#1

Gradient

Intuitive preset interpolation

Sometimes your best idea is just between two you’ve already had. Gradient is like a color picker for device presets in Ableton Live, aiding in your search for magnificent purples between the reds and blues in your existing library. Put in slightly less metaphoric terms, Gradient allows you to discover and design presets for your favorite Live devices, instruments, and VSTs in a new way that’s fun and intuitive.

What it is: A tool to design and discover device configurations in Ableton Live.

Why it is: This device isn’t a randomizer, but it borrows a lot from the mentality a randomizer
is approached with. It’s tempting to smash the Mutate button, but that leads to very inconsistant results. I spent a lot of time thinking of ways to develop a randomizer that produced reliable output, but to do so required meaningful constraints. Setting these constraints required as much or more attention and knowledge of the device as simply setting the device. The beauty of Gradient is that good constraints can be defined organically just by adding presets to the banks. Given the nature of interpolation, the values of a device’s parameters can never exceed the values in these presets which are already bound to each other by the logic and purpose of each preset. In this way, traversing the Color Pallet (XY pad) produces shifts in logic proportionally across the entire patch so that no parameter ever sticks out as an outlier. Thus, the “real” randomizer is the position of the pointer in the Color Pallet. Like traditional randomizers, you don’t need to set this tediously or have a very clear idea of what you’re going for when you start out. Just feed it patches you like and discover new ideas of your own and tweak as much or as little as you like as you go.

Requirements

Live Suite, or Max for Live

Documentation

User Guide

Download

v1.0.0 - Download via Dropbox (free)
v1.0.0 - Download via device page (pay + donation)

30 Likes
Rhizome Fundraising Compilation
#2

Lovely, just got it with the email notification, haven’t had time to use it yet though! :stuck_out_tongue:

#3

I’ve been using this for the past few days and I like it a lot! I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the wavetable choice in Wavetable is modulatable, which makes it a lot of fun to morph between presets.

2 Likes
#4

Is it a tribute to audiomulch? Exciting device.

1 Like
#5

This looks incredible. Thank you for sharing.

1 Like
#6

It’s funny, I’d never heard of it until I sent the finished device to a friend who linked me. Shockingly similar, it was eerie and a pleasure to read through the meta surface documentation after thinking over this concept in isolation :joy:

1 Like
#7

Awesome.
I’ve been using the Metasurface for years and love the concept.

1 Like
#8

That’s great to hear! The only thing I’m disappointed by is that I didn’t get around to supporting interpolating through Wavetable’s modulation matrix. There’s a lot of complicating factors and I didn’t want to get burned out, so I’ve pushed it to a future update. If I can get it sorted, that would make Wavetable an absolute dream to use with this!

4 Likes
#9

Hey, I’m just watching your video and I love it already.
This also reminded me of Nsynth (though a different kind of project).

If I am wondering if you could add the following features:

Best

1 Like
#10

This is an incredible plugin! Is there a way to use an LFO to map it to the gradient circle selector? Every time I try it, it doesn’t map for some reason.

#11

Hi all, pleeeze help!
I purchased this device to morph soundpatches on my hardware synths

Now I know I ‘ll have to configure all my damn paramenters and little knobs in the instrument object that Live uses to interface with synth to make the thing work and that’s ok, but I discovered that Live DOESN’T refresh cursor positions as I switch from a sound to another on the synth.
This make a pain in the arse setting every parameter manually when I change sound on the synth just to morph from each other.
Would you be so kind to suggest me some trick workaround to fix this?

Is there a M4L device that REFRESH parameters on the live instrument as I change sound?

Thanks in advance

1 Like
#12

@pATCHES is there a way to modulate the xy blending with Survey or some lfo device?