I'd be curious to know how fellow AMers are using this program - alone, or mainly in conjunction with other software. This happens to be my one and only music-making program, and I have learned a great deal and enjoyed myself immensely in using it over the past year and a half. (I'm not performing live, just composing things in AM for myself -- mainly rhythmic, beat-oriented music.) But I wonder how others use AM, especially for making loop-based music. Are you using AM to make sounds and loops that you then trigger or stitch/layer together elsewhere, in Ableton or on a DAW, for instance? Or do you use AM alone, both as a sound mulcher and DAW, or whatever the word is? Or what? I have a Lite version of Ableton (came with a cheap MIDI keyboard I bought) but have never really dug into it. Perhaps I should. I can see that Ableton does some things AM doesn't, but I am reluctant to make life more complicated. I also got a copy of Reaper, but again, I haven't bothered to fire it up more than a few times - even more controls and settings and concepts to learn. Am I missing something, limiting my horizons in some way? It's less product recommendation I am curious about than simply how people think of and apply AM, as just a tool for making and mangling sounds that will get used elsewhere, or as a self-contained instrument? Or something in-between?
So far, my main excursion "outside" of AM has been to record some sounds -- from a synth, say, or through a mike -- and then loop those in AM and see what I can do to them -- vs. just writing in Bassline, Arpeggiator, or 10Harms+SouthPole. One step at a time!
I use Renoise in conjuction with AM. I make stems in renoise and put them together in mulch. I think your supposed to do it the other way round. But it works for me.
As soon as Ross sorts out copying and pasting note patterns in the bass and drum contraptions i can see using it as stand alone DAW.
I mostly use Reaper and Reason when I'm working on things I need to get done, because I know them really well. I'm still figuring out AudioMulch, it's a fun playground for sonic experiments. Anything requiring MIDI sequencing I'll do outside of AM.
I had tried AM a number of times over the years and it never clicked until I demoed it again last year after reading Curtis Roads' "MicroSound," which is all about granular processing. Promptly bought an AM license, have been enjoying it since. I think before I was looking at what AM didn't have (ReWire, audio timeline recording, comprehensive MIDI recording). Now I mostly just use audiofiles and its inbuilt generators and see/hear a world of possibilities. I LOVE AM's gates, it's possible to build crazy patterns by triggering them with different devices. Also its stability and low overhead are wonderful! I'm buying a laptop soon and look forward to using AM for realtime jamming with other electronic musicians.
If you haven't already, be sure to check out how FourTet (Keiran Hebden) and GirlTalk use AudioMulch for loopy mayhem. Don't feel obligated to use other programs if you're happy with AM and it does what you need. DO you have any AudioMulch tracks you can share?
Hi Winslow,
That's a great question, and I'm interested in the answers too.
I'm a bit itinerant in my music-making, and haven't had much time recently to devote to it. But when I was quite active (the months around last Xmas), I found myself working in a couple of ways. As I'm often more into the ambient, aleatoric, let's see how it develops approach, I find AM alone is really good for that. On the other hand, I find it a bit more difficult for sequencing and repeating chunks of sound. As I'm typing this I'm listening to "Wire Shock" from Brian Eno's album, Nerve Net, which I think is a pretty good example. (Yes, I admit, I'm listening to it on youtube, but that's just because I'm too lazy to find my CD.) The kind of "cut-and-paste" audio he does (for lack of a better word), is much easier to to do in a DAW, I've found, because it's more like working in a visual way, like graphic editing. Not that it can't be done in AM, but I don't find it quite as intuitive. I guess my thinking is that AM forces you a bit more to adhere to the fact that music actually develops in time, rather than being consructed in (graphic) space. But if you want to construct a piece with "lego bricks" of sound, I think it's easier to do that with a DAW.
On the other hand, I have found AM pretty good for composing pieces with triggered samples and so forth, once I'd configured my controller (BCR2000) to do the job, but I have little experience with Ableton, so I don't know how it compares. My sense is that Ableton is more about cycles than linear sound, but I'm really just guessing. In a way, I think, AM occupies a bit of a middle space between Ableton (as far as I understand it) and a DAW. (Which I guess contradicts what I said above a bit?)
Anyway, thought you raised some interesting questions, and hope to hear others' views.
dl
My "sun" has kindof shifted over the years. I went from composing with trackers, to soundforge+cs1x synth, to keykit+audiomulch. Then I moved to flstudio for a while. The thing with composing in audiomulch is that the degree of control tends to be a bit looser - for example the state of flanger LFO-type things tends to be more free-running. Things that look identical in automation sound a little different everytime. These variations can be inspiring to react to in a live setting, but in compositions, I tend to come from the "every little sound matters" school of recording. By contrast, I think most DAW's reset the state of everything and things are just more precise in the DAW-sequencer world (although I'm sure mulch experts have workarounds for all this).
