Thanks so much for this post! When I was coming up with the plans for my Substack Polyester City I decided to go very minimal. Amazing what you can do with less. Allows you to focus better I find.
Very inspiring post, and I really enjoy the blog format. I tidied my desk and connected my digitakt to my laptop via USB last night to bring some focus, it worked really well, but I like the idea of the tactile interfaces that you get with iOS apps. Laptops are very pointy clicky!
Anyway, just wanted to show some appreciation for your work and encouragement to write more. Thank you!
Thanks Chris. Really appreciate you reading and offering kind words! I agree - sometimes it's nice to just make gestures and draw with your finger instead of clicking a mouse pointer around a screen. The touchscreen is the main appeal of iOS for me.
I love this, and really dig the substack format for these posts. Feels like every musician just does YouTube which is fine, but I personally enjoy writing too. So thank you, I’m excited to continue reading. I definitely agree on the point that too much stuff stifles creativity. I feel like I’m constantly trying to find perfect hardware setup…and always eventually returning to the daw (after buying and selling a bunch of gear lol). I like how you have a few select hardware pieces and your iPad to work WITH Ableton, instead of trying to replace it. I use logic but I’m inspired to play with that idea. Thanks!
Thanks Mike! Glad it resonated with you. I totally agree, YouTube is OK for most purposes but it's *so* dependent on production quality, camera gear, post production, shot planning, etc...it would take a ton of time to do a video version of what I'm planning to put on this site. I like this place for sharing ideas. and getting my thoughts across.
I know the feeling - I also went on the "search for hardware" for so long that eventually it began to feel stressful when none of it met my goals. I was ignoring what was already available in Ableton Live and iPadOS, so leaning into those two things has really helped me be more productive than ever. I still love playing with synths and hardware from time to time, and don't begrudge anyone for preferring those things, but I personally no longer feel a need to buy any hardware unless it absolutely cannot be done in a software environment I already have. Game changer for my sanity and my wallet!
Yeah good point I didn’t been think about the equipment side of things. The search for hardware is real, and when you factor in all of the research and time spent learning a new hardware device...it gets pretty extensive! Just saw that apple announced Logic Pro coming to iPads yesterday, so that should make it even easier to get iPad music into my main daw.
Hi Yes thinking on the Logic flow. The App looks like its ported over in a mature way & its Apple owned so maybe things will go Hyper on New Ipads soon as its definitely not being promoted well ATM by Apple. Anyways what I really want to say is due to Andrews vision & goals of minimalist ease of use with max output of super fast creativity, I am sticking with his flow as I just got the 4c & I am genuinely amazed at quality of sound & mixing on the fly with AL. Just need to get my head around the iConfig App Hack. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reconfig/id1605377681 and https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reconfig4audio/id1611970692 etc
Thanks so much for this post! When I was coming up with the plans for my Substack Polyester City I decided to go very minimal. Amazing what you can do with less. Allows you to focus better I find.
Very inspiring post, and I really enjoy the blog format. I tidied my desk and connected my digitakt to my laptop via USB last night to bring some focus, it worked really well, but I like the idea of the tactile interfaces that you get with iOS apps. Laptops are very pointy clicky!
Anyway, just wanted to show some appreciation for your work and encouragement to write more. Thank you!
Thanks Chris. Really appreciate you reading and offering kind words! I agree - sometimes it's nice to just make gestures and draw with your finger instead of clicking a mouse pointer around a screen. The touchscreen is the main appeal of iOS for me.
I love this, and really dig the substack format for these posts. Feels like every musician just does YouTube which is fine, but I personally enjoy writing too. So thank you, I’m excited to continue reading. I definitely agree on the point that too much stuff stifles creativity. I feel like I’m constantly trying to find perfect hardware setup…and always eventually returning to the daw (after buying and selling a bunch of gear lol). I like how you have a few select hardware pieces and your iPad to work WITH Ableton, instead of trying to replace it. I use logic but I’m inspired to play with that idea. Thanks!
Thanks Mike! Glad it resonated with you. I totally agree, YouTube is OK for most purposes but it's *so* dependent on production quality, camera gear, post production, shot planning, etc...it would take a ton of time to do a video version of what I'm planning to put on this site. I like this place for sharing ideas. and getting my thoughts across.
I know the feeling - I also went on the "search for hardware" for so long that eventually it began to feel stressful when none of it met my goals. I was ignoring what was already available in Ableton Live and iPadOS, so leaning into those two things has really helped me be more productive than ever. I still love playing with synths and hardware from time to time, and don't begrudge anyone for preferring those things, but I personally no longer feel a need to buy any hardware unless it absolutely cannot be done in a software environment I already have. Game changer for my sanity and my wallet!
Yeah good point I didn’t been think about the equipment side of things. The search for hardware is real, and when you factor in all of the research and time spent learning a new hardware device...it gets pretty extensive! Just saw that apple announced Logic Pro coming to iPads yesterday, so that should make it even easier to get iPad music into my main daw.
Hi Yes thinking on the Logic flow. The App looks like its ported over in a mature way & its Apple owned so maybe things will go Hyper on New Ipads soon as its definitely not being promoted well ATM by Apple. Anyways what I really want to say is due to Andrews vision & goals of minimalist ease of use with max output of super fast creativity, I am sticking with his flow as I just got the 4c & I am genuinely amazed at quality of sound & mixing on the fly with AL. Just need to get my head around the iConfig App Hack. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reconfig/id1605377681 and https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reconfig4audio/id1611970692 etc