Creating with the Seaboard RISE - 1.1: Electronic Bass Line using Ableton Live & NI Massive Video Lecture | Introduction to Seaboard Rise: Advance Music Production

in this video we're going to look at a
kind of standard procedure to use when
you're trying to use the Roli seaboard
with pretty much any synthesizer and our
goal is to establish kind of a checklist
of things to go through and my advice is
really to bring in expression and
polyphony kind of based on the needs of
your song right just enough and so we'll
start in the Rolly dashboard and we'll
place the seaboard into single channel
mode so it's going to function a lot
like a typical MIDI controller will go
to single channel mode I'm making sure
it's sending on channel one and then I'm
going to set my pitch Bend range now
really with pitch Bend range we have to
be a little bit careful and the trick is
there going to be to set it the same in
the Rolly dashboard as it is in your
synthesizer and I'll switch it over to
24 now because commonly and a lot of
synthesizers you can set a 24 semitone
pitch Bend range but we'll have to check
in our synth and make sure that we can
set it that way in this example I'll be
using Native Instruments
massive synthesizer but this procedure
is pretty much the same in any synth so
let's go over to massive now I'm going
to start from a kind of initialize patch
I'll go to file a new sound
now I'm only doing this because I want
to be really obvious kind of what I'm
doing my advice for you would be to pick
a preset that's perfect for your song
and then add in the expression to it and
you'll be able to do this after we kind
of go through this procedure but that's
normally what I would do but I like the
idea of starting from a really clean and
knit patch once so you can know what
you're doing and you can really hear it
very clearly the first thing I'm going
to do is adjust polyphony for my sound
you know I'm always thinking about this
how many notes do I want to play at once
and I'm making a bass sound and so for
bass I really want it to be a monophonic
patch which means we only get one voice
at a time that's going to ensure that we
don't get kind of overlapping notes and
ugly low-end dissonance and this will
usually be in some kind of global or
voicing section of your synthesizer and
here in Native Instruments massive it's
in the voicing tab and we'll set it to
be a monophonic preset in some
synthesizers you'll just set the pull it
down to one and other synthesizers will
be a mono button from unafonica and this
one we have this option for mono rotate
which is great and then we'll also put
it in legato Triller here in massive
which controls what happens
you do have overlapping notes very often
you'll find that when you do have
overlapping notes the synthesizer itself
will glide between them but for me I
like to do that manually that's why we
got the Seaboard right so I'll go over
to my oscillator tab and turn the glide
time very low so it'll jump quickly
between notes but since we have this
awesome device we can glide with our
hand manually let's try it so that's the
synthesizer jumping by itself now I want
to I do want to play with glide I just
need to make sure that the pitch Bend
ranges are correct so let's go back over
to massive and we'll look at this pitch
Bend option right here and we have an
option for a pitch Bend up and a pitch
Bend down now I'm going to set this to
kind of its maximum and it goes to 24 up
and 24 down and that means we do have a
24 semitone pitch Bend range now the
actual range is 48 right but we call it
24 because it goes up from that note up
24 and it also goes down 24 and we did
set that earlier in the really dashboard
so it should track right along with our
keyboard let's try it out so I'll play
on a key wave I'll play an e right now
and then I'll glide down an octave and
I'll play that pitch again same pitch so
we know that our pitch Bend range is set
appropriately and already that's a
pretty cool patch now the next thing I'd
like to work on is getting the pressed
dimension really to work well and to do
this we'll have to assign modulation and
assigning modulation is one of the most
common things you'll have to do and have
to figure out some some from synthesizer
to synthesizer and you'll always have to
assign kind of four things or define
four things a modulation source a
modulation destination a modulation
amount and a modulation direction and we
do this in a pretty common way here in
massive with a drag-and-drop procedure
we do have this 80 modulation source now
the pressed dimension of touch gets
transmitted as MIDI after touch
otherwise known as channel pressure and
so we want to assign after touch to
control something I can define the
modulation source by clicking on this
after touch modulation source I can drag
and drop that on a modulation
destination for amplitude and right away
the pressed dimension will work
perfectly I just have to make sure
my touch fader is all the way up
pretty cool patch already I'm loving it
and now we have glide working perfectly
impress I'm only concerned about slide
now now we're going to use another way
to assign modulation and this is a MIDI
learn function and with the MIDI learn
function the synthesizer will kind of
wait for the next bit of data and then
associate that with a specific parameter
within your synthesizer because it's
waiting for some data I find with MIDI
learn functions it's good to reduce what
the Seaboard is sending just so the MIDI
learn knows exactly what you want to
associate and so I'm going to turn down
the glide and press touch faders all the
way so we're only sending slide data
which actually goes in as MIDI control
change 74 now slide is a great Tambor
control often we think of glide as being
our pitch change we think of pressure as
being amplitude and slide as being some
kind of Tambor control doesn't have to
be but those are great starting points
and I want to be able to assign a
modulation amount and direction and
often with the MIDI learn it's going to
go over the entire range of the
parameter so I'm going to use a macro
control I'm going to define macro
control - to control filter cutoff just
like we did with aftertouch now in
massive we don't have a filter in there
yet so I'll have to add in a low-pass
filter
I'll use a four-pole filter and let's
try assigning our modulation direction I
click on that - that we just added click
and drag up to assign an amount for the
modulation so before we assign slide let
me just play a note and move our macro
control it sounds good
but it has like this high resonance it's
kind of really obviously the filter and
so I'm going to turn resonance all the
way down and try that macro control
again
it's a nice range I think that'll work
really well for a bass sound and now for
a MIDI learn I'll right-click on the
parameter and there's an option for me
to learn which I'll choose and then I'll
just slide up on any key waver
we have a nice range of modulation there
and now I can start performing
you