The APC40 is a great controller, but it does basically one thing: launch clips. Hans Petrov decided to improve on this diminutive feature set by writing the APC_64-40 remote script in Python to add new control modes for the clip grid, faders, and encoders.
All DAWs have their idiosyncratic nuances that make them great for some things but not so much for others. Lots of producers may have grown up using one DAW and switched to another later down the line.
Vocoders and Talkboxes are often confused in that both sound like synthetic voices and are often created using synths; they also require pretty much zero singing ability to use, which is great if you want to add lyrics to your track without being able to hold a tune.
Sampling is such a given in modern music that we probably don’t give it much thought these days – lifting a musical loop, breakbeat or even spoken word sample from someone else’s record is almost second nature to producers and has been commonplace since the explosion of sampling in the early 1980s.
TouchOSC is an app that allows control of our DAWs from our iOS device such as an iPad or iPhone via MIDI or OSC messages. It comes with preset interfaces for Ableton Live and Logic as well as having the functionality to design your own.
One of the great things about Max programming is that you almost never have to start from scratch. For my latest project, I essentially frankensteined two of my favorite patches together to make an unholy new device, the APC Mono Sequencer.
I started learning Max/MSP a few years ago around when Ableton and Cycling ’74 collaborated to release Max for Live, a fully-integrated way to add visual programming and DSP to the powerful Ableton Live DAW.
Parallel processing is a technique for mixing an effected version of a track with a dry version. This is particularly helpful when you want to process a sound but the plug-in doesn’t have a dry/wet knob or you want to be able to control the effected signal with additional effects, such as EQ, reverb etc.
One of my favourite plug-ins that comes bundled with Ableton Live is the Resonator. It’s a strange beast but essentially it’s a bit like oscillators that can be tuned independently and that react to the volume of whatever you put into it; it also has controllable decay, a dry/wet blend and a rudimentary filter.
There are numerous sample packs offering club-ready kick drums and this is by no means a bad thing. However, these might not always be suitable for your track.