Creative / experimental ways to process audio?

[snack master]

Hey everyone, I'm looking for new ways to process audio within Ableton Live. 

Currently, I make heavy use of time stretching, grain delay, auto filter, the Paul Stretch VST, flanger, reverb, redux, and the other modules to a lesser extent.  After using Ableton for over ten years now, I'd like to add to my toolkit and am curious what people within the IDM community are using.  Bonus points for free software, of course.

[thefxbip]

I love Melda Granular Mb, been using it a lot.

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MGranularMB

The best ive played with tho, so far, is VCV rack. (free!! yea!!)

Cant recommend it enough if you have a good computer to run it.(its main downside is that it is very CPU heavy) Changed my life. The full modular process is extremely flexible and permits very very thorough sound exploration. You can process the shit of everything in a very organic way.

If you still want to use ableton you could record some patch and jams and import the audio in ableton as samples or parts of trx. I would try that.

Also: a good ol' looper+overdub impros can bring some very interesting surprises.

Edited August 17, 2021 by thefxbip

[thefxbip]

Woulg has some neat tutorials. Loads of them for Ableton specifically. I recommend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTXsfk-28Yk&list=PLWnRRbvZYq6Mo_V-8n1iPhdPGQUAFcRzg

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by thefxbip

[logakght]

40 minutes ago, thefxbip said:

I love Melda Granular Mb, been using it a lot.

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MGranularMB

The best ive played with tho, so far, is VCV rack. (free!! yea!!)

Cant recommend it enough if you have a good computer to run it.(its main downside is that it is very CPU heavy) Changed my life. The full modular process is extremely flexible and permits very very thorough sound exploration. You can process the shit of everything in a very organic way.

If you still want to use ableton you could record some patch and jams and import the audio in ableton as samples or parts of trx. I would try that.

Also: a good ol' looper+overdub impros can bring some very interesting surprises.

how good is it without needing to purchase stuff?

I really like this one: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/hourglass-by-xenakios

[thefxbip]

29 minutes ago, logakght said:

how good is it without needing to purchase stuff?

I really like this one: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/hourglass-by-xenakios

Only thing i bought so far is the VST host one.

But i made bunch of stuff without it. You dont ''need'' any of the paid stuff really. It's not a videogame paytowin kind of deal.

There is so many excellent free modules you could spend a lifetime on this thing without spending a dollar. But you need a good PC, thats the thing.

[logakght]

I´ve been thinking of learning Pure Data to make some sampling mangling FX stuff, but I sometimes feel there´s already a VST capable of doing it that...

[thefxbip]

Ive tried to learn MAX MSP myself. It does look like the most powerful software ever made but im faster with VCV hahaha

 

[Danny O Flannagin]

One thing I do a lot is splitting audio with audio effect racks. For instance, you could have a high, mid and low range and each range could have its own delay with different timing. Or saturate/overdrive the frequency bands in different ways. 

[ArtificialDisco]

12 hours ago, Danny O Flannagin said:

One thing I do a lot is splitting audio with audio effect racks. For instance, you could have a high, mid and low range and each range could have its own delay with different timing. Or saturate/overdrive the frequency bands in different ways. 

That sounds kind of next level. Do you just make copies of the track and EQ them differently?

Personally I've been getting a bit of mileage out of Valhalla Supermassive. But I also like to take any type of delay effect and automate the crap out of it. Like you can move the timing knob really fast and let your daw record it as an envelope. You can get all sorts of scratches, screams and boing type of sounds that way.

[sheatheman]

8 hours ago, ArtificialDisco said:

That sounds kind of next level. Do you just make copies of the track and EQ them differently?

Personally I've been getting a bit of mileage out of Valhalla Supermassive. But I also like to take any type of delay effect and automate the crap out of it. Like you can move the timing knob really fast and let your daw record it as an envelope. You can get all sorts of scratches, screams and boing type of sounds that way.

You can use multi and compressor or the eq3 to isolate audio. Then with macros and instrument rack, you can make a 2 or 3 part crossover. You can then process each spectrum however you want.

you can use vocoder and set the modulator as the carrier, do cool stuff with band levels and formant, noise, pitch tracking. Corpus is sick for making bass lines that go over your drums. The new spectral delay and resonator are pretty cool. Lots of mileage there.

i also love the reenveloper, which can split audio into low/mid/hi.

all the stuff I’ve mentioned is stock ableton stuff or free max stuff.

