Randomly modulated effects in Ableton Live

Adding a touch of unpredictability to static effects treatments can be a great way to maintain listener interest. Here’s how it can be done using LFOs

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Our Live project has two elements – an electro-style beat created in a Drum Rack, and a separate Simpler track triggering a 909 clap on the fourth beat of every bar. To liven things up, let’s apply a randomly modulated effects treatment to the clap.

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Let’s start with a delay. We add Live’s stock delay after the clap. We set timing to an unsynced, loose triplet feel with feedback and dry/wet around 30%. Now to modulate! We add Live’s LFO before the delay and route it to modulate delay time with a Random waveshape.

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Fine-tuning the LFO is key to how the effect sounds. Adjust Rate, Depth, Offset and Smooth amounts to go between wild modulated delay and something more akin to the drift of an old tape machine. We decrease the depth and add smoothing for a fairly subtle effect.

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Now let’s add a randomly modulated reverb. We add Hybrid Reverb (new in Live 11), but any effect of your choice will do fine. We’re using a basic hall reverb sound with dry/wet at 40% – it adds a nice touch of ‘ear candy’ to our clap.

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Again, we add Live’s LFO before the effect, set to a Random waveshape and routed to the reverb’s decay time. This time we keep our LFO synced to project tempo, setting it so modulation changes happen once per bar – this means our reverb changes for every clap.

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As before, by decreasing the Depth of the LFO we can make the effect a bit more subtle, resulting in an interesting shift in perceived space each time our clap hits.