Something/Everything

Ho ho, spent most of yesterday and today to sort out two tracks to be released very shortly, on PlanetoidPark. I just needed to get them into shape for promo purposes (the whole promo world is a subject for another article).

In my daily life as a software programmer it is very similar to the concept of “shipping products.” We really value engineers who have been involved in shipping products, instead of just doing stuff. The reason is that when building a product or application, the first 80% takes as long as the final 20% finish. Also, you need to train on focus and get the product out instead of putzing on it forever. It means tons of compromises and attention to detail. This is the reason I will place a “Ship the product” sign on my monitor from time to time, so I don’t forget what I’m getting paid for.

Seems it’s the same with record releases. At some point the tracks have to be released so someone out there has a chance to listen to it, otherwise it’s kind of futile — at least in my mind — to constantly collect tracks on the hard disk for no other purpose than to make them. But to get to that point, there’s that 20% that takes as long as doing the track in the first place.

I would recommend anyone actually to take this step to release records, either on a net label, or a private label, or try to get a deal with any excellent record labels. What happens then, when you need to release something, is that extra focus on details and things you never though about when doing tracks in the first place. What happens then is growth, you learn from the mistakes and could do even more cool tracks in future.

Don’t worry about critique, any artist out there has been criticized, if not anyone else, your mom (for wasting time on music, that happened to me, but then later she was very appreciative). But getting something out, that’s something that will make you personally grow.

In the film branch, daily reels are the latest production material shot for the movie. The director, producers and others watch those for finding out what’s happening with the shooting and final product. This goes all the way up to final editing and cuts of the movie.

Maybe others are doing this already, but I started dumping the material I’m working on to a CD, a daily reel, and then I bring this one with me everywhere, to the car, to work, keeping it around and listening. This way I could check the material in different environments and speaker systems. It’s also a good way to really learn what’s happening in the track, and what’s there, missing, or too much.

If nothing else, if you don’t stand the track after a few days, most likely others won’t stand it either, so it’s better to purge it, redo it, re-produce it, or take the samples to a sound bank for future use. Or then let it be alone for a while, and suddenly you have later a better idea what to do with the track.

Now, I would use an iPod and save the world for more plastic, if it wasn’t for my car that does not have any decent iPod integration, sigh. Otherwise, then he weather gets getter and I could start biking to work again, I will use a secon-generation iPod shuffle which is perfect for copying over quick daily production material.

Another idea is to put in place multiple versions of the final master, and this way you could do A/B listening to see which one is better.

Hi, I did an early promo track last night, the results are up on myspace.com.

My myspace account is myspace.com/kentsandvik. Feel free to link back in as a friend.
Myspace is interesting, indeed. I was adding as many of the abletonlivedj.com myspace users, as many have posted their myspace accounts, and for a while MySpace thought I was a bot so it requested me to type in those funny letternumber combinations from a picture…

Also, my www.kentsandvik.com web page has a total new redesign. It’s good to redo the web design from time to time, looks more refreshing. Also, it was time to remove old stuff and think over the content. Going back to MySpace, seems that’s a good channel for streaming out new promo material from now forward.

If you read the Ableton forums for a while, a common topic is the discussion about why the default compressors do not handle side-chaining. This is especially problematic on the MacOSX side, as there are few free side-chain compressors, and the ones existing are not designed for Ableton channel routing.

Anyway, there’s actually — what I think — a better way to accomplish compressor side chaining. Before we go into it, just to be clear, compressor side-chaining is that effect you hear on dance records, the pulsating effect where the kick is driving down the volume of (mostly) any other tracks. My wife thinks it’s nauseating, actually.

Going back to Live, what I did was to just draw the same effect using volume envelopes. The picture shows how it looks like. Then if you want to replicate this effect across multiple tracks, you select it in the view, copy the envelope to the clipboard, select the other track, switch to the volume envelope view, select the area you want to replace the envelope with, and paste the envelope back from the clipboard.

The benefits with this approach are: you could define exactly the tracks that have the pumping effect, not all need it, you could draw various envelopes with very different characteristics, slower, faster, leave out parts that don’t need pumping in the middle of the loop, and so on. Also, compressors could introduce side effects, some distortion, and colorization of sound. With this you have full control, if you want grittiness, just use a distortion plug-in and this way control the effect, as well.

It took me about a minute to draw this specific envelope, and then it takes seconds to copy it to any other track.