Ableton Live fans hungry for sounds, what a good half-year it’s been. AfroDJMac alone has been busy putting together delicious-sounding, versatile racks of virtual Ableton-ready gear. After six months of contributing free downloads and videos – and discovering the use of this kind of generosity as a tool for exposure – he’s come up with some 26 such racks. You can grab them all, but I asked the artist to choose his six favorites out of the bunch:

1. Nintendo Rack- Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but these sounds have so much personality, I love them This rack has been the most popular and has been downloaded more than twice as many times as any other (I blame the CDM feature
Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #6- “AfroDJMac Nintendo Rack”

2. Vocal Rack and Dub Delay- I first got a good taste of Ableton’s capabilities when I mapped out a more primitive version of this rack to my midi controller. I don’t think I’ve looked at another DAW since.
Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #12: Vocal Rack and Dub Delay the AfroDJMac Way

3. Super Glitch Machine- I like when things sound broken!
Ableton Rack #23: Super Glitch Machine (part 1)

4. Laptop Feedback Rack- This was the first one I ever released, having no idea if anyone would even care, and to my surprise they did. I really like how this sound starts out pad-like, but decays after a few seconds into something a bit more glitchy and spacey.
Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #1- “AfroDjMac Laptop Feedback”

5. Broken Bells Rack- Made from xylophone samples playing forwards and backwards simultaneously, in my opinion there is a lot of character in this one. To my surprise however, it has been out-downloaded by most of my other racks.
Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #10: AfroDJMac Broken Bells Rack

6. AfroDJMac’s Drum Racks- I like this one because it gives a peak into how I treat my drums in my live performances. I got a couple of really nice emails from people expressing how it inspired them, and that to me is the ultimate compliment.
AfroDJMac’s Drum Tracks [Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #16]

And, to celebrate the half-year anniversary, he’s got a new rack out, as well. Tom of the Waveformless Blog provides samples of the Ensoniq SQ-80 – hardly something we get too much of. Here, you get bits of “the “Hush” preset, as well as a sample of the synth powering down,” all mapped into a sampler. Video below:

Download and more information:
Ableton Live Rack #26: SQ-80 Hush [6 Months of Racks!] [afrodjmac.com]

And all of the free racks:
http://afrodjmac.com/category/free-ableton-instruments/

There have actually been a number of other free downloads this month for Ableton; more on that next week.

Yamaha’s CP-35 may fall short of being a classic, but it is capable of some pleasant, dreamy sounds. That is, if you can actually lift it. Impossibly heavy and cumbersome, here’s a job for sampling if ever there was one. A free Ableton Live rack gives you convenient access to the instruments and live effects. I should note, by the way, that Ableton Live is not a prerequisite to using the samples

AfroDjMac, aka Brian, aka Nairb Funk, aka the guy who’s been giving us the gift of tons of free Ableton Live stuff, talks to CDM. He shares some thoughts on how he put together this rack and what his approach was. He also tells us about a project to make 100 one-of-a-kind CDs, all unique, all hand-painted – which, in turn, explains what’s up with these cowboys in the picture.

The CP-35. I tried to copy the effects that are present on the original CP-35 (tremolo and flanger) while adding a few additional ones (delay, chorus, vibrato). This particular keyboard has been on many recordings I’ve done in the past and offers everything from a nice subtle “backbone” to guitar chords, to some prominent lead melodies (adding distortion or running it through a guitar amp an be a lot of fun). I’m finding I can get an extremely wide range of tones running this through Ableton’s Amp/Cabinet plug ins. Maybe in the future I’ll record some shorter samples and reverse them to create something similar to my reversed piano rack.

[At top is] a better picture with some of our mascots from the soon to be release “Cowboys and Synthesizers EP.” My collaborator SuperKid and I painted 100 album covers, made a large collage from them, and then took a picture of them all. That picture is the actual album art, and when we release the hard copy, the first 100 will be 1/100 of the actual album art.

