Effect Racks: 20 Audio Effects for Ableton Live. Effect racks are one the most powerful features available in Ableton Live today. They're an amazing way to really transform your sound and the way you work with Live. A lot of people use Ableton Live for DJing. If you also have Max for Live, you can now use 'Pseudo Scratch' to simulate scratching. It was created by Akihiko. A lot of people use Ableton Live for DJing. If you also have Max for Live, you can now use 'Pseudo Scratch' to simulate scratching. Free Max for Live DJ Effect “Pseudo Scratch”.

• Ableton Scratch Effect
• Scratch Effect Ableton
• Free Version Of Ableton Live
• Ableton Live Scratch Effect 2
• Ableton Live Scratch Effect Youtube
• Ableton Live Scratch Effect Game

The art form of scratching has been around for several decades and first came to prominence shortly after the birth of turntablism in the mid 1970s. With the emergence of digital DJing however, it seemed like scratching would die a quick death. Luckily this wasn't the case as many jog wheels on today’s DJ Controllers are more than capable of producing that vinyl scratch sound. So where do Ableton DJs fit in? Well if you have one of these aforementioned DJ controllers or indeed a turntable itself, then you can easily incorporate scratching into your Live sets. In fact for beginners, Ableton possesses a unique advantage over solely using a jogwheel or turntable type setup. Let's take a closer look.

Now we aren’t going to get into the ins and outs of scratching, but if you are a relative novice who wants to add professional sounding scratches to your sets then you may very well find this trick useful.

Mastering scratching take a lot of practice, most notably the ability to coordinate your ‘record’ hand (which does the scratching) and your mixer hand (which uses the crossfader to cut the audio in and out to tighten up your sound. Using the crossfader creatively also adds more rhythmical patterns to your scratches. If mastering this seems too daunting to start with, there is a workaround in the form of Ableton’s clip automation. By using a dummy clip in Live, you can draw volume envelopes beforehand to automatically act as the crossfader while you scratch live. Now before traditional turntablists shout insults at me, I’m not advocating this should replace the skill involved in using the crossfader. However it is a great way to achieve great sounding scratches by solely using your record hand, leaving your other hand free for adding FX, finger drumming or even waving at the crowd.

Setup

Firstly it is important to be set properly for scratching. On my controller I will have my hot cue set to the start of a clean isolated sound, usually a vocal accapella. It is also a good idea to set the other cue buttons on your controller to the start of other suitable sounds so you can switch between scratch sounds on the fly. (I use the Reloop Beatpad as its jogwheels excellently replicate the sound of vinyl manipulation when touched. Also its integration with DJay and Spotify means that I now have access to 20 million songs.)

In Ableton, along with my normal audio /MIDI tracks in my set, I like to create a separate track to host the live scratch sound. To route the audio from your scratching source to this track in Live you will need an audio interface with at least two inputs. Connect the outputs of your turntable/controller to these inputs and configure the I/O settings as shown below and record enable the track. You should now hear your scratch audio coming through to Live.

You will then need to route this audio to another track on which the ‘crossfader’ clip can be placed. Duplicate the track and set the new track to receive the audio from the original track. Set ‘Monitor’ to ‘In’ on the new track and ‘Monitor to ‘Off’ on the original. Next place a clip with no audio on the new track and set the loop to four bars.

Launch the clip and start to scratch. The audio won’t be affected as the clip’s volume envelope hasn’t been touched yet. We will soon change that. In the clip’s Clip View click the envelope button. From the Envelope pane choose Mixer and Volume from the relevant drop-down menus. We will start off by drawing in a simple pattern. Use the pen tool (the keyboard shortcut is B) to cut out the volume every 1/8th note. Launch the clip again and scratch in time with the beat (a forward scratch every 1/4 note is a good starting point) The audio will now drop out every time you move the jogwheel back to the start position as it would if you were to use the crossfader to cut out the sound in this way.

Next duplicate the clip but on this version cut out the volume every 1/16 note on the clip. Launch the clip and start to scratch, this time with a forward scratch every 1/8 note. Free download virtual dj 8. 2 full version with crack. You should be left with a very quick, tight scratch sound.

