Free Ableton AfroDJRack #65: RubberBand Synth

A Simple RubberBand Becomes a Deep and Versatile Ableton Live Synthesizer!

I recently got inspired  to buy a contact mic by Diego Stocco's "Music from Nature."  Before I go on, let's watch the video, Diego is the man.

Being in the spirit of helping the little guy, I turned to Creme DeMentia.  Creme DeMentia is a pretty awesome DIY circuit bending and contact microphone company.  I bought one of their homemade contact mics for $15.  These little guys (mine is pictured below) are made from a beer bottle cap and two two-liter soda bottle caps.  Check out this awesome video of them putting it to use.

I've never owned a contact mic, so I can't compare it to other companies, but I love this mic!  Contact microphones are placed directly on whatever object you are recording, and it picks up any vibrations within that object.  What a great sound design tool!    The mic is durable and well built, and I find the homemade-ness of it to be endearing.

So, for my first endeavor with my new contact mic, I decided to try to record a rubberband.  As you can see from the video, my cat, Theo, was just as excited about this project as I was.  The resulting sound was a much cleaner, punchier recording than I was able to achieve with a condenser mic (I tried to do this months ago, but it wasn't sounding very good).  I recorded the samples into Ableton Live, did a little high pass filtering to remove some sub bass frequencies, and dropped them into Sampler.  From there, I added some effects, an FM oscillator, and an arpeggiator to create this, the 65th Free Ableton Live AfroDJRack.  Check out the video below for an in-depth walkthrough and just below that is the free download, enjoy!