouTube upload time limitation (which I found out they are no more now) I had to slice out the video pretty hard so some stuff might not be too clear for you so here’s a few things.
1) why sometimes there are different eq even on the same channel, would 1 be enough?
Answer is: yes, 1eq would definitely be enough but as for the analog world, plugins have their own character, now let’s forget about sounding more or less analog, and let’s focus on the sound.
Some of my favorite and most used eqs are R-eq, Sonalksis EQ and ssl eq, I do own and absolutely love flux epure II and dmg equality but they get too heavy on CPU so I usually save them for very special elements and usually for buss channels.
Now all these eqs I listed sound really good to me but IMO each and one of them has a certain frequency range / element where they sound good and somewhere where they don’t.
For example I find the R-Eq to be great on bass freqs and on the highs as well, while I’ve never been able to get a satisfying result on pads and leads with it, can’t say the same about Sonalksis eq in this case, this eq is awesome on lush sound and leads, on the bass it’s ok, not great, if I use it there probably there is another eq before or after.
SSL EQ is great on kicks and percussions / hats, on the kick I can get that round sound that sometimes take a lot of work if achieved with other eqs, same with the sparkle on the hi-hats, the ssl delivers a clean crisp sound without adding that annoying buzz sometimes you get when you push the highs.
So the reason sometimes I have more than an Eq is because I get the best out of their character.
Please note, as always, what I’m writing here is not a statement that has to be taken as the u
the ultimate true fact, it’s my taste and something that my ears find good sounding, this may not be the same for you.
2) why so many logic eq?
The 1st time Jono from Above & Beyond saw one of my logic projects he was surprised to see how many logic eq I had opened.
This eq is far from being the best sounding eq around, yet is the fastest eq you can have access to while working with logic.
For those who didn’t know, logic eq can be opened just by double clicking the little square box at the top of the channel strip, so there is no need to open menus and surf thru a Schindler list of plugins.
You know how important a fast workflow is for me, I pointed it out on many tutorials and videos, a fast way to do things helps not to kill your inspiration and excitement during music production and the logic eq is a real fast thing to get.
Second reason, logic’s default plugins are much lighter on the CPU than any other 3rd party plugin so pushing your machine to the limit is a little harder when you use this eq compared to using lets say the same amount of r-eqs or whatever.
Logic eq as I said is far from being a great sounding eq but it does the job, take a look at any of my video screen flow on YouTube you will notice most of the time this eq works as a low cut, high boost or hi cut, and as a freq killer, by freq killer I mean a type of eq that cuts frequencies rather than boosting them.
So when there is some heavy job to do on the eq of an element, or if there is a stand out element to eq my choice will be on some 3rd party product, if there is some frequency cut or a simple boost to make Logic Eq does the job and it’s excellent cause of its low CPU requirements and by the way you can quickly get it on your channel.
3) why so much low cut?
Yeah I’m pretty easy going when it comes to low cut, I’d say 80% or more of my channels have a low cut, the reason is cause human ear can’t listen below a certain frequency range (and above certain others) so what’s the point having something that adds a significant amount of “weight” to your sound if you can’t even hear it?
Let me focus on that “weight” for a second, usually bass frequencies is where all the dirt of the sound goes, it’s probably more obvious when it comes to real instruments rather than plugins and electronic equipment but in that frequency range there is often stuff that you don’t need and you don’t hear but that doesn’t mean it’s not there, all this crap adds weight to your mix, this leads to unwanted clipping and to a reducer room in your mix.
Now do not think slicing away all the frequencies below 100hz is the key to the perfect mix, cause it’s not! On The kick for example if while cutting frequencies I hear the sound changing even just a tiny little bit I usually back off and cut less, same for the bass(usually I don’t go over 20hz), low cut has to be invisible unnoticeable especially with kick and bass, with other elements like hi hats or leads you can go a little harder, but I wouldn’t go over 120 / 200 hz on the lead and over 500 on the hihat, pads depends as this usually cover a huge range of frequencies.
What I’ve learn during the years is that usually what’s really subtle makes more difference than what’s really obvious or anyway, most of the times it works better.
That’s it for this part one of the video, I found out YouTube now allows to upload videos longer than 15 minutes so next time I’ll try and be more clear with this kind of stuff straight into the video, I hope anyway you enjoyed the reading.

