Finding work flow with right controllers and reading the manual.
I just picked up a used Evolution UC-33e and all I can say is wow($60 used, slightly abused). I already had a launchpad,an akai mpd 26, and a radium 49 that were useful but I think the UC-33e brought it all together.
The aha moment was two fold. I started recording midi with different levels on quantization on so keeping the drum patterns tight. I also made sure to have blank clips ready to arm from the launch pad before recording so I wasn't recording into infinity. This enabled me tight 1 or 2 bar drum loops ready to record on the fly. For some reason i never use to have a clip loaded before recording and would have to go back and edit. This eliminated most of the clip cropping and chopping. So this step made my drum pattern creation, quick, clean, versatile and done mostly with MPD26 and Launchpad. (there was also a lot of manual review for this)
For drum patterns I use the MPD 26, sending midi to Reasons Kong. I have each pad assigned to one of 8 audio out pairs. I have the audio in coming back into a group of 8 audio channels. Each channel is assigned to a strip in my UC-33. The effects are a reverb and a delay , both assigned, plus the panning is assigned. So not only did my drum creation process improve but the UC-33e opened up finding space in my drum mix. I didn't really realize how much difference there is when you can pan, send effect a, and send effect b in real time from the UC-33e.
My story is two fold. Do yourselves a favor and get a midi controller to use for mixing, your sound gets really big and multidimensional when you can pan and effect channels from a controller. Secondly, read the manual. I spend $100 to print mine out and it was money well spent. I made a huge leap in my process with the right gear and a little study. I hope to have some soundcloud stuff up soon.
Cheers.
