Jonathan’s blog is a blog about the state of the music industry


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tutorials


Protools tips

here are some tips for protools - how to cram more into your session, and a few shortcuts that i use

the first thing is to use a lot of busses.
I usually group all my drum tracks together then fling an aux after it, and route all the outputs of the audio tracks from the drums to the aux chan. that way i can place individual eq on each drum track…

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more on the social networking, and a crescendo…

well, ive been ranting on about socail networking this and that recently, and ive almost cracked it. almost.
there are a couple of problems with all these social networking things - the first is that you sign up to 50 of them.
the second is that you have to put your profile info in 50 times - but its essentially the same information. the next is that you have to upload a&nbsp…

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Effects Tutorial 1 - compressors

this one might seem a little easy for some people, but it essential that everyone knows it - what is a compressor, and how to use it correctly.
basically a compressor takes the incoming audio and squeezes it, making the louder bits quieter and the quieter bits louder. you have control over how much compression you add to incoming audio. there are four main controls on a compressor - threshold, compression…

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abelton tutorial number 6 - using reason inside abelton

if your like me, then you love using abelton, but you also love making drum beats with reason.
you can use your reason drumbeats (and anything else you have) inside abelton.

its an easy process once you know how to do it, and you can save the setup as a template, so that when you open abelton its already wired for use with reason.

so fire up abelton and lets get going.

basically im going to show you with pictures how to :
1) create new audiotracks
2) set the input to reason
3) wire up reason so that the individual drum sounds have a channel inside abelton
4) save the setup as a template
5) record the drums from reason inside abelton

so, on with part 1

make a few audio tracks (ctrl+t)

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syncing all my contacts

ok, so i have a lot of contacts, they are all in different places.
all i really want is to have one list of names, email addresses and phone numbers.
i want this list in my phone and on all the services that i use.
never gonna happen.
but at least i can be a bit more organised.
i use outlook to manage my contacts -  all my contacts are synced to my phone -…

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syncing photo’s between social networks

man, this one is hard to do.
i think i might just make a crude little app that bruteforces its way to do it, but i dont really have the time.
though with all the API’s out there i could sell it for a fiver a time and make a fortune.

all i want to do is to save time.
i upload my foto’s to flickr. end of.
facebook, myspace and bebo all have photo…

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facebook, bebo and myspace

well, i have accounts on all three, but i organise all my stuff from outlook, always have, always will, but im trying to work on a way that when i update one service that it updates all of them, like uploading photo’s to my flickr account and having it automatically upload the same photos to bebo, myspace and facebook. also calendars would be cool, i have a calendar of all…

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how to use a playstation pad to control abelton

this is a sneaky little one - how to use a playstation pad (or any joystick) as a midi controller to control abelton (or any other music making program that can do midi)

i use a playstation pad to play oldschool games on my pc (using zsnes emulator) ive got one of those little usb convertor thingies so the playstation pad gets recognised as a regular joystick by my machine..

but i…

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abelton tutorial #4 - using a midi controller in abelton - Midi mapping

this is a quick one - im gonna show you how to control abelton with a midi keyboard
i have one of the m-audio ones with the knobs and sliders on it and i use it to control all sorts of things in abelton.

its really easy when you know how, so im gonna explain it as simply as i can.

first thing to do…

open up a session, or start a new one…

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ableton tutorial number 3 - follow actions

ok, here is the third installment of my ableton tutorials - this thime its all about follow actions and automation
whats a follow action you ask - well, you have a loop and it plays through and after it plays it stops playing and launches another loop.
this is by far the best thing about ableton. it means that you can code yoiur songs. so, how to do it ?

well, fire up…

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