For years, owners of the legendary Akai MPC series have been able to create stuttering note repeats and drum rolls with the flick of switch. Today I am going to show you how to achieve these exact same results with a copy of Ableton Live’s Impulse Drum Machine and Beat Repeat.

Thanks to Daniel for this great tutorial idea!

Step 1.)

Under Ableton Live’s device browser, open the folder labeled Instruments.

Next, locate the Impulse drum machine and click the arrow to the left of it, opening the presets.

Double click on the Vintage Funky Good Time preset to load it in a new MIDI channel.

Simply locating an instrument’s preset and double clicking it will load it into a brand new MIDI channel.

Step 2.)

Open the Audio Effects folder in Ableton Live’s device browser and drag a copy of Beat Repeat onto the MIDI channel that is hosting Impulse. With the record button enabled, you should be able to play all 8 notes loaded on the Impulse on either your MIDI controller or computer keyboard (Starting on note C3).

Make sure to load Impulse and Beat Repeat on the same MIDI channel.

Step 3.)

For the rest of our tutorial, everything will be handled in Ableton Live’s Beat Repeat.

To get those authentic MPC stutters and rolls, we have to change a couple settings in Beat Repeat.

Start off by bringing the Chance knob all the way down to 0% (as we will control the repeats manually).

Bringing the Chance knob down to 0% will allow us to manually control our note repeats.

Step 4.)

Next up, assign a key to the Repeat button on Beat Repeat. Do this by clicking either the Key or MIDI button on the top right of Ableton Live, double clicking the Repeat button and pressing the desired button you want assigned to it. After you’re finished, click once more on either the Key or MIDI button

Assigning the Repeat button to a MIDI key.

Step 5.)

Depending on whether or not you want your live drumming to be heard over the repeated notes, you can leave the Mix button selected, or activate the Ins button (which only plays the repeated note, your playing will be muted until you switch off the Repeat button).

Mix allows you to play notes over your drum part, while Ins will only allow your repeated notes to play, muting your performance.

Step 6.)

Start playing a beat on your MIDI controller. Every once in awhile, when it feels “right”, activate the Repeat button with the key you assigned earlier. You will hear the note you last played repeat. Try and catch a simple snare hit, or a kick drum, it takes awhile to get used to, but practice and you will get a feel for how it works.

To stop the repeating note, simply de-activate the Repeat button with the assigned MIDI key.

Depending on your Grid settings, you will either hear a quick drum roll, or a slower drum roll (1/8 and 1/16 notes for a standard roll, while 1/12 and 1/6 can add an interesting triplet feel.)

Beat Repeat’s grid settings allow you to fine tune the division of notes Beat Repeat will “stutter”.

Once you’ve mastered simple rolls, you can start playing with the Variation knob (randomizes the Grid settings for you) and even the Pitch and Decay knobs (tunes the drum hits up and down).

Above all, experiment and have fun!

This collection represents the regional and musical diversity of the Ableton community, featuring experimental sonic textures and drum kits courtesy of Saturn Never Sleeps (USA), funky, Neo-Afro live stylings from Gazelle (South Africa), a breakdown of “Hit Me” — the Italo-disco take on Ian Dury’s classic by Telonius (Germany), as well as the results of a sampling spree through the catalog of Truth and Soul Records by Apple Juice Kid (USA) and some experiments in extreme compression from Ben Frost (Iceland).

If you’re looking to add some spark to your productions or performances, be sure to check these out.

1. Audio Damage Fuzz Plus

Audio Damage make some amazingly high quality VST plugins. It’s no surprise then, that even their free plugin selection is top notch. My favorite out of the batch is their version of a simple vintage fuzz pedal. Try loading it onto your newly created Roland TR-606 in Ableton. (See How To Create An Analog Drum Machine Collection In Ableton.)

Features:

• Fuzz knob: This controls, as you might imagine, exactly how much fuzz is applied to the signal.
• Tone knob: This controls the brightness of the distorted signal.
• Output knob: This is the output volume of the device, when it is active.
• Bypass button: This works just like the switch on a stomp box. When the orange light is lit, you’re money. When it’s not, the input is passed directly to the output. This can be automated for a slightly different vibe than automating the effect bypass of your host.

