Kraftwerk - The Model (Deconstructed at Sonar 2013)

Ski Oakenfull breaks down one of the best known tracks from electronic music pioneers, and Sonar headliners, Kraftwerk. This deconstruction took place at Ableton's artists meet and greet at Sync Studios, Barcelona. Win an EMC online course AND Ableton Live 9 in our Vocal Verk competition - http://ow.ly/mt5I5

In this video my aim was to show how quickly you can record and arrange all the parts of this classic track by Kraftwerk using Push and Ableton Live 9. After using Push for a few months, it has become my central hub. The ability to jam down ideas quickly straight into Live and arrange them on the fly without the distraction of the computer screen is truly inspirational.

Push also made me get my act together when it came to organising my user library. Once you start categorising your presets using Ableton's own folder names (ie Bass, Synth Lead etc) and place them in the appropriate device list, they will be easily accessible from the browser. I also found that adding a space character before the preset name forces them to the top of your list so you don't have to trawl through Ableton's factory presets.

For this deconstruction I prepared my sounds in advance. Most of them I programmed from scratched or adapted from existing presets (ie. the Operator Choir sound). The track itself is in A minor, but shifts between A Natural Minor and the Dorian for the two main sections. Because bridge section also ends on an E Major chord which contains a G#, I reverted back to the keyboard to play in the chord parts, but could have also used Push in chromatic mode.