Compress Distort for Ableton Live
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3 Tools for compressing and distorting your sounds in interesting ways!
Reciprocator! The mythical beast that has been shared around the underground in various iterations since the times before hyperglitch when, legend has it, that Rob Clouth designed “the cuntpressor” and used it to make some very insane sounds on Vaetxh – Libet Tones. Since then, the technique has been passed on by word of mouth and imitation, making it into the main stream through the video by Mr Bill about dynamics processing (who’s title escapes me at the moment) where it was emulated with a technique I showed him using many utilities and a limiter, and something similar is even featured in a Tipper track (who’s name also escapes me). Now I bring you, the reciprocator! It takes your signal and multiplies it by the reciprocal of the envelope follower to bring out all the juicy details, basically turning everything into FULL VOLUME or muted. This is the OG method afaik, and still brings many great sounds to the table. (this tool was developed with the help of the incredible artist Amaranth Todd, who you should definitely check out on soundcloud – https://soundcloud.com/amaranth_todd)
WaveDrawshaper! I got sick of looking for a waveshaper where I could just draw the damn waveform so I made one. You can get all sorts of strange sounds out of this bad boi, from tube amp emulation, to harsh clipping, to bit reduction. Try your hand at the divination station and conjure your own secret flavor of distortion today!
Comprest! This is a compressor with a subtle design change. Instead of using RMS or peak detection, it uses a customizable envelope follower for detection, this allows you to get some insanely slappy, smacky, smashy smashy sounds, and even some distortion, depending on how you set the controls (and it has a high pass filter on the detection circuit, which can be easily extended to be any filter shape you want with some light max patching – btw if you want maxforlive lessons sign up here lessons.woulg.com). I find it works best to dial it in very aggressively, and then blend it nicely with the dry signal. Have a peak inside if you’ve even been curious how a compressor works (this isn’t how they usually work, but it’s a good intro to the concepts).