EDM with DP sucks big time!!!

[philbrown]

I use Numerology and Live for that kind of stuff, at least building the track. But then I move over to DP to mix, automate, bounce etc. Live is great IF you're working in measure blocks. I really dislike it for anything linear, and exactly the reverse for DP. Live's resampling function comes in handy for building these kinds of tracks and the sheer speed with which you can build and mangle loops, etc. I have a friend that runs almost everything in Live from MIDI pedals and he is blazingly fast- like a blur! For unlimited sequencer options (including drum sequencing) Numerology is great. Also if you have Reaktor, I highly recommend trying the ensemble called FastFX.

Different tools are great. I have a driven a nail with with a screwdriver handle but a hammer really is easier.

[Danielo]

I am probably late to this party, but I will add my two cents:

"no EDM producer uses DP !!"

Not sure about EDM (not sure what that label means any more), but other Electronic Musicians who do beat based work use it - for example, Autechre.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/a ... techre.htm

Having said that, I prefer Live 9 for doing rhythmic parts (either slaved to DP8 or standalone), using DP8 to capture my melodic parts and Orchestration. Both are indispensable to my work flow.

I echo the sentiment "right tool for the job" - I think DAWs that try to be all to all people end up a workflow mess (DP8 and all older DAW's come close IMHO because of the feature bloat that happens with the software lifecycle, but that's OK for me because I chose DP because I wanted those features that Live 9 doesn't do so great - like MIDI editing and sync to picture).

There is no easy solution ($$) other than to use different software for different things - it's no different with Hardware...I have an iPhone and an iPad (P.S. I am a PC user!!!). Some apps just are not usable on the iPhone and I don't want to carry an iPad in my pocket all day...

I really recommend Ableton Live 9 suite for "EDM" and (IMHO) sound design above DP8.

[kats_corner]

Is this genre requires many loops, why not build each loop its own sequence, and then use the song editor in DP to assemble the loops and repeats as desired? Or does the song editor not offer the complexity required?

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk

[BKK-OZ]

Maschine + DP = all you could ever ask for in terms of repeating/looping and composition. Maschine 2.0 a big improvement on the first version.

[Babz]

Well, this is a rather timely topic for me, because I just put DP through a major EDM workout!

I'm not a big dance music person. Of course, I have done loop-based things over the years, but I come more from the tradition of a 1970s songwriter, linear, tape, etc., and have mostly used DP just like a big tape machine.

Back in the early '70s, one of the main artists who inspired me to learn to play every instrument in the band, and start multitrack overdubbing with a Teac reel-to-reel tape machine in my parent's basement, was Todd Rundgren (who, BTW, will received the Les Paul award at NAMM this year for his pioneering work in that area). He is also an artist who has always evolved with the times, and in 2013 he released an EDM album called STATE.

I ran across a chance to remix a very strange track from that album called "Collide-A-Scope". But I had a hard two-week deadline, and didn't have available the usual tools most people use for this kind of thing, Ableton Live, Reason, FL Studio, etc. I had to work with what I had, what I know, which is DP.

I will say that yes I agree that DP needs to add more features to facilitate loop-based music, and found myself wishing for the very features that have been discuss here, and others.

But in the end, I managed to get it done, and made the deadline.

I am competing against others to try to get on the album as a bonus track, and I am probably the only one who used DP, but I am pleased with the results. DP came through for me. So, yes, and yes. Yes, DP can do EDM, and yes it needs more features to make it easier.

Best,
Babz

P.S. If curious, you can check out my remix at this link (both are the same mix, v. 1.01 is the finished mix):

http://soundcloud.com/babz_nyc

(In addition to the stems from Collide-A-Scope, I also sampled from several other records from Todd's catalog going back to the '70s, so there is an extra level of winks, nods, and Easter eggs if you are familiar with his material.)

For comparison, you can check out the starting point (which is VERY different), the original Collide-A-Scope at this link:

http://soundcloud.com/todd-rundgren-official

DP allowed me to take this track into a totally different direction -- and to combine material from like 10 different records, all in different keys and tempos and fuse it into a single groove. DP DOES EDM!

[Shooshie]

P.S. If curious, you can check out my remix at this link (both are the same mix, v. 1.01 is the finished mix):

http://soundcloud.com/babz_nyc

(In addition to the stems from Collide-A-Scope, I also sampled from several other records from Todd's catalog going back to the '70s, so there is an extra level of winks, nods, and Easter eggs if you are familiar with his material.)

