Best Free Ableton Packs
Here’s seven excellent Ableton Packs I use myself. There are a ton of great resources out there for Ableton, from rack and sample bundles to crazy Max for Live tools. We’ve organised these into 2 sections…. general packs (under Best Free Ableton Packs) and percussion based (under Best Free Drum Ableton Packs). We’ll kick off with the almighty Creative Extensions……
- In this video, Guido Werner will walk you through Ableton Operator and show you how to make various sounds. Make sure to download our FREE pack of 45 Operato.
- Operator, Ableton's renowned do-it-all synthesizer, has been given a major overhaul with Live 8. We opened up the hood, took a long hard look inside and did some serious hot-rod stuff. New filter types, more modulation routing options and additive wavetable synthesis with drawable partials make Operator more powerful and flexible than ever.
Free ableton packs Puremagnetik's collection of free Ableton Live Packs represents a hand-picked assortment of goodies sourced right from our catalog of analog synths, digital beat machines, vintage keyboards and hacked gizmos.
Creative Extensions by Ableton
Get it here: https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/creative-extensions/
Made by Ableton themselves in conjunction with Max For Live developer Amazing Noises. The instruments and effects it contains are great and could have been bundled with Live as proper standalone units as to be honest…
It has two instruments… ‘Bass’ – a monophonic low-end beast, and ‘Poli’ a polyphonic synth for designing lush chords that has some really nice features like ring mod and xmod (ala Jupiter-8).
It has a step sequencer called ‘Melodic Steps’ which has the ability to get mental really quickly with the ability to run different length sequences at various scales. With ability to sequence Octave, Transpose, Length, velocity and Chance (all with the ability to run at different sequence lengths for those infinitely changing modular’ sequencers).
The effects are immense… Pitch Hack (for tight pitch delay style effects), Gated Delay (beat-repeat style delay), Color Limiter (hardware mimicking limiter with saturation), Re-Enveloper (multiband envelope processor), and Spectral Blur (grainy reverb textures). Getting this pack feels like by Abelton doubled in size and I can see myself using some of these in every track we make.
Granulator II by Robert Henke (Monolake)
Get it here: https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/granulator-ii/
This has gained a lot of fame and rightly so, the tool is amazing for textures/drones and pads – made by the excellent Robert Henke (Monolake). It acts a bit like a sampler, but it plays back small grains of sound from a loop of the sample in an unconventional order and time. These times and orders can be tweaked to make a new evolving sound. Watch Robert explain more about it here, then download it and load up a sample….
The Forge
Get it here: https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/forge/
Some great glitchy samples and fx by IDM producer Hecq. Includes samples, construction kits, plus some custom Max for Live audio effects inducing rhythmic delays. Ideal for IDM and industrial percussion programming and processing.
Stray Cats Collection
Get it here: https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/stray-cats-collection/
Max for Cats and Sonic Bloom give away a great pack of Max For Live devices, including an 8 step sequencer, 2 instruments (with tons of presets), a chord step sequencer and some great audio effects including rhythmic and glitching delays and reverbs as well as ‘Color’ for adding analogue noise, warmth and error to the signal chain.
Best Free Ableton Drum Packs
Krikor Kouchian: Free LinnDrums for Live
Get it here: https://cdn-resources.ableton.com/resources/cf/b7/cfb7c3db-fd3a-4589-ad79-86928503a25d/pacific_alley_linndrum_project.zip
Producer extraordinaire Krikor, he’s put out some dope bangers on Long Island Electrical Systems. His Linn Drum pack here is no ordinary pack – he recorded the samples on the internal memory (eproms) of a digital Casio Rz-1 drum machine, which adds some amazing down-sampling crunch to the samples. The Rack also comes with his take on Princes style drum saturation with the Purpleizer! All in all a brilliant drum tool.
We wrote about this in our Best Free Drum Machine Samples article.
Daniel Miller’s ARP 2600 Drums
Get it here: https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/dm-arp-2600-drums/
Here’s a collection of drum racks sampled from legendary producer Daniel Miller’s semi modular dream synth. Impressive and unique percussion samples from one of my favourite synths.
Drum Machines by Ableton
Get it here: https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/drum-machines/
A big pack of drums as the title suggests! It contains multiple Roland 606,707,808, 909, samples processed and programmed plus some other great samples/construction kits. Comes with a lot of ‘.alc’ file clips – you load them and the samples load with a pre-programmed beat and fx rack so there’s a loop is set up and ready to go as great starting point. This is our go-to pack for a fresh take on classic drum sounds.
