How To Make A Generative Electro Beat In Ableton

Here I run down how to make a generative electro beat In Ableton 12, with just 4 ingredients – A Roland tr808 kick, snare, hi hat and clave drums samples. This is an example of how to use the new step sequencers in Ableton 12, as well as the Drum Sampler. It gets ‘modular’ with the 4 lanes from the Rhythmic Steps sequencer sending modulation to the effects on each different drum sampler for some glitchy, alien electro beats.

You can download the file for this and the samples used in the Downloads section below.

Here’s what we’re making, this is just four 808 drums and step sequenced effects processing….

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See also: All our other Electro Tutorials, including Electro Drum Patterns, and the Studio Brootle 808 Sample Pack mentioned. Also our full Operator Tutorial and How To Make Lo-Fi House, You can find all the free Ableton presets here.

FOLLOW US FOR FREE SAMPLES, RACKS AND TUTORIALS…

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How To Make A Generative Electro Beat In Ableton

Here’s a step by step guide to making this generative electro beat. The key is to make a normal 808 electro beat, then gate the sounds short, add random triggering to other steps so they play randomly. Then each sound is processed with the Drum Samplers build in FX unit, and this is then sequenced with the step sequencer, and even more random is added to those sequences too.

Step 1: Set Up An Electro Beat

Set up an electro beat, with a drum rack and an 808 kick, snare, closed hat and clave, all taken from this free 808 sample pack.

Here’s the pattern I used in the Rhythmic Steps sequencer. The kick is the bottom channel, the snare the second up, the 3rd up is the closed hat and top channel is the clave sample.

Here’s what it sounds like before adding any random triggers, processing or fx send, it’s a fairly typical electro beat…

Step 2: Convert Every Simpler To A Drum Sampler

You can right click on each channel and click “Simpler -> Drum Sampler” and it will convert the sampler to a Drum Sampler unit. These units are great for processing glitch/IDM/electro drums as they have some built in effects. The effects section is great and can also be modulated by velocity, so we can use the sequencer to tweak them and make them move for each note and each drum sound to get glitch effects.

Step 3: Set Up The Step Sequencer

Here I add more hits to the Chance section, but not at full height. The height of each bar is the chance it will play, so a full bar means the hit will definitely play but one that is half the height will have a 50% chance of triggering. So by adding some bars to the hits I will have random hits, but not in random places as I can decide where they will be. You can hear the kicks and snare repeating etc in a more random way now, but the main kicks and snares always hit in the same place.

I am going to use the velocity window to sequence the effects on the Drum Samplers. I can make these really random but changing the loop lengths to 10 and 6 for the clave and hats and then drawing in random velocities.

I also add some rolls which means the drums repeat.

Then I set the drums up and tweak the drum samplers. I will leave the kick as it is as it sounds good and I want it to cut through the mix without effects on it.

Here’s what the kicks sound like with some random triggering added…

Step 4: Add An FX Send.

The effects send is an Echo Unit that adds a ping pong delay for a wide stereo delay and some reverb too. Then there are 2 Beat Repeat units that turn it in an alien landscape as they pick out already reverbed and delays signals and repeat them with pitch decays too.

Here’s what just the effect chain sounds like, it add quite a nice texture/layer under the drum beat….

Step 5: Tweak Drum Sampler And Sequencer Settings For the Snare

For the snare I cut the Length short as I think the gated effect works well for this type of glitchy beat. And I add the Stretch effect and tweak Factor and Gain until it is glitchy. Then I make the low pass filter resonant and set it to be controlled by velocity (I set the slider at the bottom right to 73%) so it jumps around when it is told to by the sequencer and you get this resonant acid-like sound from the snare.

Then press play and while it’s play, go back and tweak the sequencer to taste as well as the velocity amount in the Drum Sampler to get it sounding good.

Here’s what the snare now sounds like with the acid-like step sequenced filter on them..

Step 6: Tweak Drum Sampler And Sequencer Settings For the Closed Hat

I cut the hats short and add the Stretch effect, and tweak it. I make velocity control the effect (setting the bottom right slider to 100%) so the grain changes with the velocity on the sequencer. I set the Factor to 8.85, Grain to 6.19 (adjust yours to taste) and I bring the filter down a bit and the resonant up for an alien like filtering effect.

Then, as with the snare, press play go back and tweak everything while listening to it.

Here’s what the the 808 hats sound like with step sequenced processing, and the fx send:

Step 7: Tweak Drum Sampler And Sequencer Settings For the Clave

I set the clave up to be ring modulated, and then set velocity to modulate it. I add an synched delay with the echo unit too. It sounds really random as the velocity sequence length is set to 10 steps.

Then, as with the other 2 drums tweak everything to taste including the sequencer velocities etc.

Here’s the what the tr808 clave sounds like when processed with effects from Drum Sampler, sequenced by the sequencer, and send to the fx send….

Here’s what the final beat sounds like:

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Generative Electro Beat In Ableton Live – Video:

Here’s a video tutorial and run down of the rack on our Youtube channel….

Please subscribe to the youtube if you haven’t yet: youtube.com/@studiobrootle 

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