For comparison, you can check out the starting point (which is VERY different), the original Collide-A-Scope at this link:

http://soundcloud.com/todd-rundgren-official

DP allowed me to take this track into a totally different direction -- and to combine material from like 10 different records, all in different keys and tempos and fuse it into a single groove. DP DOES EDM!

I actually liked yours a LOT better than his, though I have to give him credit for creating it and all those tracks to begin with. I don't know the rules for a remix like that. Are you free to add anything you want? Do you have to use all his tracks? Well, it sounded great. I think I've heard it about 6 times now, if you include his. And not counting listening to all the stems.

Shooshie

PS: where'd the sax solo come from? (the one at the end?) Sounds VERY familiar, almost like from Pink Floyd's Us & them, or something like that. (Probably not THAT, but… it still sounds familiar)

[Babz]

I don't know what the rules are either. I had the stems to work with, but I also sampled from other records in his catalog, including the famous riff from the Utopia Theme (1974). I just created something that I thought I would like to hear. I wanted to kick up the dance energy. It could have gone in all sorts of directions, but this was the end result.

The original Collide-A-Scope is very strange. I'm not even sure what key or mode it is in. Spooky-sounding chords and minimalist lyrics over this sliced up drum groove. Someone remarked to me that the original already sounds remixed.

My mix has three different sections, the first part is based around a bassline from a tune called "Personality Crisis" from 2011 (in a totally different key and tempo from the original Collide-A-Scope). It was a stroke of luck when I discovered that the melody could be made to work over that bassline. But then later in the tune it goes to the mixolydian thing, so I had to find a way to deal with that.

I had this concept early on that the "Collide"-a-scope was all the musical ideas colliding in Todd's head. (Fortunately, I found a sample from his 1993 tune "Love Thing" about "so many ideas in collision"). So I imagined this character "DJ Kaleidoscope", which could be Todd, or me, or the listener, mixing records throughout the night, and the result is what I like to call a TRancendent House Suite in Three Movements.

The sax solo was actually a finishing touch that came together at the last minute with the deadline bearing down on me. I needed something to tie that section together, and I was hearing a sax solo in my head, but I had no VI that could pull that off convincingly, so I just put a synth solo in there. But it still wasn't working. I really needed *sax*. In desperation, I even posted to THIS forum trying to find someone who might be willing to overdub the part.

Finally, with just two hours to spare, I googled and found a guy in Nashville, Sam Levine. I called him and he was like "You want it TODAY?" We did it over the phone and internet. Cost me some $ I didn't have, but he really came through for me, and I was able to lay it in just under the deadline.

Best,
Babz

[Babz]

The problem with DP and Snap To Grid is that, we actually DO have both absolute and relative snap-to-grid. I mean, it is *almostI already there. That is to say, if you drag in some audio, and you have Snap-to-Grid on, the clip/loop snaps to the grid lines. And if you then move it will continue to snap to the grid, like absolute snap.

But if you hold down Command, which lets you move it free of the grid, and you release it somewhere in between grid lines, and now try to move it, you have relative snap. The frustrating part is, now there is no way to ever get it back to absolute snap. (You're only hope is to zoom way in and hold Command, or use Nudge, to visually line it up with the bar line, and even then you're never fully confident it is totally right on the grid.)

The way it SHOULD work in this situation is, you hold down Command, and if you get close enough to a grid line, it snaps to it. And once back on the grid, you're back to absolute snap. What is missing is a Snap Distance feature. Hold down Command and you can drag free of the grid, UNLESS you get within the Snap Distance (user definable setting), in which case it snaps to the grid. This is how guides and snapping works in graphics programs. Seems like this should be easy to implement in DP.

The grid is such a fundamentally important tool, and everything in today's quantized music. There is no excuse at this point for not having such a basic feature.

[bayswater]

But if you hold down Command, which lets you move it free of the grid, and you release it somewhere in between grid lines, and now try to move it, you have relative snap. The frustrating part is, now there is no way to ever get it back to absolute snap. (You're only hope is to zoom way in and hold Command, or use Nudge, to visually line it up with the bar line, and even then you're never fully confident it is totally right on the grid.)

