This post was originally published in DJ Magazine’s free online edition DJ Weekly issue 125

As someone who spends hours in the studio each day, I know how easy it can be to get stuck in a rut. Recording iOS apps feels like breath of fresh air and can help you break out of that… The element of danger, the fact that you need to lock down that performance whilst recording, it brings a very refreshing vibe that I miss from the early studio days.

In the previous part in this series we did some beatmaking with iMaschine and in today’s tutorial we add some more percussive elements with Beatmaker 2. In the final part coming soon I will move onto the bass and synth parts with Figure. Give it a go, experiment and have fun!

The post Beatmaking with Beatmaker 2 and Ableton Live – Making Music With Apps (pt.5) appeared first on Electronic Music Production News and Tips.

This post was originally published in DJ Magazine’s free online edition DJ Weekly issue 116

“One of the common grumbles that we hear from people attempting to produce with iOS apps is that it is tricky to turn the good ideas you make in them into fully fledged tracks. You might play around with a tune for a while when you’re on the train… but then you’ll never return to it again. Hands up if this sounds familiar?!

So I have attempted to give you some inspiration to help get around that obstacle by recording the ideas that you come up with on the move on your iOS apps, into Ableton Live (you could do this into any DAW). Once you have committed your ideas to a larger project you can get on with the task of arranging the parts and making that banging tune that your 8 bar loop had promised.

This approach is all about making the most of the unique qualities of each app and recording the results into Ableton as audio clips. The advantage is that you are committing the sound that you have made to audio so there is no temptation to endlessly fiddle with the synth parameters or the intricacies of the midi patterns.

As someone who spends hours in the studio each day, I know how easy it can be to get stuck in a rut. Recording iOS apps feels like breath of fresh air and can help you break out of that… The element of danger, the fact that you need to lock down that performance whilst recording, it brings a very refreshing vibe that I miss from the early studio days.

The focus in the above tutorial is on the beatmaking using Native Instrument’s great app iMaschine. In the next 2 parts coming soon I will continue to work on the beats using Beatmaker 2 and then move onto the bass and synth parts with Figure.

As a final point, even though the techniques I have shown will remain a great way of working, mobile technology is moving to the point where you might not need a laptop or desktop computer at all to make tracks on the move. Standards are emerging which will mean soon all the apps will be interlinkable within your device, and every app will provide an audio and MIDI stream to each other… that will be the real holy grail of making music with apps!”

Learn more about using Ableton Live as a recording tool on Point Blank’s wide range of Ableton courses
Watch free exclusive music production tutorials on Point Blank’s sample course page

Transcription:

The last episode was all about the iMaschine, from Native Instruments. This week, we’re taking a look at a competitive product called the BeatMaker 2, but it can be used in collaboration with the iMaschine, as well. Each has its own strong points. Let’s take a look at what BeatMaker 2 has to offer.

Let’s dive into BeatMaker 2. We’ve got two choices to start off with, the drum machine or the keyboard sampler. I’m going to go with the drum machine because I want to add some elements on top of the beat that we had last week. This is what the beat sounds like. Let’s go into Percussions 1 and load it up. What we need to do is come up here, to the actual device itself. That’s the kind of vibe that I’m talking about. I’m going to stop the beat. I could record this, literally live, into Ableton, but it’s gone against basically the whole concept of this video. What I’m talking about here is being on the move; programming stuff on a train journey, outside, wherever, and then bringing it back into the studio. That’s what I’m going to do.

Let’s take this song and increase the tempo. We’re looking for 123 to match. Let’s just take this. You can use the ‘+’ or the ‘-’ signs to get it accurate. There we go, 123. You’ve got some record options here. You can set the pre-roll, you can do that; you can quantize on the way in. I’d suggest that depending on your ability, a lot of people are going to struggle with getting stuff in time on the way in, let’s get the quantize on the go. I’m going to record into the build-in sequencer, so I’m going to set a loop there. I’m going to get a counter. Here we go. You can hear it looping there. See what else we got.

I’m going to leave that and switch on to another one. Here we go. Let’s click on the ‘+’. Let’s go to Percussions 2. There’s a big library here. That’s one of the advantages of BeatMaker 2; it’s got a very comprehensive library. , Percussions 2. Yeah, I’m going to get a shaker in. Here we go. I think that could work quite nicely.

One of the ways that you could work with this is to literally build your own percussion loops. It could be stored in a library. These could be part of your own unique percussion library, stuff that you’ve build up on the move and you bring it back and record it in. Let’s take that off. I’m just going to push Stop. That’s going to do for the moment.

Of course, we want to sort of adjust some levels and stuff. You can do that, any of these sounds here. You can come over. We’ve got the option to adjust the volume and the panning. Actually, considering that I’m going to record this all straight in as a stereo pair into Ableton. I think I’m going to do a bit balancing. Let’s give that a go now. I’m going to pan the shaker a little bit over to the left and adjust the mix here. This shaker, pan over to the right a bit.

Let’s come back to the other instrument. I’m going to pan this over. I’m just going to adjust the panning a little bit on the congas. Yeah, I like what’s going on there. Going to [inaudible: 04:48], as well. That’s good.

Let’s imagine that you’ve prepared that wherever you may be, on the train, or out and about, and you want to actually bring that through to your library, or potentially to integrate it into a tune. That’s what I’m going to do here. What we’ll do is we’ll just get this recorded. I don’t actually get any clashing going on. I’m just going to take off the original beat so that we can’t hear it. I’m going to set this up to record and then I’m going to push Play on the BeatMaker 2 here. Here we go. You can see the waveform coming through. Here we go. By pure fluke, it actually looked like I was almost in some form of grid timing there. Let’s just stop that.

We’ve got the recording. We need to once again zoom in. It looks like there’s this . . . it’s attempting to pick up the transient [inaudible: 05:40]. I think I would go with over here. I’m going to right-click and go Set 1.1. Let’s have a look. Let’s see how that sits now; it’s only one bar. I’m going to bring the volume down, get the original beat, and see how they sit together. That’s actually working really nicely. I’m very happy with that. That’s one way that you could work with BeatMaker, but you can actually use it for instruments, too. I’m going to show you.

We’re going to click on ‘+’ and we can go to Keyboard Sampler. There’s a whole load of instruments that you could potentially pick here, and there are different categories. You can see: Base, all this kind of business here, there are synthesizers. This is really like an all-in-one sequencer setup. If all you want to do is to make beats and get some MIDI-style instruments down, BeatMaker 2 could be a good choice for you.

That concludes our look at BeatMaker 2. It’s great all-rounder so long as you don’t want to record stuff in. GarageBand might be your option if you want to do that because you can record audio. I have seen this spec list, though, for the BeatMaker 2 update and it looks as if they’re incorporating some form of audio recording, so keep your eyes open for that. By the time the video is published, the features may be available. This is a really good all-rounder; highly recommended.

At PointBlank Online, you’ve got 2 methods of interaction with your tutor. Firstly, you’ve got the weekly Online Mastersclass, which is in real time. Then also, we’ve got feedback on your assignments, and that’s known as DVR.

The Online Masterclass is a 1-hour session you get with your tutor every week. You can ask questions about the lesson content. You get instant feedback, and also, demonstrations on-the-fly, from their computer desktop, with our streaming technology.

DVR stands for direct video response, and the concept is really simple: You upload your Ableton, Logic, or Qbase project file to your tutor; he downloads it, and then pushes Record on the screen-capturing software and evaluates your work, basically giving you one-to-one feedback. You see all of the mouse movements and any parameter changes made by your tutor. It’s kind of like sitting in the studio, over their shoulder, watching what they’re doing whilst they work. We have found the DVR process is truly revolutionized the way that we teach you online, and the results speak for themselves.

Book your place in the course now, by visiting PointBlankOnline.net.

The post Beatmaking with iMaschine and Ableton Live – Making Music With Apps (pt.4) appeared first on Electronic Music Production News and Tips.

This post was originally published in DJ Magazine’s free online edition DJ Weekly issue 103

“So last time we took a look at using a selection of iPad music apps to create a drum and bass idea quickly and easily. You’ll have noticed that we didn’t pay much attention to the actual physical connection aspect and seeing as we’ve had a variety of questions on the subject we thought we’d dedicate this week’s article and video to the subject.

MIDI

The camera connection kit is one of the ways that you can use a MIDI keyboard to bring a traditional method of inputting note data. Alternatives do exist so if you don’t want to go the official apple route take a look at products from companies such as IK Multimedia and Alesis. This small white box adds a USB input to the iPad that actually was originally designed for camera to iPad photo transfer. If your MIDI keyboard is class compliant however you’ll find that it will probably work perfectly. Most of the apps will work straight away with the keyboard but some such as the Animoog will require you to choose from a selection of input devices in the MIDI settings section. Experienced keyboard players will of course love this option as it bridges the traditional with the future but is it necessary? It’s definitely not and in some respects, using the touch screen of the iPad is preferable. Take for example the modulation on Animoog – the vertical positioning of your fingers on the notes changes the character of the sound.

Audio

A simple stereo mini jack to 2 x mono phono jack lead will enable you to connect the iPad to your audio interface. If you don’t have an audio interface you could stick with a stereo mini jack to stereo mini jack lead and plug from iPad into your laptop/desktop but be aware that the audio quality will be inferior. You will also need to setup your DAW to accept the incoming audio stream and turn the monitoring on so that you can hear what’s happening in realtime. Make sure you get as low an audio buffer size as possible in order to avoid annoying latency. We’d suggest recording your iPad apps early in the composition stage, then when things get more complex in the production and you don’t need to ‘play’ elements in anymore you can increase the buffer size without any penalties.

Even if you only add one app based element to your workflow process we’re sure you’ll get some form of benefit. The hybrid desktop/iPad app studio brings an extra dimension to your writing process. Watch the video to see both the MIDI and Audio setup in context on a relaxed deep house vibe.”

Learn more about using Ableton Live as a recording tool on Point Blank’s wide range of Ableton courses
Watch more free exclusive music production tutorials on Point Blank’s sample course page.

———————————————————————————————————-

Here’s another batch of high quality, royalty free samples, this time from our friends at Loopmasters. It includes sounds from their Nu School Deep House, Simon Garcia, Movie Dialogue 5, Sublime Tech Vocals, Epic Electro & Tech House, Tom Middlelton and Main Room Chords packs.

To download the samples click the ‘pay with a tweet’ button below. Enjoy!

Transcription

Hi. This is Danny Lewis, Course Developer and Tutor, here at PointBlank Online. You’re watching Making Music with Apps. In the last episode of Making Music with Apps, we looked at using iOS applications to create a musical idea, but we didn’t go into the connections.

Step 1 is the Camera Connection kit. Plug it into your iPad and your keyboard. Step 2: Plug in the Mini-Jack into your headphone adapter, and then the left and right jacks into your Audio Interface.

Into Ableton Live now. We’re going to come up to the Preferences audio tab. Make sure your audio input device is set to the audio interface that you connected your cables into. That’s the first stage. Let’s create an audio track.

The input-output routing is crucial. You can see here, Audio from External In, that’s what we want. You can turn this in and out routing off or on, on the right-hand side. We can see that at the moment; that’s good. The monitor is set to Auto. If I click Record Enable down here, I can hear and see the level coming in from the [inaudible: 01:22]. You might want to adjust your input level if it’s a little bit too quiet, on the interface, on the balance. I’ve got 2 rotary controls, one for left, one for right. We’ve also got a signal and clip meter. See, that’s nice and green. If that was red, we’d want to turn it down, turning to the left. I think I’ve got a good level here. I’m just going to experiment on top of that backing. Let’s have a listen.

