Stealing ideas

Sometimes I wonder if I buy so much NI stuff partly because they have such well produced product videos.  Very possibly.  Below is one of their latest Maschine promos/tutorials.  I like it because Mark Kinchen (who I admittedly hadn't heard of until now),  walks through his workflow and process.  For him, remixing involves:

Mute all the instrument tracks
Play drums with the acapella track
Find a key that sounds good
Chop up acapella vocals
Create a new melody

I'm going to let this be my guide for Towers.  By following this method, I'll inevitably stray much further away from the original than I did on the first three tracks.  I'm going to give this a shot and hope that the limb I'm on doesn't crap out.

Groove composition in Maschine

So as I mentioned, in addition to Pro Tools, there is some other composition software at work here.  The role of Native Instruments' Maschine is a little harder to define than a common digital audio workstation.  It's a loop-based composition and arrangement tool which can be integrated into my workflow in a couple different ways.  Up until recently, I'd been using Maschine on a standalone basis to try out ideas, and put together grooves.  I would then click and drag the resulting audio file over to Pro Tools for deeper editing.  For the Bon Iver Project, I've started using Maschine as a vst, or plugin, in Pro Tools 9.  This means that Maschine's timeline syncs with Pro Tools, and they operate in parallel.  Tempo is also consistent.  Maschine simply becomes one track within the project.  This offers the best of both worlds, in a sense.  I'm able to use Maschine where it really shines (as a loop-based composition tool) while it sits in Pro Tools, where things are more easily edited and fine-tuned.  Ta daa....

Maschine 1.8 in Pro Tools 9.

So, in order to know where each Maschine "scene" (or part) starts and ends, I've added markers in the Pro Tools edit view.  I'm not saying this is the best way to incorporate this into your workflow, but it worked on Perth, and I'm trying it on Minnesota  So far, so good.

Perth final draft