“Automatic”: a self-generating Live Set

Live comes with lots of crazy devices. One of my favorites is the ancient Vinyl Distortion audio effect. This isn’t because I’m particularly interested in vinyl emulation – if you know my music, you know that it’s squeaky-clean and ultra-digital. I love Vinyl Distortion because of the “Crackle” parameter, which outputs semi-random noise.

The Vinyl Distortion effect - underappreciated and full of awesome

By itself, this noise isn’t necessarily very interesting. But I like to use it to seed other downstream devices. By combining effects that process this noise, I can create endless combinations of material without every having to write a note of music.

(Here’s a secret: I’m really, really lazy. I like having music get made, but I don’t always feel like making it. If I can design tools to make music for me, I get happy.)

I’ve created a Set that uses this type of working process. Download it, open it, and listen. It begins making noodly abstract machine sounds immediately and requires no user interaction.

If you’re part of the Ableton Share beta test, you can grab the Set here:
http://www.ableton.com/documents/10288ec1d39f

If you’re not using Share (but you still have a copy of Ableton Live/Suite 8), you can grab it here:
http://www.dennisdesantis.com/freebies/Automatic.als

Here are some ideas to make this Set your own:

• Turn off the Vinyl Distortion effect and use an open hardware input on your audio interface as the seed. If the input is being fed by nothing, you might need to boost the gain (often by a lot) to get any sound at all.
• Instead of an empty line input, try using a mic. This works particularly well on a laptop, for example.
• Instead of empty or noise sources, try using actual musical material as the seed. Feed clips into the device chain and see what you get.
• Tweak everything. There are lots of parameters to play with and even tiny adjustments can yield a completely different result.