Download Audio Damage’s Fuzz Plus here: http://www.audiodamage.com/downloads/product.php?pid=ADF001

2. Sample Tank Free

It’s nice seeing even the bigger companies joining in on the freebies. Sample Tank is IK Multimedia’s renowned sampler. If you’ve used it, you already know the amount of quality this unit brings. If you haven’t used it, now is your chance to, for free! Although it requires registration, you can’t beat the price.

• Over 500 MB samples for over 200 sounds included.
• 16 part multitimbral with easy layerable/mixable parts.
• 3 synth engines.
• One of the most powerful multi-effects section in a virtual instrument.
• 33 built-in DSP effects derived from award winning audio processors like T-RackS and AmpliTube.
• Part and Master Loop Sync.
• Imports WAV, AIFF, SDII, AKAI S-1000/3000, SAMPLECELL.
• Available both as a standalone application as well as a plug-in.

Download Sample Tank Free here: http://www.ikmultimedia.com/sampletankfree/download/

3. King Dubby

For all of you lo-fi freaks out there. This emulates the classic dub delay sounds. Using analog tape delay as it’s main inspiration, it has amazing User Interface and a screaming sound make it a unique, simple and elegant plugin you definitely want to have in your Ableton Live set up.

• Delay time: automatically synchronized with your song’s tempo and allows a delay time of up to 1 bar (with a maximum of 4 seconds) in 96 discrete steps.
• Delay feedback: controls the amount of signal which will be reinjected in the delay unit. The higher this control is set, the longer the echoes will take to decay. In conjuction with other settings, it can also create some cool Larsen effect!
• Delay degradation: mixes the clean digital delay with the more vintage tape delay channel. When you increase its value your echoes will be fully passed through our degradation filter, which is controled by the next section.

Download King Dubby here: http://www.lowcoders.fr/downloadRelease.php?name=KD.dmg

4. Da Hornet

A soft synth that has its roots strongly tied to the analog world. This is a stripped down bare bones sound machine that can get quite nasty (especially if coupled with the Fuzz Pedal mentioned above). Hours of fun with only a few knobs.

General Features:

• 16 Voices
• 4 VCAs
• 1 Filter

Download the Da Hornet here: http://www.dashsignature.com/download/daHornet%5b1%5d.dmg.gz (Use serial number TMKMKIHGNNKJFMKMKIHGNNKJF). Click here to support NUSofting, the creators of Da Hornet.

5. Frohmage

From Ohm Force, another great plugin creator, comes one of the best sounding filters I have ever tried. Lay this on top of a synth or drum part and you will get some truly inspiring sounds. Again, this one requires an account, but it’s well signing up for.

Features:

• Highly resonant low-pass filter.
• Cutoff frequency unit selection : Hz or musical note.
• Up to 15 additional bands, harmonically distributed.
• Delay on each band for unique phaser effects.
• Distortion stage, with two routing schemes.
• Very fine MIDI control (PRN and NPRN sent or recorded by Frohmage are 14-bit accurate).
• Low CPU load.

Download Frohmage here: http://www.ohmforce.com/UseFreeSoftware.do?action=listFreeNonStandalones&productId=6

Please share any of your favorite free Mac OS X plugins you like to use in Ableton Live below!

Step 1.)

Go to Music Machines: samples and click the “Roland TR-606″ link. On the next page, click “tr606kit.zip” to save the set of samples.

The music machines site is loaded with tons of accurately sampled, analog drum machine hits.

Step 2.)

Extract the samples into a folder. In my windows machine, I saved them under My Documents > Samples > Drum Machines.

Dropping the Roland TR-606 files I have downloaded into a folder I have specified.

Step 3.)

Once you have the files loaded into your destination folder. Load up your copy of Ableton Live and drag a copy of Ableton’s “Drum Rack” onto an empty MIDI channel.

Drum rack will be our starting point for creating our analog drum machine collection.

Step 4.)

Either from your OS’s folder or Ableton’s built in file browser window, drag each sample onto one of “Drum Rack’s” pads.

Dragging the samples into Ableton’s Drum Rack. I usually like to order my drum machines like so: kick, snare, closed hat, open hat, toms, cymbals.

Step 5.)

Once all of your hits are loaded, click on the “Show/Hide Devices” button on Drum Rack.