Benefits of listening your tracks in an unconventional way

David 7 Skies — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:40:11 +0000

What if you are almost done with your track but there is still that little “cherry on the cake” missing and no matter how hard you try it just doesn’t come?
I hate that feeling and for the record I’m in this situation about 350 days a year ( I deserve a 15 days break).
There a little something that I always do though and this thing inspires me most of the time.
Now, what I’m about to tell you might sound a little odd (it probably is as well) but I suggest you to give it a try since is a quick and painless thing.
I’m talking about playing you own track at different speed and before you get confused let me be a little clearer, different speed in this case refers to the classic vinyl type of speed, the one that changes tempo as well as pitch, so no time stretching or pitch shifting this is very important!
Now I won’t get into a deep scientific/musical explanation (even because I don’t know it) but what happens here is great in many ways :
1) Different approach to your track, dunno about you but by the time I finish a track I usually heard it about a hundred thousands time and the more I hear it the less I want to spend more time on it, with altered speed and pitch the track even if it’s the same track gets a new face, more or less details are brought to our attention, usually the slower it is the more details you notice, and the opposite when you play it faster.
2) resonances and harmonics, this is the best part, every time you play your track with a different speed, the natural tone change brings new harmonic elements to life, sometimes from a delay playing very slow some other from the tail of a reverb.
All you have to do at this time it’s simply listen carefully, try sing along some resonances And when you got the right thing simply record it somewhere and rewrite it on the original track once you are happy (remember than when you put your idea in the original track it ll have to be re-tuned as you were playing at with different pitched version).
I personally prefer to play the track slower as it sets the chill out mood and usually harmonics gets more interesting but sometime even play the track faster does the trick.
Before I say bye please bare in mind one thing, brain and perception are different on each one of us, so each one of us will have a his own reaction to this, some of you will be able to hear what I’m talking about, some others will just hear how a track would be if played by a broken turntable.
Worth a try anyway!
Cheers
David

Logic Users : Just watch this

David 7 Skies — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 02:09:16 +0000

Not exactly like Protools Audiosuite, but a real time saver so far.
Please note I did this video using a reverb but nothing holds you from using an eq a delay a chorus or whatever plugin you want.
I also just realized the crop screwed up a few menus so on protools what i click is simply the “Audiosuite” menu on the top bar.
On logic “Option” in the top bar and then “Audio”
On wave Editor to add a plugin : “Layer” on the top bar

What if inspiration hits you?

David 7 Skies — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:53:43 +0000

Hands up who never had an inspiration “attack” while driving or at the shopping center or during class at school/uni.
How many times that happened to you and how many good ideas did you lose because you couldn’t remember em by the time you got back home? Sometimes even if you are home by the time your DAW is ready the idea is already gone.
So in this post I’m going to tell you what you can do in order to save your ideas.
Now first thing is, the idea I’m talking about isn’t necessary a melody, it can be a pattern/sequence where you can then shape your melody on, it can be an actual melody, but it can also simply be a bassline key chance or some nice rhythm you can add to your groove, in my opinion everything cool that comes to mind it’s worth keeping.
So most important thing of all (to me but should be the same to you as well) is to buy a cell phone that supports audio recording,they are small, and most important they are almost always in our pockets(unless we are swimming or doing naked activities, but in that case it would be on the night table) who cares if it’s the worse mic ever with the worse conversion etc, we don’t need it to record the purest sound, we need to record whenever inspiration hit us, we need to store our idea who cares if it sound good or not, we ll just write them down on our DAW once we are back home and after that we can even damp the recording (I keep them cause I’m a romantic guy…).
Pretty much every phone comes with a recording function nowadays if for some reason your phone doesn’t, make sure you have something portable that will allow you to do that, mp3 players, portable recording devices(but they are more expensive as they have a better quality audio), ANYTHING that fits in your pocket and that allows you to record will do just fine.
Other very important point is to know your device! I know people who can’t even change their ringtone, as if they could record audio, so if you want to record your ideas but you are a noob with electronic devices, make sure you learn how to do that.
Make it fast and easy, if you are driving and you have an idea (happens to me all the time) set some shortcuts on your device in order to get to the recording tool as fast as you can(samsung cell phones have this function, same for many others), if you have an iPhone make sure you have a recording app on the dock or the 1st page the way that you don’t have to flick between a thousand pages, loosing time and getting distracted (remember you are driving).
The actual recording moment might be awkward sometimes, maybe you are in a busy place and someone may think you are an idiot cause you r singing at your phone, well screw them or otherwise head to a less busy area or the closest toilet (I record at any cost) also, learning how to sing with lips closed comes handy, and if you do so, remember to put the mic close to your nose, why? Try singing at lips closed for a few second then close your nose while you are still singing and see what happens.
In the studio, while playing with your keyboard don’t be afraid to push the record button, if you are recording midi notes you could play for 10 hours and ending up having a file which is not even 10mb (midi not audio), sometime is enough just hitting 3 notes in the right sequence and tempo and the melody comes to life by itself in your head, and it’s a shame if you lose it just because you missed to hit a button.

