NAMM NEWS - DP 10 - It's Here!

[terrybritton]

I’m wondering if I’ll learn it well enough to use the new features in my lifetime. As my imagination never drifts toward loop based anything, there’s a lot I will never have to deal with so that’s reassuring. I’ll spend the two bills but wonder how much I will use.

I'm with you, Mike - Not sure if I'll ever use the loop-based functions. My brain just has a hard time wrapping itself around that "mode". But I'll be giving them my money anyway as a way of voting with my wallet in appreciation of their continued development and further innovation, for sure!

Terry

[mrgkeys]

so direct from the horses mouth, the instrument library included in DP 10 will be instantiated in the UVI Player, and hopefully M53 and Falcon. Right around 2:40 if want to skip to that part. So not a total freeze with UVI it sounds like.

Makes perfect sense. Generally anything that opens in UVI Workstation can also be read by Falcon, but we’ll see.

I just realized this is the first NAMM without Magic Dave, right? Of course, Brendon is doing a super job stepping in... maybe he needs to rebrand with a new nickname.. Brendon The Sorcerer? sorry..

I want a 3-ultrawide-monitor set up like that!

the new Falcon library that comes with Pro Tools now can only be opened by the custom Falcon player that goes along with it, so there's a chance that anything bundled won't open in the regular Falcon. I hope it does though I love Falcon.

[frankf]

whatever you do, you end up with snapshots of EVERY plugin parameter instead of only the ones you allow in the Automation Setup box.

Still look forward to DP10, looks great.

I was responding to the above. No condescendence intended but apologies if interpreted as such or I got it wrong. It happens.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[FMiguelez]

I’m wondering if I’ll learn it well enough to use the new features in my lifetime. As my imagination never drifts toward loop based anything, there’s a lot I will never have to deal with so that’s reassuring. I’ll spend the two bills but wonder how much I will use.

I'm with you, Mike - Not sure if I'll ever use the loop-based functions. My brain just has a hard time wrapping itself around that "mode".
Terry

Mike and Terry!
I am allergic to loop-based anything too.
When I first got Live 10 (where MOTU obviously got inspired from for this feature) I thought it was for only working with loops... But that's not necessarily the case!
I'll give you some ideas you may want to consider to see if you like them:

Think of this as if you were an alchemist and that feature is your Erlenmeyer flask. Or you're a chef, and that thing is your sauce pan. It's a place where you get to try out and mix stuff non-linearly to test ideas. This gives you great flexibility and ease of use (instead of doing the same in DP's normal timeline, as we normally do). It really lends itself well for easy and quick experimentation and for trying out crazy stuff you probably wouldn't normally do, so it can even have creative value.

Remember these idea-building blocks can be original... you can write your own loops --and NOT treat them as such-- and ignore the factory-canned ones.
IOW, you use your sauce pan to try your spice in the kitchen, and then, how you decide to plate your dish and present it, can be entirely different and done normally.

Just throw some spices in that pan and taste it with your spoon-ears for something exotic...
It's great to use it as idea-place-holders for things you tried and you would like to work out into your composition later, and even for promoting "happy-accident" and unexpected inspiration. Sometimes, just a little sound or a snippet of a combo can suddenly spark great ideas for a full piece that you then go and write/develop linearly as usual, etc.

Even better, you can do it the other way around... Whatever it is you hear inside your head, throw it in there, in that format that lends itself well for you to easily "play around" with it and fully develop later.

You don't have to work with "4-bar loops". So AFTER you have your main ideas in non-linear building blocks, you can then parse them into the main timeline and work with your music normally as you always do without ever being locked into "loop mode" (you could then perfect or completely rewrite the temp place-holder loops to your taste, rework out transition details, etc).

AFAIS, this new feature is kind of like current DP9 clippings but on steroids, and it can have a lot of different uses, from the EDM guy who just writes with 8-bar loops to the consumate film scorer using it for trying ideas out, experimenting with the main form of the piece, etc.

If you think of it as a "sketch-book", other non-fans of commercial loops like you and I will surely enjoy this new feature (I know I will if it's anything like Live's)

Also, if you think of your original loops as "Stravinskian ostinatos", polyrhythmic or otherwise, you could easily use the new tool to work out some passages in the style of Stravinsky's First Period music (like his crazy polyrhythmic "loops" and orchestral crescendos in the Rite). Though, for more contrapuntal music, like his Neoclassical period, perhaps no that much...

It's a tool you certainly won't need or want to use for every project or for certain styles. But it's there if you need it for any of the above

[Michael Canavan]

I've never fully understood the reaction to loop players of "I'm not a loop guy", if you play music you're playing repetitive patterns, unless you're playing extreme Jazz I suppose, and even then..

I play various forms of electronic rock. Mostly songs fall into typical scenarios: intro, verse, chorus, break, out.. with variations. 90% of what I write can be expressed simply in a Clip form like what DP 10 is offering. The big advantage of clips is the ability to rework the order a song plays in to try out different ideas, even lengths of the song without committing or going in and grabbing whole chunks of the song to move around etc.

