I got a request from thetechnobear in another thread to go into some detail about how I set up Live with my TI with the VC plugin, and working with the TI generally. I don't expect this will solve some of the more serious issues people have with getting VC to play nice, but hopefully it'll help someone. There may be some better ways to achieve what I'm doing as I'm no Live expert, I only switched to it a year ago. So if you have a better workflow I'd love to hear about it. I've been using the TI since 2008 though,,,,and I'm still not done learning everything the engine has to offer. DEEP!
If you want to ask questions about my setup with regards to getting VC to work, I already posted up everything I could think of over at this thread. Feel free to ask questions there.
http://www.virus.info/forum/in…ad&threadID=5072&pageNo=2
I'll get on answering thetechnobear's questions...
"- your workflow, whats your template look like, do you record midi, then bounce etc."
My template that I fire up every new project looks like this. Pretty simple. I have the TI plugin instance at the top turned off. Three audio tracks monitoring in.
1/ From > Virus TI > Post FX
2/ From > Virus TI > 2-Virus Ti
3/ From > Virus TI > 3-Virus TI
I sacrifice the input as I don't use the Virus Vocoder (I use Razor...really clear vocoder) nor do I use it for FX.
I use each track for logical groupings of sounds. Bass in one, leads in another, pads...whatever the tune requires. I then create MIDI tracks for each sounds routed to the relevant channel on the TI. The sound on the TI is then routed to USB 1,2 or 3 depending on it's grouping. I avoid bouncing for as long as possible and I tend to effect groups as a gorup (except detail work....eq etc.). When I do need to bounce something, usually because the Virus has run out of DSP I just solo whichever sound I don't need to tweak and record it into the track. Copy that into a new track and mute its MIDI channel. The patch and routing are all still there to be un-muted and recorded if you need to tweak. I mix the levels of these sounds in the VC plugin until I'm ready to bounce all of them. Then everything gets its own track and I can do eq detail etc.
"- more on how you 'group sounds'"
Half explained above. Back when I was using Renoise I got used to how it separated instruments from tracks. Any instrument could play in any track as each note event has to designate which instrument it's using. This was useful for using lots of sounds like one instrument. If I had a bass sequence that used a bunch of different patches (wubs or reese etc.) it could all just live in one sequence in one track. I'd route the relevant USB out for that group to that track and treat multiple patches as a single patch effectively. I could do lazy things like rack up subtle variants of the same wub patch as separate patches and vary the LFO rate and unison pan etc. per patch, but use them like one instrument.
I lost a lot of that functionality moving over to Live...it's way easier to just automate those parameters in this environment than manage 3-4 midi tracks of virtually identical patches. However grouping sounds and just using multiple synth instances stuck. If I want to do a heavily modulated bass I just mix up my TI bass group with things like Massive or Razor in an Ableton track group and treat them like 1 patch....lots of eq and filter sculpting...which the new TI filter banks are great for.
Everything else is explained above really. If anyone knows if I can route notes on a single midi track to different/multiple midi channels it would help me out a lot. Almost like having Renoise back...almost.
Most of the other questions have been answered in that little essay...so I'll skip a few.
"- do you use clocked aspects e.g. clocked LFOs, delays
- do you bother with virus on-board effects (I'm pushing them to ableton/vsts)"
Yes and yes. One of the reasons I don;t like to bounce or work with samples is my love for using modulation to change the texture of a sound. LFOs that sync to funny measures or freewheel. I tend to get the modulation options on any synth to do half of the work before I approach manual automation. I use the onboard effects a lot. Analogue boost and the speaker cab get a lot of punishment. Great distortion models. Great as filter saturation....rate and follow is really useful. They are all really good effects and they are RIGHT THERE. I rarely need to use VSTs or Live native effects on virus patches as, since the addition of the additional filter banks, pretty much everything I need available on the TI. I really can't say the same for any other synth I use (currently mostly Massive, Reaktor, Razor). The exception being some EQ and compression.
Finally on working within the TI limitations....well there's how I approach patch grouping and bouncing. Not an incredible innovation, but saves me time. Also as I said in the other thread, yes the Virus is famous for its history as an analogue (though admittedly I was a Novation Nova guy back then) that's a very crowded space. The wavetables are great. PWM wavetables are a downright TRIUMPH. The formant oscs open up a whole range of textures that really compete with a lot of the modern digital VSTs. Whenever I go hunting for patch advice I see a lot of posts saying the same thing...
'The Virus can't do those kind of sounds...'
I think. Are we talking about the same Virus? The TI? Do you even own a TI? Have you ever upgraded the OS?!? It's a beast! where else can I casually rack up 9 sawtooth waves on one knob and sync that to another complex wave like the wavetable or formants...or frequency modulation between two different flavours of complex wave? Hell even if you are some kind of weird epic trance monk who has taken a vow to only ever use sawtooths...9 on 1...9 on 2...plus slave...plus sub...oh an 8 voice unison. THAT'S TOO MANY SAWS!
So yeah. Those patches tend to eat up the processor, but it really grabs the uniqueness of the virus. You don't get many sounds anyway on a TI1 before it runs out of puff, so might as well use the stuff that any old analogue modelercan't do. I usually get 3-4 sounds with my programming habits, which fits in just fine with the way I route and use sounds mentioned above. Plus, like I said, it encourages me to write specific little stabs, wubs etc. that everything keeps out of the way for. No more than 3-4 complex sounds at once and you can get away with having loads of different patches, or subtle variants like I mentioned earlier, darting in and out without any dropouts. I also got out the habit of using too much unison. I found that on most of my patches you stop hearing any difference over 5. 8 voice unison patches with lots of detune etc. tend to want to dominate a mix anyway.
Of course, as I mentioned on the other thread, you can max out a TI1 with just 1 patch if you use 2 formant complex oscs and unison. To be fair though if you do that and the patch doesn't sound like arse it's a bloody achievement! Be proud!
Phew. Long post. I hope that answers your questions. I also hope people find it useful or at least interesting. Here's hoping it sparks some woefully absent positive debate about the TI.
