I like how you just casually drop in the trick with routing the midi from the sub like it's no big deal. I can't believe how much time I've wasted copying changes over to other tracks before changing my mind and having to turn it all back, definitely gonna start using this method now

Wow I am so fucking happy right now, I taught Hullabaloo this technique (channel switching with compressors' sidechain listen) that he developed further and then inspired Mr. Bill to make this... to indirectly contribute a production technique to the man who inspired me to learn Ableton Live in the first place is truly special. Very much love, and thanks to my mentor Will Kreiser for teaching me the compressor-listening-as-track-routing technique in the first place

This is absolutely brilliant. Maybe one of the most clever things I’ve ever seen for music production. Real quick though, let me help you out with breaking down the ranges real quick. 0-127 is chosen as a range size because it’s 2^7 different values, which is nice for computers. So, because 0 is included, you have 128 values. For 8 chains, that breaks down to exactly 16 values per chain. So you’ll want to do 0-15, 16-31, 32-47, 48-63, 64-79, 80-95, 96-111, and 112-127.

Nice tutorial! You can also do this on a single track with a single MIDI clip. On a MIDI track, load up your synth. Group it into an instrument rack, then add however many additional instances of a synth (or simpler, sampler, etc) you want. Then go to the velocity chain and distribute ranges equally. Now different velocities trigger the different synths. You can insert the velocity MIDI device before it for random, or just adjust the velocities of the notes until you hear something you like. You lose some flexibility with velocity-sensitive patches, but for most things (bass patches are a good example) it doesn't matter.

This tutorial showed me how to have fun making music again. I love everything about your channel!

Learning the terms for this shit has helped me articulate a lot with production now a days, thanks Mr. Bill

you could also automate the macro with a lfo (from max) and set it to random

Actually you could have just devided 128 by 8. Zero is also a value so you got a total of 128 Values. 0 - 15 16 - 31 32 - 47 48 - 63 64 - 79 80 - 95 96 - 111 112 - 127

quite possibly the best intro ever.

Damn this is like one of the most interesting tutorials I have watched in ages, inspired ASF rn

Give us the tipper patches and no one gets hurt 🔫😓💣

This is a very interesting method of achieving hocket. Another approach I use is by using midi gaters that take midi signal from a drum rack and then you can do both hocket and layering that way. I'm also working on a max for live device that will handle all of this for you.

came back to this after a couple years and just realized you gave a shout out to tipper, and right at the start i'm like hmm sounds like some tipper sounds

"and girls - it's 2019"

THAT'S HOW THEY FUCKING DID IT? I always wondered how artists used these hyper transitions! Fucking awesome man.

this was awesome. never tried using hocket in my songs but want to now. also, that insight about switching several channels to "in" so they all receive the same midi is something i havent seen before but looks really useful. thanks for all this

it's funny how i just rewatched the old tutorial where just manually clicked thru presets to get glitchy sounds. This is really next level mode, great stuff mr bill!!!

I love this! I do Hocket all of the time and this will definitely speed up my workflow and add more randomness to my selection process. Cheers, Bill...Nice one!

1:53 Thank you Bill for showing me this trick and girls

This is one of the best tutorials like ever. I have watched about a half dozen times, sold me on becoming a hardcore abeltoneer!

Super clever and inspiring! Can't wait to play around with this idea, perfect for that distinctive glitch vibe. Thanks!

Damn dude...This is the ultimate time saver. So freaking cool! I love the randomness technique too, Definitely brings a new life to the music.

This is genius! And so fun to play with! Thank you Mr.bill!

Damn! That's awesome. I use side-chain inputs on SO many things, but I've never used it like this. Also thought I'd mention: the reason the chain selector trick doesn't work because it mutes/unmutes audio inputs into the chain. Those compressors are all placed after the input, so that mute has no effect on them.

nice tip!- gonna try this. The VSTi "Rounds" by NI allows for a synth-per-voice architecture that can be programmed to have a similar result to what you are describing. Also, in Serum, assigning velocity or "note-on random" to wave-table position (or any other parameter that changes the sound significantly- i.e. "morph") can result is similar hocket madness. I whole-hearted agree with your embracing of the random: bounce then find you favorite resulting edits.

Neat, I know what a Hocket Machine is now.

so interesting to find out ive been doing this all along manually and it has a name and even a better method wow

Mind bending and completely creative as always. Of course it will take me a day to set up and understand. But damn, so cool.

