Blocks Wave workflows and best practices

krassmann

I recently fell in love with Blocks Wave. Man I love this app, it's so creative. I want to share my current workflow

My setup:

I have Blocks Wave in Audiobus sending to AUM and another channel with AUM sending to BW. Additionally added Xequence 2 in a Midi channel. In AUM adding some synths and a mix bus channel that sends to BW. Then everything is running perfectly in sync and start/stop just works from all apps. I have a great choice of synths in AUM and can recorde into BW.

My workflow:

I jam with the synths or drums to create my own loops and when I got something nice I record it in Xequence 2 to keep the Midi. Sometimes I also use Rozeta or sequencers of the synths. When I'm happy with my stuff I record the loop into BW. As everything is in sync, the recording perfectly matches the measures. Then getting creative with the features of BW, slicing, looping, etc. After I created some cool stuff in BW I usually transfer the project to Launchpad and jam around with it with my Launchpad mini. Then after I got enough inspiration for an arrangement I record it and then export the blocks to load them up in Cubasis, reproduce the arrangement idea and then fine tune it as I can do FX, eq, mixing etc. per channel and do other audio editing. Maybe adding some more instruments or audio tracks, e.g. vocals until I'm totally happy with my song.

Basically I'm quite happy with this workflow. But two things I'd like to improve:

1. Sometimes I find it to complicated to fiddle around with the "Xequence 2 - AUM - BW record" part of my workflow and more easily create a beat or melody in an app that can directly export to BW. I think in a video of Jakob Haq I've seen that he used AudioCopy to directly copy stuff from Figure into BW. Do you know more such shortcuts?
2. It is quite time consuming to re-create the arrangement I created in Launchpad in Cubasis. Do you know any other way to achieve that?

How are your workflows with Blocks Wave? Which cool ways how to integrate it into your creative process have you discovered? Which other apps can play nice with BW?

pao

Hi, just getting started with Blocks Wave and trying to find a nice workflow for myself.

I mainly want to use it to play drum loops I have created and I want to jam with. But I am starting to see how it could also work as a great sample creator.

So way are you using Audiobus in this setup? COuldnt you do the same all inside AUM? Im still trying to get my head around all this stuff, so bare with me

Thanks for sharing!

Simon

@krassmann said:
I think in a video of Jakob Haq I've seen that he used AudioCopy to directly copy stuff from Figure into BW. Do >you know more such shortcuts?

Buy Bloc's $6 "Audio Input" IAP and you can directly import clips from AudioShare and the Files app.

The $2 EQ IAP is worth getting too.

icsleepers

I'll usually lift stuff out of it after jamming using Link. Some stuff I'll take out directly if it fits, with little to no modification, some stuff gets run through all kind of mayhem. Depending on the host app I'm using the process will be a little different. If Auxy I'll usually use ReSlice to chop up the loops to be destroyed and re-arrange in a drum sampler instrument. This is a ballache honestly and I don't enjoy this process too much (mostly because ReSlice insists on exporting 32bit waves which Auxy chokes to death on).

If using Gadget I'll usually import into AbuDhabi and just go nuts. The stuff that's not intended for any kind of mayhem goes directly into a Zurich and that's that.

Sometimes, if I'm hard up for ideas I'll even pick a tasty loop out of Blocs and then re-create it in the host app. I do this a lot with basslines. The end result is usually more satisfying than if I had just lifted the loop out