Messing Around in Ableton

Today I decided to take a different approach to working in Ableton, less about trying to finish a track or “be productive,” and more about just having fun with sound. After reading that interview with Hekt and thinking about how he treats production as a playful, open ended process, I felt inspired to do the same, letting myself just explore without pressure.

I opened up a blank Ableton project and loaded up Operator, which we’ve discussed in class as a powerful FM synth. I didn’t go in with any particular plan—just started messing with waveforms and parameters to see what would happen. It was actually really freeing not trying to make something specific.

Eventually I landed on something I really liked: I set oscillator A to a low-pitched square wave, to create clicky pulses, with the pitch envelope used to speed up and slow down the frequency of each pulse. I then ran it through Spectral Resonator and assigned an LFO to the tilt parameter, which made each click tail off differently depending on the modulation, giving each transient its own metallic echo.

Then I started messing with the coarse pitch to sculpt the timbre, and experimented more with the pitch envelope, making it pitch down over time. To make it even more interesting, I added a second oscillator with a Sin 8 waveform to it a bit-reduced, squeaky edge, almost like a broken toy or a squealing hinge.

I put OTT on the chain to boost the weird artefacts and bring out more texture, It sounded kind of gross but in s really good way. I grouped it all into an instrument rack, assigning each parameter I had fun messing with to different macros, and saved it to use in future projects.

I think what I took away from today is that sometimes the best thing I can do is just sit down and make weird noises for the sake of it, I didn’t save a project file of composition or try to build a full track, just explored what was possible and enjoyed the process. And honestly, I think I probably learned more about operator doing that than I would have by forcing myself to “finish something.”