2021 Studio Update // Changed my Mind about a workflow.

[Music] this video is sponsored by nordvpn but more on them later hey what's going on today i wanted to talk about my studio and kind of where it's at right now of course my studio is forever changing but a mindset shift i had recently was understanding that one studio in this case this studio doesn't necessarily have to fit all purposes for a while i was trying to achieve that and i realized it didn't really achieve any purpose 100 it was okay at doing most things but it wasn't really good at doing any specific thing which of course led to a lot of like speed bumps and workflow issues and annoyances that showed up along the way so for this studio this specific setup here i have it tailored to a specific goal which includes making music that is easily editable sounds clean relative to most of my other works and has the same core sound to the tracks and another thing that was kind of important to me was to have room for exploration and experimentation with loops like samples and of course some modular stuff but those two last things aren't always necessary and when i mention the same core sound to most of my tracks that really comes from having a consistent use of the same synthesizers sure i can select different patches but they overall have the same vibe or sound or tone to them so let's get into what those are and we'll start right here on my main desk so on the table top right above the keyboard and mouse i have the novation peak and yes i do work there but i would own the synth even if i didn't i use this synth mainly for a lot of filler sounds at the end of making a track as well as the majority of my pads and uh and my chords when making music and even though it's right here dead center right in front of my keyboard i don't always use it first what usually comes first is exploring samples and chopping things up here on the you guessed it octatrack here's the thing though and even then that this i say this comes first i don't always use loopy samples or chop samples in these types of tracks i'd say probably for the past month and a half ish maybe two months i brought the octatrack back out and really missed it and it's really fun to use but i don't always use it in all my tracks i don't always need to use everything that is out especially when it comes to finding new rhythms within rhythms i love the octatrack especially like using the slider as well as different things like the different loop points or the slice grid the ot mainly handles drum brakes or just weird textures that i can loop at different lengths quickly and in an almost like performative way to kind of have a human touch to them i also mentioned how this space has room for modular exploration i do keep the pallet case right here next to me or over here on table number two which i'll get to after we finish up here but as always i love the palette case i've talked about it a ton and i just got this osiris voice if you haven't seen this video already it is easily one of my favorite voices now and honestly probably one of my favorite modules of 2021 i mean mainly because it's just so usable usable use that was useful and usable at the same time useful especially with the music that i'm trying to write and the way i like to write my music so yeah check that video out if you haven't seen it already now onto this keyboard tray rollout y'all have probably seen this keyboard once or twice before in some other videos but this thing is a workhorse i use it so freaking much and i've been using it more and more the more i get used to playing the piano and the more i kind of learn about playing the piano and that's going to be this here the nord electro 6d this keyboard i kind of bought it randomly saw it in a video once i was like oh that sounds cool but it just has so many amazing like electric pianos strings organs just like organic sounds that sound incredible and play extremely dynamically which i didn't realize was so important until i got this thing furthermore the keyboard itself feels incredible it's a 61 key semi-weighted waterfall style keyboard so that the lower notes require a bit more velocity to them a bit more uh oomph when playing them versus the higher notes which is kind of cool and basically i like this keyboard so much i took the usb out of this run it into my mac and i use it to play other synthesizers once in a while or on the rare occasion a plug-in so yeah that's my nord electro 60 absolutely love this thing next to that tried and true needs no introduction the electron digi tact as you all have seen before i've talked about this thing a billion times i still think it's one of the best bang for buck drum machines that you can get mainly because of overbridge and remember how at the beginning of this entire chat i mentioned that in this current studio setup i really like or i'm looking for clean audio as well as easily editable sessions that's where overbridge comes in because with my um my setup inside ableton live like my default template i have all eight tracks plus the left and right master output of the dt all in their own channels and that whole setup is in its own group that way i can just hit record record a two bar loop or maybe a four bar loop and then just arrange it later in the daw or if i wanted i can just hit record and perform the whole thing in and fix any of my fix any of my mistakes in post so it's incredible i will say though that this dt honestly gets swapped out back and forth with push 2 and if i'm not using the digi tag for my drums i'm using push 2 and drum rack but the reason i'm not using push 2 right now is because i wanted to mess around with a lot of the parameter locking and the sample manipulation that the digitak kind of offers just built in right on the face of the unit and sure you can do a lot of this stuff or get close to it on push 2 but i mean for me at least it just takes a bit more it just takes a bit more time for me to set it up and i just kind of want to hit record and go i guess