There we go. We can take a look at the audio that’s been recorded. We can check it out and see how that feels. That’s working absolutely fine. Just a little summary: Once again, Preferences, Audio, the input device, make sure it’s the same as the audio interface that you’ve connected your cables to. Make sure you’ve got Record Enable on an audio track. If you need to check, you can do the in and out routing on the right-hand side. and then select from one of your input sources.

I hope you enjoyed that second installment. Check out PointBlankOnline.net, for the courses, and YouTube.com/PointBlankOnline for the free tutorials. After the break, you’re going to see and advert about the unique one-to-one feedback that PointBlank Online has with its students.

At Point Blank Online you’ve got 2 methods of interaction with your tutor. Firstly, you’ve got weekly Online Masterclass, which is in your time. Then also, you’ve got feedback on your assignments, and that’s known as DVR.

The Online Masterclass is a 1-hour session you get with your tutor every week. You can ask questions about lesson content. You get instant feedback, and also, demonstrations on-the-fly from their computer desktop, with our streaming technology.

DVR stands for direct video response, and the concept is really simple. You upload your Ableton, Logic, or [inaudible: 03:37] project file to your tutor, he downloads it, and then pushes Record on the screen-capturing software and evaluates your work, basically giving you one-to-one feedback. You’ll see all of the mouse movements and any parameter changes made by your tutor. It’s kind of like sitting in the studio, over their shoulder, watching what they’re doing whilst they work.

We have found the DVR process has truly revolutionized the way that we teach online, and the results speak for themselves. Book your place on the course now, by visiting PointBlankOnline.net.

The post Making Music With Apps (pt 2) – Hooking up your Music Apps / Free Loopmasters Sample Pack appeared first on Electronic Music Production News and Tips.

This post was originally published in DJ Magazine’s free online edition DJ Weekly issue 101

Fact: It’s getting to the point where you won’t need a laptop or desktop computer to make music. Things are moving so fast in the mobile app world that right now it’s feasible to construct a complete track using elements created entirely within your iPad/iPhone. Sure not all the aps are talking to each other right now but standards are emerging and sooner or later each and every app will provide an audio and MIDI stream to each other. If I was to take a guess why Apple’s much anticipated Logic 10 is taking so much time to arrive it’s because of this little upstart called iOS!

I wanted to take a look at what’s feasible for myself so I set aside a little bit of a budget and grabbed some interesting tools from the app store. I was looking for a nice broad selection of elements, a drum machine, a couple of synths, a loop mangler and some devices for creating abstract sounds. I decided not to try and use some of the new MIDI and Audio standards as from what I can make out only certain combinations of apps will work. I just wanted an open canvas and for that reason I decided to record from the audio output of the iPad into Ableton Live via an audio interface (Propellerhead’s excellent “Balance”). Also on a hardware tip I quite fancied plugging an actual MIDI keyboard into the iPad so bought the camera adapter and found that it worked perfectly with my AKAI LPK25. Do you know what? The hands on physicality that a ‘real’ keyboard brings when plugged into the iPad makes me feel like I’ve got a bit of a winner here. It’s like a Korg Kronos on a budget! Seriously, next I’ll be plugging in a full size keyboard and getting one of those iPad holders to go on the top. I wouldn’t be surprised to be honest if this is what contemporary session musicians do; a weighted midi controller keyboard partnered with an iPad might just make it onto the stage at Rhihanna’s next gig, you never know.

So this approach is all about making the most of the unique qualities of each app and recording the results into Ableton as audio clips. The advantage is that you are committing the sound and in my example you also have to do a good job of performing the musical elements in. This brings a certain ‘organic’ flow to the proceedings, something that I truly enjoyed. Working with MIDI for so many years has made me lazy, I tend to record something in, quantize it and make it all perfect. I don’t tend to practice a riff and try to ‘feel’ how it should be. This is why recording iOS apps feels like breath of fresh air. The element of danger, the fact that you need to lock down that performance whilst recording, it brings a very refreshing vibe that I miss from the early studio days. Trust me, watch the video, get some apps and get some stuff down; you might surprise yourself. I’m all for alternative methods of composition to break out of a rut and I feel positively cleansed by this whole experience.”

Learn more about using Ableton Live as a recording tool on Point Blank’s wide range of online Ableton courses

If you want to learn how to make drum & bass we have a brand new online course perfect for you. Check this promo vid:

Free Samples from Prime Loops

Here’s another batch of high quality, royalty free samples, this time from our friends at Prime Loops. This  pack is rammed full of excellent sounds from their Black SFX, Chopper FX, Dark Ambiences & Textures and Razor FX libraries. Whether you are looking for sweeps and lazers from outer space, glitched out synth and percussion sounds, or haunting eerie atmospheres, there is plenty here to add that extra layer of texture to your tracks!

To download the samples click the ‘pay with a tweet’ button below. Enjoy!

And if that’s not enough for you, Prime Loops are having a massive Spring Clean Out – head on over to their website to get up to 50% off all Prime Loops sampled and loop packs.

Transcription

Hi. This is Danny Lewis; Course Developer and Tutor, here at PointBlank Online. You’re watching Making Music with Apps.

In this week’s video, we’re going to take a look at using iOS apps to create all of the musical elements in a track idea. This is recorded into Ableton Live. I’ve got several elements. We’ve got the iMachine for the beats, Korg MS20 for bass, Animoog for abstract pad sounds, Beat Shuffler for the [inaudible: 00:37] arrangement, and then Garage Band Electric Piano. In the next few minutes, I’ll take you on a tour. I’ll show you the apps I use to create the actual musical elements that you’re hearing now.

The first app was the iMachine, from Native Instruments. What I wanted to do was create some variations so you can see they’re muting the closed high hat pattern. Recording into Ableton Live now. This is not synchronized with the transport at the moment. I’ve just got the tempo on the transport, the same as the tempo on the app. That means that it’s out on the actual audio clip recordings, so all I need to do is re-establish the first beat in the bar, that’s what’s happening here.

The section with the closed hat into the section without. Create a couple of clips as a variation, you can see me doing that now, reducing the actual length. This is going to be the clip with the closed hat and then shifting the loop brace over. Adjust the loop brace, of course, just find a section that you prefer. That’s a beat down. Next onto the bass.

The bass is from the Korg MS20. It’s got real classic analogue sounds to it. You can see me recording a bass line in here, just improvising a little bit every now and again. Remember, there is a lag because of the fact that I was using Soundflower. If you guys are just doing this for yourselves, you’re going to get a nice instant response from the synth. You can see I moved the low-pass filter to create a variation, shifting onto the high- pass, thinning the sound out, onto the Chaos Pad.

Animoog is next for an abstract pad sound. This is from the Richard Devine collection. What I wanted to do is just get a collection of notes. These are really abstract, so there is not so much a defined note pitch. I wasn’t worrying about the notes; I was playing on the keyboard. What I wanted to do was to get a little bit more expressiveness; I used the actual keyboard on the Animoog, because the vertical position adds modulation to the sound. Animoog is a great synth for abstract textures, as well as traditional sounds.

If you want some fun mangling up, some breaks check out Beat Shuffler. You can see that I can trigger the loop at whichever position in the grid that I want it to be. Just rearranging stuff on-the-fly, automatically quantized as it’s locked into the grid. The concept really, was just to record a long section where I can get some bits that I can pick and choose from. You don’t have to worry if you make any mistakes, just get it all down and then see what’s best when you actually finish. I ended up this loop, transposed it up, reduced the section to create a more gated effect, and then just adjusted the level.

This is the Smart Keyboard in Garage Band. I’ve got something programmed here. What I’ve got programmed is the chords. You come up to the Settings, as you go to Edit Chords, you can see what I’ve setup on these last two. These are deliberate; these are something that I feel work quite nicely. Really easy, you just trigger the chord by holding your finger down, and when you move up, it create this little arpeggio. This is a really nice way to get some chords down. I’m going to record some in, on top of what we’ve got.

