Natural Reverb From One of Nature's Most Amazing Creations

I recently traveled to California with my friend Mike Longo. You might remember Mike from the Alpha Juno and Korg Poly 800 Ableton collections we created.  (Mike also just released this amazing EP of classical and acoustic guitar based songs).  We flew into San Francisco and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, stopping along the way, and ultimately winding up in Los Angeles, from where we flew home. If you've never driven down that highway, do yourself a favor and do it.  It was some of the most breathtaking and amazing scenic beauties I have ever seen.

Just north of San Francisco is Muir Woods.  Muir Woods is a giant forest of huge, skyscraper-like Redwood trees.  It's absolutely incredible.  The size of the trees, the depth of the forest, the crispness of the air, and the sound of the natural reverb all blew my tiny mind.  Here's a picture:

Thankfully I had the presence of mind to pull out my iPhone and record the sound of a hand clap while in these magnificent woods.  Because of that, we all benefit!  I took the clap and created an impulse response for Ableton Live 9's new Convolution Reverb. I dropped it in the device and macro mapped some useful controls and even added a gate for some gated reverb.  The result: you get to make your recordings sound like they were tracked in Muir Woods!  I could explain the process of doing this, but I'll just share the MacProVideo article that I learned from.  It's really amazing how you can capture the sound of a place and put that sound on your recordings.  For me, since I fell in love with Muir Woods so hard, this reverb has a sentimental value that would be hard to recreate.  Check out the video below for a proper walk through of the Audio Effect Rack I created, and then scroll down to download it for use in your own productions (Sorry folks, but Live 9 Suite is required to use Convolution Reverb).

Come Out to My Show In Brooklyn Tonight

Tonight September 5th, I'm playing at the Rock Shop in Brooklyn.  I go on at 9:30pm in between two great electronic acts, Prism House and Young Heel.  I'm really looking forward to this show and can't wait to get dancing with the crowd tonight!  If you are in the area, come on down and say hello and lets hang!