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...