Lately I've been searching for a new "sun" setup. I've migrated to OSX, so flstudio isn't an option for the time being (OSX flstudio has been in beta for what feels like forever now). I've been trying to enjoy using reaper and renosie for the past 3 years or so, but to be honest, neither have quite clicked. Both of them seem to have interface-workflow methods that get in the way for me. Live might be a good option but it's priced ridiculously and hasn't been updated in a while. Reason is interesting, but at this point, so many people have explored those modules to death that I think I might be better served (originality-wise) by cutting my losses and starting at a less typical starting point (although the recent rack extensions announcement has renewed my interest). I'm waiting on bitwig, but it may take a while for that to mature. I'm also getting back into low-level algorithmic coding and hand-made music environments (which I explored a while back by coupling keykit to audiomulch) ... probably partially out of nostalgia and partially out of a desire to do something that's inherently new and different.
There's something to be said for audiomulch's really high compositional-expressitivity to operational-concepts ratio relative to other environments. Trying out other environments has made me appreciate this even more. Reaper seems to be great for a lot of people, but that ratio is really low (i.e. each sequencing/composition option requires knowledge of a particular function in the DAW). I've been toying with the idea of using mulch + geist as an "ideas" environment and then reaper as a final-mix-mastering environment (ala some artists and their mpc-centered studios), but I haven't quite fine-tuned my setup yet.
@drlids I won't say it's easier, but If you spend some time setting up a looper/recorder with external control to grab chunks of the audio you want cut up it can be much more "hands on" and rewarding feeling than cuting and pasting things up in a traditional DAW environment with some practice.
Other things to do to get cut and paste sounds are to use the metasurface with the matrix mixer, delays and granulators. By sending the same audio through the mixer at different times and adjusting the volume it's like you're cutting and pasting. And see what Winstontaneous said about gates as they offer plenty of options too. You can use a delay to monitor the sound and then adust a mixer to trigger a gate, etc.
Personally, I'd rather do a couple passes of this, that is record my live cut up attempts and then move the file back to the player to cut it up some more, than do hyper editing in a DAW. Oh, and you can also change the intial of delay of multiple file players at once with the metasurface.
Anway, to answer the original question, I use AM for everything, but not all at once! So if I use it to effect of create sounds I send those sounds into a sampler or if I use it to "compose" I mainly use live or recorded sounds that get arranged, although some times this is radical enough to change the sound.
@jonah Thanks for your comments. In fact, recently I've been experimenting with exactly the workflow you mentioned, to process live-streaming audio, and I get what you mean. But I'm still fumbling quite a bit. I'd be interested in seeing one of your patches using the metasurface, matrix mixer, delays, granulators, etc., if you'd be willing to share. Your post also prompted me to revisit the editing of automation sequences, which of course addresses some of the points I raised.
Also thanks for referring me back to Winstontaneous's comment. I had totally forgotten the gating function of the bassline contraption!
As an update to my previous comment, I haven't launched Reaper in quite a while, whereas I'm tinkering in AudioMulch almost every day.
dl
Before starting to use AM my workflow was all made with Numerology Silent Way and Logic. Now i use , almost all time , Numerology as VST in Audiomulch :
i use a lot the various Numerology modulation with the new MidiOut contraption to control the AM parameters, the sound often come from my modular and other HW synth and mangles and recorded in AM, Sometimes i edit the result in Logic .
I can say that AM and Numeroloy together make a really flexible/scalable and powerful tool.
More of a planet. I've been using mulch for as long as I've been making electronic music, and while everything else i've been using shifts back and forth, I am always using mulch for something. It's the only computer program I use live (except for Reaktor sometimes).
These days, I use it with numerology reaper, and all my hardware toys :).
@Amzonx, I have been looking at Numerology, have downloaded the demo (which sometimes seems to freeze AM, sorry to say). Can you tell me, will Numerology enable me to play a sequence or phrase on a hardware or software synth and then have that phrase play automatically as a loop? Can it record actions on a keyboard, in other words. And is it able to quantize the notes in that loop? Thanks in advance.
Other than the fact that I use Ableton live, I use AM by itself most of the time in different ways. I only use a wave editor to cut some files up. Sometimes I just use the onboard contraptions to generate sound and movement and then record straight to wav. I play drums and some keys so I've set-up AM with mobius looper for jamming live with a friend. I find AM to be perfect for that as I see all the signal path in front of me. On one midi input I have the keyboard controller and the other I have the roland spd-sx to trigger drums or sometimes the spd-sx is plugged in an audio input and the korg wavedrum oriental is plugged in the spd-sx's audio input. I can do the same in Ableton live but I prefer AM as it is more visual.
@Winslow17, I don't know about Numerology, but I'm pretty sure piz midiLooper does exactly that: http://thepiz.org/plugins/?p=midiLooper
dl
@drlids I won't say it's easier, but If you spend some time setting up a looper/recorder with external control to grab chunks of the audio you want cut up it can be much more "hands on" and rewarding feeling than cuting and pasting things up in a traditional DAW environment with some practice.
-can i be a pain and request more detail regarding this process?!
Other things to do to get cut and paste sounds are to use the metasurface with the matrix mixer, delays and granulators. By sending the same audio through the mixer at different times and adjusting the volume it's like you're cutting and pasting. And see what Winstontaneous said about gates as they offer plenty of options too. You can use a delay to monitor the sound and then adust a mixer to trigger a gate, etc.
-this too! please explain!?!?
I, too, would be very interested in hearing more about using the looper to grab chunks of audio, and about the use of gates for making rhythms.