Opening the Show/Hide Devices panel will allow for better control over our drum machine samples.

Step 6.)

On the main sampler panel, make sure you have the first sample selected (1) (in my case, the kick sample) and bring the “Release” (2) and “Velocity” (3) sections all the way up.

Bringing the release up to 60s gets the full tail of the drum sample, bringing the velocity up to 100% gives you full control over the velocity of the MIDI data when programming your drum parts in Ableton’s Sequencer.

Thanks to slatva for this tip: “You can copy the release and velocity values easily to all other pads by right clicking on them and selecting ‘copy value to siblings’. No need to set them up separately!”

Step 7.)

Once you’re done setting up drum rack, locate Ableton’s device browser and drag the entire drum rack into the “Drum Rack” folder located in the device browser. Rename it to something appropriate (ie “Roland TR-606″).

A quick and simple way to save out our newly created Roland TR-606 drum machine.

Now, anytime, you can drag out your new drum machine into any empty MIDI channel, and it’s ready to go. Also, if you want to create a new drum machine, I would recommend using a pre existing setup (our 606 for example) so you don’t have to redo all of the Release and Velocity settings.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to let me know of any other sites that offer free drum machine samples!

Step 1.)

Start off by dragging a copy of Analog onto a new MIDI track.

Simply drag a copy of Analog from Ableton’s device window onto a new MIDI track.

Step 2.)

Program a couple of chords into your piano roll window. I decided on an A Minor to a B Minor Aug5.

The chord sequence I am using for this tutorial. A Minor notes are: A2, C3 and E3. B Minor Aug5 notes are B2, D3 and G3. This sequence is set to a 2 bar loop.

Here is what the sequence sounds like so far:

Pretty boring, lets start shaping the sound.

Step 3.)

Next, we’ll quickly change the routing of our newly created Analog synth. Locate the routing section by clicking on the main panel (1) and clicking the “Quick Routing 2″ option (2) under the routing section in the middle of the device.

Changing to Quick Routing 2 allows for both oscillators to be fed directly into their own filter, and finally their own amp section. This means better control over shaping our sound.

Step 4.)

Be sure to activate the second oscillator by clicking the “Osc2″ (1) button at the bottom left of Analog. Also, be sure to lower the volume on each oscillator from 0.0dB to -5.00dB on each.

Lowering the volume of both Oscillators in Ableton’s Analog will help prevent some clipping as we sculpt the sound.

Step 5.)

Next, locate both Filter Section 1 (1) and Filter Section 2 (2) (“Fil1″ and “Fil2″) and change Filter 1 Freq knob to 4.0k and Filter 2 Freq knob to 1.0k. This helps to smooth out the sound. After that, be sure to change the filter mode to LP24 on both oscillators for a higher quality filter.

Smoothing out the sound with both of Analog’s built in filter sections.

Already you can hear the sound losing some of it’s high end, helping making it sound a bit for lo-fi.

Step 6.)

Head over the both oscillator sections and change OSC1′s detune knob to 0.08 and OSC2′s detune knob to -0.05. Also, change OSC2′s wave form to a Square wave.

Both of Analog’s oscillator’s are at the heart of shaping your sound based on their selected waveform.

You can hear that adding another oscillator and de tuning them has helped fatten up the sound a bit.

Step 7.)

Here is where the real sound shaping starts to take place. Click on Amp1 (1) and bring the attack to 1.0s, the sustain to 1.0, the S.Time to inf s and the release to 1.10. Also, under the Pan Mod and Level Mod settings, change LFO1 to 0.50. Here are the settings for Amp1:

The settings on Amp1 for our retro synth pad sound.

On Amp2 (2) your attack should be 2.0, the sustain at 1.00, the S.Time at inf s and the release at 1.10. Have the settings under Pan Mod and Level Mod the same, except invert the settings to -0.50. Here are the settings for Amp2:

Fine tuning each Amp section gives unlimited amounts of control over the shape of your sound.

We are getting closer to the desired sound:

Step 8.)

Now for a little tweaking on both of Analog’s LFOs. Both LFOs (1) and (2) will have the same exact settings so this is pretty straightforward. Start off by both activating the LFOs by clicking the LFO buttons green. Next click the music note to change their rate to tempo match. Lastly, both change rate knobs to 1/4.