Awesome trick! I’ll definitely check out what weird ideas I can get by using it.

Thank you! Been trying to come up with a solution like this for too long 🙌🏽

Cool idea. Reminds me of something I've been doing with Instrument Racks to switch between Serum patches, but I can imagine this approach having some nice benefits in some cases.

That’s cool man - great tutorial with loads in there to explore 👍

Lmao “heh, come on the channel” fuckin love Mr Bill

That's a fun trick. Thanks Bill, you the man 💪

tried it with audio.. works very nice, all I had to do was to make a midi channel and dun a midi clip with a c1 to c2 legato notes and use that for triggering instead.. added the arpeggiator then the velocity and the same is rest.. but worked out very nice thanks!!

such a great tutorial! gives me so many ideas!!!!!!

I did a similar thing for a uni assignment a few years ago, but just using an instrument rack with a chain selector instead of routing it through compressors

What an awesome tutorial!! cheers!!

Awesome bro, follow your tips always!!! 😍😍😍

Pretty cool, but there is actually no need to do most of this. Simply create an instrument rack and you have your chain selector and only one midi region! :)

Much appreciated tip , thanks man 👊👌🙏

Dope ! Thank you for sharing!!

actually this is the best idea for switching sound when you performing live too. thanks mr.Bill

awesome work around! super creative

Great video! Didnt know about that expression plug in, it was i was looking for! Thanks!! Another way to do this is grouping all your vst, distribute them in the chain and them map the chain selector to a macro.

Thank you so much! This saves so much time :)

dope tutorial as always

cool and thank you :) I usually dont have the patience so i sample my beeps and bleeps, make them monophonic (on pad) and then toggle them around (i use an mpc) BTW i love your sample packs :) (im not a proffessional musician, just a hobby)

Omg I dont use Ableton Live but this just blew me away!

This is pure programming. Awesome

I would just place all Serums as chains in a single group using an Ableton instrument rack. With this I would not need the compressor trick and safe tracks /lanes in my arrangement

Nice. Thanks I’ll have to remember this trick.

Godtier beat posting. Thanks mr Bill

OMG I've been trying to figure out how to do this like two years. Didn't know it's called "hocketing" which would have naturally helped a bit googling it :D Thank's a million and thanks for the great podcast channel as well!

A hocketing technique is child's play in Bitwig, requiring no adaptive workaround routing like you're doing here in Ableton. In Bitwig, you can do instantaneous switching among channels ("layers" in Bitwig)--and automate it or modulate the switching--by using the "Instrument Selector" and "FX Selector" devices. So: one Instrument track with one MIDI clip. An "Instrument Selector" (or "FX Selector") device down in the Devices panel. Set up all your synth presets (or whatever) on the different layers in the Selector device. Then use a modulator or automation lane to change the index value in the Selector device. One and Done. ^.^ BTW a unique advantage of layer switching in a Selector device is that the processing tails will ring out fully from the layer you just switched out of. They're not suddenly choked by the switch like would happen in Ableton if you automated a group's chain selector to achieve a similar hocketing effect. BTW not saying any of this to ding on Ableton--it's a great DAW. Just pointing out that Bitwig (which is very similar to Ableton in many ways) has quite a few first-class methods of dealing with things that Ableton is weaker at.

havent done it in a while but one time i put all the different basses in a rack and split the basses on velocity so i could choose which bass depending on the velocity, i felt this was easier to switch around with different patterns of the basses.

This is brilliant!

There’s a tool called Ultraloop by twisted tools for Reaktor by Native Instruments. It is based on the same concept but it shuffles around with audio files! This is cool too!!

Thanks for the video, that was an interesting trick :)

Max for live also has a LFO tool that you can put on 'Random Mode' and map it to the macro.

This comment is a bit late, but I thought I should share a thought. I believe you can change the range of values for macros, so instead of calculating sub-ranges from 0-127 and allocating them for each instrument you could set the range to 0-6 and have a smaller, more precise automation grid.