Same scratch with 16th note automation:

1. Emulate vinyl record scratching in Ableton Live. Emulate vinyl record scratching with this free.
2. 6 Best Free Ableton Live Pack and Effects An awesome Ableton Live Pack can be really inspirational. Once and a while I look online for a new technique, sound design, or idea and love checking out Ableton Live Packs and Racks to play around.
3. Oct 23, 2017  Mr Bill shares advanced Ableton Live techniques using the Midi Fighter 3D and Twister: slicing up clips for finger drumming on the fly, scratching samples.
4. Apr 13, 2015  Scratch-O-Matic ÷ Ableton Live Rack The Scratch-O-Matic is a fun and easy to use Instrument Rack that can be used to add and manipulate scratch sounds in your mix. It comes loaded with 128 scratch samples that can be quickly selected with the turn of a knob.

Ableton Scratch Effect

You can hear from the above examples that the second clip is a lot tighter and cleaner sounding.

Experimentation

In order to get the best sounding scratches in your live set, you will need to do some experimentation beforehand to see which envelope patterns work best with which type of scratches. For example, you could leave just the attack of every scratch so you get that stab scratch sound or perhaps let the sound last a bit longer to get a chirp scratch. You could also draw in combinations of scratches until you find the perfect fit. The world is your oyster.

Have a listen to your scratches without the dummy clip and try to determine which parts of the sound would be best left in and which would be chopped out. When finished you should have a list of clips that you can launch on the fly while scratching. Your crossfader hand has nothing else to do after all.

Scratch Effect Ableton

This is what a more advanced scratch sounds like with no automation:

This is what the same scratch sounds like with the automation as shown in the pic:

The possibilities are of course endless and with bit of practice and preparation, you can really use these ‘scratch’ dummy clips to add an extra dimension to your Live sets. As mentioned, it shouldn’t be used as replacement for the crossfader but could be thought of as a performance enhancement tool or learning aid to becoming a scratching master.

“It was kind of a fluke” admits software developer, Marc Résibois, about the conception of Live 10’s new Drum Buss device. “I had this code for a filter that I’d been playing with for a while; I really liked the way it sounded. I was just messing about with it and inverted the filter from high to low pass – it suddenly started booming in a really satisfying way. I was pretty sure it was something worth exploring.”

The happy accident that helped create the Drum Buss prototype sounds much like the kind of creative spark that leads music makers to a new track. But surely serendipity isn’t the only force behind Live’s new creative tools? Keen to find out more, we spoke to a handful of the Live development team about the inspiration and perspiration that went into creating three characterful new audio effects for Live. The team also passed on some insider’s tips on how to use the effects in your music.

Sparks and sprints

Following the unforeseen invention of Drum Buss, an early version of the device was soon on show at one of the development team’s regular hack sprints – a kind of internal show-and-tell used for Live experiments – where it picked up admiration from fellow engineers. “People are encouraged to explore whatever they want,” says device designer Matt Jackson, who had a hand in the production of Drum Buss, Wavetable (Live 10’s new synth), and Pedal – a device that took off from the same hack platform. “With Pedal, there wasn’t a formal decision by a project owner to develop it. The early form of the device we saw at a Sprint was so convincing that everyone quickly got behind the idea.”

The origins of Echo, Live’s third new audio effect, were a little more predetermined. “We felt a slight dissatisfaction that we didn’t have any modulated delays in Live” reveals the Sound Team’s Christian Kleine. “Our existing delay effects are quite clinical – we wanted something that could drift a little more. And delays in themselves are so powerful. A lot of effects are based on them: flanger, chorus, even reverb to a degree.” Christian saw a chance to create new effects that would broaden Live’s palette: “They distort sound in a way that is usually only known in analog gear. Precise effects have their own charm, but Live’s new ones mean you create more sounds that just don’t sound like computer music.”

Inspiration over emulation

Christian led the research into the world of classic hardware delay units that guided Echo’s initial design.“We made a kind of playlist of songs with delay sounds we found interesting; ones that would have been hard to achieve with what we had in Live. Then we recorded a whole bunch of old delay and echo units – like the Roland Space Echo, WEM Copicat and Morley Oil Can – and asked ourselves, What gives them their character? What are the quirks and imperfections that make them interesting, and how might we go about recreating these?”

With the idiosyncrasies of these devices in mind, software engineer Marco Fink worked under the hood of both Echo and Pedal: “To emulate the repitch behaviour [that results when changing the delay time] of many hardware delay units, for example, you have to think about the physics of what's happening in the hardware. And then you reproduce it digitally with a mathematical model.” But aside from Echo’s analog-modeled filters – which Marco mentions “distort, compress and saturate” – the effect is no copycat. “It was never our intention to model anything real” explains Christian. “It was more about capturing the spirit of these things; covering similar sonic space.”

