Ableton Life - An Ableton Live Tutorial Blog

April 30, 2010

How To Program A Detuned Pad With Ableton’s Analog

by Ryan

• File Under: Tutorials
|

Help support Ableton Life by stuffing a few dollars in the tip jar!

For this tutorial, I will be recreating a synthesizer pad from the song “Eutow” by Autechre. I will be only using instruments and plug ins within Ableton Live. Not only will this be showcase the power of Analog, but I hope it serves to teach a few things when it comes to programming synth sounds.

Think of it as a “Synth Recipe”.

---

Here is the original Autechre version:

And here is the recipe:

Start with the default settings of Ableton’s Analog

OSC 1:

Waveform: Square
Detune: 0.04
Pitch Mod LFO: 0.08
Pulse Width (Width): 100%
Pulse Width LFO 1: 0.65

Filter 1:

Type: 24dB
Freq: 8k

Amp 1:

Attack: 4 Seconds
Sustain: 0.50
Release: 150ms
Pan Mod (LFO 1): 0.19

LFO 1:

Mode: Beat Sync
Rate: 1/8

OSC 2:

Waveform: Sawtooth
Detune: -0.04

Filter 2:

Type: 12dB
Freq: 8k

Amp 2:

Attack: 5ms
Decay: 80ms
Sustain: 0.70
Release: 50ms

Main panel:

Quick Routing: First Routing Option (O,F,A/O,F,A)
Volume: -2.0dB

Reverb:

Dry/wet: 40%
Stereo: 50ms
Decay: 2 seconds

Ping Pong Delay:

Dry/wet: 25%
Feedback: 45%

---

Click here to download this Live set: http://abletonlife.com/project-files/autechre-pad-recreation.zip

The Julia Child of synth programming I am not, so if anyone else would like to improve on, or send their own versions of the patch, I would love to hear it.

Also, as a side note, if you are new to Synthesizer programming, I highly recommend this set of tutorials: http://synthstudent.wordpress.com/