MD1 is the full library of famous and obscure hardware drum machines your Ableton Move needs – plus a bunch of Drift presets and tonal samples, to boot. It’s optimized for Ableton Move, and comes with well-organized sample files you can use anywhere.
MD1 is the first release by MID, which, while it’s not publicly revealed here, is long-time friend-of-the-site Benjamin Weiss, who contributed to Ableton Move and Native Instruments Maschine hardware. He’s also Nerk of TokTok, which means he’s also associated with an obscure legend of German drum machine history, the TokTok-edition Jomox Xbase09. You’ll therefore of course find Xbase09, and a grungy, hard-hitting hardware vibe throughout.
That means in addition to the Roland CR-78, TR-505, TR-606, TR-626, TR-808, and TR-909, you’ll also find plenty of rarities. There’s the ultra-rare Cheetah MD-16 in there, the other Berlin legend MFB, Yamaha RY90, MPC 3000, plus synths like the MS-20, DX7, and SH-101. Those vintage finds are accompanied by new digital and analog instruments, too. Tonal elements come from both the drum machines and synths – and visa versa, you get synthesized drum sounds from the synths.
All of these are brilliantly organized into 20 full kits with both drums and tonal parts, 50 independent Drift synth patches, and 20 kits designed with “vintage groove” so you can get that hardware feel right away. There are even full Sets combining elements so you can try jamming immediately and not get lost in preset navigation. They’re all great track starters, and the library packs that hardware feeling down into Move’s ultra-compact space.
You can import the pre-made kits in Ableton Move or Ableton Note, or work with the samples directly. You can’t use them in Ableton Live directly, which is a limitation of the ablpresetbundle format, though I would imagine Ableton may address that at some point. (The workaround is to load them into Move or Note first, then transfer the session. Going the opposite direction, if you’re interested, I note Mark Mosher posted a workaround technique back in October for exporting Move/Note-compatible presets from Ableton Live.)
This one is a must. The included Ableton content is great, but this is like having a perfectly outfitted hardware studio ready to go, with a fully stocked library of gear.
MID’s MD1 is available from the Istotonik Studio shop, our partner:
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MD1 for Ableton Move by MID
Famous and obscure hardware gear