Welcome to Day 3 of my 30 Day Journal experiment. In this Video I was a victim to murphy’s Law and lost the whole video and had to redo it. Luckily I was able to redo it without too much trouble. This video finds me making a new melody part, constructing the loops into scenes, creating a sidechain track and beginning the song arrangement process.

Be aware that due to the volume of video material I’ve recorded (20 or more hours), there are no zooms or tricky video effects. I am also aware that there may be some imperfections & volumes may fluctuate with my voice from video to video. In this case I’m going for a wealth of content instead of perfection. It is recommended that you enlarge this video to fullscreen for best results. Enjoy and please share this with your friends through word of mouth, email, Twitter & Facebook. I’d like to share this free content with as many people as possible for the next 30 days. Understand that each video will only be available to stream for 48 hours or until the next video goes up. If you miss a video, the previous day’s Video/s will be at the end of this blog.

For those who are interested, I will be making all the songfiles, samples and final mixes of the songs available immediately if you decide to  Advance order this full collection   (you’ll need version 8.1.3). I will want to do some final work on these videos before sending them out. The full collection will likely be priced somewhere between $59-$79 but will be drastically reduced during the next 30 days.

I’ll also have all my collections available at a 20% discount through the duration of this Video Journal. Just use the discount code: 30DayDisc

* The comment section of my site is screwy at the moment but feel free to email me at MusicSoftwareTraining@gmail.com if you like.

I hope you enjoy this 30 day experiement. Happy Music Making

Jason

30 Day Music Production Video

If you've ever wanted to look over my shoulder while I make songs, THIS is the collection for you! In this collection you get me producing 2 full songs and a DJ mix from start to finish over a 30 day period. I take you through the good the bad and the ugly. It's the most honest video collection I've ever made. It includes every Ableton songfile for each day, every sample used and about 20 hours of Video. It also includes mixdowns of the 2 completed songs and DJ Mix.

Ultimate Ableton Collection 1

A must for anyone new to Ableton or wanting to dive deeper into the depth of this program. Over 4 hours of the most in depth yet easy to follow tutorials on the market!

Ultimate Ableton Collection 2

This collection makes an incredible companion to the first collection and gets into the newest features in Ableton. There are also 20 professional custom drum kits and a full Drum Racks replication of Roland's famous R-70 drum machine.

Advanced Warping Collection

This collection is a must for DJ's and remixers! If you find yourself warping full songs on a regular basis, you are going to run into warping issues that can really bring your production to a halt. These simple secrets will get you past that with ease and back to doing what you do best.

Dj'ing and Performance Collection

A must for anyone wanting to DJ or perform live in Ableton. Includes 17 in-depth Videos on Warping, Organizing files, Setting up midi controllers (including APC40) and lots more! As a Free bonus, it also includes my Ebook "Mixing with your Mind - Make your best DJ Mix".

Ableton Remixing Walkthrough

For those who want to see exactly how I approach a remix. From editing the original sounds, to dropping them into Ableton and building ideas. Then adding to these ideas to compliment the original material and finally working it all into a song. All edits, effect settings, automation, and arranging procedure is included in the information packed video collection.

Producer's Deluxe Collection

Get all 3 of my full video Collections (Ultimate Collections 1 and 2 and Advanced Warping Collection) Producers Deluxe Collection

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My 30 day video producing Journal

For those of you who are following me on Twitter over the last 30 days, you may have seen me tweet about an experiment I started on the 1st of August.  This idea has been running through my head all year and I kept putting it off because I was honestly a bit afraid of embarrassing myself publicly by agreeing to let you watch my songwriting process for 30 days straight.

One major hurdle was the fact that I have never produced music everyday for this length of time and wasn’t sure what the outcome would be if I forced myself to create when I wasn’t particularly inspired. Would inspiration show up or would I be left showing you 30 days worth of “go nowhere” ideas? That can’t be good for anyone’s ego.  :-)

Another fear was that you might not learn much from this process. I don’t purposely do complex things just for the sake of it, so most of my process is experimenting with layers of simple ideas until I find something that works. I didn’t want you watching me use the same techniques over and over and thinking “I thought he was gonna show me some crazy stuff” and being disappointed.

