Ableton Live Pack #51: Commodore 64 Drums

March 15, 2012 Brian Funk

Continuing in the study of unusual percussion sounds with Ableton Live, I recently consulted Tomislav from Bedroom Producer's Blog. Tomislav has utilized his Commodore 64's famous SID chip to produce a collection of 8 bit samples that are sure to take you back to sitting on the living room carpet trying to save various princesses from an assortment of comical evil-doers. For this week's free Ableton Live Pack, I've used his drum samples. These are some fun and nostalgia-inducing samples, that can serve a variety of purposes. I've racked them up into Ableton's Drum Racks and added an exciting array of effects. One of the cool things about drum racks is the ability to give the instrument its own send and return channels. It's a very convenient way to add effects to your sounds without setting up additional channels in your Live set. So, I've given the Commodore 64 drums three effect sends. There is reverb which also has control over the reverb time. Next is a delay, set to repitch, mode, allowing for some cool analog delay effects. And finally, a New York Style or Parallel compression. This is a really useful effect for drum sounds because it allows you to squeeze and beef up your sound, but also retains the dynamics of the original. The rack has control of the pitch of the samples, allowing you to raise or drop them by 48 steps. As you might imagine, this drastically changes things up. Finally there is Ableton's Arpeggiator effect, which can be helpful in creating rhythmical patterns.

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I hope you enjoy this Ableton Live Rack and find it useful. Please head over to BedroomProducersBlog.com, thank Tomislav, and enjoy the wealth of information and resources Tomislav adds to the blog daily.

Below is a tribute to Jack Tramiel made with these drums.

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AfroDJRacks for Ableton Live