Well, I was planning on finishing the loop for “Grace Will Be My Song” today, but I actually ended up spending about 3 hours EQing and tweaking the piano.  I’m still not happy with it by any means (my ears are probably just tired), but its getting there.  I got all of the piano parts sequenced out, and all I have left to do is sequence the pad…then mix all of it.

Also, I was thinking and decided that when I post it (it should be soon, I promise), I will post the loop both with and without the piano track just in case some of you are running with a live keyboardist.  That being said, if any of you have any special requests when it comes to anything I post, please do let me know — I’d be more than happy to accommodate.

Oh, and a quick shoutout — I have become acquainted with a couple of really amazing individuals lately, and thought I’d point you their way.

First, please check out Josh Collesano’s Blog – He’s a worship leader and musician from the land of Michigan.  He’s got some sweet videos up on the blog.  Oh yeah — you’ll notice that his guitarist has freakin’ amazing tone.  That’d be because he’s got a Bad Cat.  Kudos.

Also, hop on over to Aaron Ivey’s Blog...he’s the front man with a heart of gold for an amazing band called Spur58.  They’ve got some catchy tunes, so do yourself the great favor of taking a listen to their album.

That’ll be all for today.  I’m tired ladies and gents.  Really tired.  I wish I felt like finishing that loop tonight, but I just can’t do it.  I try not to exhaust myself creatively.  I’ve seen people do so to the extreme, and watched as they’ve completely lost passion for the art they were once in love with.  Don’t know about you, but I never want that to happen to me!  Never underestimate the value of rest and recuperation!

This is in response to a question I received earlier.  Hopefully this answers the posed question of “how do I get a Reason project into Ableton Live?”  Let me know if this helps!

Please let me know if you have any further questions, or need any clarification!
Also, if you want to download this video in full quality, you can do so by clicking here.

Please do let me know if you have any random questions about Ableton or Reason — I’m here to help!  Shoot me an email at TheMonoBox@gmail.com. 

Alright, me and another individual who frequents the blog are about to attempt to write a loop for David Crowder Band’s “Rain Down”.  I realize that this is a very daunting task (quite honestly, it scares me that I have committed to working on it…it is songs like this that make you feel incapable), so thought that it would be a good idea to ask if anyone has any bits and pieces of the song that they have already sequenced out and would like to contribute.

Let me know (either in the comments or emailing me at themonobox@gmail.com) if you have sequenced any of it out, or would like to assists in handling the workload!  If not, be keeping your eyes open; if things go well, you will probably see a loop for “Rain Down” pop up here on TheMonoBox within the next couple of weeks.  If nothing less, this will be an intense learning experience.

Also, I wanted to let you guys know that I am going to start working on finishing up the loop for Steve Fee’s “Grace Will Be My Song” (as mentioned in the previous post).  You should be seeing that within the next several days.

Hey guys – I was looking through some of the loops I’ve constructed over the past year or so, and saw that I had a good start on Steve Fee’s “Grace Will Be My Song”…

That being said, are any of you currently doing this song or want to do the song?  If there is a significant response, I’ll finish the loop up (I think I just have to add the piano parts), and post it.

Let me know if you’ve got a significant interest in it, and also if you have any special requests regarding the loop.

So, you may notice that my blog is now forwarding to a different address: themonobox.com.  

Today marks the day that somewhat of a transformation will take place — over the next month or so, the blog will likely get a facelift and will no longer be a strictly personal blog, but rather a more general blog focusing on Ableton Live, Reason, Sampling, Music, Audio and related things in relation to the Christian faith.  I plan on having multiple contributors (Benji Robinson, Matt Monson, and others) who have specific areas of expertise.

That being said, this site will henceforth be known as TheMonoBox.

I’m sure the vision and direction of the blog will become more clear over time (especially as I find more time on my hands).  Please bear with us as we get things in order…its all somewhat of a mess right now…

Rock y’all.

So, I know these guys, Neil Greathouse, Joe Hohman, and Matthew Santone…they are basically geniuses of the highest degree.  Extremely creative.  Well, a while back (not too long ago), they designed a web site for a growing multi-campus church in Arkansas called New Life Church.

Well, turns out, they made it on Churchrelevance.com’s Best Church Webdesigns.  So, I just wanted to congratulate these guys and slap a big high five over the bloglines.  Rock and roll.

