this weekend i took a class in NYC at dubspot... it was dope. it was a two day ableton workshop specifically addressing the use of the apc-40. our teacher was abe duque, he did a fantastic job. i would say the information was split 20/80 between the two days.. after day one i thought "yeah it's pretty cool" but after day two i was pretty much in the "mind has been blown" category. some of the things we covered were mapping to buttons on the apc, warping, chaining effects, effective ways to use the effects in transitions, using the crossfader on the apc, mapping to macros, beat repeat, a transformer effect using the "auto pan" and general clip triggering (including "follow actions")
it was a lot of information to digest in two short classes.. we even had homework after day one to bring a few warped tracks to the next day's class that we would work with. i kinda went with the NYC theme on that one. when the class was done i tried to record my mix but they were closing up shop and i had to cut it off after about 5 and a half minutes. here's what i did before i had to stop...
some of the effects are a little over the top but we were trying to experiment and i wanted to try and touch on as many of the things we learned in the class as possible. this is pretty much "straight to tape" with the exception of one or two minor things that i cleaned up after the fact. far from perfect but much different from what i would've been capable of before taking this workshop.
i don't have an apc40, we'll see if i end up getting one. it's a pretty useful tool in the studio and it would be great for performing.. not sure i'll ever give up the two 1200s though.
funny story to add: at the beginning of the class we were going around talking about what brought us to the workshop. after i had mentioned that i got started working with an ensoniq mirage, sp 1200, eps 16+ and mpc, abe asked "what are you, 60 years old?"