The behavior of tape components brings distinctive sonic characteristics

While Drum Buss wasn’t directly influenced by specific pieces of gear, its conceptor Marc always imagined it as “A hardware device that never existed” on account of its immediate, limited control set. With Echo and Pedal, however, it was a case of concrete inspiration from hardware. Matt echoes Christian’s words about character and spirit: “I think what’s interesting is that we actually didn’t emulate a specific pedal. We listened to a variety of classic stomp boxes and tried to combine the different characteristics and elements in a way that worked harmoniously. We tried to get the essence of the pedals.”

Free Version Of Ableton Live

But how do you go about capturing this hardware spirit? What’s the ghost in the machine? Christian uses the example of Echo: “Its LFO behaves perfectly; digitally. But as soon as you introduce something imperfect, that behaves randomly in a listenable way, you perceive it as more alive. More analog. Sometimes it’s fairly simple to introduce artificial randomness, but in other cases it’s very challenging. We spent a lot of time experimenting with how to best achieve nice-sounding noise and wobble, for example.”

Finding the balance

Pedal was also inspired by the characterful way hardware components process sound. “But we also wanted it to be efficient”, Marco points out. Herein lies a new challenge. Engineers often face the question of how deep to go when emulating analog behaviour. Especially when processing in real-time, replicating the finer details demands more and more CPU. “You have to choose between simple and more sophisticated models for every part of the device”, adds Marco.

A different usability issue informed the development of Echo. Christian explains how original designs were for a simpler device: “In the beginning we wanted to create something with very few parameters – we always think about how to avoid adding more features. But many early user-testers wanted access to what's behind those controls, so we decided to expose quite a few of them, like the noisy elements for example.'

Noise and wobble parameters in Echo offer control over pitch inconsistencies and noisy artefacts

'This makes Echo a little more complicated at first use, but also better for creating unique sounds. You’re always walking a line between usability and breadth of options. We still have tons of ideas for what we could add to Echo, but if we put them all in, the thing would explode! Prioritizing which functions to include needs testing with others, listening and making music with it.”

There were other balances to get right. The handful of parameters in the Drum Buss device, Marc explains, needed careful calibration: “We had the Boom section in place, then after some initial user testing we added crunch and later transient shaping, compression and other elements. We wanted a device with few parameters that would all play really nicely together, so they sound like something desirable no matter what you do. So we spent a lot of time tweaking – probably 75% of the time was spent finding the right balance between the various processing elements.”

A fine balance between Drum Buss’ elements means a broad sweet spot of desirable sound

Testing and teamwork

User testing can play a big part in the creative decision-making process. Marc is clear about the importance of other music-makers in the development of the Drum Buss: “It was super useful as it helped us make decisions about what to do next. It gave us a lot of direction.” The Pedal device underwent a lot of tone-tweaking; it was made to sound more extreme, especially after user feedback that suggested the Fuzz sounded “A bit too nice”.

Following user testing, Pedal’s Fuzz mode got some not-so-nice tone-tweaking

Echo grew a Mid/Side mode quite late in the process after early feedback from music makers – “We thought about about it, tried it and it was so interesting, we had to do it”, Christian enthuses.

But what is Mid/Side? 'Instead of processing the left and right channel of a stereo signal, Echo delays the sum and difference of the channels individually', explains Marco. 'The mono and stereo part of a signal can be repeated using different delay times to create a time-variant stereo image – so you can have, for example, fast repetitions in the centre, but slower ones on the sides. Sonically it really does have its own character.'

Though the teams behind the three effects were small, they nonetheless fostered divergent points of view. “Typically there’s one lead person who has an idea or vision, then a few others doing development and design”, says Christian. “But what I found interesting about the process for Echo is the different perspectives. Coming from a musician's background, I had a clear idea of what I wanted things to sound like. An engineer might not have the same vision, but a better technical perspective. If something is technically crappy but still sounds great, to me that’s wonderful! But not for an engineer… you still have to make it usable. So that makes for some interesting discussions.”

Working on Drum Buss, Marc shared this preoccupation with sound, and reliance on the rest of the team: “I have a very experimental approach to things. I’m just trying to discover things that sound cool rather than making sure I’m doing it the best way. I usually end up with code that has 'spirit' but doesn't behave very elegantly – I often make mistakes. Fortunately I have team members with a deeper understanding of intricate DSP matters than me.”