Designer Drums by Ableton
Get it here: https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/designer-drums/
Some really nice glitchy IDM / minimal house / glitch-hop style drum kits and samples. Plus some ‘.alc’ clip files so you can load up some pre-programmed beats with instruments and rack effects all ready to go. Perfect for digital weird drum sounds.
Summary
There you have it, some of the best free packs for your library that are highly use-sable. ‘Drum Machines’ is probably my most used pack to be honest. Please let us know anymore you recommend and we’ll update this article.
We’ve also done a rundown of the best free vsts that we use.
Follow us for updates…. https://www.instagram.com/studiobrootle/
In the first installment of Techno Fundamentals, electronic musician and Dubspot Instructor John Selway explains and shows you how to create interesting, deep, and lush bass sounds with Ableton Live‘s versatile software instrument Operator. In part two John looks at the “one note lead” idea using Ableton Live‘s Analog instrument. Commonly used in techno and other styles of electronic dance music where melody takes a backseat to rhythm, the “one note lead” is a simple yet very effective composition technique.
I first thought to call this series “Techno Basics”, as I am showing some simple ways to get started with making beats and doing sound design for techno. But even just a few basic elements quickly develop into complex textures and open the door to bigger production concepts. Also, I’m keeping an ear to the past, taking techniques and sounds I’ve worked with in the late 80′s and 90′s and bringing them up to date with the modern tools in Ableton Live. I think it’s a great way to learn about techno production, having some perspective on where it all comes from. So “Fundamentals” refers to the musical and production techniques as well as the past of techno and how it relates to current music.
In this first tutorial, I’m introducing the idea that a single element can sound like more than it is, and that small changes can get a big result. Now I’m not specifically referring to “minimal”, but the idea that less is more applies. Making the most out of a few elements is always a great way to go. Lately I’ve been diving into early to mid 90′s techno styles again, the era of techno where I got my start and that I know very well, and which is what gave me the idea to use FM synthesis with Operator as an example for the tutorial. Much early techno uses FM sounds, tracks by Detroit pioneers such as Derrick May (Rhythim is Rhythim’s “Sinister“) and Juan Aitkins (Model 500′s “The Chase“) feature FM synths prominently – excepting the drums which are almost invariably Roland TR-909, TR-808 or other similar machines of the time. Also in the early to mid-90′s, artists like Cajmere (aka Green Velvet) used the distinctive FM tones almost exclusively for bass and lead sounds in classic tracks such as “Conniption” which the sound in my tutorial is partially inspired by.
Operator is one of my favorite devices in Live, it’s made FM synthesis more approachable and useful for me. My example in the video is to start with the most basic sound that Operator makes, the default with a single sine wave, and show how quickly it can evolve into something complex and dynamic. Also, without going into too much detail about exactly how FM works, it gives some experience into that kind of synthesis just by playing around and hearing the distinctive quality that happens when one oscillator is modulated by another at very high frequency.
A lot of the life in the sound I create in the video comes from the real time control of the Operator parameters. I’m showing how a sound evolves in a musical way, and choosing how and when subtle or extreme changes happen is where the magic is. A simple yet energetic beat and one interesting, dynamic sound, playing together in an undeniable groove, are enough to capture imaginations and move bodies. In the next installment there will be more of a focus on arranging, using the evolving sound to shape and build out a track.
- John Selway, Electronic Music Producer & Dubspot Instructor
Starting October 24, November 12, December 4 in New York
Operator Ableton Free
and the week of DECEMBER 4th ONLINE!
Start dates and information about payment plans can be found here.
If you have questions, please call 877.DUBSPOT or send us a message.
The flagship of our music training, with every Ableton Live course offered at the school. After completing this program, you will leave with 4 completed tracks (EP), a remix entered in an active contest, a scored commercial to widen your scope, and the Dubspot Producer’s Certificate in Ableton Live.
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This program is about learning Ableton Live by going through the entire process of being an artist, by developing your own sound through a series of sketches and experimentation. You will also learn the ins and outs of this powerful software through a series of exercises designed to help you master the steps involved in producing your own music. After a level of getting familiar with the tools that Ableton has to offer, you will then develop your sonic ideas into full length songs – one per level. You will be exposed to a variety of approaches to arrangement and composition, storytelling techniques, ways of creating tension and drama in your music. At the end of the day, it is the sum total of your choices as an artist that define your sound, and levels 2 – 6 will give you the experience of actually completing tracks to add to your portfolio.
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