DM ARP 2600 Drums is a free Live Pack consisting of 8 Ableton Drum Racks and 150 original analog percussion sounds sampled from Daniel Miller’s own ARP 2600 modular synthesizer. Extensive controls for real-time sound tweaking and bonus sequence clips are included.
DM ARP 2600 Drums is a free Live Pack consisting of 8 Ableton Drum Racks and 150 original analog percussion sounds sampled from Daniel Miller’s own ARP 2600 modular synthesizer. Extensive controls for real-time sound tweaking and bonus sequence clips are included.

Ableton Operator Free Alternative
Operator Ableton Free Download
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Apr 01, 2020 Ableton Operator provides a unique hybrid approach to additive, subtractive, and FM synthesis (somewhat like the Synclavier did) and is one of the most deceptively powerful softsynths available. Even so, many musicians shy away from using it fully because FM synthesis remains opaque despite its prevalence for more than 30 years.

Ableton Operator Tutorial

Welcome to our Ableton Operator Tutorial… This is not an academic guide, it is an evening project to get to grips with the synth quickly. We’ll make some Operator presets along the way to show it’s features. And I will give some free presets away and deconstruct them to understand sound design with Operator.

It is such a versatile synth. It has the characteristics of an 80s digital FM synth but with analogue modelling filters and all in a clean modern interface for detailed sound design in an easy format.

What Is Operator? And What Is Fm Synthesis?

Operator is an FM synthesizer. So what is a an FM synthesizer I hear you say? It is a digital synthesizer. Most analogue synths like a MiniMoog or Arturia MicroBrute are subtractive synths, but in the 1980s digital synths came on the market like the Yamaha DX7.

Digital FM synths are a totally different beast than you might be used to with a standard analog subtractive synth. FM synths use an oscillator to modulate the frequency of another to make a simple sinewave much more complex harmonically. Operator actually has 4 of these oscillators. Traditional FM uses Sinewaves, and multiplies them together to make more harmonic content. Operator has a lot of different waveforms, as well as sine waves, which lead to interesting sounds and combinations.

Off the bat – lets make a simple patch so you can hear a simple FM example…

So load up Operator and in a new channel, make a midi clip that plays a note at c3 for almost the length of a bar, and loop it for a bar, so you can hear the note playing. You can hear oscillator A playing.

Now slowly turn up the level of oscillator B and you can hear the sound change. You are NOT hearing Oscillator A and B, what you ARE hearing is the sound of oscillator A’s frequency being modulated by the wave from oscillator B. You are hearing Oscillator A, and the effect of Oscillator B frequency modulating Oscillator A.
The Display in the middle will also change to show Oscillator B’s settings when you click on it…

In the display – turn down the Sustain of Oscillator B to ‘-inf’. You can now hear the envelope of Oscillator B effecting the frequency off Oscillator A. This is the basics of FM Synthesis. It should sound like this….

Now change the Fine pitch of Oscillator B and the sound will change. Note you are not hearing Oscillator B directly at all here, just its affect on the frequency of Oscillator A. By adding the second Oscillator we are adding harmonics, and by using an envelope we can start to sculpt our sound. So the sound changes over the length of the note.

It is not the most complex patch ever, but this is the basics of FM synthesis, we’ll go on to make much more usable sounds later…

Now bring in Oscillator C and D. You can right-click on them and select ‘copy from Oscillator B’ to copy it’s settings as a starting point, then change some parameters like ‘Coarse’ to change the pitch significantly. You are hearing Oscillator A modified by Oscillator B, which is modified by Oscillator C which is modified by Oscillator D.

Following on from this, here is a basic deep house bass to show this simple FM applied to sound design that can actually be used…

Deep House Bass Operator Preset

As part of this Ableton Operator Tutorial we’ll be making a few presets…. Start with a fresh version of Operator, and play this at C1 (2 octaves down). I used this midi…

Turn the filter freq down and turn Envelope up to 100% in the central display so that the filter will open with the envelope settings. Put decay at 3.50 s

Don’t change Osc A at all, as the default sinewave is what we want… then on Osc B, set wave to Sq 3 (a square wave) and Coarse to 2 and turn up the Level, you can hear it adding harmonics if you play a note. You can play with the Osc B envelope to make the Sustain and Decay shorter and hear it’s affect on the sound.

You get the idea. This is a fairly common FM bass sound that is easy to set up. You could try adding another oscillator with a different Coarse setting and you can get a more EBM/industrial style bass hit (we’ll do something like that later in this article…).

Operators Main Sections

Here’s a quick rundown of Operator’s main sections to get you acquainted with it a.s.a.p….

4 Operators/Oscillators (left)

The four oscillators, operators, sound sources, (what ever you want to call them!) are on the left, with these controls…

Coarse Gmod free to play pc. : this is NOT an octave knob like on subtractive synth. It is in harmonic ratios. Yes this is probably different to what you are used to but don’t worry! Basically 1 is the default. 0.5 is an octave lower. 2 is an octave up, 4 is another octave higher that that.

The Fine tuning knob represents a whole octave, but it is split into 1000.

The Fixed button: makes the frequency fixed and changes the Coarse to know to select the frequency, and the Fine tuning change to Multiply.

In the centre display you can change the Wave type (it is a sinewave for standard FM – but there are many other types to choose from) – play a sound with one Oscillator and then change the wave form types to hear the difference. When you start using more oscillators with FM the combinations are very different.

Drawing you own wave form – yes you can draw your own waveform!… Click on Wave and make sure the Display has Oscillator selected and not the filter and then just draw it in with the mouse. You can get some interesting wave forms this way. You can set the resolution on the right and by right-clicking (on a pc or ctrl-clicking on a mac) you can select just the odd or even parts and edit just them – give it a go and then draw with the mouse. You can save these waveforms for later in the right-click menu (‘Export AMS’).

Feedback is to make an Oscillator modulate itself (this can only be done if no other Oscillator is modulating it).

Phase is to dictate where in the cycle the wave starts – increase it with the mouse and look at the wave form move. The R next to it is to select whether to retrigger the wave to just let it run free.

Osc<Vel is to make the oscillator change pitch based on velocity. This is really good for the carrier modules – lets make a patch to demonstrate this…. Make operator play a midi clip like this with different note and velocities (note the different velocities at the bottom of the image) :

Then play a patch with 2 oscillators, both sinewaves. And while it is playing turn up the Osc>Vel amount for Osc B (highlighted in red in the image below and you’ll hear what happens…. The Q box just means it is Quantised to it harmonic values (the same values as the Coarse tuning knob). So this sequence is like manually changing Oscillator B’s Coarse tuning knob for each note.

Here is what it sounds like – the first bar is with Osc>Vel at 0 and the second bar it is about 55% – you can hear even the second oscillators pitch being independent of the overall pitch. the midi is controlling overall pitch and the velocity is changing the pitch of Oscillator 2 independently. Try it yourself and change the velocities.

You can do some very interesting sequences with this technique, I love using a max for live sequencer on Osc>Vel as well as pitch. For some mad sequences.

Copying Oscillator settings from one to another: you can copy the Oscillator settings from one Oscillator to another (or the envelope settings too). You just need to right click (on a

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