Since the day I got a Korg Electribe ER 1, Frequency Modulation percussion became a personal favourite. Though it is often contested that the ER 1 is quiet limited and somewhat plastic sounding, architecturally the layout was interesting. Here was a drum synthesizer that relied on FM synthesis to generate quiet usable percussion sounds. I always liked Kraftwerk's use of FM on their 'Electric Cafe' album, so for my aesthetical preferences, the ER 1 fit the bill. Enter Ableton Live's Operator. Recently, being somewhat stranded (voluntarily so) or rather confined to using a significant amount of software synthesizers, I've taken a strange liking to this synth. It has a sound that is very clean yet full bodied. It reminds me of a lot of Synclavier tones, somewhat harking back to the 1980's. So, being a fan of electronic percussion and building drum tones on synthesizers, it was a logical step to develop an FM drum synthesizer using nothing but Operator. And here it is, assembled as a drum rack:
I've included the basic essentials, and though my tuning of the tom tom's and conga's is a major scale interval, this is but a simple edit in the Drum Rack edit screen. There was something quiet minimal and techno about the sounds and when combined with Live's Groove Templates of the MPC 2000xl (which is my main sequencer of choice back at home) it had a definite unique vibe and thump. There is quiet a bit of bottom end to one of the kick drums so good headphones or studio monitors will aid in listening to the included audio file. The clip is a very quick run-through some basic (emphasis on basic) patterns:
And here is the actual Drum Rack File. Drag this into your Live Library's folder of presets for Drum Rack and Load it up:
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