Best way to submit your tracks to a label

David 7 Skies — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:20:27 +0000

After I got the 12347263524273725 mail from someone asking me to make sure Anjunabeats got his demo I decided to write this.
So labels actually check out the demos you send over, most of them even pay someone to listen each and every track that gets sent to the office(they are called A&R and they are VERY patient persons), now, asking to an artist of a label to ask the label to ask the A&R to listen your track isn’t the strategy that will get you signed, for a few reasons.
1) Plenty of people already thought about this strategy already, messaged this artist who already had enough of these silly requests who will never contact the label for you.
2) introducing yourself rather than being introduced by someone else is a great thing, gives you more credibility, clearer deals (believe some ppl between you and the lable might be jealous and be more of a pain than a help),
3) The less you “own” to people, the better, you never know what kind of situations life will put you thru, it’s rather bad having someone telling you, you are there because of me…whatever!
I’m with you that this might be like a very dark vision of life but I’ve been into discography for over 8 years now and I saw a lot.
You are also right when you say that being considered when you are a total stranger takes longer and its harder than being introduced by someone else, but is also true that when you have REAL talent you get what you deserve!
Now let’s leave behind the possible bad things that might happen to you and let’s focus on how to promote yourself a little in order to have more chances with getting heard and signed eventually.
Most important of all things be realistic! If by comparing your track with a track signed on the label you are sending your demo to, you notice a HUGE gap in therms of quality, well maybe try improve your track and make it a little “tastier” and good sounding before sending it over, because if you keep sending average stuff the A&R will associate your name to something that ain’t worth listening and this might make it way harder for you, if your track sounds average but the melody you have there it’s the ultimate bomb, keep it on your hardisk, improve your productions skills and go back to it when you feel ready to turn that bomb melody into a bomb track.
Second most important thing, makes sure the style of your track matches the style of the label you are showing your music to! You can’t really send a dubstep track to a house music label, I mean you can but we are trying to increase your chances to get considered here.
So what if you produced a track which is great but is not quite the genre you usually produce, you have this tune and you have no idea which label you can send it to.
Well here a bit of research comes handy, you can simply surf around beatport.com listen to some random music till you find a some tracks similar to your one, now all you have to do is google the name of the labels those tracks are signed to and send them your stuff (other suggestion, send 1 mail at a time, not the same track to 800 different labels).
Other small things (yet important) you can do are : send full length & finished tracks, if something has to be fixed, fix it before you send it, also, show you are always keen to follow the label suggestions in case they are interested and ask you to fix a certain part of the track.
Do not overload them with tracks, 2 are enough 1 it’s way better, make sure your contact detail are correct(!!!), try to resist the temptation of showing the world your new track before you show it to the label, they LOVE exclusive stuff (kinda easier to sell), last but not least, if the label you wan to contact has a forum, hang around there for a while, show what you can do, try to get them to know you before you even contact them, a forum is a great source of information for a label, so if you think they are not watching you, you are very wrong.
Many other things should be said but this post is long enough already, just don’t forget to make music to have fun and not to become “famous” cause one single sign will hardly make you rich or famous or surrounded by girls ;)

Native instruments 50% Off, 5 Plugins You Can Pick!

