Our friend Gustavo Bravetti is back with more Ableton Live tutorials. Looks like good fodder for working on some music making this weekend — especially if you’re not familiar with some of these techniques.

First up: cascading follow actions can break up endless looping repetition by triggering complex patterns. Gustavo throws in some "dummy clips" or "ghost clips" for adding additional automation.

Next, if you followed Gustavo’s bass drum tutorial with Operator and want to follow it up with some snares (and resonance), have a look at this:

More details at Gustavo’s iproducer column.

By the way, to anyone who wanted more "advanced" tutorials (or more beginning, for that matter — it’s all relative) — feel free to send us requests. Now I’m sort of intrigued by synthesizing drums; I’ve been chatting with a couple of our contributors here about Native Instruments’ FM8. The whole beauty of Operator is its simplicity, but maybe we should see if we can make an FM8 kit, as well. (And you’re not restricted to using Ableton’s own instruments in the Live Drum Rack, either.)

If you make stuff this weekend, or find tips of your own, let us know!

There’s a disturbing amount of free sound-making stuff out there, enough to clutter up your VST folder and make you forget where you put that multi-tap delay you wanted. It’s a beautiful thing. So, as a regular, erm, public service, I’ll be semi-regularly rounding up some of the free instruments and effects appearing around the Interwebs.

This week: a brilliantly deep reverb, plus everything from a beat box (as in human beat box) to a motorcycle simulator.

Digital samples got no soul? How about digital samples of tape and cassette samples of classic Roland instruments? Huggie from New Zealand (and Goldbaby Productions) has been producing some lovely sample libraries from favorite gear, free and payware. He’s posted two of the best as freebies to the CDM forums. The hook: they’re recorded on analog before being sampled again.

There’s a TR606 recorded to an Ampex 1/2 inch 2-track tape machine, which appeared around Christmas. And this week, we got a superb 808 samples set recorded to a portable Marantz deck. (Funny, I’ve spent some quality time with both recorders, so that adds extra nostalgia.)

Less this all be chalked up to simple novelty, I have to admit you get a nice, warm sound out of the results. I’m dropping these on some Drum Racks in Ableton as we speak.

And here’s what it sounds like in action:
Cassette 808 Demo [mp3]

Free Tape606 sample pack… Merry Christmas! [CDM forums in December]

The Cassette 808 sample pack! Old skool and free… [CDM forums]

Free Stuff @ Goldbaby (other goodies, too, but for these scroll to the very bottom and look for Tape606 sample pack and The Cassette 808)

Thanks, huggie! Good stuff. Anyone else with soundware they want to share, please let us know.

HypnoSapien (aka Patrick Petro) loved the Zendrum, the cult-hit, ultra-sensitive, boutique drum controller. But he wanted something compact with a specific configuration. He writes:

Check out the new Zendrum ZAP desktop midi percussion controller, the first truly professional level instrument of its kind. I contacted Zendrum about custom building this particular model for me with this particular pad configuration. They loved it and made it a full production model.

The results: a Zendrum that costs less than the other models (US$999 list) and fits into tight spaces.

Of course, cool as this hardware may be, it’s easily upstaged by the ridiculously dexterous finger-drumming chops of Maestro Petro, as seen in this demo video:

As Patrick says, “Good stuff! My ZAP is my monome 256’s new best friend. Mmm…wood.”

Actually, that’s not a bad coupling at all — one of my criticisms of monome way back before all the Web buzz when it was released was that its buttons lack velocity sensitivity. With monome handling button-pressing duties and ZAP responding more as an instrument, your fingers should be very happy indeed.

Zendrum ZAP Product Page [Zendrum Catalog]

Amazing how time crawls when you’re eagerly awaiting something. Such is the case with the BoomChik: it seems like ages ago that drum machine legend Roger Linn and synth legend Dave Smith “pre-announced” this synth/drum machine. It was actually just this time last year. Unfortunately, you’re going to be waiting a little longer: feedback from musicians and the release of Linn’s AndrenaLinn III and Smith’s Prophet ‘08 (easily two of the biggest products of last year) has delayed the BoomChik.

Now the good news: in addition to a new name, the new design looks far more mature. And it’s going to be eminently affordable: street around US$1000 for a basic model, and $1500 for a fancier model with four analog voices as shared with the Prophet ‘08 and Evolver.

Full specs are available on the site and a bunch o’ other sites, so here’s the Cliff’s Notes version. (Kirn’s Notes?)

• Real-time, no-stop, no-drop OS for live performance
• Pressure-sensitive, backlit (with animation) pads
• Modulate, filter, and resonate everything, digital or analog voices
• Step record like an MPC and like an 808
• Compact Flash storage, USB for MIDI, audio, and sample transfer with a computer (plus real MIDI jacks, don’t worry)
• Ridiculous number of performance controls, simplified menus, plus foot/expression pedals. (Having seen how much menu jockeying the current Akai and Roland models have, this sounds great. When I want to use a computer, I’ll use a computer with a 23″ display, not a 1″ display.)
• Stereo inputs let you sample, process audio, or trigger sounds
• “Analog” version adds analog voices, 27 encoders for voicing, and four direct outputs — one for each voice.

