Using Native Instruments Battery kits in Maschine 2

This is just a summary of the amazing video I've linked here.  I did this process several times this evening and I think I've got it down but I'm sure if I don't do it for a while I'll forget.  So in a nutshell, this is how you map individual Battery samples/cells to individual sounds in a group in Maschine.

1. Open Battery from Instruments, load a kit on sound 1 (pad 1)
2. Click Channel/MIDI button (upper left) and then right arrow to page through until you get to MIDI page in left screen
3. Leave pad 1 alone, but for every other pad, hit the pad, change knob 1 (DEST.) to S1 (sound 1) and knob 2 (channel) to 1
4. All pads will now show Dest = S1 (sound 1) and channel = 1, except pad 1, which will have a Dest = None.  All pads should now be triggering the same sound (sending same MIDI)
5. Click back to Pad Mode and adjust the Octave +/- and Semitone +/- buttons for each pad to get it to trigger the sound you want.
6. Rename the sounds in the software (recommended) and rename the Group (e.g., 707 Kit Mapped)
7. Save the group in the default location
8. When loading the group, ensure in the software that the +ROUTING item is lit in the bottom left

Again, huge thanks to Aftalyfe for creating this video.

Deep Reconstructions Zubaru

I've been vocal about my love for the discontinued Native Instruments Kore 2 product, and hopefully I've evangelized the series of effects known as the Deep series that included Deep Freq, Deep Transformations, and my favorite, Deep Reconstructions.

In preparing for FAWM 2022 I've looked back on some of the amazing things I've been able to make largely due to these effects.  There are literally hundreds of patches in this series crafted I believe all by Denis Goekdag, now CEO and cofounder of Zynaptiq.

This Guitar Rig patch is something inspired by (read: stolen from) the Zubaru patch from Deep Reconstructions.

Zubaru Guitar Rig Patch

FAWM 2021 - What Have I Learned?

My 10th FAWM is over and once again I've (somehow) managed to do 14+ songs in 28 days (technically 16 in 27 this year).  Every year I wonder if I can do it.  The self-doubt never goes away, even after writing over 150 songs in those 10 years, all during a February, I still have that little voice of doubt inside.

Now that it's all but over, I've been thinking of the things I still don't know how to do and focusing on that, because I have constant imposter syndrome and (when it comes right down to it) never think anything I do is good enough. So massive thanks to @caseewilson for posing the question, "What did you learn?"

There are a lot of great answers on that thread.  I'm not sure how many active FAWMers there are this year, or how many manage to "win" (do 14+ songs), but that forum post shows you that there are artists from all different styles, locations, and levels of experience, and we're all learning.  Luckily, that's my favorite thing in the world.

So here's what I learned.  I learned to:

FOCUS.

The vast majority of my tracks fall into the downtempo / chill out genre this time. Still a few that fall outside of those boundaries but I've made probably the most cohesive album of the 10 years I've done this.

EDIT. 

Pretty much all my stuff this time around is 4-5 minutes, and while it could still use some editing here and there, I feel most tracks are tighter than normal.

STEAL. 

I'm not good enough to steal properly, which is probably why it sounds different than what I'm ripping off, but then it's not stealing I guess?

PATCH. 

I got into modular synthesis almost two years ago but "dancing on fire" is the first song I've done that's 100% modular (all but drums were sequenced in Ableton but that's about it).

MASTER. 

Better than before at least. Gotten much better with using compression / a limiter, still not great with EQ.

BE PATIENT. 

To echo @cblack - yes. This was the hardest of all. I always put a *lot* of time into my first track but after that, there might be one or two that I give that much attention to how it sounds at the end (mostly mixing / mastering). This year, starting with my second song, I realized if I just put one or two more hours into every track, it would make a huge difference. This resulted in me spending arguably more time than ever before in the studio, 27 days straight with an average of about 4 hours a day working on or listening to others' tracks.

And I honestly learned to love what I do (and the ones who enable me to do it) just a little more.

I'm on this awesome podcast from G-Slade!

 Hey all,

I had the privilege of spending several hours with G-Slade yesterday, a fellow long-time FAWMer and all-around good dude.  An enigma wrapped in a blueberry pancake wrapped in a pizza - now that's what I call a podcast!