another random shout out would be this thing that's turned off right now it's the roland jv 1080. i don't use it as much anymore but if you listen to any of my older tunes it was on a lot of them and i'll use it once in a while for that weird like borderline cheesy sound if that's what i'm looking for it's very rare that i want that sound so the thing usually just stays off and it's just racked up so that covers my main desk and by the way the desk itself is called the output platform desk i have a review of it here as well in case you're interested but the tldr of that video is would i buy it again no do i hate it no am i happy with it yes and do i plan on getting rid of it no so yeah if you wanted more info on that just check that there and uh if you're wondering about my actual mechanical keyboard here it's the kikron k2 thank you to one of my best friends for gifting it to me this i absolutely love it it's awesome could be wired it could be wireless has a built-in battery i've got a link to it down in the description below in case you're curious about that and then i was using a mouse for a while i tried so many different ergonomic things but i ended up with this which i might be saying the name wrong is the apple magic trackpad this thing is pretty tight because the one thing i really like is within ableton live i can zoom in and zoom out kind of like an ipad and it comes with a lot of the other man this thing is dirty it comes with a lot of the other uh gestures that i'm just so used to doing that i also can't do on a regular mouse because a lot of this is kind of habit from using my macbook laptop that has a trackpad so i know all the four fingers up three fingers down types of things so this is actually more useful than i realized now i want to get into table two where i swap a lot of things out and i want to talk about my audio routing as well as my midi setup but before that i do want to give a quick shout out to today's video sponsor nordvpn in line with most of my sponsorships i love bringing something to you that i actually use that you will get a major discount on now i know this might sound super random to be here on this channel but i know for a fact that you have a device that connects to the internet how do i know this because uh hi hello from the world wide web i've been using nordvpn since 2019 and i absolutely love it what's a vpn you might ask tldr it's a way for your computer to connect to the internet through a couple different servers that disguise or hide your computer from companies trying to track you for like ads or those cookies that you always hear about or anything like that nordvpn happens to have over 5100 servers in 60 different countries so that you'll be good to go and i know you're not doing anything illegal but i'm a big advocate of personal privacy online as well as transparency on where our data goes and what our data is used for some might say i've gone off a bit on the deep end i'm kidding i'm kidding but in all seriousness nordvpn is a simple and easy way for you to finally get back some of your privacy while online and not have a ton of corporations try to sell you things on the back end of your browsing it's especially useful when your significant other or your mom or dad asks you to search for something that you would otherwise never search for and now they won't stop trying to get you to buy i don't know crocheted oversized frogs with purple yarn or something something else insane another useful tip with nordvpn would be to connect to a different country to access shows or discounts on products that don't exist where you're currently at it's super easy to use with a one-click option to connect or you could be like me and enable an auto connect for zero click protection and if you're worried about your internet speeds i personally can say i've noticed no effects on my speeds whatsoever while uploading videos or playing games online or even just regular browsing or even watching tv shows and lastly with one account you can have up to six devices connected to it nordvpn is also supported on every major platform from windows android ios mac os and even linux even your android tv can support nordvpn so if nordvpn is something you're interested in go to nordvpn.com rickytinez to get a two-year plan plus one additional month at a mega discount all right on to table two so table two is honestly barely a table it's a piece of wood on a triple keyboard stand and it's beyond sketchy but it's lasted me so far so i'm just hoping it continues to last to at least the end of this sentence how crazy would that be if this actually broke when i said that on the top of this sketchy thing i have the pro 3 tried and true total workhorse synth and this kind of goes back to the or the original point of this studio which is kind of having that core fundamental sound i use this on basically everything you can check out this video here i use the same patch on pretty much all my tracks and with that patch i'll just track it in as i go once i'm done there maybe i'll explore through some of the presets but the pro 3 is just such a fun synth to design on and to design sounds on that i usually just start with an initialized patch which i finally learned is down and latch under that i have this here which is the pro that the pro 3. the launch pad pro and again i work at novation and i have this because i work there but it has been becoming more and more useful to me because whenever i'm writing that cool bass line up here and i'm afraid that i'm going to forget the notes or where the notes are i can jump onto the launchpad pro hit record arm choose a new empty track and once i'm ready there i just hit record from here and i don't have to like octopus arm across my studio and hope that i'm going to hit the thing and the notes and everything it just becomes a mess i just have it right here next to this of course i have this which is kind of comes to like a swappy section this is the avalon baseline which i've been in a love and heat relationship mainly