What a weekend!
On Saturday I was at a chess tournament for my son. It’s a ‘season’ much like any sport and it was the kick-off of our going to tournaments on most Saturdays from here to about March/April. What people don’t know about these tournaments is that you, as a parent/guardian, show up and are basically the ‘pit crew’. If you’re lucky enough to be with people from your school’s chess team or your chess club then you have other parents/guardians to hang out with, but these things go ALL DAY!
That being said.. a lot of us bring laptops to do work. Sometimes I bring my career stuff and work on those things.. but I really like bringing my creative laptop for poking at sound design, blogging, video editing, etc.
This time, however, I brought the Launchpad Pro! It was awesome.
What a freaking upgrade this thing is over the “MK1” Launchpad I have. The visual feedback from the full-color RGB LEDs is worth it alone, but add in the “Pro” features of stop clip, record arm, duplicate, double, delete, undo… and it’s a powerhouse of templating (not a word, but one I use to describe the act of creating music templates/project starts) and micro-performance. I got to use the note mode and was blown away at the after-touch and responsiveness.
OK. So it’s Tuesday. I worked all day Saturday adjusting Ableton Live! parameters and routing and writing notes for my next work session. I took Sunday off. Monday, which was a holiday at my work place, allowed me to get some stuff done around our home and then work toward a solid 1.5hrs (might have been more) of music work.
I feel better about the interface I’ve built for using my gear. Things are flowing well enough and will get better and better as I write and perform on this version of “the rig”.
What’s left to do?
Practice. Practice. Practice.
I also need to tear down and re-build the whole thing as I hope it to be when I arrive at the venue on Saturday evening. I need to get some stuff in place for ensuring that the rig is easy to slide around/move when built.. and that everything goes in and out of it’s place smoothly.
Aside from those things… I think I’m nearly in a spot where I can stop mucking about with MIDI routing, audio routing, FX, and sample selection.. though I just remembered that I have a few open slots for virtual instruments that I might try to fill with some ambient-building tools (air sweeps, pads, etc).
The last thing? Remember not to freak out.