PRO AUDIO
paul

Paul
May 22, 2013

Ableton Live 9 + Push in a Hardware Studio

While it seemed obvious that Ableton Live 9 would power my studio as well and flexibly than its predecessor (with some improvements), there were some items back in the announcement for Ableton Live 9 and its accompanying hardware curiosity that left me with questions. As a hardware synth loving kind of a guy, my first and most immediate questions revolved around the level of integration with external instruments. In the months that have passed, I have acquired the Push controller and answered these questions for myself. Over the next few weeks, we will be doing some videos to show you how to duplicate the more interesting uses for plugins and external instruments we have been finding while working with Ableton Push, as well as digging up more ways to use Push as a tool for creative performance.

In this video, I am simply creating using my own startup template, …

Ableton Push
PRO AUDIO
MOBILE STUDIO
Taylor

Taylor
May 14, 2013

Aviom Monitoring System at the Greater Travelers Rest Baptist Church

The second video in our series showcasing practical applications of the Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System takes us to Decatur, Georgia and the beautiful Greater Travelers Rest Baptist Church. Amandla Lassiter (a.k.a. Dole) is the chief audio engineer for the church and was kind enough to walk us through how he integrates the Aviom system into his work flow. Dole goes over the highlights of this integration in the video above, but it’s worth discussing more specifically how he, and his five piece band, utilize the Aviom system.

Each member of the band has their own Aviom A-16 II Personal Mixer so they can control each individual channel they want to monitor. As Dole notes in the video, the things they want adjusted in terms of EQ are done during sound check. Once that is to the bands liking, it’s just a matter of them mixing themselves in terms of …

Aviom A-16 II
PRO AUDIO
MOBILE STUDIO
Taylor

Taylor
May 8, 2013

Soundcraft Si Expression Digital Mixer Overview

Digital mixing consoles have been dominating the field of audio engineering for the past few years. More venues have begun implementing them into their live sound applications, and consumers are loving the versatility of being able to take a digital desk from the stage to the studio. What makes these consoles so accessible is not just the ease with which you can perform EQing, level assignments, and FX control, but more importantly their incredible value when compared to the similar designs of yesteryear. The advancement in digital technology has made the existence of racks of FX and dynamics nearly obsolete and these desks are small and lightweight with most of the construction centered around the mic preamps.

Soundcraft has been making live sound and recording consoles since the 1970s and they were one of the first companies to incorporate a live sound mixer into a flight case, which made it perfect for …

Soundcraft Si Expression
PRO AUDIO
MOBILE STUDIO
Taylor

Taylor
May 1, 2013

Aviom Monitoring System at the Alliance Theatre

For this video we took a trip to the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, GA. The Woodruff Arts Center is home to the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the Alliance Theatre. It’s a beautiful facility located at the cusp of the heart of downtown Atlanta (in case you are ever in the area and looking for great music, art, and theater). For our purposes we visited the Alliance Theatre to take a look at how they have integrated the Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System into their live sound installations.

The Alliance Theatre was hosting a production of Zorro which included lots of choreographed acrobatics and full use of the theater space. The orchestra members for this production were not placed in the traditional orchestra pit, but were instead lifted onto the right and left sides of the stage with a drummer placed below the stage (for obvious noise …

Aviom A16 II
PRO AUDIO
paul

Paul
April 23, 2013

Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1 MKII Review

Very recently, Taylor found himself trapped in a situation reminiscent of Groundhog Day where I was repeatedly rattling off complaints about my drum situation. Having gone to an entirely hardware synth driven arrangement recording, my drums situation had started to seem like more of a time sink than ever. I had been alternating between using Maschine and some old favorites in a loopmasters sample library for a while, and then gradually got around to beating up the same set of samples from 505, 606, 707, 808, and 909 sample sets for every track. Sometimes I would drop these samples straight into an Ableton timeline, or I would use them in Maschine, Drum Racks or Reason’s Kong, depending on what software combinations I was using for the project.

Lucky Taylor sat through quite a long process of me rambling about why this or that device didn’t work.

While I will swear …

Elektron Machinedrum