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1. Synthesising an evolving pad with Ableton Analog and Panagement CM

1 Expansive pads can conjure up a wealth of different moods, so let’s create a layered, evolving, ethereal pad in Live 9. Create a new MIDI channel, drop in an Instrument Rack and drag in Live’s Analog synth. For a thicker, dual sawtooth sound, let’s tune the first saw oscillator an octave above the second – raise Ocs 1’s Octave dial to 1. 2 A typical pad usually fades in and out, so let’s dial that in via the synth’s amplitude envelope. Click on the Amp1 section and adjust Attack time to 500ms, Sustain to max and Release to 3.00s. We’ll add LFO-driven pitch movement by activating the Vib button and turning it up to 55%. This wobbles a bit too fast, so turn the Rate down to 2.5Hz to slow it down. 3 A pitched-up synth layer will add movement, texture and ‘shimmer’. Expand the Instrument Rack’s chain menu (its middle left-hand) icon, right-click and select Create Chain, then drag an instance of Operator onto this parallel chain. For a gritty, high-pitched tone, tune Osc A’s Coarse dial up to 8 and set Wave to Sine 4 Bit. Pull Level down to -20dB. 4 Let’s turn this static layer into a rhythmic, moving one. Drop in an Arpeggiator at the start of the chain. Set the style to Random and the Rate to 1/24. For extra stereo movement, place an Auto Pan after Operator in the plugin chain and turn the Amount up to 50%. The Arpeggiator and Auto Pan interplay prevents the arpeggio from sounding too mono or static. 5 It’s processing time! If we place the effects after the entire Instrument Rack, we process both layers as one whole signal. First, let’s spread out the sound with Panagement CM: drop an instance after the Instrument Rack and turn the Mono To Stereo amount control up to the max 100%. This gets us closer to the wide, expansive sound we’re after! 6 To shave off some harsh treble, insert Ableton’s Auto Filter after Panagement CM. With Cutoff set to 2kHz, raise the Envelope to 60 and LFO Amount to 5 to make the filter sweep up and down. Finally, throw Ableton’s Filter Delay and Reverb after Auto Filter; turn the Reverb’s Decay Time up to 8.00s for cavernous repeats and ambience.