Have you ever run into overcomplexity while arranging your latest piece of music?
It happens to me all the time. It’s that phase of composition where you’ve got all kinds of automation going on, sweeping a filter here and increasing an effect trail there.
In addition to automation data, you may have a dizzying array of chopped and rearranged clips of audio and MIDI.
While this isn’t much of an issue when you’re fleshing out an idea that’s merely an 8 bar skeleton of a track, the waters get muddier when you start adding more detail. At some point it all becomes a bit overwhelming to look at, perhaps even hindering your progress as you perpetually second-guess your previous decisions. “Just one more tweak here, I swear!” is a familiar refrain in my studio.
the complexity of this arrange view is multiplying rapidly
If all of this detail is stifling your progress, try bouncing each track down to audio.
Of course, you’ll want to save a copy with all the automation and other tweaks intact in case you absolutely need to come back and change something. This process gives a sense of finality to the choices you previously made, etching them in stone and (hopefully) making it easier move forward.
As an added bonus, all those effects and bits of automation will be printed to audio so your processor will thank you. Another huge benefit is that clicking around the arrangement interface will become much easier after you get rid of those tiny slices of data that like to get in the way of your cursor!
Using Ableton Live as an example, I achieve these bounces by simply “freezing” and “flattening” them.
Freezing is a temporary function which creates an audio file in the background and plays it in place of the original track.
Once a track is frozen, I then flatten it: This process destructively replaces the entire track and its contents with an audio track containing a clip.
These operations can be carried out in both the Session and Arrange views, so the program is pretty flexible in that respect.
That’s all for this installment, but I’ll be back with more next week! In the meantime, feel free to stop by nickstutorials.com for more info on sound design and music production in Ableton Live.
| Image Credits: Simon James‘s “Day 90 – Facing Forward” via Flickr |
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Sound advice (forgive the pun). I only discovered the “freeze instruments and channels” function in Cubase recently and, particularly when working on the laptop (smaller screen, slower engine), it’s been an absolute god send.
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I switched over to using laptops exclusively a few years ago because the portability is of prime importance. Like you, freeze functionality has been my best friend at times for saving processor power.
A really useful article. In a world of super quick PCs and flexible software, it’s easy to forget that it’s possible to make music with seemingly much less computer power. My recent foray into netbook audio will require this very technique at its core. Thanks – J
Indeed, sometimes the endless potential and limitless “undo’s” of a digital system can be devastating to your creativity. I’m becoming more and more fond of committing things “to tape” and moving on. Too many options makes you take 4 years to finish one song.
…or maybe that’s just me. Good stuff, Nick.
@James I enjoyed your netbook soundscape experiment on your blog, keep it up! I’m considering a netbook running Ubuntu with some lightweight music software as a fun changeup from the usual. Definitely keep us updated.
@Joe It’s not just you, trust me
Ah, so that’s how you bounce tracks in Live! I swear it was a different process in earlier versions. Sort of frustrating that you have to freeze and then flatten, so that you’ll never encounter the option if you don’t experiment with freezing first. Thanks for the pointer!
Another potential issue with this is hard drive speed. The laptop I use for sound design only has a 4200RPM drive… which is fine for working with a few dozen instances of Operator, but once you’re streaming those clips as audio it’s a nightmare. Luckily Ableton gave us the RAM button to alleviate some of those headaches.