ambi - ambient exploration device

Ambi is based on a boutique guitar pedal that's quite popular with ambient musicians.  I won't say the name of that pedal but I think you can probably figure it out.  Also, it rhymes with DUDE.

Anyway, that pedal has some very interesting looping capabilities.  Essentially it grabs a short bit of audio and then has this Clock knob that shifts it up or down  - not randomly, but in specific musical amounts (perfect fifths) that tend to sound very good either separately, or when quickly twisting the knob.  There are other aspects of this pedal that I didn't build, but this one particular part, it inspires me very much and so I decided to try to build an Ableton version.  This is also my first rack that uses a Max4Live component that I built.   I'm quite proud of it and I think the results speak for themselves.

AMBI is about reflecting on sounds.  looking within them, slowing them down, speeding them up, degrading them.  finding new in the old. The main knob to be concerned with in Ambi is this one - the clock.  It does two things at once.  It shifts the source material up or down, depending on the direction. As you turn the clock down, the recording quality of the source material is degraded slightly, bringing a lo-fi charm as the pitch shifts down in perfect fifths. as you turn it back up the other way, the audio is brought back to pristine quality as its shifted higher and higher. Then we have two different reverbs, a cavernous one, and a shimmer, and some delay to add more depth. and of course each reverb can be frozen, again, to hopefully bring inspiration.

Go forth, explore.

Still an Ableton Live 11 user? You're in luck. I've just added a second version of the rack made to play nice with Live 11. Nothing is changed in it, it was just compiled with Live 11 so that it can be opened by other Live 11 users.