For Marc, working in such small teams can help a device inherit real character and uniqueness. “I think it’s nice when something like this is built by a small team. It’s easier to reflect someone’s personality. Drum Buss is not a neutral device. It has a colour; a way of working. It makes sounds the way I like them!”

Using the devices

So what do the new effects sound like? What makes them special, and how can you make music with them? The devices’ creators gave us some tips, and came up with some audio examples to demonstrate them.

Pedal

Pedal “Completes the circle” of devices for guitars in Live. It helps to get more sounds out of Amp and Cabinet, bringing the kind of extreme saturation made famous by a long list of guitarists, dating back to the 60s, topped by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. It’s a sound that the latter band’s guitarist, Jimmy Page, described as outright “rude”.

Ableton Live Scratch Effect 2

A dry riff, then with Pedal's Fuzz, Overdrive, Distortion, and finally a Pedal-Amp-Cabinet Rack

Using on synths will also deliver extreme results. Think of the wailing distortion employed by Daft Punk at an earlier, rawer point in their oeuvre:

Pedal offers the type of extreme distortion heard in Daft Punk’s ‘Rollin’ and Scratchin’

“One unconventional use,” adds Matt, “is to sweep EQ peaks around before a Pedal device – the results are really unexpected. It sounds more like a change in distortion type than a filter sweep. And don’t worry about the resonance – just go completely nuts!”

Some EQ Eight sweeps before Pedal in Fuzz mode (plus beat processed with Drum Buss)

“It can certainly do more heavy-handed distortion sounds,” Marco adds, “but with the Wet/Dry control you can of course be subtle too. Some people even use this type of effect on vocals to add a bit of brilliance; like an exciter. Realguitar classic vst. They stack a second distorted voice on top of the clean one.”

Echo

So aside from tape delays and the psychedelic stereo panorama of Mid/Side mode, what sounds are possible with Echo? (You can download the preset files of the settings used to create the following audio clips.)

“Well, you can combine cleaner digital sounds with analog noise in useful ways”, Marco explains. “You can have something with the wobble and noise of a tape delay, but not the darkness or compression. Or, have a tape-like distortion without the noisy artefacts. Of course in the analog world, you can’t separate these.”

“The way you can modulate things goes way beyond what you could do in any of the hardware pieces [whose sound inspired Echo]”, says Christian. “It’s quite simple to achieve really nice flanging, chorus, and other pretty weird sounds. It’s just a fun device – you can happily play with the feedback for 10 minutes if you want”. Marco adds, “I like the weird robotic sounds you can get by setting small delay times, adding lots of feedback and modulating the time with a Random LFO setting.'

'It’s also really good to use with a guitar, especially if you’re into ambient or drone music. The kind of interconnecting delays and reverb combos you need are built into Echo. Just set the reverb to Feedback mode with a long decay time”. “Shoegazing made simple!”, adds Christian.

“It also has an envelope follower,' continues Christian, 'which responds to the amplitude of the input signal. Using a guitar, the amplitude of the note can be used as modulator for the delay line. It’s a very organic feature to have. You can do envelope-followed flanging or delay lines and this sort of stuff. People like Frank Zappa used it quite a lot.”

An enveloped-flanged delay – first with guitar, then a drum loop

Drum Buss

“The thing I like most about Drum Buss is that it finds a nice balance between instant gratification and control,” says Marc. “When you add the device, your drums just sound bigger right away. Then you can tailor things to how you like them – boomy lows, crunchier highs, snappier attack. It's definitely rooted in the distorted drum-machine beats of contemporary hip-hop, and harsher drum sounds in rock/electronic crossovers.”

The type of upfront drum processing made possible with Drum Buss

“But you can get very subtle with it too; it’s not just about in-your-face sounds. People have started using it for kicks, snares, single percussion elements or even synths – all with very convincing results that don't necessarily carry any Drum Buss imprint. For me, that’s a reflection of its versatility.”

An acoustic kit processed with Drum Buss – from subtle to heavy treatment.

Ableton Live Scratch Effect Youtube

“So yeah, it was made for buses, but like with a good hardware unit, you should feel free to abuse it on anything!”.

Ableton Live Scratch Effect Game

Drum Buss is part of Live 10 Standard and Suite. Pedal and Echo are included with Live 10 Suite. Compare editions of Live 10.