When you experiment with the use of vocal and audio samples for slicing, you begin to experience a new sonic property of your sound. With Ableton Suite 8 you are able to slice an audio sample along grid or warp marker points to a drum rack. Simply right click (ctrl-click for MAC users) any audio sample in the session or arrangement view and you will see the option for “slice to MIDI track.” After you select this, you are given an option for slice length as well as presets. Each drum slice is mapped to various macros, depending on which configuration you choose. You can then easily adjust the ADSR of the sample as well as loop, start point and length of the sample. This makes for some interesting new manipulations as well as the ability to arpeggiate a long sample with a MIDI sequence. If you would like a template file, leave a comment and I will make one for everyone to download.

You can watch a video tutorial that I stream live below.

As we use computers more and more for daily functions, it seems advantageous to maintain their cleanliness and health just as we would our own.

A client brought her computer to me for cleaning and an issue with playing videos of any kind. Malwarebytes returned no results while Spy-Bot found several infections. This and some other strategic cleaning has made all malicious and related behaviours null and void. In the end, there was a lot of tracking and high-jacking software which oddly enough seamed tied to the video streaming sites performance.

How do we avoid these annoying infections. Some would say, “Get a Mac!” I would say just learn to use the internet. Many people believe that Macs are safer but the reality is that they are just less targeted. Yes, there are structural differences betwen the operating systems but if you learn the weaknesses, you can make them strengths and vise-versa

We are avid PC users and support all computers for making so much available to us. We will be recording a series of tutorials to discuss how to safely browse the Internet on any computer while maintaining whatever productive momentum you may have be it making music, fliers, videos, or any other processor intensive applications. Stay tuned!

DMJ

Just discovered Wordbooker which pushes WordPress posts to Facebook. We’re loving all these widgets and plug-ins!

As we work on site design for Spinetastik we are reminded how making graphic websites is made much easier with Adobe Creative Suite 4. Dreameaver has changed the interface and functionality to adhear to increasingly stricter web standards but at the same time, Fireworks allows the designer to build “web-friendly” sites quickly and easily. The new export to CSS function makes template making a breeze and allows the web designer the ability to enjoy some of the visual interactivity of web design once again. For us it is fun to watch standards and methods of web-delivery change as we strive to stay on top of these changes for our clients.

Stay tuned for more posts and tutorials to come!

We started our quest for touch surface control when Dax, Houston’s best intelligent lighting designer, told me about a touch screen overlay. I’m still looking for that overlay that he was talking about but in the mean time, we’ve discovered Jazzmutant Lemur, Reactable, and the iPod/Phone Touch. The true beauty of the Apple touch series of devices is the combination of touch control and the vast amount of mobile applications. Building a blog with your thumbs, making music with your index fingers. All the possibilities are best complimented with a good sense of limitation. Enjoy this culture of technology while we have it so easily available. We’re headed to Galveston to relax with The Galveston Wizard for now. Catch you on the flip side Houston!