I am pleased to present “Time And Tide”, my tenth Saturday Sounds track. I feel that this came together particularly well. I feel like from a mix and musical place it is all firing well.

This is incidentally the first track where I have used the Ableton Push 2 in the production process. Coincidence? Kind of. I didn’t really put it to work until Friday, where I used it to do the final mix. I have to admit it made that work a LOT easier! I did a lot more tweaking, and more advanced tweaks at that and it took me about the same time as my previous mixes, when I could get to them!

I am still learning the device, but I have its basic functionality nailed down. It is very cool, though! It makes a lot of things easier, and it finally made the Ableton Operator stock FM synthesis device make sense! In my youth I did DX7/11/100 programming so I’m not intimidated by FM synthesis at all, but if the awful UI of the plug-in in Live is representative of the current state of DAW FM synths, I can understand why people would be! I don’t even think I was clear that Operator WAS an FM synth. Seeing the controls laid out in a much better way on the Push was like a giant “click” in my mind. (It’s a UNIX system!) “I know this!”

I don’t think the Push will be used a lot for a bit yet. The studio is not really ready for me to use a bunch of hardware to produce yet, but that redo is coming starting in about two weeks. Once it’s all in place, I’m hoping to do a lot more in later tracks. Some guitar and bass (who knows, maybe even vocals?) and a lot more Push work.

The reason why I got it now rather than waiting for the studio to be complete is I had an opportunity to get it second-hand gently used for quite a bit less than the standard retail price. I’ve not noticed any issues with the controls yet and the wear and tear is minimal.

Anyhow, that’s where things sit now. Hoping to kick out another track next week. I think I’m going to put the bootleg remix on hiatus for a while. I’ve got some ideas for things I want to write, and I’d prefer to use them in my tunes. I hope you enjoyed this one!