Akai APC40 Tutorials by Steve Gregory

Rebirth for iPad

2010-11-20T19:37:00.000-08:00

Rebirth has now been released for iPad, and it's amazing. It was released a while ago for iPhone, but the interface was just a bit unusable on such a small screen. The screen on the iPad is perfect for it though. I am now working on trying to do a live mix making use of the APC40 with the iPad plugged in as an input through the record in. Whether or not this will work with syncing remains to be seen, but it should be a lot of fun!

Remix Available for Download

2010-11-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

Well I got a huge surprise at the popularity of my new mix. It went to #4 on the daily youtube views, and stayed at #9 for the weekly views. Thanks very much to everyone for viewing it!
It is now available as an MP3 to download at soundcloud.

You can get it here:
http://soundcloud.com/remix73/deadmau5-empire-of-the-sun-mix-steve-gregory

Deadmau5/Empire of the Sun remix overview

2010-10-27T23:45:00.001-07:00

I've had a few requests for some more background on how this mix was done.
There was a concert a couple of weeks ago where I heard Empire of the Sun and The Potbelleez playing live. They are both Australian bands, and while I recognised all their music, I wasn't aware that they were the bands responsible for it all.
Anyway, it was enough to tear me away from iPhone application development for a couple of days and do a mix. Initially the track was made up of Potbelleez, Empire, and Kate Miller Heidke. She's got some beautiful vocal work from a song called The Last Day on Earth. Unfortunately it didn't really fit with where the track was going, so I'll save it for next time. I did however leave a very small section of some backwards vocals, which is what you can hear at the very beginning of the track.
It was put together pretty quickly, and I used the default tracking within Live without doing any manipulation of hit points. This has meant that at a couple of points in the track (around 2 minutes) you can hear it drifting just a bit. It was also the first time I had tried using my laptop instead of my Mac Pro. I was really impressed, as it didn't have any problems whatsoever. In fact I think I had about 10 other applications running while I was doing that, including After Effects and Photoshop!
The video was shot on a Canon 7D DSLR with a few different lenses. Due to the fact that I should have been doing work, I didn't really have much time to colour correct the footage, so it's a bit dark in places - but that's 100% straight out of the camera. I used a few different lenses on it. The closeups are a 60mm macro 2.8 lens, the wide shot is a 17-55mm 2.8, and the side shots are a 50mm 1.8. I actually had the shutter speed a bit wrong, which is why the lights are strobing in the closeups!

In this case I didn't create any of the samples myself, and did fairly minimal editing as well. As it shows in the video, most of the additional samples come off the Zero G Electro sample CD. I think I've pillaged most of it now though, so I'll need to look somewhere else next time! There is only one sample used from Deadmau5 - fairly often too, but I think it works :)
Again, as mentioned in the video, the main effects are the Sugar Bytes Effectrix and Wow plugins. I routed anything that needed to be effected out to two different tracks, and then put all the insert effects I needed there. I then MIDI mapped the controls for each of those effects on to the APC40 controls. Triggering of the Effectrix was done via MIDI clips.

Let me know if you need any further information! Currently there are no mp3's for any of the mixes I've done, but I'm getting a few requests so will get on to it!

Deadmau5 vs Empire of the Sun vs Potbelleez

2010-10-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's been 6 months since my last remix!
Anyway, here's a new one. Hope you like it!

Tiesto Remix!

2010-04-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

New Mix - Coldplay vs Imogen Heap

2010-01-08T08:48:00.001-08:00

New mix coming!

2010-01-08T08:26:00.001-08:00

I've been really busy with work the past few weeks, so haven't had time to do any remixes. I have one nearly ready now though, a combination of Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap, and Clocks by Coldplay. I'm really happy with it so far, it has some fairly strong electro basslines in it, but I've added in a bit of live drumming out of Stylus to not make it too electronic.
Due to the fact that may video camera is not here today, I've pulled apart a couple of music videos and used my camera phone to film the rest of it. It's a little bit different, has a few screen grabs showing the plugins I'm using as well - so hopefully everyone will like it!

