Ableton Wavetable Presets

Ableton Wavetable is one of the best plugins around. We put together a few free presets for wavetable below, focused mainly on techno and body music, with a description of each.

Wavetable works by playing a sound from a table of different waveforms. This table can be scrolled to find new and similar sounds. Where it comes into it’s own in modern synthesis, is modulating the scrolling the wavetable, which can result in really aggressive sounds from barking basses to pulsating drones.

See also: Ableton Operator Presets, Ableton Operator Tutorial, Ableton Wavetable Tutorial, plus our UK Garage and How To Make Dubstep guides. You can find all our free presets for VSTs here and all our Ableton presets here. Also: Free Ableton Wavetable Presets: Drones.

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Download The Wavetable Presets:

Downloads

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Update 2024 – 2 New Wavetable Presets

Dusty Cold Wavetable Pad (with rack)

This presets is based around Wavetable, but also has some other effects for movement and crackle…. Wavetable produces the pad sounds, and then it has a vinyl distortion unit adding vinyl crackles into the effects chain. Which you can see in the first image. Then it goes through a ‘parallel filters’ group I made which is 2 different filters moving with 2 different LFOs and effects. These thicken the sound and add a lot of movement. Then the effects chain is finished off with Echo and Reverb. The Macro controls filter and driving the pad sound, then the volumes of the 2 filter fx, plus Echo and Reverb controls.

Wavetable Techno And Rave Preset Pack

Here’s 5 Wavetable presets focusing on dark and detuned techno stabs and basses.

A Rundown Of Our Older Free Ableton Wavetable Presets

Here are our Wavetable presets, with screenshots, audio and description of each. But first download them…

Flight Path Bass

We made a pitch diving detuned bass. Two of Wavetable’s oscillators are pitched low and then detuned against each other by the maximum of 50 ct each. Both using different classic waveforms from Basics>Basic Shapes. Then a sub bass under it from the SUB oscillator to beef up the low end.

The filters are set to take the top end off with a low pass filter and then they add a lot of Drive with the OSR setting.

You can see that the only modulation I added is the global Pitch to Envelope 2 to give it that pitch glide.

FM Techno Patch 1

Here is a detuned and harmonically rich Techno Stab. There are two different waveforms used from Basics. Both pitched down 1 octave (12 semitones) and detuned by 50 ct each way. And a sub bass under it, with Tone turned up to add more harmonics as I want this to be thick and harmonically rich.

Osc 2 has Warp set at -100 which makes it even more harmonically rich.
Drive is added at the filter section with both filters on OSR mode with drive.
Unison is also added with 4 voices.

There is a lot modulation added to the sound based on the incoming notes, so if you play higher or lower the synths settings change quite a lot.

There is also movement added by modulating unison and filter frequency. These all contribute to a thick techno stab.

Moving Unison Pad

This uses 2 Complex waveforms with Oscillator effects on each. Sync on one and FM on the other. A Sub Osc underneath them. Then two filters with a lot of drive on each.

In the modulations sections there is a lot of movement assigned to Env 2 and Env 3. Unison is also modulated with the LFO and an envelope. This makes for a really thick and noisy moving tone.

Noise Drone

A noise drone made from a Complex Waveform (Bit Ring) and Pouring Rain Noise waveform. With oscillator effects on both, plus a sub osc. Two heavily driven filters. All modulated by two envelopes and two LFOs for a thick and noisy evolving drone.

Pulsing Bass Drone

A really nasty bass tone using all 3 oscillators. No detuning on the oscillators or any unison, the thickness comes from the modulations, especially the PW and Sync effects for the two main oscillators being moved constantly by LFOs. A lot of movement (modulation) and drive distortion on each filter too.

Reecey Bass

A dark drum n bass style bass patch. A fairly simple patch that produces a big sound using detuned oscillators driven at the filters. Plus some slight pitch envelope.

Sinister FM Sub Bass

This bass uses 3 low passed oscillators. The oscillator effects are set to FM and these are modulated with an envelope. It also has modulation and distortion on the filter.

Techno Dark Bass

I really like this detuned sub bass. Sub 3 waveforms with PW effects on each, modulated with LFOs, and pitched low and detuned. A low sub osc for added bass weight. Movement with an envelope on the filter section and heavy drive distortion too.

Techno Drone Tone

A monstrous bass tone, with lots of parameters modulated by a beat-synched lfo to give it a pulsating feeling in time with the beat. 3 oscs, detuned, pitched down. Wavetable position, and Wavetable Effects modulated by the LFO, plus drive distortion too for a really tough nasty bass tone.

Techno EBM Bass

A short tight bass hit for EBM or techno body music type sequences. Fairly simple waveforms and effects on them, with position and effects modulated by a fairly quick LFO, with a tight envelope on the driven filter for a snappy bass.

Techno Metallic Bass

This patch started off as a high end techno stab with the percussive organ wave tables but turned into a techno FM bass stab. Really detuned and thick from the 7 voice unison and the oscillator effects FM controls modulated by LFO. Also the Filter Envelope’s decay is modulated by LFO, it is tight and snappy, but there is some movement in it’s snappiness due to the LFO.

Wobbly Sub

A wobbly sub with 3 oscs. All moving from FM controls and filters being modulated by LFO. Slow the rate of LFO1 down slightly and you can hear how the whole thing is pulsating from it.

Even More Wavetable Patches….

We’ve also made a few different posts with free Ableton racks that use Ableton Wavetable, here’s a list of them below, but you can get them all in the Downloads section above, along with the others in this post.

Free Ableton Wavetable Drum n Bass Reese Presets – 5 separate dark growling reese bass drum n bass presets for Wavetable. They are detuned and distorted, with wavetable scrolling and distortion modulation for growling dark basslines.

Free Ableton Wavetable Presets: Drones – a free Ableton Wavetable preset pack of dark, detuned and eerie drones, making use of the modulations to move the wavetable and modulate the effects for evolving drones.

Ableton Wavetable Techno Stab – tutorial on making a ‘Birmingham Techno’ style detuned techno stab in Ableton live with native plug ins only. Influenced by Surgeon, Oscar Mulero and early Jeff Mills.

See also: our UK Garage Drum Pattern guide for a UK Garage bass Wavetable bass preset. And our How To Make Dubs t ep post for 2 dubstep bassline patches.