I really like the idea of something hand made, especially these days when everything is so digital and mass produced; we are making an EP that has some tangible, original artwork. Hopefully it’ll give people a reason to want an actual copy and not just a digital version. I love how your album has an actual painting as the artwork. Sometimes in the digital realm it is easy to forget that people’s hands actually touched and crafted the art.

More on both these stories, plus the free CP-35 download:

Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #9: Yamaha CP-35 Rack

“Cowboys and Synthesizers” EP artwork preview

And if you feel the need to get a bit crafty. (I love craft time with glitches and cowboys…)

Ableton has introduced various features to its flagship Live tool over the years, but one of the simplest ideas – combining instruments and effects into accessible Racks – is also one of its most useful. They make those sound controls immediate and functional, and they can be a great way of delivering sounds. Two cases in point: free downloads that incorporate synthesized vocals and retro Nintendo blips.

AfroDJMac keeps his free Live goodies coming with noises constructed on a vintage Nintendo Entertainment System, the 8-bit timbres orchestrated by the sadly impossible-to-get MidiNES MIDI adapter. True to form, you get direct access to the NES’ Pulse and Triangle channels, plus Noise, which can give you either pure 8-bit sounds or game-styled chip retro tunes. Sure, there are plenty of other ways to do this, but you can’t beat the convenience here. Enjoy:
Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #6- “AfroDJMac Nintendo Rack”

You can keep up with his musical productions and free downloads on http://afrodjmac.com/. In case you missed it, one particularly nice entry recently features his mother’s china dinner plates, layered into thicker pads.

Francis Preve has made a name for himself both as a writer and a sound designer; now he’s focusing on his new record label and artistic career, but connecting those two disciplines. So, when he introduces a classic formant filter used to synthesize vocal sounds, he also walks through the technique of producing it in the software and why it’s a relevant sound on clubland’s floors. (Hint: Pleasurekraft, most recently. But part of why I like classic synth techniques is that they’re become comfortable and familiar, in the way acoustic instruments have been, and thus don’t have to apply to any one genre.)

Picking apart this Rack will give you some good tips on how to build such things – or you can just go ahead and use it to start some new ideas. If you concoct something, I’d love to hear it. (No sound sample, so just go download!)

Ableton Preset: Tuvanism

Speaking of goodies for Ableton Live, NYC-based electronic artist and songwriter AfroDJMac has been creating some unusual, nicely quirky Device Racks for Ableton Live. Unlike a Max for Live patch, these are accessible to anyone with a copy of Ableton Live – and may be easier to edit for those of you not comfortable tinkering around with Max patches.

Each creation begins with a sample, then twists it into playable instruments in virtual device racks. AfroDjMac has been releasing these racks on a weekly basis; weeks two and three are already looking good. At top, a 1960s Gibson acoustic guitar meets an Ebow for some lovely string timbres.

The Ebow itself is a pretty terrific invention:
http://www.ebow.com/home.php
Battery-powered and handheld-sized, it’s a shortcut to ethereal sounds.

Another example, seen below, is a reversed piano. That sounds not terribly interesting, but he’s loaded it up with clever delays and programming and created something pretty deep. The piano itself is worth mentioning, too – a 1913 Kranich and Bach upright piano.

All you need is a recent copy of Live, and you can open the sets directly. In fact, this is a reminder that sets and racks remain the best way to distribute simple creations for Ableton Live, even if Max for Live is a good choice for much fancier tricks. It still makes me wonder what the best way to distribute samples may be, with various competing formats; I’m open to ideas beyond the obvious “big ‘ol folder full of files” technique.