Then I had a thought…..

These excuses were the exact reason nobody else has done something like this before and if that’s the case, this must be common with most everyone that creates. Maybe by showing my strengths and weaknesses I might be able to pull others outside of their comfort zone. Maybe this will show you some of the essential things to learn instead of you feeling like you have to know everything before allowing yourself to start.

Through this process I’ve been motivated, unmotivated, grumpy, anxious, unorganized, inspired, bored, confused and slightly embarrassed at times. Despite all that I was able to complete 2 songs & a DJ mix I am pretty happy with. That has got to count for something. I’ve also become that much better at fighting through resistance and getting to the other side. I may talk more specifically about my struggles as I share this 30 day process. If I can create in the state of mind I was in on some days, you definitely can too!

So here’s how this is going to work…

At some point soon I will be posting 1 video on my blog a day for 30 days. Almost all the videos are 30 minutes of longer, while some are well over an hour. Each day 1 video will be up to watch for free for 24 hours (or until the next video takes it’s place). So for 30 days you will have a new video to watch. I’ve edited the videos a bit to keep them more focused so you don’t watch me go off on tangents that are unnecessary. You will however see me do some things that don’t get used at all in the final process. I figured it was important to include that so you can pretty much watch the whole creative process.

For those who find value in this collection, I will later make it available if you want to purchase it. It will include all the samples used and all the Ableton song files from each day as well as the 2 completed songs and DJ mix (obviously seperated tracks from my DJ mix will not be included).

Don’t call this a tutorial

Although there is alot to learn from this collection of videos, it was put together without any planning and therefore is not like any other collection I have made. This isn’t a “how to make a (choose your style) song” but rather an relatively honest approach to some ways I approach making music.  I do however limit myself to just Ableton’s internal effects and instruments. These limitations take me outside my comfort zone which I thought was a good challenge. I wanted to be working with tools that all Ableton users have access to so everyone can not only follow along but stop thinking they need more stuff before they can start creating professional sounding music. In another track I built the song just using samples and internal effects. I also go through the process of preparing a song to play live in Ableton and build a DJ mix.  Do to the 20ish hours of footage, I haven’t done the type of editing I usually do. Sometimes you’ll find me in the “zone” and I stop talking about what I’m doing and I just DO, although I try my best to fill you in or why I’m doing what I’m doing and what I am thinking at the time.

I hope this lets some of you inside my head creatively and shows you some building blocks, techniques and tools that you can apply to your work. I certainly didn’t invent any of the techniques, so it’s only fair that I pass along what I know so you can take it and figure out a way to do it better. … Then I can learn from you  :-)

Keep your eye on this blog and make sure to follow me on Twitter if you want up to the moment updates.

Til then,

Happy Music Making,

Jason

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*This post will likely only interest Ableton users who have an Iphone and work on a PC (or Bootcamp/Parallels).

Here is a custom controller I have made to control many of Ableton’s features with my Iphone.  Although it isn’t an “end all” solution, it definitely makes things go faster and much more conveniently whether you are producing at home or DJ’ing. As long as you have a wi-fi signal to connect to, you’re golden.

Here is what you will want to do to get started.

1. Go to your Iphone AP store,  purchase and install Snatch Remote (don’t worry, it’s only $4 and if you don’t like my custom controller, you cn pretty easily make your own).

2. Download and install snatchtrackpad & remote onto your computer at this link http://www.hoofien.com/Snatch/

3. Open up Snatch on your computer, and then your Iphone

4. enter the server/password info into the setting on Snatch inside your Iphone

5. Download and unrar my Snatch remote files at this link http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com/share/snatch.rar

6. In Snatch on your Iphone, hit “Keys” tab, then “Edit” then “load screen”

7. a window will pop up on your computer, choose the first Snatch file, confirm on your Iphone and hit “done”

8. On your Iphone, swipe from right to left to get another blank screen and repeat steps 6 and 7.

9. Watch the video below and make sure to assign your 1,2,3,8,9 & 0 keys to the correct locations.

Enjoy!