Activating the LFO ensures that the settings we made in our amp section will give us a hazy rotating effect.

Here is the aforementioned sound:

Step 9.)

Lastly, the effects chain. We’re going to drop a copy of Ableton’s “Phaser” on the track with the preset “Acoustic Cascade” with the Dry/Wet knob dropped down to about 35% (we will go into a more in depth tutorial on the phaser at a later date).

For now, the “Acoustic Casecade” preset works fine for the desired sound. Be sure to keep the Dry/Wet knob around 35% for a more subtle sound.

Here is the final result:

So there it is. A pretty retro-fied Analog synth pad. Let me know what synth/settings you like to use for your pads.

Operator…I’m Looking for an Oscillator…

Operator’s 4 oscillators make it easy to sculpt straight forward bass sounds. Even loading up a copy of Operator (with it’s default Sine wave on OSC1 enabled) and playing a few notes in the C0 – C1 range can shake the house.

Operator’s 4 customizable Oscillators to help sculpt your bass sounds.

However, you probably want a better starting point for your bass sounds, here is how.

Step 1.) – Drop a copy of Operator onto a new MIDI track.

Step 2.) – Bass sounds usually require mono phony (only one note triggered at a time. Do this by clicking on the “Global Shell” (1) section and in the middle panel (2) change the voice count to 1.

Bass sounds are usually Monophonic. Be sure to change the voice count from 6 to 1 in the “Global Shell”.

Step 3.) – Next, click on the Oscillator #2 panel (1) and bring the level knob up to about -8.0dB and the coarse knob up to 2. Make sure to activate this oscillator by clicking on the “B” on the right side.

Under Oscillator 2 bring the dB up to -8.0dB and the coarse knob up to 2

Step 4.) – With Oscillator #2 still selected, locate the middle panel and change the “Sustain” level (1) to about -20dB and the wave type (2) to Sq3.

Operator’s “Sustain” and “Wave” settings.

Step 5.) – Click right above Oscillator #2 to select Oscillator #3. Repeat steps 3 and 4, only this time change Oscillator #3′s level knob to -10dB and under wave type select “Sq16″. Again, be sure to activate Oscillator #3 by clicking the “C” on the right side of it.

The settings for Operator’s Oscillator #3

Step 6.) – Last, we are going to locate Operator’s “Filter” section (1) and bring the frequency knob to around 400. This helps smooth off some of the highs, allowing the bass to occupy only the lower frequency range. Don’t forget to click on the small square to the left and activate it (it will turn orange when activated).

Cutting the highs with Operator’s filter section helps carve a sonic spot for our bass (400Hz and below).

Check it out and revel in the beauty. Thanks, Ableton!

Ableton’s favorite sound designers have developed a rich collection of instruments custom-made for Ableton Live: the Partner Instruments. Now, we’re giving away the Partner Instrument Compilation — a free 2.9GB Live Pack that provides a selection of content taken from the Partner Instruments. It includes everything from acoustic pianos and electronic drums to exotic instruments and cinematic soundscapes.

The Live Sets were made exclusively for Ableton by ten artists from the Minus roster. Each Set comes with a companion Lesson that reveals insights into the artist’s musical vision and offers valuable production tips.

Includes material from: Click Box, Hobo, Heartthrob & Troy Pierce, Magda, Marc Houle, Fabrizio Maurizi, Barem, Ambivalent, JPLS and Gaiser.

Check out the site for more details.

Join other creative young people around the world and take the Ableton Summer Music Challenge. Create a track, send it and share it to win great prizes from Ableton, Novation, Loopmasters and Soundcloud for you and your school.

This competition is open to students in two age groups: under 15 and 15-18. There is a grand prize winner and 24 runners-up in each age group.

Find out more and enter the competition.

The APC20 is Akai Professional’s second dedicated controller for Ableton Live. It frees you from the keyboard and mouse, letting you compose and perform with a fully integrated hardware/software musical system. Like the APC40, it features a multicolor 8×5 button Session View Matrix, 9 high-quality faders and two-way communication with Ableton Live. The APC20 also features 3 modes of operation, built-in customization features and a number of smart new tricks.

The APC20 was co-developed by Ableton and Akai Professional.

http://www.akaipro.com/apc20