How to really use Live mode as a studio production tool

I’ve just added an article in to the member section about the LIVE mode in Spectrasonics Omnisphere.

As you’d expect “LIVE” mode is a multi/combi mode where seperate sounds can be accessed easily, erm. live.

But it starts to get clever because by allowing one patch to continue to play whilst a new patch is selected (and remember with the arpegiator that the original sound playing could be quite complex), you can control different layers of sounds.

In fact here is one of the power features – you can switch and layer between 8 sounds simultaneously, at the touch of a few keys. Those “keys” can even be notes on your keyboard (or MIDI controllers, program patch changes, etc. ), so you can basically use a keyboard range as a “control zone”.

All quite normal so far. Halion and Gigasampler do this.

Now add 2 zones accessed by MIDI channels (either from 2 keyboards, or a split mother keyboard) and assign 4 slots to each channel. Now you can play between two independent sound sources, which are each dynamic (changeable in real-time) with the 4 switches used to layer and mute each patch.

OK still fairly normal?
Now add the OmniSphereElite magic in our article and make it a usable production tool…

Oh and now throw on top of that MIDI control of the mixer and effects via controllers too.

Now forget about using this just for live use, and imagine using it in a composing or production studio as a “kinetic” instrument and effect in its own right.

You can see it’s starting to get very powerul and pretty complicated. Too powerful to do anything “useful” with? Not when we break it down with the Lite…

For access, join the Elite.