Ableton Forum

Thought I would start a thread about go-to devices you use when you need that spark of inspiration.

I'll start with a short list.

Nova3 by Tonecarver
Anything from glitchmachines. (They always nail their randomization functions.)
K-devices Autobeat.

Anyone else want to share some cool stuff?

If this thread is bogus, please ignore.

I find switching up my hardware to be inspirational. If I'm not getting anywhere on a keyboard, I'll switch to Push. Nothing on Push? I'll move to a drum machine. No luck there? Try playing around on Ukulele. I also like to move between DAWs. Recently working a lot on the Elektron sequencer in the Analog Rytm. Man, that is very inspirational.

Re-compose liquid notes

Eno's Oblique Strategies

sit still quietly for three minutes

Samplr on the iPad.

u-he DIVA

Playing my Rhodes. Always seem to come away from playing it - even if it's just practicing, with something.

sit still quietly for 4 minutes.

this one

helped for me

I noodle on my bass over a simple drum pattern.

Electric guitar if I'm in a synth rut.

Messing around on the Moog with a bass sound.

Found sounds run through granular synthesis of some kind, M4L, or Metasynth etc.

Recently picked up Push and already I can tell that it's going to replace Geist and other Drum machine plug ins for me.
Too bad it's a dud in ReWire...

record something with a microphone. Make a loop of it - either as a clip or as a wav in sampler. Start playing it, repitching - timestretching - slicing - resampling.

In the spirit of “let the computer do all the damn work”.

Load up Maschine Expansion pack kits with patterns. Find a pattern I like. Disable pattern load and flip through different kits. Once I find something interesting that works bounce all the stems to audio.

Repeat a second time.

Load all the stems in a DAW set and delete the ones that don’t work.

Slap on a bunch of Fabfilter effects all over the place.

Skilled genius!

+1 for Oblique Strategies

Run some old wave files back through Molekular while flipping through the presets and fiddling with them. Record and repeat.