I agree that being able to switch between relative and absolute snap makes a lot of sense. But I'm unclear on what you would be able to do that you can do with the process you described, along with quantizing once you've lined up events reasonably close to the grid.

[Shooshie]

The way it SHOULD work in this situation is, you hold down Command, and if you get close enough to a grid line, it snaps to it. And once back on the grid, you're back to absolute snap. What is missing is a Snap Distance feature. Hold down Command and you can drag free of the grid, UNLESS you get within the Snap Distance (user definable setting), in which case it snaps to the grid. This is how guides and snapping works in graphics programs. Seems like this should be easy to implement in DP.

The grid is such a fundamentally important tool, and everything in today's quantized music. There is no excuse at this point for not having such a basic feature.

I agree there should be a feature to snap selections to the grid. Absolutely, this should be an option.

Meanwhile, as we are waiting for MOTU to give us that, one way that I use to do that is the Shift feature. You can shift TO any point, and grid locations are particularly easy to type in. Command-L gets you the dialog. It's a lot faster to use than you might think. I've used it many thousands of times; it's not a hinderance, really, though certainly not as fast as just "command-drag."

Shooshie

[Babz]

Cool tip, Shoosh!

bayswater, I am talking about snapping audio files to the grid, and I believe you are picturing MIDI. MIDI and snap-to-grid is a whole other issue I wasn't even thinking of, but maybe similar.

The problem which, in my opinion, kinda justifies the "sucks big time" level of frustration is that, it just doesn't work the way you would expect it to work, or works tantalizingly *close* to the way your hand-on-the-mouse intuitively wants it to work, but then doesn't. Whether you zoom-in, nudge, or use Shift or Quantize to get your data back on the grid, you're now moving from mouse-object-in-hand to command/menu. You've already got your hand on the object, with the mouse. Just snap to the frickin' grid again, dammit!

OK, got that out of my system.

Babz

[Shooshie]

...it just doesn't work the way you would expect it to work, or works tantalizingly *close* to the way your hand-on-the-mouse intuitively wants it to work, but then doesn't. Whether you zoom-in, nudge, or use Shift or Quantize to get your data back on the grid, you're now moving from mouse-object-in-hand to command/menu. You've already got your hand on the object, with the mouse. Just snap to the frickin' grid again, dammit!

OK, got that out of my system.

Babz

Ha! I do remember that frustration, but for me it happened in the early 1990s, so I just learned DP without it, and gradually came to forget about it. But this is one feature for which I really don't understand MOTU's recalcitrance. It's as if they refuse to allow DP to work that way. Maybe they're afraid that people will use that exclusively and not learn the many other ways of working in DP. Probably not that; probably just "why does anyone need THAT?"

If enough people ask for it, sooner or later they'll do it.

Shooshie

[Babz]

Well, if they had to make us choose only one type of grid behavior, I wish it could have been absolute grid, since that seems the very definition of Snap To Grid.

I've learned to live without and workaround, but hope springs eternal...



B.

[Shooshie]

Well, if they had to make us choose only one type of grid behavior, I wish it could have been absolute grid, since that seems the very definition of Snap To Grid.

Relative grid has its perks. It's so easy, once you get a groove, to copy elements of the groove and move them to another measure. Can't do that with absolute grid. There are many ways to move to the "absolute" grid. Relative grid? Not any that leap into my mind, other than actually having a relative grid. If I had to choose between the two, I'd have to take Relative grid, since that's an important part of working with phrases and getting the effects you want, and difficult to do without the grid.

The truth is that both are sorely needed. They need to make an option for each. Really, MOTU!

Shooshie

[James Steele]

Well, if they had to make us choose only one type of grid behavior, I wish it could have been absolute grid, since that seems the very definition of Snap To Grid.

Relative grid has its perks. It's so easy, once you get a groove, to copy elements of the groove and move them to another measure. Can't do that with absolute grid. There are many ways to move to the "absolute" grid. Relative grid? Not any that leap into my mind, other than actually having a relative grid. If I had to choose between the two, I'd have to take Relative grid, since that's an important part of working with phrases and getting the effects you want, and difficult to do without the grid.

The truth is that both are sorely needed. They need to make an option for each. Really, MOTU!

Shooshie

That's true. Seemed if you had MIDI parts played in realtime, your not attacks aren't going to land precisely on the downbeat of a measure. Snapping that to grid would not be desirable.