Ableton Live Rack #39: Christmas Tree Synth

The Christmas Season is upon us :) This week I have an Ableton Live Rack to help celebrate.  I just put up my Christmas tree and put on some lights that play Christmas songs.  The songs are comprised of very simple monophonic melodies, coming out of a tiny little speaker, but as soon as I heard it I was transported back to my youth sitting around the tree late at night.  Naturally I had to sample it.  So I put my AKG C3000 right up to the speaker and let it play.  I selected four different notes to use in the instrument.  The lights only play notes ranging just over an octave, so there's not a lot of choice.  From there I placed it into an Ableton Live Device Rack and went to town.  I put some reverb and delay in a separate rack, inside the main instrument, to allow you to mix in some space without drowning out the original note.  There's an arpeggiator hooked up to the macro knobs, as well as Sampler's Shaper control for some added grit.  The different samples can be played all at the same time, three at the same time, two at the same time or just one, if you are a purist like me. I've also looped one of the samples so that you can play the instrument with some sustain; the original notes are just short bleeps and bloops. The result is a very lo-fi quaint little synth, but at least for me, it has a lot of charm.

So follow along in the video, you can see the tree in action (moments before my cat Theo decided to start attacking it) and I will take you through the different components of the instrument.  I hope you enjoy it and even more importantly I hope you have a Merry Christmas and an overall Happy Holiday Season.  In this time of thanks, I'd like to thank anyone who has stopped by and checked out some of these racks, read the posts, and listened to some of my music.  It's been really special to me to share my journey in music making with so many of you and it gives me motivation to keep moving forward and trying out new things.  Next week I will bring you the next installment of my Zebra Attack! collaboration with Mark Mosher.  Take care!