Brian Funk

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FREEZE Ableton Live Pack: Create Dense Layers and Atmospheres

One of my favorite little-known feature on Ableton Live's Reverb and Delays is the Freeze function. The Freeze button allows you to capture a moment in a sound and endlessly repeat it. It can be a great tool for making soundscapes and textures that can be used to build a track or add supportive tones to a piece of music.

Live's Reverb and Ping Pong Delay both have Freeze functions that endlessly loop a moment of sound. 

FREEZE Ableton Live Pack

I've harnessed the power of the freeze function and combined it with lots of other built-in effects to create FREEZE, which is a collection of Audio Effect Racks and Instrument Racks that will help you make some incredible sounds with ease. Here's an overview of the Pack and some ways you can use it to make your own dense layers, instruments, and atmospheres.

FREEZE Captures Hidden Worlds Within Any Sound

FREEZE is an Ableton Live Pack with Audio Effect Racks that take advantage of the freeze function on Reverb and Delay. You can "freeze" a moment in sound and then apply a variety of effects, or apply the effects first and then "freeze" that processed moment. This allows you to unlock different textures and tones within any sound the effects are applied to.

FREEZE contais 13 Audio Effect Racks for manipulating and "freezing" a moment in any sound.

In the following piece of music, I applied some FREEZE Audio Effect Racks to a simple, one-chord piano track and a field recording of birds chirping. All of the textures and tones were created using only Audio Effect Racks included with FREEZE.

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FREEZE - FX on Piano and Birds

Deep, Evolving Instruments Made from Samples of FREEZE FX

Once you've applied the effects to a sound, that sound can be recorded to another track and used for a variety of different purposes. My favorite is to drop that new sample into Live's Simpler device. I've created a collection of soundscapes and placed those into all new Instrument Racks. The sounds can be further manipulated into interesting and evolving instruments. The result are instruments with lots of movement and texture that feel alive and organic.

FREEZE contains 17 Instrument Racks made from samples of soundscapes recorded with the FREEZE Audio Effects.

In the track below, I used just a few of the Instrument Racks that come with FREEZE to create a dense soundscape.

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FREEZE - Instrument Racks


FREEZE
Ableton Live Pack

Unlock hidden sonic worlds in any sound. Contains Audio Effect Racks that allow you to find dense textures within your sounds, using Live's freeze function on its Reverb and Delay devices. Includes dense and evolving Instrument Racks made from frozen sounds created with the Freeze FX.

*Requires Ableton Live 9.7 Standard or Above

*Freeze is the February 2018 download for the AfroDJMac Music Production Club