Dirtywave M8 basic workflow ( making a small track )

Take a look at the basic workflow of making music on the M8 tracker.
Hi I got asked what the workflow is like on the M8, it's kind of too hard to do with subtitles alone, so I did a voice over on this one. I am used to filming hardware, so screen recording and microphones is not something I am experienced at. Can only get better from here.
I preloaded some instruments to make this video go faster.
This is M8 headless version running on a teensy 4.1
M8 Headless is free you just need a teensy 4.1
Learn about setting up M8 Headless here github.com/DirtyWave/M8Docs/b...
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[@jimsface]

Just watching someone quickly punch in the basics is so helpful. Thank you

[@cjlewis79]

and the lightbulb turned on in my brain with this. Thank you!

[@eeclarkutube]

I've watched several "basic" videos on the M8... this one is the easiest to follow and uses the right terms like "song", "phrase", and "chain". Thanks for posting this.

[@avrilcadabra]

Thanks Edward. It is my main piece of gear and used it for hundreds of hours before making this video.

[@porchlogic]

I second this! This is the video that finally got me up and running. Thank you!

[@Thedrumsthebass]

Agreed, this one “clicked” with me. Subscribed

[@horatiotimewaster5755]

Wow....all this in 6 minutes! The M8 is new to me so this video and your next one have opened me eyes....very cool.

[@avrilcadabra]

Thank you, I think it's very quick to write music on, look forward to finally having the production unit next week.

[@Claidheambmor]

Awesome workflow video, thank you!

[@jeffp.9369]

This is a great workflow and i can't believe i hadn't even considered arranging a beat when this method. Thanks for posting this!

[@D4House]

The sound is amazing

[@villagenumerique9085]

that's one of the best tutorial i have seen on the M8 really clear to see how to use it in a simple way just the sound of the track are too loud instead of your voice :-)

[@canecreek00]

i'm in the pre-order, thank you for this video, of all the videos i've watched its this one thats gave me the best idea of whats happening.

[@avrilcadabra]

Thanks, and awesome you will love the M8. I skipped over loading the presets here and why I was naming the everything the same numbers as the tracks ( no reason other it looks neater in a simple example like this ) . I will try and get some more videos done before the units arrive (not long now)

[@jupitor919]

Thanks,, your teaching style is so clear and good to follow. Plus you rock so it’s fun listening to your jams.

[@avrilcadabra]

I appreciate that!

[@Threadbare78]

Just finished putting the m8 Headless on my handheld and your video was a super straightforward explanation of how it works. Seeing you put together a quick track from scratch was awesome! Great work!

[@avrilcadabra]

Nice, if you got it working on a gaming handheld then the actual making music with it bit should be easy!

[@pedrobotinasguedes]

Really liked the video! You made it do easy

[@RaverOperatorGeeza]

Excellent! ❤

[@megahozer13]

Finally clicked in my head spent a whole day just messing with it

[@RobbekenSynthMusic]

Trackers aren’t my style, but I love hearing what people do with them. This is rad. Keep it up!

[@StephenMcLeod]

Yasss mon the M8. Always cool to see other people's workflows. This came together so quickly and sounds awesome. Nice one!

[@avrilcadabra]

Cheers. So hard to make a short video on this!

[@StephenMcLeod]

@@avrilcadabra I've made one. It's about half an hour long hahaha.

[@CorentinHarbelot]

now I understand! Thanks!

[@ScottPigman]

Very cool. And thanks for the narration, that helped. There's a lot of information already on screen.

[@avrilcadabra]

Thanks, glad it made some sort of sense. I had tried a couple of takes and went way over ten minutes before I had even put a note down, so forcing myself to not go into detail, I will make couple more videos showing the synth engines in depth and the mind blowing tables.

[@fsdfsdfffdssfsdf847]

Thank you very much for this video

[@julienchrist]

I was blocked and your tuto make me start with the m8, Thank you very much !!! Very helpful !!!

[@lou19]

I realized could never work with a tracker... i wish i could though! The M8 sounds amazing. Thanks for making this video.

[@bclikesyou]

lovely! yeah 'super saw' is definitely an appropriate name.

[@alexandrosroussos]

very cool video thx

[@paulsarodh5460]

Rockin 💢💖👌👌🙌

[@ElectronisoundsAudio]

Thank you for this! 😁🙏👊

[@avrilcadabra]

Hope you are getting along with it :)

[@ElectronisoundsAudio]

@@avrilcadabra I made my first (really simple) beat with it today! Woot! 😃😃

[@geecen]

Nice one! Def enjoy the voice over and track from scratch. Would be great to see more walkthroughs if he experimental stuff you’ve shown in the discord.

[@avrilcadabra]

Thanks geecen. Will definitely go way into the twilight zone in future videos

[@dawlessstrolling5306]

thnxalot - nostalgic vibes in track & interface - great to see some trackers in hardware - my first tracks were made with Fasttracker II - back in 1998 :):)

[@avrilcadabra]

I used fast tracker II on Amiga also, but when I moved out the family Amiga stayed home so I lost touch with trackers :(

[@dawlessstrolling5306]

@@avrilcadabra ha! That's really sad actually! Where you able to make music in other ways at that time? We also had this "family-pc". Early 2000's I only had a demo of FL Studio. And just some hours after school to use the computer...before it was my brother's turn. I remember freaking out to finish tracks real fast because they had to be finished and exported as MP3 in that demo. I was very quick at that time haha! Cheers.

[@fierytoucans6177]

cool to see hexadecimal being used on the mixer

[@avrilcadabra]

Yep. Most stuff has a decimal help text at the bottom also. For the non hexers

[@itsmorphinetime]

Hey Avril, do you think you’ll be making more tutorial-style videos like this one? I’m already all in on the M8 whenever they become available again, but being new to the whole tracker scene videos like this certainly help me understand the process a bit more.