In fact just because the EDM crowd have embraced loops and clips doesn't even mean it's that relevant to them. If you're song structure is to get a really catchy drum and synth line going, then layer sounds over it for 3 to 9 minutes to build some sort of tension/release in a four on the floor dance song, you really don't need but one loop for the main part of the song, which you can do in any DAW.

Anyone not doing classical or jazz (and even them sometimes), can find a use for a clip based approach to constructing a song. Just for the off chance that you find an arrangement pattern that you never do. It's also fantastic when working with vocalists, life was always a thousand times easier working with Ableton Live cutting a song into the relevant big changes and not committing until I got through a couple practices with the drummer and vocalists requesting a longer chorus etc.

[terrybritton]

FM and MC:

Heh - well, I think I am truly guilty of composing generally in an "A-B-C-D-E-F-G" style as a rule! But what you suggest as experimental approaches has long attracted me to break myself out of my usual ways. (I even purchased a Native Instruments Maschine Jam to try to force myself to mess with patterns and loops more, though expecting to go at it in an unconventional way treating melodic segments rather than percussive ones as my elements.)

That, to date, has not materialized!!!

However, I do have it on my bucket list to do so.

I really do want to get some drums into my stuff more often. I have some "rock-inspired" sections and even entire improvisations with a regular drum beat present in my archives, but have yet to incorporate such a thing into any multi-track projects NOT performed live. But you are giving me ideas and the inspiration to do so!

I have the Ableton Live 10 "Elements" version and have thought to hook it up via ReWire to DP soon to try out some approaches similar to what FM and MC suggest. Perhaps this new feature in DP10 will eliminate that requirement of using Ableton at all.

Anyway, thanks for the nudge to get me out of my comfort zone!!

Terry

[MIDI Life Crisis]

...if you play music you're playing repetitive patterns...

Not. If you are simply doing that, you are only running in circles. Great composers might indicate a repeat, but only mediocre players will play it exactly the same way both times. I find that musically and intellectually lazy.

If you think taking the repeat of a Beethoven sonata is a "loop" then you loose all credibility as an "enlightened" musician (which I have known you to be).

So as a friend, I ask you to please expatiate on the quoted comment above as I am diametrically opposed to that position.

En guarde!

[terrybritton]

...if you play music you're playing repetitive patterns...

Not. If you are simply doing that, you are only running in circles. Great composers might indicate a repeat, but only mediocre players will play it exactly the same way both times. I find that musically and intellectually lazy.

If you think taking the repeat of a Beethoven sonata is a "loop" then you lose all credibility as an "enlightened" musician (which I have known you to be).

So as a friend, I ask you to please expatiate on the quoted comment above as I am diametrically opposed to that position.

En guarde!

That is exactly what I meant by an "A-B-C-D-E-F-G" style. Even if it is the same melody being played again somewhere in a piece, it is never played the same way, nor is it surrounded by the same accompanying elements exactly, at least not typically when following that approach.

But, I do appreciate the concept of testing and trying out new versions of combinations using these looping tools like FM suggests, only committing them to the track when satisfied they represent the "thing" that I want to do in that place in the music.

Terry

[bayswater]

I've never fully understood the reaction to loop players of "I'm not a loop guy", if you play music you're playing repetitive patterns, unless you're playing extreme Jazz I suppose, and even then..

I'm sure I've said something like this a few times. But it's not some sort of put down. It just doesn't come up. Now and then I've started listening to some loops thinking it might be a way to get started, but after a while paging through dozens of loops, and not hearing anything that works, it just seems easier to press Record and play what I have in mind.

I've copied and pasted the occasional chorus, but even then I usually end up recording it again. Sure it's the same thing on the surface but it's never identical. Maybe editing parameters on the repeat would work, but again it seems like more work for a result that's no better.

Maybe you could argue using loops properly is a useful skill I haven't acquired; I don't know.

[mhschmieder]

The Beatles didn't play loops. Most GOOD jazz players don't either. I am VERY conscious of avoiding direct repetition. In the early days at least, Depeche Mode, Talk Talk, and many of the other synth-pop bands that used sequencers a lot, ALSO did not use loops per se -- they had learned from The Beatles, classical and jazz musicians, etc., that a song tells more of a story and keeps the listener interest better if there's as little cookie cutter going on as possible.

It might be as simple as different parts of the drum set being used, subtle rhythm variations or deliberate gaps. A long list really. Think of famous jazz standards like "Autumn Leaves", where MOST people play the head with stops at the ends of phrases, which goes back to the call/response of stuff like "Don't Get Around Much Anymore".

Most writers try to come up with something unique, but even borrowing arrangement ideas from older material is still usually more interesting and engaging than just hitting repeat on a loop. The Beatles made each verse and chorus slightly different. The average listener doesn't notice, but it's a big reason why the song is longer-lasting over the generations than one that doesn't do that.

