5 Minutes with Animoog and Ableton Live

YouTube Uploaded by elnoumon on Nov 18, 2011

"A while ago, when I first professed my love for Animoog, I promised to show you how I planned to use it with Ableton. Well, it took me a couple of weeks, but I?ve done it! Here is a video of the workflow that I?ve cobbled together between Ableton and Animoog.

A few notes on how I set this up.

I used the Launchpad to quickly arm and launch new clips that I am recording the Animoog into. When I use a setup like this, where I am using one instrument (be it a synthesizer or an iPad app) to record into mulitple tracks, I like to map the bottom row of the Launchpad to the record-arm buttons of individual tracks. Remember that the default mapping of the Launchpad can be overridden with conventional MIDI mappings. This way, you can keep the whole affair on one page.

Make sure that your record arming is set to ?Exclusive? in the Preferences. This will make it so that only one track can be armed at once. This way, with one button, you can decide which track the instrument is going to.

So, without further ado, here is my improvisation with the Animoog. All sounds except for the drum break are from the iPad app.

A few notes:

I couldn?t get a convincing bass sound out of the app. I think it?s because there is such an emphasis on sounds that evolve over time and I don?t really like that much sonic complexity in my bass sounds.

If you are going to be switching between Presets (as I?ve done here) during improv, I would name them something like _boomtown, with the underscore, or append a number. That will make sure that they are all sequential on the list.

I sure would like to see the ability to make the keys longer, or mess with the scale of the panes in general. I REALLY like the keyboard on this app (the ability to customize is key, har har), but it would be cool if there was more space.

Have any of you worked animoog into your Ableton life yet?"

Animoog - Moog Music Inc.
iPads on eBay