David 7 Skies — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 20:54:19 +0000

A few minutes ago like probably many of you, I received an email from Native instruments with a great deal, 50% Off all Instruments and Effects for the next 5 days.
I’m probably not the only one who got really excited about this thing as I’ve been trying to purchase a plugin from almost an hour now and Native Instruments Website has been experiencing High Traffic problems on their server since I first got there, which means a hell lot of people are trying to take advantage of the offer (can’t blame them).
So how can you decide which plugin to pick?
Well it of course depends by the ones you have already, but if you are new to Native Intruments world my 1st pick would definitely be Massive, (which was actually my 1st pick when they did this same offer last year), Massive is a great piece of software especially for EDM, trance, house, drum & Bass, and Dub Step are filled of sounds coming from this synth which makes it in my opinion the nr.1 candidate for this offer.
Second pick for me is Kontakt 4 (which is what I’m going to buy as soon as NI website will let me), A little bit more expensive than the other plugins but this thing has a total different technology and once you have this monster the things you can do are never ending.
Not to talk about the number of libraries out there, orchestral sounds, pianos, strings special effects, moog samples, whatever you want!
For those who don’t know, Kontakt is a SAMPLER so it won’t be able to generate the sound as a synth does, you will need to load some samples in it, kontak reads various formats, from his own extention .KTK, to EXS, AKAI, REX and of course you can create your own maps by loading your own wav / aiff files.
Position Number 3 FM8 which should jump at number 1 if you are an anjunadeep / 80s music fan, FM8 is a recreation of the well known synth by Yamaha the DX-7, which along with some Korg and Roland synths shaped THE sound of the 80s.
Fm8 is a little bit hard to get on when it comes to program but the factory presets are great and very useful and you can always find some tuts around about FM synthesis.
4th position Reaktor…This thing is not for newbies, reaktor is a modular monster synthesizer which is why you have to be a little bit experienced if you want to use it at its best.
Good think though it comes with plenty of pre-made synths called ensembles, and there is a big community on NI’s forum where users share their own ensembles some for free some for fee.
Pick number 5 : Absynth this one is great to create atmosphere sounds and gritty acid noises, but also amazing for pads and (with some programming) basslines.
If ‘d have pick the plugin for how cool they are this would definitely be the first, but I’m trying to suggest which one might be better for EDM productions and despite its coolness, absynth is definitely better when it comes to background sounds rather than Leads or Bass.

