New Year, New Tools 🌈

Hey everyone, Happy New Year! I hope you all had a good holiday season and are ready for the year ahead 🌈

Over the break, I've been working on my music-making setup. My toolset was feeling a little sprawling and disorganised - plugins I'd bought and used once, or tools that I hadn't mastered and I'd load up and flip through a few presets and never go anywhere with them 😵 Every time I sat down to make music I felt like I had too many choices and none of them was actually that great!

So I made a plan 💪

I wanted a set of tools that were highly focused and just sounded good. Things I could load up, tweak a control or two and be good to go. I was thinking about timeless bits of gear - things like the TR-808, the Juno 106, LA-2A compressor, etc. - and what makes them so timeless. All those bits of gear are really simple, with an intentional set of controls... and they just sound damn good 🔥 So that was my mantra - to build a collection of sound-making tools that felt focused, easy to master and sounded great.

I started by going through each category (i.e. compressor, EQ, distortion, etc.) and doing a deep dive on that topic as well as extensively A/B testing plugins from the category. I was biased, as I tend to be, away from VST plugins and towards the built-in tools and was pleased to find that, in most cases, Live’s built-in devices were just as good, if not better than, the 3rd party alternatives. I think I tried about 5 different LA-2A plugins and ended up deciding that, actually, Compressor is pretty damn great ✨ I came across some great resources in my deep dives on a bunch of different subjects which I’ll try to collect and share at some point as well.

My next steps were to fill in the gaps where I felt the native devices didn’t do what I wanted or didn’t exist. That’s where this winding tale becomes relevant to you! Instead of heading for VST plugins, I figured I’d build what was missing in Max! 🛠️

Keeping in mind the philosophy of highly focused, but great-sounding tools, I’ve ended up with, what I think, are some pretty handy devices (a selection of which you can see above)!

I learned a lot of cool new Max stuff along the way too, so I’ve been able to do things I hadn’t before, including learning how to make custom interactive interface elements with jsui, which are super fun 🤩

I'm currently sharing a new device a day over in Discord, along with a deep dive into what it does, so if you're not there then this is a reminder to come hang out (members only)! 😊

If you're not into Discord, that's totally okay - I'll be sharing all the devices in a pack soon. That will just take a little longer to be ready, but keep your eyes out for that.

Lots more to come this year as well. Thanks, as always for sticking around here.

Cheers,

Tom