High quality tutorial^^

Why wouldn’t you directly add serums to chains instead of using a compressor since you are using another track for midi? You could have two tracks only instead of a whole bunch. Chains remains but you don’t need the compressor routing since your serums are on the chain itself

this way is good for cutting style hocket, but not when you want each layer to fully play it's own note. When you don't cut the notes and distribute them between layers, some more interesting things become possible. For instance you use same synth/patch on each layer, but assign some randomized modulation maybe on same parameter, maybe on different, and perhaps make this modulation kick in on release. Creates interesting effect, as if something is chasing the notes, ripping them off selectively and mangling them in the background. I would strongly suggest checking out Bitwig, it's super easy to setup various ways to do the hocket there. Many other things mentioned in your tutorials is much easier to do there too.

Yo this is SICK 🔥

thats a really nice trick !!!

This is very cool. BUT it’s way more complex to build than your first older workflow of doing this. After doing all the work this could be saved as a device and simply going forward. Love the randomness idea. I randomize as much as possible. controlled chaos.

probly been said already, especially if you're using the same midi input, but you could just use an instrument rack for each serum/softsynth instance and do the same macro routing with the speaker on. haven't tested it but i imagine it would have a lower cpu load than each chain having an instance of a compressor and depending on how each softsynth patch is working, you could really lower the cpu load by routing each chain's softsynth "on" button to the macro such that only one softsynth instance would be turned on at a time, however you might encounter some issues that way

Legendary. You're one of the top 5 smartest dudes in the elec. music DAW game, fam. Big ups!

Hey, just wanna let you know that the Chain Selector can work if you apply a small fade-in / fade-out in each chain! It's not a "choke" but it does the trick and saves you a lot of time with the whole "Speaker On" mapping part :-) Cheers!

Genius!

So I do the same thing but I take long form samples of equal length from different flattened articulations of a number of similar sounding synths (for consistency), throw those renders into a Sampler, play one note on the sampler for the duration, and then use the LFO M4L tool attached to the chain selecta to get hocket. Then, you can render it over and over with different effects and feed it back into itself since its the same length.

sick!! thanks!

You can sidestep the whole compressor process and just create an audio/instrument rack. Does the same thing.

Damn, this dude is OP

even mr bill has to flex that he got the tipper patches nice dude

Absolutely awesome tutorial, as usual :) Hey, would you consider making a guide for creating safe mixes with mid-range gear (like when using small monitors with no sub speaker and/or headphones)?

Thanks guy. Kinda makes me think about makin a max patch to replace this whole hacky workaround

Next Level.

Thanks! I believe there should be a much easier way to do it. I’ll let you know if I’ll find one.

This is an excellent tip, but also you can use midi program change, requires less setup.

nice!, thanks man.

Have you tried using instrument rack instead of using the compressor to solo each channel? I does the same like the effect rack but for VST-s and other instruments. Drop in the sounds and set different value for them in the selector window after that you could automate the selector current value with anything you like.

oh baby a studio cam

Nice trick mate”

Ur my Guru.

128/8 is 16. 0 is considered a value and and midi is 7bit which can store 128 discrete values :)

Hey Boss Bill, very interesting content thank you. I am curious, have you tried the method where you simply group all of the various synths together on one track and use the chain selector to hocket the melody? I have found this method to give some good results as well.

nice dudette

holy crap, ima try it with Patcher on FL

thank you

Mr Bill is breathing some rare air up there

You could do all of this with one instrument rack using one MIDI clip and just switching the chains, without using sub channels etc. You don't need to put a compressor in side chain mode and do the routing, the chains can select between the different synths. Also, you can actually right click in the chains and select distribute chains equally and it will do the math for you. ;). You will have to pull out the chains first though before the distribute equally will work. Anyway, hope this helps speed up your workflow even more...

"Hocket" terms come from latin word "hoquetus". fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoquet_(musique) In classical music it's called Klangfarbenmelodie (ou "mélodie de timbres" en français). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klangfarbenmelodie

I must be dense-why not just have one midi track and all the instruments in individual chains and then distribute ranges equally and then automate the chain selector?

really nice one, let's do it

what about making a group of all the instruments+effects in racks and put them in a group of instruments in one track then use the chain selector?

In my live set I have one bass track. The first rack has a sub patch in one chain and a midbass rack in a second chain. Using the chain selector in the midbass rack I can switch between the midbasses. I sometimes get stuck notes if I change mid note, but this compressor method would be too CPU intensive for me.

Really useful, I was doing it in a complex way and my laptop started to hang.... Thanks

Mr. Bill, you genius. Thanks for saving me from PewDiePie's wormhole.