I’m Sorry But…

David 7 Skies — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:51:35 +0000

I’m not going to make any youtube video tut. about mixing, eq-ing, compressing.
Why so?
Well, despite what you might think it ain’t because I don’t want to show you my tricks or something like that.
When it comes to teach something in my opinion you have to be able to teach conventional method before you teach your own one, it’s like driving lessons, where you always have to keep both hands on the steering wheel and stuff like that, and as soon as you have your driving license you just start drive the way it’s more comfortable with you (just give me the chance and advice to drive as safe as you can ALWAYS) well anyway mixing eq-ing and compressing to me its something like that, if you do a search on the internet you will find half a billion tutorials, books, videos and whatever else comes to mind about that subject, but then anyone change the rules to fit them better to he’s needs, and I can’t teach you that, none ever should!.
So why do I make tutorials it the first place you may ask.
My tutorials on YouTube are usually about some kind of “unbreakable” ways of doing things, let me be a little more clear.
Lately i spent a few time showing how to speed up your workflow, but what I showed was mainly a series of keycommands or short cuts that lead us to a faster result on certain operations.
When it comes to this, the ways to achieve this result are a finished number, 3 or 4 sometimes even just one.
When it comes to mixing, eq or compression though, the variables are almost never ending, just think about the fact that DIFFERENT eq, compressors, mixers and DAW having the SAME setting and processing the same thing will more likely never sound the same, Logic sounds different than Cubase that sounds different than live etc, at the same time waves R-Eq sounds different than the Sonalksis one, and so on, so we have tons of unmatching results and we haven’t even started tweaking the knobs!
Thats about gear’s internal circuitry even worse it’s when it comes to the actual sound to process, even here the variables are infinite, level of the sound, quality of the recording / loop / Sample, speakers and sound card you r playing your mix from, number of tracks you are mixing etc.
That said you might understand my point of not wanting to get into this kind of tutorial adventure that would most certainly turn into a nightmare, someone would take what I said as hidden gold and find out with huge disappointment my method doesn’t even barely work for his own purpose, someone might just say I’m a total noob cause my way is different compared to someone else’s way, I have a lot of stuff to deal with in my life already (as you all do) and I really can’t be bothered dealing with this.
Now on the bright side, I will tell you something that you might not want to read but that may help you way more than a YouTube video.
Ah, I should have actually started this whole blog saying that I don’t think my tracks sound as good as someone says, that’s another reason I would rather not teaching you how to do this kind of stuff, cause I may do more damage than good.
Anyway, my suggestion is…
Turn off the Internet! No I’m serious!
The Internet has become some kind of an infinite source of information and tutorials which gives us the illusion that we are actually able to do something by just reading or watching a few videos, but as beautiful and useful this thing is, it will never replace our own experience.
When I started making music I was this total 12 years old newbie who didn’t even know what a synth was, lucky coincidences in life allowed me to discover and own a few audio tools, but when I was that age I didn’t have Internet so the only way to understand how those things worked was to explore them, I might be wrong but as I said, seems all this having tuts at the tip of our fingers took away the beauty of exploring and discover things, and made us lazy.
Keep in mind I’m not talking about YOU, I’m making a general talking.
Well back to little David, as I was saying, all I could do with all those fascinating tools I wasn’t able to use, was find a way to learn them, so I started to browse synth patches I liked and tried to take them to the classic Init sound, some kind of backward process, the way I could understand the concept and the process behind, same with grooves, I used to take track with a grove I loved, stretch it to very slow and then analyze what elements were in it, with Mix etc, same story, and this is an advice you will read EVERYWHERE, I used to get (and still do this actually) a track that sounds good and sounds close to the style I’m producing and all I do, is get as close as possible to its sound, but once again it needs time and patience and lots of failures sometimes.
So, the advice I really want to give you is, don’t be afraid to explore and to experiment, if you don’t know how to do something don’t sit there hoping someone someday will post a video showing you how to do it, try be THE guy who will post it!
I promise I will keep doing tuts, showing stuff on YouTube but,and not because I’m lazy or I’m trying to hide something, I will not cover everything in music production, i will eventually talk about some very basic eq or comp or mix, but do not expect big things or something you don’t know or heard about already.
I really enjoy helping you guys, but believe me, there is no such joy as discover things yourself :)
This post has already taken away lot of time you could have spent on your new track so get off this page and get hardcore with your DAW!
D.

Standalone-Studio (which is my studio)

David 7 Skies — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:35:10 +0000

So this morning I was playing around with my camera, and a lens i borrowed, a nice 17mm that lets you take a quite wide angle on your images. Well anyway, I took some pictures of my little studio and published them on my facebook, which was a big mistake as now I’m flooded with questions about my setup. So I decided to take a little time to write on my dusty and unupdated blog, and talk about how I make all that stuff work. So the core of the whole studio is of course my MacBook Pro and Logic Pro 9.
Whoevers following me on facebook or twitter has surely read about my huge excitement a few days ago when I upgraded to my current Mac, a powerful i7 2.66ghz with 4 gb of RAM. Someone (and I was one of them) might find it odd using a laptop to produce music (it’s not the easiest thing I admit that) but I had to deal with it when it was the only thing I had to produce was a laptop and now (after 4 tracks on Anjunabeats produced on a MacBook pro) I can assure that even laptops do the job in a brilliant way. There is another great feature on my MacBook pro that I didn’t intentionally mention yet, which is the display….damn laptop and those 15″ you will say (I do)…. a single plugin interface can barely fit sometimes, I’ll let you just imagine how i was working with over 100 channels during the making of caffeine or any other track/remix released in 2009/10. Well that ammmmmazing machine which is my new Mac has a hi-res display which gives me 30% of extra space in the same 15″, now, I might be anal with computers but believe me, spending that extra 100 bucks on such a display was a hell of a good choice!!!! i can see something like 10-15 more channels on a logic project, plugins do not take 80% of my space, and even if you would never say it a spacey area will drastically speed up your workflow.