Read up more on the artist’s blog:
Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #2 – “AfroDjMac Gibson Ebow Pad” and Live Video Performance from Brooklyn
Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #3 – “AfroDjMac Reversed Piano”

Below, you can see what AfroDjMac’s live set is like – and yes, apparently rock clubs do allow laptops these days, if you bring a mic:

Live’s Instruments can be a terrific way to explore Ableton Live – rather than simply giving you black-box preset sounds, these include custom racks that can be customized, disassembled, and warped to your own applications. I’m a fan of the work of some of the folks doing the programming, too, like the talented Puremagnetik folks; rather than just generic productions, you get a lot of the sort of oddball stuff that we love.

Live users may already know this via Ableton’s mailing list, but in case it got into your “marketing from companies” filter, Ableton is offering up a huge compilation of their partner instruments as one giant, 2.9GB Live Pack (1.2GB download, compressed):
Free Live Pack: Partner Instrument Compilation
You get 58 instrument racks, 16 drum racks, 5 live sets, and 80 clips.

Add this to the ten Live sets, focused on artist-specific production and performance, made in conjunction with the Minus label, which I’ve covered previously:
Free Stuff for Ableton Live: FM Drum Machine in M4L, Minus Artists’ Live Sets
…and don’t forget the tasty monome Max for Live content we saw last week.

Updated – still more free content: PakBytes are free sampler sets from Puremagnetik’s larger collections, with samples of Casio Phase Distortion and VL-Tone and SK-1 gear, modular analog drums and Buchla samples, Atari 2600 sounds, KORG Wavestation, and more:
PakBytes

It’s a good way to spark some production ideas – if not for you, worth passing along to friends you know exploring Live. For those investing in an upgrade or new copy of Live, there’s also a deal on that bundles a free partner instrument.

The Covert Seq – Creating patterns and Presets from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.

The Covert Operators and Bjorn Vayner have become my favorite go-to source for wild Ableton Live hacks. And even before the release of Max for Live, Bjorn has built some terrific, simple step-sequencers using Live’s Racks feature. That’s just the Racks feature – no Max patches or hidden features anywhere to be found. Sure, I suppose the clip view itself can be seen as a kind of step sequencer, but this gives you a unique way of generating sequences.

If you just want to begin playing with step sequencing in Live, Bjorn has a new download, aptly called The Covert Sequencer, as seen in the video at top. It’s free, it’s fun, it celebrates the 5th Anniversary of Covert Ops and the 10th of Ableton Live (good grief!), and it’s all voodoo built with dummy clips and MIDI effects.

Full post, downloads, and video tutorials:
The Covert Seq [The Covert Operators]

If you want to try your hand at the ninja skills behind all of this, Bjorn posted a screencast back in August revealing his secrets:

Making a Step Sequencer in Ableton Live. from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.

And if you like this sort of thing, definitely don’t miss The Covert Operators’ exclusive creation for CDM, making elaborate use of the racks and slicing features of Live 7 and later:

Exclusive: Free Ableton Live Slicing Pack by Covert Operators

Slice of Winter from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.

Vocal manipulation with Ableton Simplers. from wiretotheear on Vimeo.

Oliver Chesler of the currently on-fire wire to the ear shares this tutorial using Live’s Device Groups and built-in Simpler. Basically, the idea is to rack Simplers together so you have easy access to different slices. Because these racks can easily map MIDI to different rack slots, there’s quite a lot you could do with this technique.

Oliver ultimately works his magic by manipulating the patterns in Arrange View. You have a couple of options here if you want to work live. You could simply bounce some of those manipulations that would be hard to play back into a slot in Session View. Or, if you want to stay in Session View (the one with the clips), you could try doing more extensive MIDI mappings with the Rack, and use patterns in clips in place of Arrange View.

Need to brush up on the basics of slicing and drum racks first? The good folks of Infrasonik are back with another 101 tutorial:

Ableton Live – The Definitive Guide: Intro to Slicing and Drum Racks from Infrasonik.com on Vimeo.

Previously:

Ableton Live Shortcuts in Infrasonik Video, Live Tutorial Player

And yes, I’ll be working on assembling all these videos into one, central location. Stay tuned.