I look forward to our community sharing further tweaks and custom controls.

Happy Music Making,

Jason

Follow me: http://twitter.com/AbletonVids

Website: http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com

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Analog vs Digital
The Analog vs Digital war battles on and will likely continue through the ages, however year by year digital has tightened the gap and is getting warmer all the time. Some of the softsynth reproductions of “analog” warmth has been pretty impressive as well. Although I’m not planning on taking sides, I am going to defend digital a bit for all the heat it seems to get from so called “analog purists”. I am also not planning on getting into the math on this one. That kind of stuff bores me to tears and defeats the point of this little blog.

Digital strengths vs Analog strengths

The Art of Mastering Audio by Bob Katzs makes some good points on this subject. Being one of the most respected mastering engineers, I take what he says as coming from years of experience in both the digital and analog world. This is what Bob has to say:

Analog recordings tend to excel at producing accurate detail in the lower frequencies and get less detailed and fuzzy at the higher frequencies.
Digital recordings excel at accurate reproduction of the higher frequencies and get fuzzy on the bottom end.

Bob uses this analogy to give you an idea of how this works:

Analog recordings would be like looking up at a skyscraper from the bottom whereas Digital would be like looking at the same skyscraper from the rooftop down.

From this perspective you can see where both digital and analog could both be used to good effect, depending on what you are going for. You can say that analog has a pleasant muddiness (I’m using this term loosely so don’t throw a fit) and digital has a sharper sound overall.

Imperfections

The thing many of us love about analog is that it’s imperfect and thus more human. The artifacts created in an analog recording keep a recording a bit more dynamic and unpredictable whereas digital recordings come across much more sterile and with virtually no artifacts or imperfections. Many producers keep this in mind when recording in the digital domain and do their best to inject some variation and unpredictability to the recordings. Many high end virtual instruments and fx plugin’s do a good job of recreating analog-like artifacts and “analog” warmth. If you know the right tools to use in the digital domain, you can fool most people most of the time.

Mastering

Many people think that a professional mastering studio only uses analog equipment to do their work but this isn’t the case.

Most engineers agree that taking your wav or aif file master recording, running it through analog equipment and then back into the digital domain will usually do more harm than good even if they are using excellent converters. More often than not, if an artist wants everything mastered in the analog domain, they will deliver their reel to reel masters to the mastering house, otherwise the work will most likely have the best results staying in the digital domain.

For Studios on a small budget, the cost of comparable analog gear, the converters and all the highest end cables would not be worth it. Also remember all the maintenance to keep the equipment working top notch. That isn’t cheap. On top of that, you can’t expect to have an artist come back to you years after your first session and have presets that will deliver identical results. Analog gear can’t be expected to get the same results day after day because its not crunching numbers like in the digital domain. There will always be a little chaos added to every piece of analog gear. This can be wonderful during the recording phase but can make it very difficult to master an album over the course of months or years.

The Real Test

Go ahead and go through your CD collection and pull out your warmest analog recordings. Pink Floyd? Stevie Wonder? Air? Notice the difference you hear in those recordings. Notice all the warmth from the tape saturation. Notice the difference between that and the most obvious digital recordings and these old recordings. Some of you might prefer the clean modern sound and that’s totally fine. To each their own.

The most important point that I want to end with is that digital must be pretty damn good at reproducing analog sound since the best CD you’ve ever heard is still a 16 bit digital representation. It might not be vinyl, but most of what you listen to these days ends up digital at some point. In fact, don’t doubt that some of your vinyl is just an analog representation of a digital recording.

This blog wasn’t meant to answer all the questions in the analog vs digital debate but rather to open up a healthy conversation on the topic. These days there is so much great technology at our fingertips whether it be Analog or Digitally produced that it’s hard not to be attracted to both. Even with free software you can create release worthy music. Don’t get hung up. Use what you’ve got. If it sounds good to you, roll with it. When it comes to your art, it’s your opinion that matters most.

Happy Music Making,

Jason

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Follow me: http://twitter.com/AbletonVids

Website: http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com

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