I say, get a day job now so you can quit it when this comes out.

Now a bit more bad news: I hear a prototype may not actually make it to NAMM, which dashes my hopes of getting to show you an actual unit when we’re in Anaheim next week. But we will be talking to Dave and Roger, and hope to have more details soon. And if you focus really hard, maybe one will magically make it there. (Say it with me … ommmmmmm … booooooommmmmm … chikkkkkkk)

Bill Pendry wanted to use his PlayStation 3 Rock Band controllers with GarageBand on the Mac, so he’s posted step-by-step instructions to do just that. The secret formula: a wonderful utility that helps you use HID-compatible game controllers on the Mac, sans drivers.

GamePad Companion (US$15 shareware)

Of course, the nice thing here is that the basic steps apply to other controllers, just in case Rock Band doesn’t float your boat (or rock your socks, or whatever).

I ended up choosing kick, snare, two toms and one cymbal, since the other cymbal I wanted was in a inactive area of the keyboard. I re-mapped the keys in GPC, switched back to GB and gave it a try. Success! Samples were triggered correctly, the fast key repeat rate didn’t cause any problems, and latency was basically nil.

The results:

And step by step instructions:
GarageRockBand [billpendry.com blog]

More good news: Bill has updated the post with information on Xbox 360 controller possibilities. Generic Xbox controllers work just find via the Wireless Gaming Receiver. No word yet on the Rock Band controllers, though, and I think they do a little more than the standard controllers. Anyone got an Xbox 360 and a Mac who can tell us if it works?

Previously:
Game Day: Use Rock Band Drums as MIDI Controller - Windows, Yes, Mac, Soon? (and I guess we got our answer!)

Bless Nintendo for making the Wii controller: inexpensive, lots of internal sensor data (motion sensing, tilt sensing, buttons), elegant design, and standard Bluetooth support allowing it to be used with Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Now there’s free and open source software for making the most of your Wiimote as a musical instrument. First up: Wiinstrument, a multi-purpose percussion instrument, now available for all three operating systems (a Windows version was recently added).

• Plays percussion / drums with gestures
• Use an (in-development) internal sampler with WAV files, or trigger other software via MIDI
• Use tilt for control changes
• Supports tilt, velocity (how much force you use when you move your Wiimote), with acceleration from both the Wiimote and nunchuk
• It works with Mac, Windows, and Linux, via a standard OpenGL-based interface, thanks to the awesome 2D OpenGL library Gosu. (Programmers, take note.)

Of course, drums are just the beginning — you could use this to trigger clips, grooves, visualist videos and animations, whatever. And it comes with demos, tutorials, source code, the lot.

Wiinstrument Release Information
GarageBand tutorial (relevant to other apps, too)
Support information for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard, Linux
Via thread with the creator on our forums

Here is in action.

But, you say, that’s all well and good, but it’s not … air guitar. Today is your lucky day:

We took a look at the Mandala drum controller last year: it’s a multi-zone drum controller you can play with sticks. Different zones give the device extra expression, packed into a compact area. And the manufacturers know something about controller design, having worked on the D-Beam IR controller for Roland (among other things). Check comments on our last post: the combination of the finely-detailed zones, smart MIDI configuration, and quality pads have made people fall in love with playing this thing.

That’s good enough as-is. Make the Mandala really cheap (US$349 list!) and add a USB plug for use with a computer, and you’ve really got something interesting. (It’s now purple instead of red as pictured here.) “But wait, there’s more!” These guys also bundled 4 GB of samples, including some 3,000 snare drum samples. That makes it arguably a better deal than some soundware libraries that lack hardware. I like the way they describe it: “It’s a synthesizer with drumsticks, with a drum pad so sensitive it responds even to a fingertip touch.” If they’re halfway there, this could be a must-have.

I have to get one of these in for review. Shipping in December, apparently just in time for the holidays. This one could rise to the top of our holiday list.

Mandala Drum Product Site

Easily my YouTube pick of the day, individually-tuned voices on this classic LinnDrum LM-2 drum machine make wonderful beats. Thanks to Matt Bean (of Men’s Health magazine, no less) for bringing this vid to my attention. Skip to the part where it starts making sound, and you’ll get it right away.

YouTuber rolandsh1000, who has some other related videos up, explains his creation:

I modified my LinnDrum so all voices could be individually tuned, which was an acknowledged limitation of this Linn model. It’s a similar mod that some have done to their TR-707. I think it really expands the sound of the LinnDrum.

If you want to do this to your LinnDrum, go to the Yahoo LinnDrum group and go to the files section. The whole writeup is there for downloading:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Linndrum/files/