[Danny O Flannagin]

9 hours ago, ArtificialDisco said:

That sounds kind of next level. Do you just make copies of the track and EQ them differently?

Personally I've been getting a bit of mileage out of Valhalla Supermassive. But I also like to take any type of delay effect and automate the crap out of it. Like you can move the timing knob really fast and let your daw record it as an envelope. You can get all sorts of scratches, screams and boing type of sounds that way.

I don't make copies but instead use the "racks". There are instrument racks where you can stack as many midi instruments as your computer can handle. There are also audio effect racks where you can do the same with audio effects. There are also volume/mule/solo controls for each chain so you can kind of mix a rack 

[TubularCorporation]

I've probably already posted this a few times, but I'm a big fan of putting a time-based effect (reverb or delay) on an aux send and then either vocoding or ring modulating it with the original dry signal.

 

A long time ago when I was completely broke I made a fake sitar sound by sampling a crash cymbal, running it through an envelope filter, and then using that as the impulse in a convolution reverb set to 100% wet and playing a DI acoustic guitar through it.  It didn't sound anything like a sitar but it sounded kind of cool.

Edited August 18, 2021 by TubularCorporation

[ArtificialDisco]

On 8/18/2021 at 1:24 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

I don't make copies but instead use the "racks". There are instrument racks where you can stack as many midi instruments as your computer can handle. There are also audio effect racks where you can do the same with audio effects. There are also volume/mule/solo controls for each chain so you can kind of mix a rack 

Ah, ok, I see how this works. I don't have much experience with Ableton, but you can basically use racks in parallel? In Reaper you'd have to copy the tracks or use sends I think.

[sheatheman]

15 hours ago, ArtificialDisco said:

Ah, ok, I see how this works. I don't have much experience with Ableton, but you can basically use racks in parallel? In Reaper you'd have to copy the tracks or use sends I think.

Yeah, you just select your effects, right click and group, then there is a view you can open, like I/o or some shit, and you can duplicate the chain, or simply create a new chain. Your audio will be duplicated as many as many times  as the number of chains you have in the instrument rack. So you have to be careful with volume. 

[TubularCorporation]

You can do similar stuff in Reaper.  Every track in Reaper has up to 64 channels of audio and every plugin has its own routing matrix, so you can set up really complicated signal paths on a single track (especially since one track can contain multiple overlapping audio and MIDI clips). Or you can use the "track wiring" view, which essentially gives you a Reaktor-ish modular view of a single track's signal path, but I haven't really dug in to that much. This is a decent example of a couple Reaper tracks with a fairly simple signal path:

 

Edited August 24, 2021 by TubularCorporation

[logakght]

this thread made me download Max 8 and I´m actually considering buying it, what a fun piece of software to mangle with

[ignatius]

On 8/16/2021 at 6:09 PM, thefxbip said:

Woulg has some neat tutorials. Loads of them for Ableton specifically. I recommend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTXsfk-28Yk&list=PLWnRRbvZYq6Mo_V-8n1iPhdPGQUAFcRzg

 

his grainspec max for live device is pretty awesome. 

 

[logakght]

a simple patch to create gentle glitchy efffects from a sample

 

[sheatheman]

Sound example pls

[thefxbip]

On 8/19/2021 at 11:13 PM, ignatius said:

his grainspec max for live device is pretty awesome. 

 

fucking amazing

[TubularCorporation]

Back in the portastudio kid days we used to sometimes put a floor tom with the bottom head removed in front of an amplifier, put the microphone inside it close to the head to get a little reverb, and then spread some BBs or gravel on the top of the head for fuzz.

[Himelstein]

If you have a nice amp that you can easily mic- putting a box fan between the amp and mic can create some cool choppy tremolo/amplitude modulation effects. Other fans work too, but box fans are easiest to work with. Messing with the speeds can be really cool. Also taking the grill or casing off the front of the fan will allow you to spin the blades yourself, so you can really mess with the rates in an organic way.