We wax idiotic about a lot of stuff, mostly aliens and music too.

Click the pic for the podcast :)

He's had tons of other folks on there as well, and doing a fantastic job of representing a plethora of musical genres.  It's worth it just to hear him pronounce the word I now only know as:

M! I! crooked letter, crooked letter, I! crooked letter crooked letter I! humpback humpback I!

(Mississippi for all those who haven't visited the excellent P-Valley)

liriope

I've been up all weekend
Chasing dragons
Watching for truth
Living a lie

Once I found the apex
Expensive drugs and cheap sex
Feeling next to nothing
Fawning to fly

And then I found you

Colors washed from my world
Savaged by domestic girls
Made my bed
Now here I lie

Accepting the consequence
Except for the pretense
I wish I could say
I don't want to die

And then I found you

All the times that we had
All in the past
Back to this
There's not much else

Time is all I have now
Feeling a fade out
You made me feel
I could live with myself

And then I lost you

You're like liriope
Not that much left of me
You're like liriope
Sinking inside of me

FAWM 2013 - Five Years Later

I listened to some songs I wrote for FAWM 2013 tonight for the first time since I wrote them, probably.  These last two nights I've spent listening to a lot of old stuff, at M's suggestion / request.  When I think about revisiting what I've done, I'm always afraid I'm going to find that I'm repeating the same themes, that I have no new ideas.  Isn't that every artist's worst nightmare?

It's not just 2013 I've been revisiting, but all of the years of music I've made, at least since I started participating in FAWM in 2009.  I even listened to the first song I ever finished, a remix of Locust / All Your Own Way from June 2001.

The crazy thing is not realizing how far I've come, but how I wish I was back in the creative headspace I was back then.  I'm excited for what I'm doing now... maybe in five years I'll be able to appreciate it the way I appreciate what I did in 2013 now.

FAWM 2013 - Some Things

I finished the demos for the 2013 FAWM project on the 28th of February.  I usually pace myself, finishing one song and posting it on average every two days.  In this way, I'm assured I'll reach the goal of the 14 songs by the end of the month.

Usually, the routine is to write a song, give it some time (when it's available), then post it and start madly writing comments on others' songs in the hopes that you'll get some comments on the one you just posted.  It's a pretty supportive community, so people usually follow this unwritten rule.  The one exception is that people usually also follow the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything"rule.  So sometimes you don't get any comments, which can be better or worse than getting comments like, "This song sucks."

I won't go into all the reasons I decided not to post comments on others' songs this year, or why I decided to post everything only on the very last day of the competition.  For that, you can check my "manifesto," which I posted on my artist page on FAWM.org.

What the manifesto doesn't say is that one of the key advantages to this process is that I didn't have to feel like something was in a somewhat finalized state after only a day or two of work.  Sometimes dedicating a limited amount of time to a song is all it takes, and sometimes it's beneficial.  However, there are other times where it's best to let a track simmer in my mind before calling it semi-complete.

The whole idea of FAWM is to write songs.  Not necessarily finish them, or even post demos.  However, for me, it doesn't count unless I post a demo.  For the record, I don't think this is the only way to do it, just my way.  I'm fortunate enough to have the equipment, skills and time to do this, and I use February to make this happen.

Waiting until the whole thing was completed allowed me the artistic distance to realize the best order for the songs, the best flow.  I tried to post those songs in that order, but due to a combination of changes to the site and my lack of familiarity with the changes, I flipped the order of a couple near the end.  No biggie.  The intent held in this case.

Part of the limitation of releasing demos in the order they're written is that the people who are out there listening believe that the album should be sequenced in the same way it was written.  This is how I did the first album I released, but it's also partially why I never released a second.  I've never felt that every song I wrote during the month deserved a release after that first year.

So maybe I'm older, wiser, whatever.  I know now that Uncle Frank was right.  "Every artist has a built-in shit detector."  You have to trust your instincts and try to only release things to the public that are better than average, at least.  Why release something that's just not that great?  Chock it up to experience, learn from it, and count it as something you've done, but don't cripple an album by putting something substandard on it because you feel you have to.

So the takeaway is that I really did learn something new this time around, that while I love the process of FAWMing, for me, sometimes it doesn't (directly) contribute to the quality of subsequent tracks.