That’s it for this week. If you’ve got an iPad or an iPhone, try the apps out, see how it works. Record them into Ableton, Logical, Qbase, whatever you’re using. Don’t forget to subscribe to YouTube.com/PointBlankOnline. Check out the promo after this for some information about our courses.

At PointBlank Online, you’ve got 2 methods of interaction with your tutor. Firstly, you’ve got weekly Online Masterclass, which is in real time. Then also, we’ve got feedback on your assignments, and that’s known as DVR.

The Online Masterclass is a 1-hour session you get with your tutor every week. You can ask questions about the lesson content. You get instant feedback, and also, demonstrations on-the-fly from the computer desktop, with our streaming technology.

DVR stands for direct video response, and the concept is really simple. You upload your Ableton, Logic, or Qbase project file to your tutor who downloads it and pushes Record on the screen-caption software and evaluates your work, basically giving you one-to-one feedback. You see all of the mouse movements and any parameter changes made by your tutor. It’s kind of like sitting in the studio, over the shoulder, watching what they’re doing whilst they work.

We’ve found the DVR process is truly revolutionized the way that we teach online, and the results speak for themselves. Book your place in the course now, by visiting PointBlankOnline.net

The post Making Music with Apps (pt 1) Recording from Apps into Ableton Live / Free Prime Loops Sample Pack appeared first on Electronic Music Production News and Tips.

This post was originally published in DJ Magazine’s free online edition DJ Weekly issue 97

iOS apps are making the process of production much more accessible and ‘Figure’ from Propellerheads, the people who brought us Reason, offers a unique next gen interface for jamming with musical ideas. Traditionalists are going to hate on this one big time: for starters you don’t input notes via a keyboard and neither do you have the ability to edit notes on a piano roll. What is does is take away the ‘thinking’ process and strip things right down to a primal ‘fun’ level that is downright addictive!

Composition is broken down into three key areas: drums, bass and lead. For drums you get four touch strips, one for each category of drum sample such as kick, snare, hats and percussion. The vertical position of your finger on each strip sets the ‘length’ of the drum hit and is great for adding variety to your programming with larger decays at the top. The snare, hat and percussion strips also give you a different sample on the left and the right side allowing for even more creative scope. When I first used Figure I tried to programme the beats like an MPC or Maschine where each tap became a single element of the beat but the app doesn’t lend itself naturally to this kind of programming. Instead you select a ‘pattern’ from the rotary dial and then trigger it like a loop into the sequencer: the longer you hold your finger down, the longer the loop plays for. It takes a little getting used to but makes perfect sense and is a great way to lay down some beats, particularly for those who can’t play in time. The bass and lead elements operate on a similar principle: select a pattern and then trigger this from the touch strip, adjusting the root note of the sequence by the position on the pad.

At times like this it’s great to know that sound design tools such as Native Instruments’ Kontakt are out there. This allows us to work with source sounds in a malleable fashion, twisting them up beyond recognition, breaking free of the existing time and pitch constraints that most other samplers have to conform to. If you map midi controllers, this manipulation becomes more hands on and far less academic than some other tools. It’s truly a fun way to experiment with sounds you have ripped from the web. Turn a voice into a rise/fall effect with ease, slice up existing elements and re-arrange them, just do whatever you can to take the listener away from recognising the source – this is the key to staying on the right side of the law.

Danny is otherwise known as Enzyme Black, with releases on labels such as Defected, Masters At Work and his own imprint Enzyme Black Recordings. He is the head of course development at Point Blank’s online music production school.

Watch more exclusive free tutorials on Point Blank’s sample course page.

Transcription:

Propellerheads have released their new iPhone app. I’ve got it on the iPad, here. What we’re going to do in this video is just discover what’s going on with their . . . We’ve heard that it’s a very simple and easy-to-use kind of fun music-making tool; it’s not a serious tool. This has just got three main elements: drum, bass, and lead that we can play around with. I’m going to discover how it works. I’ve got the site here as a reference point, so I can read up on anything. I’m literally going to get the camera top-down, we’re going to take a look, and just have a play around and see what it can do.