But let’s get back to my whole setup (watching the amount of txt I already wrote just talking about my Mac I’m seriously thinking of splitting this thing in a few parts), audio inputs and outputs are managed by the excellent apogee duet, a small yet powerful audio interface, features 2 outputs and 4 inputs + headphones monitoring. Apogee is well known for the quality of its converters, they are indeed some of the highest standard in the market and I can confirm whether recording or playback, the sound is awesome. As you can see from the various pictures of my studio, I have a few magic boxes, also known as hardware synthesizers, precisely i own : Roland JP 8000 (the blue keyboard on the left of the mac), Clavia Nordlead 2 (the red one) and an Access Virus Ti Snow (the white little one). This last one has its own usb to plug in the mac and a plugin that works in logic (and any other sequencer) that makes it easy to play and control from the mac, while the other 2 synth need a MIDI device that will allow data swap between the instruments and the computer. In my case it’s just a small m-audio midisport 2 ins and 2 outs connected with the mac thru usb. Another very important thing is of course the midi keyboard, in my case midi keyboard and midi controller, what I have in the studio is a massive M-Audio Axiom-61, heaps of keys (you guessed it, their are 61) and plenty of midi assignable faders and knobs, great to control logic and plugin parameters straight from the keyboard and by touching them with hands instead of by mouse (that I can assure you, makes a little difference).

Now of course all this stuff has to be plugged in somehow, every synth (apart from the Virus TI in USB mode where the USB cable does both, communication and audio streaming job) has a minimum of 3 cables, 2 audio going out from the Output of the synthesizer to the Input of the Apogee duet, and a midi cable, going out from the Output port of the m-audio midisport into the input of the synth so the audio cables will let recording our synth into logic, and the midi cable will let us control the synth from logic. There is even the possibility to connect the MIDI output of the synthesizer into the MIDI input of our interface, this is useful when we want to save patches from our hardware to the computer or when we want to know which MIDI control is assigned to a specific parameter (cutoff, release, adsr etc…). So this is how the mac gets and sends various signals to all the external devices, I hope it’s clear for all those who were confused seeing the pictures I posted. Now since this post has become a couple of kilometers long I decided to split the studio talk in a few parts that way I can get into details with each specified thing, next time I will talk about the various instruments I use and what’s the difference between them, and later on I will talk about my workflow, what kind of shortcuts I use and how their approached to productions. I won’t deny that it might (it will) take a while as I’m busy as, but stay tuned or just subscribe to my FEEDS or Newsletter if you don’t wont to bother checking the website every 5 hours. Till next time bye bye! D.

Mixing with Ableton Live

David 7 Skies — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:29:55 +0000

I’m far from being an advanced user of Ableton Live, I use it mostly for radio shows and sometimes to stretch stems for remixes, however it seems many people don’t get or underrate the power of a specific Ableton stretching algorithm.

Did you ever listen to some online radio shows and the tracks playing sound like there is an lfo modulating the volume or the phase? Or to be more clear, Did you ever listen to some online radio shows and the tracks played sound like crap?

That’s because of the ableton (or mix meister or what ever) algorithm, by default in Live, this algo is set to “beat” (but in the preferences the default can be setted to any other algorythim) which for full tracks isn’t really appropriate.

The “texture” algorithm doesn’t work either and nor does “tones”, there are 3 other algorithm available “complex” that I personally never liked for full tracks, “complex pro” which works quite well but misses a little something.

What I’m going to suggest to use is the other algorithm Ableton offers “Re-Pitch”, this one despite the other warp modes previously listed, alters the pitch of the track because it acts like the actual pitch from cdjs or turntables.

That’s exactly the point! by using this algorithm we don’t just get rid of that hateful crappy sound, but we also simulate the set being played on turntables/cdj, this gives (in my opinion) a better “in da club” feel.

This thing of course (as all the good things) has its cons, since “Re-Pitch” alters the pitch, most of the time when a track is heavily pitched up or down its key changes so you ll have to re-consider the key you are mixing the other track with, which is a pain in that place.

With a little bit of work though this method gives the closest result to an actual dj-set, worth giving it a try if you never have :)