The KORG nanoSERIES has a rabid following among many Ableton Live users, and with good reason. The nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL street for about US$60, provide basic knobs + faders + transport (KONTROL) and pads and X/Y control (PAD), plus a fully-featured, cross-platform editor, but still fit in a backpack. They’re small enough to use in coach on an airplane.

Having to open Live templates, however, just to get the mappings you want is a big pain. So, instead I’ve created a basic set of MIDI Remote Scripts and Kontrol Editor templates for Mac and Windows, Live 6.x and later, and wanted to share them with you.

If you’re Windows-based and a big fan of the nano, I will say that I recommend you use something else altogether – the brilliant nativeKontrol. It’s a hell of a lot more sophisticated, gives you more control, and still requires no template:
nanoLive

Of course, there are some advantages to my (otherwise inferior) humble solution. It’s free, it works on Mac, it’s completely editable, and much of the idea was to provide an easy way of learning about MIDI Remote Scripting. (Check out the tutorial below.) Now, knowing CDM readers, I imagine someone out there can improve what I’ve done, so feel free to modify it and please send us a copy of what you’ve created!

korgnano_live.zip [Cross-platform archive; will update with a fancier release later on once I've gotten some feedback]

Ableton Live MIDI Remote Scripting How To: Custom Korg nanoSERIES Control

And, of course, read all the instructions…

If you need an injection of samples into your new project and haven’t got any cash, here are a few ideas from the CDM inbox:

Drum machines, from Ace Tone to Yamaha: The site KB6.de has an obscenely large collection of drum sets from most of the popular drum machines over the years. They’re raw samples, and you definitely get more of an all-around package from commercial sets, but if you just want some free samples, it looks like a good place to start. Donations encouraged to cover bandwidth costs.

Free stuff from Goldbaby: CDM reader Hugo of Goldbaby sends his treasure trove of free soundware. The latest addition: an analog tape-sampled recording of the rare 1987 German Vermona DRM machine.

To celebrate the release of our new product (Tape Drum Machines Vol 1) we have created a free sample pack called: TheTapeVeronaDRM.

Contains 142 x 24 bit samples of the Vermona DRM. Recorded on an Otari MX5050 1/4 inch tape machine… plus the original drum hits without any tape love as well.

Each drum sound has also been recorded multiple times for use in Round Robin Layering. This can help recreate the analog feel of the machine.

Some really nice and unusual stuff there.

Goldbaby Free Page (download is on the top, among some other goodies)

IDM Nerds: From Munich, some strange and glitchy loops. Der Einmeier writes:

we just published a new sample-package of more than 120 mbyte containing 174 individual and unique, FREEWARE bassline-glitchnoize-loops for idm/mimimal-nerds.

mnml_blslns — 124MB of basslines
bleepbox.rar — 50 bleeping loops
more stuff described as “warez” but looks quite legal (no guarantees about whether your significant other / cat will like the noise, though)