But of course there are exceptions, such as awful stuff like "Achy Breaky Heart" that I've had to suffer playing for 17-18 minutes straight. But that's all about a particular dance step than it is about the music.

Anyway, it's good to have a variety of tools available, and it's also wise to change one's workflow now and then lest one get into one's own patterns and loops so to speak. It's why I rarely ALLOW myself to write AT an instrument vs. in my head, lest I be limited by my playing ability or by well-worn riffs and themes that I've either played many times or are very similar to ones I've played a lot.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Disclaimer... I've used a Korg Wavestation and more than once composed using an arpeggiator. I ALWAYS felt like I was cheating (becuase I was) but it sounded so good, or more precisely, it sounded more "precise." (See what I did there?) But it also sounded "clinically" depressed. Sort of music with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

But hey, if you can make living looping (and many do) then good on you. I suspect your audience is less intellectually demanding than the folks I'm trying to reach. I don't do "pop" pops. lol

[Michael Canavan]

The Beatles didn't play loops???
We are not talking the same language here. Any run of notes or chords that repeats itself can be a loop. A similar chorus can be flushed out to be less a carbon copy later on in the composing process, that's how I work anyway, so Clips will be used.

I'm not diametrically opposed to any form of music, except Young Country and Emo, and that's mainly because I can't stand the vocals. Chopan to AC/DC, to Parliament, Pink Floyd, Death Grips and Kraftwerk get played here.

I just picked up an MPC Live a while ago and this reminds me of the comment someone made about a new side chain compressor built into the hardware (DP has had this forever with the Dynamics plug in), about how crappy music was going to be made because of the trend in R&B and House music to pump the entire song with side chain. It's not the tool that's the issue.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

The Beatles didn't play loops???
We are not talking the same language here. Any run of notes or chords that repeats itself can be a loop.

Only in the most simplistic definition of "loop." Sure, Ringo "loops" his rhythms, but does he loop the expression of those rhythms identically every time. Only a discerning ear can tell, and therein lies the rub. "Real live musicians" playing live on an instrument don't play loops. They may play repeats, but that is not the same thing.

However hard you try, you simply cannot take the art of creating music and dumb it down to fit the technology available to you as the thing that music is. Again, if you can make a living making and/or using loops, great. But that is very different from actually performing music.

[bayswater]

The Beatles didn't play loops???
We are not talking the same language here. Any run of notes or chords that repeats itself can be a loop. A similar chorus can be flushed out to be less a carbon copy later on in the composing process, that's how I work anyway, so Clips will be used.

I'm not diametrically opposed to any form of music, except Young Country and Emo, and that's mainly because I can't stand the vocals. Chopan to AC/DC, to Parliament, Pink Floyd, Death Grips and Kraftwerk get played here.

I just picked up an MPC Live a while ago and this reminds me of the comment someone made about a new side chain compressor built into the hardware (DP has had this forever with the Dynamics plug in), about how crappy music was going to be made because of the trend in R&B and House music to pump the entire song with side chain. It's not the tool that's the issue.

If you broaden the definition of loops to anything that repeats in some way, then of course no one has any objection to loops and everyone uses them. But that definition that make the whole argument pointless by defining all music with a few extreme exceptions as loop based. That's not what anyone means when they talk about loop based music.

[Michael Canavan]

Disclaimer... I've used a Korg Wavestation and more than once composed using an arpeggiator. I ALWAYS felt like I was cheating (becuase I was) but it sounded so good, or more precisely, it sounded more "precise." (See what I did there?) But it also sounded "clinically" depressed. Sort of music with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

But hey, if you can make living looping (and many do) then good on you. I suspect your audience is less intellectually demanding than the folks I'm trying to reach. I don't do "pop" pops. lol

Because your music is intellectually demanding doesn't mean your audience is more intelligent. I've met plenty of people who played classical and jazz music as a pretense to being elite. There is plenty of bad classical, you listen to it and realize someone did a math problem, clinical and lifeless. IMO there is good music and bad music, and it's entirely up to you as a listener to determine that.

Disclaimer: it's also my firm belief that half of the battle of being a good musician and finding a "voice" is to be hyper critical, to be a bit of a hater, otherwise the full wash of possibilities in this modern era where almost nothing sets you back from making any kind of music except your own mind. People get lost and can't create anything. It's far more common than you think.

So IMO MLC, it's entirely understandable that you hate on full ranges of modern music, it's part of the process. IMO it actually helps you get focus on the music you do like. The problem comes in though that not everyone thinks like you do. I rarely use arpeggiators but I think of them as a completely different thing than actually playing the part, it's more like an advanced LFO to me. The problem comes in at this point though, as of now this is still the most popular and really the only active Digital Performer site out there. Are you going to dump on every kid who makes EDM that pops up wanting to expand his musical horizons after getting a copy of DP 10 as an upgrade from Live or Bitwig? Because that's going to get old really quick.