We are the music makers - producers?

Yeah, cheers!

Finally got my hands on an Eventide Space pedal for the price I was hoping and now I can't find a 2.1mm to 2.5mm reversed polarity cable to power it anywhere in town. Joy of joys.

Sweeeeeet. I've been booked for my first indoor gig since lockdown.

Awesome, grats. :)

Wicked!!!!

Leaving this here as a reminder to myself to watch it again!

https://youtu.be/IT5Th7Atgc0

Also meant to leave a comment about the new Mac Studio. I have the basic version and Ableton really struggles to run 1 instance of Arturias Analog Lab. Ableton is really spiky, runs around 40% of the core but prefers higher latency and doesn't like to run smoothly if it's not the focus app.

Had to withdraw my comparison with Logic, seems I hadn't compared exactly the same presets. I'll have to do a bit more with Logic but it seems worse at the moment.

I couldn't get Logic to run the same preset at 96k, there's no 2048 buffer in Logic either.

Coming from a 12 yr old Intel Mac Pro it seems that single core speed is still going to be needed for musicians and the M1 falls a bit short at the moment.

That's insane, at work we're due to be getting issued with new laptops soon and I'm probably going to be able to buy my work computer (2017 Macbook Pro) for a pretty measly price, but was considering whether it might just be worth picking up a new M1 model instead given the apparent speed increase.

Is there an M1 specific release of Ableton yet? I remember seeing a video a while back of a guy running FL Studio on a 2020 M1 MBP and getting worse performance than a 2016 Intel MBP. But in a subsequent release of FL Studio the CPU usage dropped to about a third of what it was previously.

I mean I run Analog Lab fine on my 2014 MacBook Air 11"!

It's the single core speed. I've had to pinch myself. Ableton is now native. Arturia are Native. They are both the same though, each track uses a single core so massive plugins need fast cores.

These machines are very very quick at communicating between memory and graphics but that's not part of the equation for music suites.

Obviously I'll have to do some digging to see if this is normal and I will admit I'm running a lot of other stuff in the background, which is how I like to run my computers. (Chrome, Numbers, Mail, Roon etc.)

Really inspired by this approach. Made me dig my DR40 out in hopes of doing something similar on the MPC 1000.

https://youtu.be/JyvyjfwhddM

Especially interesting playing it back in a separate tab divorced from the visuals.

Once again completely underwhelmed by Erektron products. Syntakt is totally overpriced and I'm really not sure what they're trying to achieve with it?

Clicky Clacky buttons is a no from me besides

Erektron

lol

And yet the Syntakt has sold out in preorder in most places - the fandom is very strong with that brand. Their products are a bit more than I'd like to spend, but I hope to see what all the hubbub is about one day - I like clicky-clacky buttons.

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with my elektron kit. It's always been expensive but they cram a lot of features in and they can keep you amused for years.

It always leaves me wanting a one knob per function synth though.

I'd be totally down to twiddle a Monomachine/Machinedrum combo, but the current lineup doesn't really do it for me. The form factor of the Digitakt tempts me occasionally, but the 13yo MPC 1000 steamrolls it in terms of power and I don't know that I'll ever get over my resentment toward the Octatrack after seeing so many affluent tech workers who make Boring Techno pressure new producers looking to explore hardware into spending $1000+ for it like it's an essential bit of kit.

The thing about the Syntakt that turns me off is that it just seems like a repackaging of a lot of their old/existing stuff. So many talented people have left Elektron now. It’s not the innovative company it once was.

I’ve always been a fan of Elektron gear and how it works but I can’t get excited about Syntakt at all.

I’m very new to using a computer for music.
Where to people recommend for drum sample packs?

A lot of people swear by Samples from Mars

Depends on what style you're after but I like the abitdeeper packs.

Loopmasters do free tasters of most packs which usually include a few drum hits at least

Samples From Mars are very high quality. Best thing is to wait for their Black Friday sale if you can, you will pay hardly anything for their entire catalogue.

There’s lots of free or nearly free stuff out there though.

Eg scroll down here:

https://conforce.gumroad.com/

Some free 808 samples, FM drums, SH-101 drums, etc

Depends what you're after, if you're looking for samples from old drum machines (Linn, Roland, Oberheim, Simmons etc.), there's a massive pack you can get for free here: https://studioslave.com/product/iv-vintage-drum-machines/

These are also free and might be more what you're looking for: https://99sounds.org/drum-samples/

Thanks for the advice. I’ll have a look at those links.
Up to this point I’ve always sampled drums from records, this is new territory. But I’m still after that dusty old vinyl sample sort of sound for my drums.

Might also be worth looking into some noise & saturation plugins to tweak the sounds as you like. Izotope Vinyl is free and nice to add some noise/crackling: https://www.izotope.com/en/products/vinyl.html

There's a whole host of free saturation plugins out there too. Something like BPB Saturator, ChowTape or Tape Cassette 2 to give you a bit more flexibility by tweaking whatever sounds you can get your mitts on.

Two great places if you're looking specifically for drum machine samples would be this list from Bedroom Producer Blog and the KB6 drum machine archive.

Anyone here done any film or tv music? I've done the teeniest bit of dabbling in the past and have a few mates who do it for reals. I'm not sure if it's made me more aware of movies soundtracks, but man... they're so samey. Especially doomy, sci-fi, epic type stuff. I keep googling the tropes that i find most ubiquitous, but never find anyone else talking about it.

The first one I hear ever and over again - swear to god it was in four of the five trailers that played last time was at the cinema - I call the "doom parp". It's an incredibly loud, deep farty brass note. Often it's so loud it can make you jump. It's somewhere between an old school foghorn and the noise the tripods make in war of the worlds. It usually denotes gathering doom. Massing hoardes of marauding mythical beasts or aliens usually brings it on. BAAAAAAAAAARP!

The second is variation on this which often denotes creeping terror but on an epic battlefield scale. It's also has a giant zombie war-horn vibe kind of type of vibe, but this one modulates atonally downwards. It kind of holds the note for a beat or two then slides atonally down a semitone or so then cuts off. Vibes of whalesong. Also reminds me of the sound in the chorus of Army of Me by Bjork. I hear this one a lot.

Lastly, tribal fucking drums. Non-specific tribal/native/ethnic drumming. On everything. All the time. Will it ever end?

But then, I'm still waiting for TV ads to get tired of ukuleles, whistling and breathy covers of 80 and 90s pop.

Oh, and reality TV and half of YouTube to get over the Stomp-Clap Stomp Clap Whoa-oh-oh-oh, faux chain-gang holler thing that has been almost as ubiquitous for almost as long.

https://longreads.com/2016/12/08/braaam-inception-hollywood-soundtracks/amp/

I also dabble in soundtrack stuff, mostly short films so tropes are a useful shortcut!

The one I notice everywhere is hang drums/hand pans being used for time travel/slightly unsettling sci-fi.