Trilian Update

2009-11-24T14:14:00.000-08:00

Spectrasonics have just released a patch library update for Trilian. This now adds 500 synth bass sounds, where previously there was only a demo bank. This will be really useful for anyone doing electronic music, at it has a huge amount of massive basses covering everything including Waldorf Pulse, ARP 2600, Minimoog etc. Check out www.spectrasonics.net

Akai LPD8 and BFD

2009-11-23T00:51:00.001-08:00

Just made a couple of purchases today, and looking forward to them arriving.

The first one was the BFD drum library. I've used the lite version that comes with ProTools, and it's an incredibly responsive drum module that is perfect for the times when you need natural sounding drums rather than the more electronic drum machine style that you get out of Redrum or something.

The second one was a pad controller. I tossed up between the Akai LPD8 and the Korg Nanopad. I've realised that one thing the APC40 just can't do is play drums. This is unfortunate, as while I can get by without velocity sensitivity, the latency when using it as drum pads just completely rule it out. I've tried all sorts of tricks - even shortening USB cables, putting it on its own buss etc, and it just won't cut it. So I wanted to get a very small set of drum pads that won't take up too much room on my desk. While I really like the Akai MP series of pad machines, they are really just too big for what I'm looking for. This should hopefully fit right in front of the APC40, and give me some live drumming ability.

What really helped me make my decision was the following review, this might be useful too if you're in the market for something similar.

http://www.djtechtools.com/2009/10/27/korg-nano-pad-vs-akai-lpd8/

I have a new remix under construction, but I think I'll wait until the new gear arrives and then put up another video!

APC40 and Rewire

2009-11-18T06:06:00.000-08:00

Finally got a chance to sit down and get some things going today. I tried rewiring Ableton Live through Logic, which seems to work quite well - but you don't get the use of the APC40. Logic has control via Rewire, so the APC just becomes a piece of plastic! I may try rewiring it the other way, so that Live is the controller, and Logic becomes the slave, as I think I'd get full control.
I then tried the same thing in Pro Tools, obviously with the same result. One thing that I did notice since installing Snow Leopard though was that my MC Mix know longer worked with Pro Tools. I installed the latest patch, with still no luck, and after hunting around for ages found a post that said you needed to use the file permissions tool to scan your hard drive for changes. That seemed to fix it, and now I have automated faders again in Pro Tools and Logic, which is great. Only thing I have now is none of the Spectrasonics plugins showing up in Pro Tools, so that will be the nxt job.
I have another remix I'm playing around with at the moment, so might get that one done in the next week or so!

Spectrasonics Trilian

2009-11-12T13:44:00.001-08:00

My copy of Trilian just arrived a few days ago, and I've had a bit of a chance to play with it. For those of you not familiar with it, this is Spectrasonics' new bass synthesizer. It's made up primarily of electric and acoustic basses (upright, chapman stick etc), and sounds incredible. Amazingly well sampled, uses round robin sampling (so that every note doesn't sound the same), and apparently some of the bass sounds have in the order of 21,000 samples! I think it will work really well for more open and acoustic styles, but fantastic to have.
For most of my work I'm actually interested in synthesizer basses, and I must admit that I wasn't expecting it to be so heavily orientated to real bass sounds. That said, they are planning on releasing a giant patch set of synth sounds, so as soon as that comes out I will do a video going through the program and show what it's capable of! You can hear some of it on the Christopher Walken video I did last week.

Christopher Walken performs Lady Gaga Poker Face - Live remix

2009-11-07T22:36:00.000-08:00

I wanted to do something a bit different this time and give a demonstration of Ableton Live's stretching abilities.

As you'd know, Ableton Live has some pretty impressive time stretching and audio manipulation tools. I decided to take Christopher Walken's recent poetry reading of Lady Gaga's 'Poker Face' song and retime it. I think this really demonstrates quite how much you can stretch things around and move them. Even doing this sort of thing in Pro Tools is pretty tricky, but Ableton makes it pretty easy.

