Wednesday, November 7, 2007

efx racks & macros in Live 6.

i've often daydreamed about the huge potential of multi chain effect racks with several parameters linked to one knob/slider/touch pad/ or my favorite the mod wheel/pitch bend combo joystick on the ole Xstation.. i had built several effect racks in live 6 tho(primarily to complexify drum patterns) before i came to fully understand mapmode for mapping the macro knobs. i knew you could map several parameters to one macro.. what i didn't know is that you can designate the high and lowpoint of the parameter, or switch them for that matter. so>>>for example> with one movement of my modwheel i can turn the cutoff down from 20khz to 600hz, turn the resonance up from 0% to 50%, turn the chance on a beat repeater from 0 to 100, take 10 decibels off the lowshelf of an eq while simultaneously increasing gain, lowering the q, and sweeping the frequency of another band of the eq. the potential for these kind of efx racks is huge for all types of electronic producers and performers.
I built a few of these effect racks with mapped macros that i'd like to share. they mostly use effects all from live 6, but i occasionally include the vst or au of Supatrigga, available for free at [url]http://www.smartelectronix.com[/url]
so this first one is comprised of two chains, one completely unaltered and the other with utility, 5 beat repeats, two auto filters, a redux, a gate, and a phaser. i have it set up so that when you turn up the mod wheel, the volume on chain two goes from 0.0 to -inf and chain one does the opposite. chain one's 4 beat repeats and one filter are switched on but the others are not. when the mod wheel is up all the way, the effect can morph in two different ways, up or down on the pitch bend. go up and the redux and gate turn on, go down and the hpf auto filter, phaser, and another beat repeat turn on.
this is effect rack preset:
http://www.mediafire.com/?4ggmdn9gkgm
once downloaded, put it in user/library/applicationsupport/ableton/presets/audioeffects/audioeffectracks
or the equivalent on a PC

this is a live set that has a drum loop in track one and the mod wheel & pitch bend routings already in place so you can play with it quickly.
http://www.mediafire.com/?6sgdll6z9k9
one issue with the chain switch method is that the fade curves cause a short audible hole in the music. however, i've worked this out by implementing the crossfader. it responds much quicker.
So, instead of using two chains and switch between them with a macro, use two tracks and switch between them with the Live crossfader.
here is the one chain version of the same rack:
http://www.mediafire.com/?5tpgdgdut9g

and here is a set with everything set up and two tracks playing the same clip:
http://www.mediafire.com/?1ivdpj9ciym

Let me know if anyone wants more of my custom effectracks/macro setups, i have quite a few. I have seen people selling this kind of thing online (covert operators, puremagnetik)but i'm unclear of the quality and sophistication of the racks because i haven't used them.
anyway,
so far i love this site and this is my first blog.. i hope that it is enjoyed and that it possibly gives people some ideas on how to make their own adg.'s and evolve their production. i would love to try out anyones rack creations or if their are links to more free stuff like this, please share.

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