REQ: Philip Meyer Ableton Live MIDI Tools
I'm excited to release 12 new MIDI Generators and Transformers for Ableton Live! Use these to work quickly and creatively in Live and generate MIDI that would be nearly impossible to create manually. I love to use these to quickly generate ideas and then create variations on those ideas.
INFO:
Generators
Phase Pattern
Phase Pattern is a rhythm and melody generator for Ableton Live. Basically, you bend time and that creates a rhythm. Got it? It's great for "bouncing ball" rhythms like on Monolake's Toku.
Blocks
Blocks is a rhythm generator for Ableton Live that uses proportions to create uneven divisions of the MIDI Clip. You can think of it as an "additive rhythm" or a "proportional rhythm".
Turing Machine
Turing Machine is a MIDI Tools version of the Music Thing Modular Turing Machine sequencer. Its ingenious design uses a randomness and a 16-bit shift register to generate pitches and rhythmic patterns.
Polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is a multitrack algorithmic sequencer for generating a quick beat or melody. I really like using it with a drum rack to get a beat started. The length of each pattern can be set independently, which makes the rhythms it generates feel a lot less boring and loop-y.
Transformers
Divs
Divs is a transformer for Ableton Live 12 that subdivides notes in your MIDI clips to create ratchets, tuplets, nested rhythms. This device is great for adding decoration or rolls to rhythmic patterns.
Pattern Transform
Pattern Transform is a multi-function MIDI clip manipulator that is fantastic for creating variations on your ideas. It is probably the most powerful of all of my MIDI Tools. Want to take a beat but just thin it out by removing some of the notes? Or increase the freneticity of the beat by adding more notes? Or create some controlled melodic variation (in key, of course) within the course of a bassline. This device can do all of that, and more.
Condition Transform
Condition Transform is a multi-function MIDI clip manipulator that helps you create variations on existing MIDI Clips. Like Pattern Transform, it allows you to selectively transform some notes in your MIDI clip while leaving others untouched. Notes are selected based on the note's pitch, velocity, duration, or chance value. I built this tool to allow me to do ratcheting and subdivision precisely with complex MIDI clips.
Feel
Feel is a MIDI clip transformer for Ableton Live. In Basic mode, it's just a simple swing knob, and in Advanced mode, it's a powerful microtiming tool for dialing in a rhythm.
Draw
Draw is a MIDI clip transformer for Ableton Live. It allows you to change pitch, velocity, and chance super quickly with your mouse. It's basically a bit like using the mouse in the piano roll or velocity and chance sections of the MIDI clip, but way faster (and a bit less precise...which is a good thing!) I use this thing all the time to create quick variations of MIDI clips for my tracks.
Develop
Develop reduces or increases the complexity of your MIDI clip over time. Say you have a pattern that you want to "build up" to by just playing fragments of the pattern, then, finally, at the end, the whole thing. Or the opposite - you want to remove an element from the mix, but not by bringing the fader down. Instead, just selectively remove notes each time the pattern loops. That's what Develop does.
Segment
Segment is basically a combination of Divs and Condition Transform. The histogram section at the top, borrowed from Condition Transform, displays the notes in the clip according to their duration. You can select notes by picking specific durations, and then subdivide them with the velocity and pitch functions borrowed from Divs. Quantization and special Division Mode help tame this device's weirdness when you need that.
Shift
Shift is a MIDI clip transformer for Ableton Live. It allows you to remix a clip quickly by rotating each attribute of the notes independently. This simple device has lots of power for creating subtle or dramatic variations on patterns and melodies.