Our inbox is full of fun stuff Ableton lovers can download, so we’re pronouncing it “Ableton Goodies” day. Enjoy! And this one has audio samples you can adapt to other software, too.
Like taking a photo or painting a picture, somehow you can transform the way you see a synth by sampling it. And one person who can really get his head inside a synth is Francis Prève. As a veteran of sound design and documentation, production and music journalism, DJing and the dance music scene, he can be uniquely dedicated to detail and attention. Whereas commenters (cough, here) complain that there’s nothing new to talk about in a two-oscillator synth, Fran can obsess over nuance – as if saying that there’s nothing new in red wine.
So, think of this Simpler pack both as some free samples of the synth, and a portrait of what about this synth is special to Fran. The KORG MS-20 Mini here gets a full workout. And everything defaults to “init” default modes, LFOs and envelopes off: this is a sound design pack for other people who care about building sounds.
The presets:
Ring Fizz – Combining the MS20’s ring mod (using a major third interval) with super-resonant filters resulted in this nasty patch. Check out the freaky aliasing in the top octaves.
Reso Square – I tuned the filters to match the square wave oscillators, which added a light quiver to the overall tone.
Res Saw Interval – Interval tuning on a pair of sawtooth oscillators, again with the resonance cranked for additional harmonic emphasis.
Noise Square – Using the MS20’s patch bay, I modulated the filter cutoff with some white noise. Dirty.
Filter Frenzy – With the filter resonance adding some “ghost” tones, I dropped one of the oscillators by an octave to increase the low-end content. For some serious boom, lower the cutoff frequency on this Simpler patch.f
Detuned Pulse – A pair of pulse waves detuned with the lowpass open and the highpass subtly boosting the lows.
Have at it:
Free Korg MS-20 Ableton Instruments
And while it doesn’t really have anything to do with the MS-20, let’s turn over to Francis’ musical side.
I love this quirky-groovy track that Francis did called “McFooty.” It’s also done with a KORG – remarkably, the iPolysix iPad app.
He can also select tech-house and dance music like no one I know.