If you’re using Ableton Live, you simply need to know about Sonic Bloom. It’s like a spa-slash-university for your Live-using self: you’ll come out refreshed, smarter, and even a bit better looking.
Creator Madeleine Bloom has been busy. The site, at the age of three this month, now has five hundred tips, tutorials, and informational articles on Ableton Live. (And, occasionally, you’ll pick up an Oblique Strategy, or two – like fill every beat.) There are some ninety freebies, too – from Live Packs to skins and colors to keep your Live set looking spiffy. For instance, just this week, Madeleine shared a Max for Live-based tool that automatically colorizes your clips, free. Very cool.
Madeleine herself is an interesting character. Raised in Berlin back when she was still on the DDR side of the wall, she was from an early age a singer and multi-instrumentalist, turning to electronic music tech as a way of fitting a one-person show into a rig that could travel on public transit – no car keys needed. She also has an impressive technical resume to match the musicianship, including a stint in support for Ableton (yes, that shows).
There are few places to find this kind of in-depth knowledge. It’s not just a bunch of lessons behind a paywall, but quick tips and inspiration, too, something that can spark an idea in a few moments, free downloads you can play with when your Live project is feeling drab. And those are things we certainly believe in.
So, we wanted to celebrate, too. Madeleine is helping us do just that by offering CDM readers the exclusive debut of a free Live Pack based on her own vintage Bontempi B3 electric organ. You get samples for the 25 individual keys, plus six-chord automatic accompaniment and a Leslie-style effect produced by the onboard fan. Those sounds – some of them blissfully just out of tune – are here in two fully macro-mapped Instrument Racks as well as a raw Simpler preset, set for use in Live 9. (Note: as with any Live Pack, you can use this download even if you aren’t an Ableton user, by grabbing the raw samples.)
Listen to the results:
Want more? There’s also a 50%-off fire sale on absolutely everything through Sunday the 26th at midnight (extended), in honor of the anniversary. That includes stuff like the Max for Cats sound packs, of which we’re a fan, which now start as low as 5€/US$7. Courses start at 10€ / $14.50, and, well, everything is half-off.
Plus, we’re giving away five free downloads each of:
Ableton Live 9 Essentials + Push the Envelope Bundle (available in English and German)
value: €45/$62
Max for Cats Complete Collection (six packs full of expert-designed devices)
http://sonicbloom.net/packs/max-for-live-devices/max-for-cats-complete-collection/
value: €55/$75
Wow, very nice. To qualify for the download, just sign up. (If you like, you can also opt into the newsletter we’re launching this fall with more freebies and tips.)
Sign up for a free organ download (and a chance to win more freebies)
(apologies for the lame Google form, but promise to make that work – we have some other big projects in the works that I think you’ll like, hence I’m a bit distracted!)
And good luck. Either way, you’ll get a link to download the free organ straight away from us. (We’ll email instructions and tips in a separate email by Monday.)
Happy Bloom Day, then.
http://sonicbloom.net/
Oh, and check out Frau Bloom’s music, too:
http://madeleinebloom.com/