As you hear in the song, the first sample played is the way Christopher Walken actually read the text. Emphasis, spacing, and the length of words are completely different. Next I moved and stretched everything around and you can hear the new emphasis on top of Lady Gaga's voice.

Seeing as this was a pretty basic remix, I decided to throw in a bit of something else as well. Here you can hear a Yamaha WX-11 wind controller playing a Yahama VL70m sound module. This is a physically modeled sound device, and the wind controller is able to make great use of it. You can hear how the expression available with a wind controller is much more than you would get out of a keyboard. I might do a few more videos showing this unit in action!

APC40 mix - Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "Relax" mixed with "Busy Child" by The Crystal method.

2009-11-07T22:35:00.000-08:00

The Crystal Method are one of my favourite bands, and even though this song is probably about 10 years old, it still is a really kicking track. 'Relax' is of course very famous, and I thought it might quite well over the top.
In this demo I'm using a couple of plugins. The first is Effectrix, which is a glitch/beat scrambler VST plugin. The second one is called Lucifer, which does basically the same thing - but is a bit more advanced (and harder to use!). I have placed both of these effects on the master channel, but set with about 50% dry/wet mix. The two outside tracks contain MIDI clips that send note data to each of the plugins and trigger the appropriate effect. In this case I'm using Effectrix for most of the effects like Chorus, Flanging, Delay etc. and I'm using Lucifer for the beat repeating (8ths, 16ths, 32ds) etc.
I've found that using MIDI clips for triggering effects is a bit easier than trying to control it from the knobs and dedicated effects controls of the APC40 (as I have done in earlier remixes).

"American Ghostbuster" - Akai APC40 remix

2009-11-07T22:33:00.000-08:00

This one started out more as a bit of a joke than anything else, I don't know why I thought it would be possible to put Ghostbusters together with American Beauty - but it ended up sort of working! Not an amazing remix, but not bad for a filler if you're doing a live set. American Beauty is one of those amazing evocative tracks that just seems to really fit well into any electronic setting.

Ableton Live 8 with Akai APC40 - Part 2

2009-11-07T22:32:00.000-08:00

This is part 2 of my breakdown of the Money for Nothing remix. It shows how everything is put together, and the way that the APC40 is controlling Live.

Overview of Ableton Live Software - Part 1

2009-11-07T22:30:00.001-08:00

This is part 1 of my breakdown of the Money for Nothing remix. It shows how everything is put together, and the way that the APC40 is controlling Live. This is a good intro for anyone who has never seen the Ableton Live interface before.

Money for Nothing Remix

2009-11-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

Money for Nothing by Dire Straits has got such a famous guitar riff in it, and I'm just amazed there haven't been more remixes done. Of course Prodigy works with anything as well, so I decided to combine them both together. This is one of my earlier mixes, so there are a few timing issues that happened when I played it live, but nobody seems to have minded too much! While this is a pretty simple remix, I think it shows how combining two tracks together that are already so well produced can come up with something completely new altogether! Fortunately neither of the tracks had to be pitchshifted too far from their original key signatures, so I was able to use a lot of the samples completely in context.

Love Story Remix by Taylor Swift

2009-11-07T22:26:00.000-08:00

This is a remix I did to introduce my Music Technology students to the art of remixing. Taylor Swift is an amazing song writer, and this song is incredibly popular. I thought it was possibly recorded a little bit fast though, and by slowing it down we could turn it into a bit more of a hip hop track. When this is done the track immediately loses its country feeling, but I think still retains the character of the original song.
One thing I try and teach my students is not to do a remix just for the sake of it, unless you are adding something new, all you're really doing is putting a beat under someone else's work. You should always strive to add your own unique creativity expression onto an existing track.

First day with the APC40!

2009-11-07T22:23:00.000-08:00

I had literally just pulled the APC40 out of the box when I recorded this. Up until this point I hadn't really used Ableton Live much at all. My primary sequencer had been Pro Tools/Logic and before the Mac, Cubase. The hardware interface has made the software so much more accessible, that it's now become my primary sequencer.
This is a super basic remix that I will probably erase at some stage, but I've left it up as it was my very first one!