Alright, I was searching through some old stuff, and realized that me and a good friend of mine, Matt Monson, had created a loop for Hillsong United’s “Lead Me to the Cross”.  At that time, we didn’t have anyone dedicated to either acoustic guitar or keys.  

So, the loop includes acoustic, pads, shaker, and tambourine.  When we’ve used it live, it has always filled the song out quite nicely.  Sequences like these are nice because everyone can essentially stop playing to let the song breathe, and the sequence carries it very gracefully.

The tempo is at 72 BPM and the key is A.  If you happen to have Ableton Live (which I recommend all of you get!), you can easily transpose this if you’d like to do so.

Alright – here it is:

Lead Me to the Cross – 72 BPM

Hope it helps someone out!

Well, its more of a sequence than a loop.  Someone I have become acquainted with (a worship director in Michigan) needed a sequence written for a song called “Words Hurt Too” by Rhian Benson.  It is not, by any means the type of music I am used to listening to, but fortunately, the instrumentation is pretty traditional.  
The only twist to all of it is that he needs the bass guitar sequenced out…this will definitely take a while, as the bass line is quite involved.  It will be fun to see how it turns out – I am not used to trying to imitate a bass guitar using Reason.  If only I owned a bass…

At any rate, I wanted to give y’all an idea of how I do this sort of thing.  Over the past year or so, I have become more an more comfortable doing all of this as I have developed a specific workspace/workflow for this kind of work.  I use two programs simultaneously – Reason and Ableton live.  This is not a new idea by any means…I love Reason for its sequencing and instruments, but it lacks audio editing capabilities and is, naturally, a closed program, which means that I cannot use any external plugins.  So, I Rewire Reason into Ableton Live, and do the writing using both.  You will notice, by the way, that I named my Reason and Ableton Live sessions incorrectly – I named them “Words Don’t Hurt”.  Turns out I can’t read.

For example, at the beginning of the song, there’s a bunch of reversed sounds.  So to figure out how to get those sounds, I simply loaded the original song into Live and reversed it.  Thus, I could hear the reversed sounds in their original state.  It turned out to be a reversed Rhodes riff, so I learned it, and then sequenced it out in Reason.  Then, I recorded it into Ableton and reversed it…shazaam!  Sounds pretty good.

So, the marriage between Ableton and Reason gives you a lot of creativity, and really just makes the entire process so easy.  It also allows you to load the original song into Ableton to follow along as you sequence it out.  This is always really nice, unless you run into a song that has any tempo drift, which happens to be the case here.  You CAN correct tempo drift under some circumstances, but this one is somewhat of a disaster. 

Well, I will keep y’all posted on the progress.  If you have ANY questions about using Reason and Ableton together, please either comment, or send me an email (mattjhuber@gmail.com).  

That’s what I keep telling myself.  The truth is, I have been writing so many papers for school lately that I sure wouldn’t mind hanging myself from a balcony.  But no!  I will continue!  Life is still worth living!

On a serious note, though, I wanted to apologize to all y’all who have been faithful to the good ol’ blog – I have not posted anything of real substance lately.  I certainly intend to, but haven’t had the time to do so.  You have my word, though, as soon as these papers are written…its go time.  I have a lot of idea that I am excited about and think you’ll love.  So, please do stick around.

Also, I wanted to inform the world that Benji (my roommate) and I have started running.  Yes, that’s right.  I’m exercising.  Many folks would find this surprising.  But its true. 

Yeah.  I know I have a weird expression on my face.  It looks like I’m sucking on a Jolly Rancher or something.  Whatever.

So, you know what’s been eating up my time.  What takes up the hours of your day?

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Apparently there’s a tornado in Columbus.  Not to be confused with the Yugoslavian metal band, Tornado (they call themselves “the warriors of steel” making “neoclassical music”)…

But anyway, I just realized that here, in Grandview (a suburb of Columbus), the tornado sirens harmonize with each other.  Quite honestly, it is beautiful — I swear, I went to my guitar and played along…it’s an F# Major chord…  

It makes me wonder if they are tornado sirens or whether Jesus is returning as we speak.  I always wonder what those trumpets are going to sound like.  I bet they are going to be absolutely gorgeous.

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