Check out these two videos of Matt Shadetek talking about the Creative Process. I especially like the parts about artists having a conversation with their audience. If you create a track or piece and it’s not well received, the best thing to do is to get back on the horse and keep going. Don’t let that be your last word.

Matt is a dj, producer, label boss and teacher at Dubspot.com. Check out his label Durty Artz for more.

Here’s two dope videos of what can be done using the Akai APC40 which has recently become my weapon of choice.  Artist is called “Mnstr Island”, check him out on facebook.

Here’s a site with some free scripts for the APC.

http://remotescripts.blogspot.com/p/support-files.html#APC40_22

Bonobo - Black Sands

Bonobo – Kiara

Buy Links: Amazon | Amazon Mp3 | iTunes

I found this great video from Computer Music of Bonobo, Simon Green, explaining the making of the track “Kiara” off of his new album “Black Sands”.   I recently opened up for Bonobo at The Parish in Austin which ranks as one of my top 5 gigs.  His band was amazing and their vocalist Andreya Triana was sensational.   It’s so inspiring to see one man’s vision and art be so well executed in a live setting.

BREDE and Simon Green aka Bonobo

DJing template with Ableton and APC40 from Will Marshall on Vimeo.

2nd video with updates:

DJ Template Redux from Will Marshall on Vimeo.

This is a short walkthrough of my current APC40 + Ableton DJing template.

The template is based on Tom Cosm’s Megaset, but with modifications both for my own taste and to suit the APC40.

The project file can be downloaded (without music) at github.com/willrjmarshall/AbletonDJTemplate

Ableton Live Tutorials

These were posted on Beatportal but I figured I’d repost them here as a future resource for myself and others.  Enjoy.

Creating a beat in Ableton:

Resource Files

z-trip interview

247HH v2 Interview/DJ set: Z-Trip from MCM on Vimeo.

Video of what appears to be Beef Wellington using his new APC 40. He’s basically set up a drum loop on each button and then for each square set up varying effects. I think he has it on a 1/8 or 1/4 quanitization so that nothing he hits can be that off and he just sort of mashes away from there.

His comments as explaination:

It is pretty random actually, for the most part. With everything prepped correctly, it’s hard to make something that sounds bad. I know the sound is bad on the video, but if you listen to the individual clips at the beginning you can see how it is laid out. There is a kick with repeating high hat, snare with repeating high hat, which create the foundation. Then different note variations (repetitions, reverses, etc.), and the Apache loop segments to add as accents.

5 tracks of clips with outputs routed to effects track. On that track is an effects rack with Knob 1 as chain select on autofilter, beat repeat, chorus & reverb. Knobs 5, 6, 7 were for one parameter on each of the first three effects.

Some of the clips are actually doubled notes. A clip’s length cannot be shorter than a 16th note, so I made of the clips 2-32nd hits, and some 3-16th note triplets. So those fast repetitions are just prepped samples that are a 16th note duration.

APC 40

EDIT – Download my full zip pack with instructions on installing the APC 40 template.

I just got the APC 40 and so far I’m really digging it.  I did notice that there were some ideas/features that they didn’t include.  I’ve been looking at it but so far haven’t ventured off to create my own templates yet.  This guy did, good for him, he’s a real winner.  Enjoy.