This week, I sampled the beginning of Take on Me. I sampled every instrument right up until the second synth starts. I was able to map synths, drums, and bass to different buttons on the launchpad on the first page. It plays nicely, and I am going to move on to the next set of synths and lyrics this week. I am lagging behind schedule just a little bit, but I'm going to pick up the pace in the coming weeks. The sampling takes the longest amount of time. If i can just get past the audio part, I should be good. I really like how the project is turning out so far, and I think the finished product will look really cool. I've been looking at other launchpad covers on YouTube to compare mine to. I think mine will end up looking better than the majority of them, but the few professional covers on the site are amazing. Specifically, Kaskobi has some really nice looking covers. His two newest are my favorites. He's able to play up the performance a lot, and has some awesome looking light effects. I'm going to try to model my cover after one of Kaskobi's.
This week, I changed the song to Take on Me by aha. I found the song stems online, and because it's more electronic than Breezeblocks, I imported them into Ableton. It's more advantageous to use a song with electronic drums because I would have had to program a separate button for every beat in an organic drum track. There's a lot of repetition in an electronic drum track, so I can just use one button for different parts in the song. The project thus far is going pretty slow. I'm going to try to sit down with it this weekend and get more done.
I want to start out with talking about what I've done over the past week. Firstly, I've created a video detailing the specifics of my project on this blog. It was fun to make, and more like it are coming soon. I also created two different projects for the Launchpad. The first one is a mix of three different random song snippets to demonstrate MP3 splicing and piano notes in the video. The second is the beginning of my main project song. I set up the MIDI tracks and imported the audio, as well as created the outline for mapping the samples to the buttons. I have a lot to do ahead of me, and it seems a little frustrating. Creating a Launchpad cover from song stems is a very time consuming and monotonous process. It's feeling a little slow right now, but I'll get it done nonetheless.
For the first week, I just gathered the materials and resources for my project. I decided on a song to sample, Breezeblocks by Alt-J, and have already downloaded the stems. Beyond that, I've created a project with a multitude of songs on it to show the difference between creating a cover using stems, and creating one using mp3's. This will be used in the first video I post on here, which will explain what a Launchpad is, as well as explain the basics of what I'm doing on here.
I want to welcome everyone to the start of my fun-filled journey to creating a Launchpad cover! My goal here is to create a professional Launchpad cover utilizing sampling and MIDI controlled lights. I want to teach people about the basic process, and talk about what a Launchpad even is. Ableton is a very complicated and frustrating software, but with enough patience and time, I should be able to create a good looking cover. I will be refining my skills in Ableton, and hopefully teach you about the software as I work. I'll only be using my computer, Ableton, and a Launchpad MK2 to accomplish this. I will be posting videos periodically that showcase any basic steps I've completed at that time. At the end of the project, I'll post a less in-depth video summarizing everything I've done. The entire reason I do things like this is to feel like I've succeeded in what I've done. To measure my success, I'll compare my cover to a professional's and see what others think about my project when it is finished. With all that said, buckle up and get ready for a semi-interesting Genius hour project at best!
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