[@avrilcadabra]

For sure I am kind of obsessed with the M8, I enjoy making tutorials so I will definitely make a lot more M8 videos

[@itsmorphinetime]

@@avrilcadabra oh man that’s awesome! Super excited! I’m obsessed with it too and don’t even have one yet XD The meet-ups have been illuminating as well but they’re just so much info that sometimes I feel like these shorter more focused tutorials are more helpful, at least to a tracker newbie like me

[@julienchrist]

Same here :)

[@adde65]

Thank you! I've been bingeing on M8 videos, and this is one of the few where I can actually follow what's happening :D I'm wondering if it would be insane for a middle-aged "traditional" musician (strings mainly) to get one of these? The concept and form factor is hugely appealing, but I'm frankly scared of the learning curve, as it looks like a foreign language to me. Also, the stuff I'm composing is more ambient and not groove-based, so I would be using mostly longer chords/pads and a combination of instrument and nature samples. Is the M8 capable of going down that path, or do you think it's inherently better suited to the groovebox/drum machine role?

[@avrilcadabra]

Hi Andy. I am an ex guitarist (played for 20 years before touching a synth) but also have done computer programming so I love the hex and fx commands. It can do Ambient well and you can stream long long stereo samples. I have a synthwave track that has city ambience in the background of the whole track. The only thing that can be weird with long audio files is if put a note to play a 30 minute wave file at the start. But want to start song at 15 minutes in you won't here the wave as you've skipped the trigger that started it. There are workarounds for that. The other thing is it's 8 monophonic tracks. So you can sacrifice 3 to be big 3 voice pads. Or use the fm synth and tune each operator to be a chord or a few other ways. There are very few things you can't do on m8. Though some might take a bit of effort. You can try the headless version which is free you just need a teensy 4.1. If you have any further questions maybe jump on the dirtywave discord can get all you questions answered a bit easier there.

[@adde65]

@@avrilcadabra thanks so much, this is really great info for me. I’ve owned a few synths in the past, and to be honest the M8 appeals to me much more as an immediate, creative tool. It grabbed my interest after looking at things like the Digitone and Polyend Tracker.

[@fulluphigh]

If only it were possible to somehow magically balance the voice over volume with the output 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 oh well, maybe in the future we’ll have such incredible technology for video creators to use

[@avrilcadabra]

Would actually be useful. I'd like a new rtx card to fix my faulty one for the ai and a shure mic setup. But I already spent my youtube revenue on a happy meal.

[@fulluphigh]

@@avrilcadabra 🤣🤣🤣 very fair lol. I couldn’t watch this one because the volume shifts were too loud for me, but I watched a handful of your other videos already and they were really inspiring and impressive btw!!

[@avrilcadabra]

@@fulluphigh thanks. The supersaw is to loud and annoys me to watch to. I sort it in the mixer before the video ends. Was expecting 30 people to watch this video but here we are. If I knew 10k were going to id have redone it but you never can tell.

[@fulluphigh]

@@avrilcadabra lmao 🤣 yeah that’s uh, pretty fair. Sorry for being a jackass about it , for what little it’s worth 😅

[@yepuh8828]

Thanks 4 the vid. Were the synth sounds you played made with the internal synth engines or are they samples?

[@avrilcadabra]

Hi thanks. The supersaw was Macrosynth. Baseline was thr FM synth. The drums were 909 samples In this one.

[@yepuh8828]

@@avrilcadabra Thanks for the reply, thats what I wanted to know. The internal synths sound good to me.

[@avrilcadabra]

You can do great drums also. In all the engines. In today's official meetup video a_rival showed how he does FM drums.

[@yepuh8828]

@@avrilcadabra Yea I know, I saw with the fm synth. Ive seen other meet ups where trash 80 showed some techniques for drums with the wavsynth and the tables in there too.

[@vj7248]

"I'm using an xbox one controller" music making speedrun any%

[@eeclarkutube]

Cycling back to this video, the one thing that stands out to me now that I have the M8 in my hands is that you didn't drill down into the instruments on each one. Maybe too deep for a basic workflow video? Around 0:57 you set an instrument (cycled through down to Instrument 01) but you did not show how you selected Saw and set it as the instrument associated with Instrument Slot 01. You have different instruments set up in each slot (01 through 04) but as a noob I did not realize that you actually set up those instruments one level deeper. Now I know though after watching one of your other videos ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/bYG7nnasqLqLgpI ). Thanks for posting these.

[@avrilcadabra]

Hi, yes it says in the description the instruments are preloaded, congrats on getting your M8, I think after you use it awhile you will probably end up with a tonne of song files containing ideas and unfinished songs and you will probably load those and just work on music instead of making a new empty song file each time anyway. So for me at least this is pretty much my workflow.

[@SonicVibe]

Man that workflow looks rough

[@wreignone]

Wanna sell me urs?

[@avrilcadabra]

you can buy them from Dirtywave.com

[@BobbyGeneric145]

You sound so sad!

[@avrilcadabra]

Who could be sad using an M8!

[@BobbyGeneric145]

@@avrilcadabra my thoughts exactly... Probably just the accent!

[@RaverOperatorGeeza]

@@avrilcadabra it's brought me lots of joy and serenity listening to my currently track... No plug here, just saying... ... It's fast becoming my favourite unit to use, full stop. It's amazing!!!!!!!

[@suntzu6122]

Everything about this device gives me GAS

[@avrilcadabra]

I still think it's the best music device, If I could only have 1 this would be it.