Let’s start at the most logical place, with the drums. We’ve got some kits that we can swipe across here. Let me just check something there. Depending on the position here, we’re getting a different sound. I wonder if that’s the same on every single kit? We’ve got snare at the top. We’ve got a decay that’s increasing, so it’s a longer sound at the top, shorter at the bottom. Clap, the same as well. That seems to be a common theme. On the kick and the snare clap, it’s just shorter sound at the bottom, longer at the top.

We’ve got different samples here, with the hats on the left and the right. Once again, longer decay at the top, shorter down below. Different percussive sounds here, over on the shake tin. Let me just switch to another kit, see if that’s the same here. On this one we’ve only got the 808 cowbell. Definitely common that we’ve got the longer decay at the top and shorter decay down below. This is a really interesting approach. The numbers seem to indicate almost like a quantized grid. Here you got 4 separate divisions in the bar, there’s 7, but there’s also a pattern kind of vibe that’s going on behind the scenes. Really, this is a very intuitive interface for experimenting with different rhythmical ideas.

Yeah, I like that. I’m assuming recording, we just push this and we just give it a go. Let’s have a look. That was interesting. That’s a really nice little collection of sounds there. I wasn’t expecting that. Really liking this at the moment; a lot of flexibility. Let me just see if once you’ve got the pattern down that you can tweak it with these grid divisions once it’s playing. Do you know what, I’m really liking that. I wonder if that can be recorded in, as well. Let’s see. It doesn’t go as far as doing that. That possibly is a wishlist for a future version. Maybe I did something wrong, I’m not sure. This is the first time that I’m working with it, so we’ll see. That’s good, definitely feeling that at the moment, and love the experimentation here. Really like some of these patterns here. It’s got a real kind of broken beat flavor when you start working with those non-even-numbered grids, the odd numbers. Getting a really interesting flavor coming through there. That’s working well. I like that beat.

Let’s have a look on the mix. Just a level control. Pump. There’s some kind of side chain thing, I remember seeing that. I think, because there’s no musical elements on the go at the moment, we’re not really feeling that. Let’s come back to this, and let’s take a look at the bass. I like the beat there. Let’s take a look at the bass. The pattern here, from the rhythm section, if I increase this to 8, yeah, that’s as you would expect. 1/16ths , is just going to be rapid. The range here dictating the pitch, scale, steps, I think, is octaves. Let’s take this up. Let’s take a look. How high can we go? 7. Maybe the range is the octaves, so let’s just take that higher. Yeah, it certainly seems so. Let’s take it away from 16ths. Let’s go maybe . . . Let’s put the beat back.

Let’s record something in. I’ll keep running with that. Let’s take a look at this Tweaks section; Filter. Let me record some of that in. I’ve just realized that I’ve not recorded anything in on the lead, so we got back to this pattern section. I’m just getting familiar with it here. What else have we got? I’m going to play the backing so I can see if this going to suit. Let’s go with that. What have we got on here? Let’s try this. Wicked, that’s working really nicely. What have we got here? It looks like we can change the musical key. Tempo, Shuffle. That’s working really well.

It’s a really intuitive system. You can see that it’s a lot of fun. I can see a lot of people picking this up and getting a really good musical idea down without actually really knowing what they’re doing. It’s more a kind of ‘get your fingers on here and play around’ kind of a vibe. I’m not sure if it has any kind of exports to Reason. I can’t see anything at the moment, but that may be something that they’ll feature on a later version. To be honest with you, my feelings about this at the moment are that this is a great fun app, particularly given the price; it’s very cheap. It’d be really cool to see some kind of export functionality into Reason. We’ll see what happens; maybe they’re going to bring that in. I think, at the moment, just through playing that around, you’re seeing how quick and easy that is, and that’s without me getting to know this. This is without me looking at stuff in detail. I just took a quick skim of the site beforehand. Really good results, really quickly, and they actually sound really, really good; there’s no doubt about it.

The post Propellerheads iOS App Figure – First Impressions appeared first on Electronic Music Production News and Tips.