because it sounds really good but it doesn't do much other than what it was built to do and i'm kind of just not feeling i guess i'm just not feeling that sound right now so i i used it a ton in the past but i think i just kind of need to give it a break and i was giving it a break i just brought it out maybe like a week ago so this section here is kind of like my swap experiment section i've also talked about this before in this video here and i find that it's super important to have in a studio and in that video i had it over here but i recently moved it over to this side because this is also where i'm kind of changing a lot of my guitar pedals that i run sounds from either ableton live through these pedals or through uh or any synths that are here on this desk like the pro 3 or the avalon i'll run them through here when it comes to my guitar pedals i just picked up the shallow water it's it's incredible i've tried the dot chaser and i wanted to get the cooper effects one but it's astronomically expensive right now so i ended up with the shallow water and i could not be happier this was heavily influenced by ura music or aura music if you haven't seen any of their videos please go do yourself a favor and check them out after this one i of course have a link down in the description below the like button next to that i'm checking out this reverb pedal by empress just got it not too long ago not very familiar with it but so far so good and then next to that right now i currently have the eventide tricera course again i did a video on this and why i love it so much right here all of these pedals are powered by the eventide power max i recently ran into some um some weird issues well i guess they're not that weird they're kind of common i ran into some common issues where i was getting a lot of hum and buzz from my pedals and i realized it was coming from a cheap power supply i got off of amazon so maybe me i reached out to eventide they responded to me the quickest of course and i asked hey do you have any suggestions on power supplies outside of the ones that you make and i didn't realize that they have one of the best power supplies four pedals duh so they sent this over to powermax and it's been incredible no complaints so this whole section here changes the most mainly the pedals and mainly the avalon sometimes the avalon becomes i don't know an sp404 sometimes the sp404 becomes a nord drum and sometimes you know any synth sometimes it just becomes more more petals that's really it so uh yeah that's that's table two let's move on to audio routing and midi stuff moving on to audio and midi routing i'm still using this thunderbolt version of the focusrite claret 8 pre again not to sound like a book a broken record i work at novation which is owned by focusrite but i would own this thing even if i didn't work there and i actually own this one because i bought this one under that i'm running the octopre mark ii dynamic by focusrite as well it's an additional eight mic breeze and i really like the dynamic version of focusrite mic pres mainly because they have built-in compressors on each channel and they sound they sound really good and this is also being ran over adat adat optical whatever you want to call it under that rack this is just a 3u space i have of course my patchbay where everything gets routed back in and out for the most part but um right now as you can see it's kind of kind of empty because everything in here is pretty pretty standard i don't have to patch too many things unless it's effects and you might have not you might not have noticed but on table two i actually have a patch bay for my patchbay that way i don't have to run cables across my whole studio aka just this little table i can just patch them right there on the table and when it comes to midi stuff i for notes i try to keep everything over usb but anything that is sequencer related i of course i'm still using the erm multi-clock which i love and i've tried to debunk it a ton of times as you've seen in probably some of my other videos and i still love it to death still use it all the time but i don't suggest it to anyone only because i get a ton of questions back on how the hell do you make it work and it took me way too long of a time to figure out how to make it work and it's impossible for me to explain that over an email and i've even tried to do a video on how i did it before but honestly that's pretty much it i spend a ton of time in here making very similar sounding music and i think that is very important which is having a goal on the type of music you actually want to make with your studio that is like half the battle when it comes to making a good studio that will work for you so yeah if you have any questions leave them down in the comments below i'll try to answer them on the day of this video as well as you know the the following weeks and whenever i can get to it and of course if you are a part of that a simple thanks youtube membership uh thing i got going on down below i checked those comments pretty regularly and i super seriously crazy that i just put that thing up and some people joined i seriously appreciate everyone who is a part of that it really means a lot all right that's it for me hope to see you again next week and uh yeah thanks for coming by until then you already know the drill share the love share the knowledge knowledge is power peace you

Channel: Ricky Tinez

Views: 38,997

Keywords: ricky tinez, studio update, studio workflow, ableton workflow, hybrid studio, hybrid studio setup, hybrid studio monitors, hybrid recording studio setup, recording studio, music production, ricky tinez studio, ricky tinez studio setup, ableton studio, ableton studio setup, ableton studio session, how to setup music studio, how to setup music studio at home, how to setup your own music studio, music studio, music studio setup, music studio tour, music studio setup at home

Id: 2a9fLwmwAAc

Length: 18min 43sec (1123 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 27 2021