VCR WAVE
Ableton Live Pack

Dripping with nostalgia and lo-fi charm, these 40 Instruments were made by recording Teenage Engineering’s OP-1’s Dr. Wave synth to a VHS tape. Those recordings were used to create this lush collection of sounds.

• 40 Ableton Live Instrument Racks

• 1 Ableton Live Audio Effect Rack

• Lush and glorious sound of VHS in your music

*Requires Ableton Live 10.1 Standard or Above

The OP-1’s Dr. Wave Synth Engine

Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 has a number of great synth engines. Among my favorites is Dr. Wave, which uses “frequency domain synthesis.” As with most of the OP-1 engines, it is difficult to describe, but it operates by morphing through various waveforms while introducing interesting detuning and chorusing. There's a deep explanation of it at OP-101. Regardless of what it is doing, I think of it as some kind of love affair between chip tunes sounds and supersaw waves.

Synthesizing and Sampling

I went on a deep dive synthesizing sounds using Dr. Wave and recording long single notes of the patches I came up with.

After that, I made the ultimate sacrifice and recorded those sounds over my VHS copy of Pump Up the Volume, starring Christian Slater. I’m sure this is a crime in certain parts of the world, so please don’t report me; it undoubtedly contributed to the personality of the resulting instruments.

Building Ableton Live Instrument Racks

Once I recorded the samples from the VCR back into Ableton Live, I began building the Instrument Racks. My first impression of the sounds was delight by what the VCR had done to them. Each sound had a new haze over it. Some of them must have crossed worn parts of the VHS tape, as they contained some extra noises and pitch fluctuation. It was exactly what I was looking for!

I built a two-chained Instrument Rack to house the samples. You get control over the a Low Pass Filter, its Envelop, and the ADSR Envelop. The first chain contains the synth sample, the second chain has a sample of blank tape with characteristic VCR noise, hum, and hiss. You can adjust how much extra VCR Noise you want, and if you go into the VCR Noise Chain, you can filter out some of the low hums and even create a phasing filter using the LFO controls.

How Healthy is Your VCR?

If the natural degradation of the VCR transfer isn’t enough, I built a separate Audio Effect Rack to help you emphasize the nostalgia or add it to any other sounds in your production. VHS HEALTH allows you to add pitch drifting, distortions, chorusing, and delays to the sounds. It’s great for adding just a little health VHS quality or emulating a nearly broken VCR sound.

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