Review of ShuttlePro V2 Control Device

For users who do a lot of video or audio editing, especially with programs that take advantage of "scrubbing" within their editing capabilities, the ShuttlePro V2 can be a nice complement to your existing way of controlling your workflow.  It has a jog wheel, a shuttle control, and fifteen separate user-controllable buttons.  Designed to be used in conjunction with a mouse or similar device, this device will reduce your reliance on the keyboard and keyboard shortcuts.

  

Here's a review video about this device:

A couple of the key points that I love about this Control Device are:
- Appears to be built solidly.
- Doesn't slide around on desk.

One thing I didn't like about the ShuttlePro V2 was:
- I'm just not accustomed to working with a device like this!  But that's a personal shortcoming, not a problem with the control device itself.

ShuttlePro has presets in the control panel for the following long list of programs in a variety of styles:

Adobe Flash
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Audition
Adobe Encore
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe PhotoShop
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Soundbooth
Avid Liquid
Avid MC Adrenaline
Avid Media Composer
Avid Pro Tools
Avid Xpress
Boris Keyframer
Boris Red
Cakewalk Guitar Tracks
Cakewalk Home Studio
Cakewalk Music Creator
Cakewalk Plasma
Cakewalk Projects
Cakewalk Sonar
Canopus DV Rex
Canopus Sonar
Canopus Edius
Discrete 3DS Max
Discrete Combustion
DPS Velocity
Easy Prompt
Finale
In-Sync Speed Razor
Magix Samplitude
Magix Sequoia
Media 100 iFinish
Media Studio Pro
MicroSoft Access
MicroSoft Excel
MicroSoft Outlook
MicroSoft PowerPoint
MicroSoft Word
Pinnacle Commotion
Pinnacle Edition
Pinnacle Studio
Sony Acid
Sony Cinescore
Sony Screen Blast
Sony Sound Forge
Sony Vegas
Steinberg Cubase
Steinberg Nuendo
Steinberg WaveLab
ULead Video Studio
and many others

And of course, the presets are just there for convenience.  You can program your own for any software package that you own.

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca

Simple Audio Editing Tutorial

I've been working on a couple of microphone review videos this weekend, and in each, I did a bit of audio editing of test recordings. These weren't high-quality comparison testing recordings, where the microphones were lab-tested against competing brands, just short tests of a few of my favorite current microphones (studio condenser mics, a lav mic, and a shotgun mic).

 

In each of the videos, I did some simple audio editing to tidy up the video, similar to what I might have done if I was using the audio in a project. The steps included some basic noise reduction, some equalization, and adding a light touch of reverb. To spare the effort of explaining what I was doing in each microphone video, and keep them shorter, I figured that I'd do a separate video to explain those steps in detail, so just the people who were curious could learn more, and it wouldn't detract from the microphone reviews. Here is that video:





Later this week, I'll add links to some of those other microphone review videos here, for anyone who is curious. Here's the first one:




I also referred to another tutorial during the middle of this video. Here's a link to that other tutorial, which talks in even more detail about basic editing of voiceovers for DJ mixes and other spoken word editing:

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca

Ableton Live 9.0 released

Literally hundreds of thousands of music producers have been eagerly or impatiently awaiting the release of version 9.0 of Ableton Live for about two years now. It is finally available to the public.

Ableton has produced a fifty-minute YouTube video, which you should check out here if you’re an existing Live user.




If you want a quick preview of what the video talks about, and some of the interesting new features, here’s a spoiler list:

- Over 1.8 million people world-wide are now using Ableton to produce music.
- AL9 will analyze an audio clip (say some humming, or a saxophone solo) and extract a MIDI version of the melody.
- Same concept with audio clips as a “convert to drums” option.
- Instrument rack presets now preview in the enhanced Live browser (actual instruments, if you’re confused by thinking this was possible before).
- Three thousand new instrument racks in Live Suite (did I hear that correctly? Three thousand?)
- Lots of new Max for Live effects modules.
- Max for Live is now integrated into Live Suite, not a separate entity.
- Recording of automation in Session view.
- Automation curves. Finally. Both in session clips and arrangement view.
- Real-time gain reduction graph output in the compressor, which can be useful, for example, for playing with sidechain parameters.
- Consolidate a time range in the arrangement view and print all of the data within that range back into a scene in session view. So cool! Essentially, you can create your final song in arrangement view and then quickly re-create it as a number of scenes in session view.
- Single-click to create break-points in envelope editing, a minor detail that I like.

The video also demonstrates Ableton’s “Push,” a hardware controller that might potentially become as ubiquitous to Live as the APC40 did for many producers and performers.

You really need to see that part yourself, rather than have me try to fully describe it. If you didn’t want to watch the entire video above, go directly to the 32:40 mark, where there is ten minutes devoted to describing Push. For the gear junkies out there, it’s pretty slick. And quite intuitive, from the looks of things.


That should be enough to whet your appetite. I did a couple of DJ-related tutorial videos this past spring about Ableton Live 8, which have received over a hundred thousand views already. You can see those by checking out this post. I'll be spending some time in the studio this winter to cover a number of other topics, including:
- Live performance DJ'ing using Ableton Live.
- Creating and programming kick drums.
- Creating and programming bass and pads.
- Producing house/trance/techno tracks from scratch.
- and a whole bunch of other ideas.


For now, check out more at the Ableton website:

www.ableton.com

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca