The Rhythm Generator in action.
If you’re a budding Brian Eno or merely in need of a little inspiration, Live’s MIDI Generators have got you covered.
Among the many delights of the refreshed Live 12 are a set of five MIDI Generator tools, designed to kickstart the creative process and serve as a starting point for new pieces of music. Each differs in the precise way it generates notes in Live’s clip view, but most are just pseudo‑random generators: no AI here — yet!
They’re found under the Generative Tools tab in the MIDI Clip view. Clicking that tab reveals a drop‑down menu with a choice of Rhythm, Seed, Shape, Stacks and Euclidean. They are similar in that they all feature a Generate button and a set of controls that will create new notes at your command. Generated notes will be filled in for the entire length of the clip, and can be further edited from there as desired.
Rhythm: Drum Pattern Generator
Tired of laboriously clicking in the piano roll to create beats? Tire no more — Rhythm allows you to quickly build up multi‑layered drum patterns. Simply select the drum sound you want from the drop‑down menu (cleverly pre‑filled with the names from a loaded Drum Rack instrument) and adjust the settings to your satisfaction. Leaving the Generate button highlighted will allow you to see (and hear) these changes in real time. Once happy with a pattern, select another drum sound to continue building up a whole rhythm section.
Tip: Remember to de‑select the current set of notes when you’re happy with them; if you don’t, when you select the next drum to work on, those first notes will disappear and reappear on the new sound’s pitch row. You need to deselect them first, and then choose a new drum sound. I confess this confused me at first!
Use Option‑click on a note on the piano roll to quickly select that drum in the Rhythm generator. Neat. And use the ‘Split %’ control to split a random proportion of notes into two: a surprisingly effective way of creating and maintaining variety.
Some combinations of settings, for one drum part alone, can give as many as 6434 different patterns to idly browse on a wet Sunday afternoon! Clearly dialling in something quickly and going with what you like is the order of the day here — be spontaneous, not exhaustive!
Despite the potential for thousands of rhythms to choose from, it is actually pretty quick to dial in a pattern that works for one drum and then move to the next, quickly and effectively building up a complete drum kit part.
Seed: Wide Ranging Note Generator
For fans of human/machine partnerships, Seed can be used for inspiration by allowing it to generate melodic and harmonic ideas. The challenge will be to stick with something that catches your ear and have the discipline to work it up into something more complete, rather than getting distracted with the next pretty riff it comes up with, as it does come up with plenty!
The Seed Generator plays nicely with Live 12’s new scales functionality.
Despite the minimal set of controls (a good thing), it’s extremely easy to generate a wide range of patterns to meet your taste. These can range from delicate melodic lines to monstrous multi‑note black MIDI cacophony!
One of the most interesting things to experiment with is the new set of scales in Live 12, which Seed will use when it generates a new pattern. This really can provide ideas that may not occur to those of you still tied to the major/minor hegemony of Western music, and it can certainly free one’s ears. I would have liked more explanation of the origins and structure of the more exotic of the 35 scales though — something of an educational opportunity missed here.
Whilst experimenting, I found restricting the pitch range of Seed to something like a fourth or a fifth with Voice set to ‘1’ produced some pretty convincing riffs that I could see myself using. And the ‘Messian 4’ scale was great for producing niggly little electronic melodies. (Messian 4 comprises two groups of four chromatic note sequences in the octave. It shouldn’t work, but it does — especially if you manage to get a sequence that doesn’t include a cheesy major third!) By contrast, setting the pitch range octaves‑wide with large polyphony and a ‘floaty’ pad sound can create some lovely background ambient‑style textures.
Shape: Melodic Pattern Generator
Not unlike Seed, Shape generates sequences of melodic notes, but unlike Seed it’s only monophonic — no chords or overlaps here.
Unlike Seed, Shape generates notes monophonically.
This time the notes are generated based on a set of preset shape templates — up, down, arc down, bounce up, etc. Again, experimentation is the order of the day. It’s fun, effective, and (as with all these kinds of note generators) having the discipline to choose just one to work with is the main challenge!
Clicking away from the clip (perhaps to change the sound) and returning to it causes the current notes to be de‑selected, and adjusting the settings again causes a new layer of notes to be overlaid on the previous set, which isn’t always what you want (actually it’s never what you want, as it makes a mess of notes all over the place!). Remember to re‑select all the notes before changing the settings to make adjustments to the pattern you’re working on. And don’t forget to make your own shape if none of the nine presets inspire you — just click and drag on the purple dots to draw a new one.
Stacks: Chord Sequence Generator
Unlike the previous generators, which created semi‑random strings of notes at the click of the button, Stacks is a bit more intentional. You have to decide which chord you want by choosing a root note, the inversion and the chord type. There are 15 chord types available, from the humble three‑note triad to super‑complex jazz‑tastical constructions like ‘Cdim11sus2(no5)’ via slightly more conventional sevenths, ninths and 11ths.
Stacks is dedicated to chord generation.
Use the chord slots in the Stacks window to create up to four chords within the MIDI clip — Stacks will space them equally as they are created. You can then edit each chord to your taste. Alternatively, manually copy and paste a chord or root note multiple times within the clip, and then select each of those chords or root notes in turn, building up its chord using the generator parameters of chord type and inversion.
Producers without deep musical training could easily use Stacks to build up a chord sequence by starting with the root notes of a bass line and choosing a chord for each, going purely by ear.
Producers without deep musical training could easily use Stacks to build up a chord sequence by starting with the root notes of a bass line and choosing a chord for each, going purely by ear. If a melody, root notes and chord sequence are aligned with a Live 12 scale this could definitely get starter musicians up and running in a satisfying way.
For more experienced musicians who already have a chord sequence up and running, Stacks could be used to add spice and interest by stepping through the 15 different chord types and seeing what works. This could add surprising voicing, character and general interest to the sequence.
For power users... well, if you already know your C5maj7add9 from your Cdim11sus2(no5) then you probably don’t need a chord assistant! Or maybe it will give you a shortcut to inputting those chords in the piano roll if you don’t have a keyboard attached at that precise moment — maybe as you cross the Atlantic in your private jet!
There are some quirks. It’s very nice to see pretty little shapes for each of the 15 chord types in the blue outline boxes, but they seem a little arbitrary, and it would be more helpful to have the name of the chord itself written in there, instead of having to glance down to the lower edge of Ableton itself and squint at the chord details written in tiny font there.
Euclidean
For me, Euclidean is the least successful Generator; there’s only up to four notes concurrently possible, and I couldn’t seem to program one note’s rhythm sequence and then move to the next without the previously entered sequence changing as well. The shortcut is to press the central square and have all notes generated at the same time. But then they all use the same settings, so I couldn’t easily have different Euclidean cycles happening at the same time. Maybe fans of mathematically precise spaced beats will gain more mileage than I did from this particular Generator!
Some beats created according to the ancient principles laid down by everyone’s favourite geometrist.