![]() Once I’ve got something I like, I open up my iPad and build a nice accompaniment. I’ve got a copy on my iPhone and a copy on my iPad. I start off by jamming out a pattern on my phone. I’m a big fan of Korg’s iKaossilator, which is now Link enabled. No more cables, connections or anything else that eats up valuable time at the rehearsal studio. Get on the same Wi-Fi network, enable Link and you are all set up and synced. Imagine you are in a band, and your drummer is running percussion loops on his laptop, while the keyboard player triggers sequences and loops. Link can be used to sync up multiple computers running Ableton Live. All the while the jam is never interrupted. You have to go home, so you exit the jam that you started without affecting the other players. Your buddy AfroDJMac stops by and syncs his Ableton Live project to your ongoing jam. Another friend stops by and she can join in as well. You can sit down with a friend and each of your devices are tempo locked, as you both jam away on different apps together. So Let’s Start to Imagine the Possibilities Here… Link will automatically recognize any enabled device and send it tempo information. Link will allow you to tempo sync your apps with Ableton Live, but in a surprising and useful turn, you don’t need Ableton Live in the equation at all.Īccording to Ableton, there is no limit to the number of devices that can be synced together. You can even Link sync multiple apps on one device. Once you enable Link, you never need to do it again. Easy Setup So You Can Make MusicĪll you need to do is enable Link on compatible apps, and Link will automatically sync any app on any device on the same Wi-Fi network. There are no masters and slaves. With Link, all players are created equal. If any musician changes tempo, the other musicians follow. No one has to start over at the beginning of the piece. If a real musician wants to join in with other real musicians, he/she just finds the beat and plays along. Only the master has control over tempo, and if the master stops, so do all of the slaves. But Link behaves just like real musicians do. But this relationship causes some unnatural problems real musicians don’t face. It uses a simple Wi-Fi network to send a tempo sync between devices. Ordinary MIDI syncs involve master-slave relationships. Think of it like a conductor calling out the beats of the music “1,2,3,4” so all devices can hear. It’s an SDK that developers can build into their apps as a feature. That reason is Ableton Link.Ībleton Link wirelessly connects iOS devices and Ableton Live over a wireless network. Finally, I have a reason to dust off the iPad and actually put it to work in a useful and exciting way. Rather it’s an announcement of a rebirth. ![]() After a while, it was the iPad itself that started collection real dust.ĪfroDJMac showcases Ableton Link in action:īelieve it or not, however, this is not a eulogy for touch-screen music making. It became lots of trouble and little fun. Setup was excruciating. Signals were lost. Trying to sync up and jam with friends was frustrating. I’d make some short musical phrases and then they would just sit there gathering digital dust.Ĭonnecting apps to each other and DAWs was cumbersome. Personally I found myself downloading app after app, swiping my fingers across the screen for a few minutes, and going back to the App Store to look for something new to download.Įven the apps I enjoyed and spent some quality time with felt disconnected from my workflow. We were spending a lot of time tinkering with our iPads, but not a lot of music was being created. It Was Just a Dreamīut suddenly a realization came over us producers. Our hardware was getting jealous and our beloved DAWs were afraid they’d soon receive their pink slips. ![]() Apps like Moog’s Animoog or Korg’s iPolysix packed in features we never imagined. Soon ports of our favorite VST plug-ins, like Sugarbytes’ Effectrix, were under our fingertips and for a fraction of the price. I started downloading just about any music-making app I could find. There were some great ones. As the initial apps rolled out, the excitement grew. Producers like myself felt that our craft had changed forever. I remember thinking things would never be the same again, in 2010, when Apple launched its first-generation iPad.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |