Natural Selection S 1.0 by ndivuyo is not just any synthesizer—it's a device that resituates you in nature's seat, allowing you to oversee the evolution and manipulation of sound. Through genetic algorithms, it takes sound design to its most rudimentary structures—DNA values—profoundly revamping the process of music creation. This Max4Live device is not just an instrument but a living model, creating generations of sounds influenced by your preferences. This audible journey towards your preferred sounds will evolve as it mimics the intriguing process of natural evolution.
The versatile internal poly synthesizer in Natural Selection S presents you with comprehensible options for sound exploration. There are a few sources available, each possessing a unique sound and expression. Choices range from the basic morphable oscillator with Frequency Modulation (FM) to the white noise oscillator. If you fancy more complex options, there's also the Resonator with a mallet exciter, Karplus Strong String, and a Wavetable oscillator, which facilitates the use of user wavetable file drops and FM options.
The working dynamic of Natural Selection S is comprehensive, intuitive and allows for a myriad of choices. You can stick to the preexisting sound parameters or tweak them as per your liking, using mutation modes or limiting the number of generations for a new sound. To keep the adventure thrilling and explorative, the device has a system that allows the remixing of parent presets DNA to create new audio offspring. Essentially this not only pushes the boundaries of sound design but also accommodates various styles and preferences.
What makes this tool even more fascinating is its rhythmic note generator system. This system has a trigger with sync and free millisecond rate options, and a swing amount. It has two gating modes, a euclidean sequencer with a unique 'Slope' parameter that clusters pulses either at the beginning or end of the sequence, and a random note gating mode. To top everything, a random ranged velocity and duration generation enhances the overall rhythm dynamics.
Incorporating an effects system into the mix, the Natural Selection S has distortion, chorus, phaser, delay, and reverb options to add that extra touch of magic, taking your soundscapes deeper and broader.
In this device, the transformation goes beyond just the sound—it encompasses rhythms and full-fledged auditory organisms, with each creating its own unique 'voice' and 'song.' With time, you become part of the music creation ecosystem, guiding the evolution process, and using your musical intuition to create the most pleasing sounds.
Ready to immerse into such audacious sound engineering? Get the Natural Selection S 1.0 from dillonbastan.com and embark on this fascinating exploration of sound evolution. Please visit https://maxforlive.com/library/device/10861/natural-selection-s for more details on this wonderful device. Innovation is right at your fingertips within Ableton Live sessions—dive in and immerse yourself in generous audio landscapes that promise to revolutionize your music creation process, right from your Ableton Live 10.1.43 and Max version 8.6.2 platforms.
Example Usage
Imagine walking into your studio, feeling a bit uninspired, and wondering how to start your new track. Today, you decide to let evolution be the muse for your music creation. You launch Ableton Live, load up the Natural Selection S 1.0 Max4Live device onto a MIDI track, and prepare to embark on a unique sound design journey.
Step 1: Getting Started After opening Natural Selection S, you start with an empty slate. The device greets you with its clean and intuitive interface. At first, you decide to dive right in without tweaking the synth parameters manually. You're here to evolve sounds, not build them from the ground up.
Step 2: Generating the First Generation To populate the first generation of sounds, you use the 'seed' presets function which gives you two options: create presets based on the current values with some randomness or start with entirely randomized seeds. You opt for the second option for a fresh beginning. Clicking the button, the device produces the initial 'parent' sounds, ready for your selective evolution process.
Step 3: Evolve and Select Now, you'll listen to each parent sound one by one, using your MIDI keyboard to play notes and hear how they sound. Some may immediately catch your ear with their unique tones, while others might not fit your taste. As you go through them, you use the rating system to favor the sounds you like, giving them a higher chance to pass on their 'genetic' information to the next generation.
Step 4: Breeding New Sounds With your selected parent sounds rated, you tell Natural Selection S to breed a new generation. The device mixes the DNA of the top-rated parents, introducing slight mutations according to your mutation settings. As the new generation of child presets emerge, you explore these fresh sounds, once again rating and selecting the ones that resonate with your creative vision.
Step 5: Iterating the Process You continue this iterative process of evolution, selection, and mutation over several generations. With each cycle, the sounds start to align more closely with your preferences, reflecting an evolving soundscape that feels both organic and deeply personal.
Step 6: Fine-Tuning and Implementation As you become more acquainted with the generative results, you might decide to tweak some parameters on the favorites to fit perfectly within your track. You can also take advantage of the rhythmic note generator to create unique patterns and textures that complement the evolving sounds.
Step 7: Finalizing Your Soundscape Satisfied with a few generations, you save the presets you've nurtured into your library. These evolved sounds are now ready to be sequenced and arranged into your latest piece, bringing forth a track that is truly one-of-a-kind – all because you let the principles of evolution guide your synthesis.
And that's just a glimpse into how Natural Selection S can transform your Ableton Live sessions by weaving the forces of nature into your sound design toolkit, making each of your musical creations a sonic exploration of life itself.
Creating an Evolving Pad Sound with Natural Selection S 1.0
Let's delve into utilizing Natural Selection S 1.0 to craft an evolving pad sound, perfect for ambient textures or dynamic backdrops in your productions. This pad will gradually develop over time, showcasing the generative synthesis capabilities of the device.
Step 1: Initiate the Evolution Process - Load Natural Selection S onto a MIDI track in Ableton Live and create a long, sustained MIDI note or chord progression. - Begin with the 'seed' presets by selecting current values with optional random spreading to introduce some initial variability into our sound.
Step 2: Tailor the Genetics - Set the Mutation amount to a moderate value to ensure noticeable changes between generations without losing the essence of our pad sound. - Choose the basic morphable oscillator as the primary source and adjust the number of partials to add harmonic complexity, set to a moderate spread for a rich, full sound.
Step 3: Sculpt the Sound - Engage the Euclidean sequencer in the Rhythmic Note Generator to introduce subtle, evolving rhythms into our pad. - Tweak the filters to shape the overall tone, opting for a gentle low-pass to retain the smoothness of the pad.
Step 4: Evaluate and Select Traits - Let Natural Selection S run for a few generations, listening to the resultant sounds. - Utilize the rating system to 'vote' on the preferable traits, guiding the evolution towards your desired sound characteristics.
Step 5: Capture the Evolution - Once you've found a pad sound that resonates with your creative intent, use the function to remix parent presets' DNA to create a new child with those particular characteristics. - Save these settings into the child's DNA for future reference or variations.
Step 6: Refine with Modulation and Effects - Apply modulation from LFOs and envelopes to the filters and oscillators for movement within the pad sound, creating a slowly changing texture. - Use the internal effect chain of Natural Selection S, adding a touch of reverb and delay for spatial width and depth.
Step 7: Record the Output - As the generative pad evolves, record the audio output into a new audio track to capture the fluid changes over time. - This recording can be used as a unique, organic layer in your arrangement or further processed and resampled.
Step 8: Integration and Automation - Blend your evolving pad sound with other elements in your track, ensuring it sits well in the mix. - Consider automating parameters like the blend slider between presets or the modulation depth to enhance the evolutionary process throughout your musical piece.
By following these steps, you can harness the power of generative synthesis with Natural Selection S, creating a pad sound that organically develops and brings a living, breathing quality to your Ableton Live sessions.
Further Thoughts
Title: Unleashing Organic Soundscapes with Generative Synthesis in Ableton Live
As we delve into the rich sonic ecosystems that Natural Selection S 1.0 conjures within our Ableton Live sessions, it's compelling to see how evolutionary concepts can catalyze our sound design. Imagine seeding a musical landscape where sounds evolve, grow, and adapt as if they have a life of their own. This Max4Live instrument, crafted by the innovative ndivuyo, gives us precisely this – a way to cultivate and direct sonic evolutions without preemptive judgments, letting our ears select the fittest sounds in a survival-of-the-prettiest.
Let's embark on a generative journey, creating an evolving ambient soundscape that shifts and morphs over time. We start by introducing a set of initial 'seed' presets. For this example, imagine you've crafted a delicate bell-like tone using the Basic morphable oscillator with a light FM touch from Natural Selection S' versatile internal poly synth. This will serve as one of your primary genetic materials.
To introduce variation, you create a second seed preset leaning heavily on the Karplus Strong String with a mallet exciter, adopting this contrasting timbre to your pool. With these seeds in place, you engage the genetic algorithm, allowing Natural Selection S to mix and mutate these preset 'genes' to conceive new, unique sounds, a family tree of presets that represents the diverse offspring of your initial ideas.
While the algorithm does its work, you add creative constraints to direct the generative process. You set a limitation on the number of generations, ensuring that the evolution doesn't spiral into a sonic wilderness too far removed from your original concept. Instead of endlessly waiting for new generations to spawn, you use the rating system to add bias, favoring characteristics that resonate with your vision, perhaps favoring the crystalline decay of the bell-like tones or the physical modeling qualities of your string patch.
As the session unfolds, you find that some of the child presets exhibit intriguing rhythmic patterns, thanks to the internal Rhythmic Note Generator system. You select presets that express complex polyrhythms that ebb and flow using a combination of the Euclidean sequencer and the random note gating mode. Suddenly, the ambient soundscape is not just a static bed of sounds but a dynamic organism with its rhythm and voice.
To add further dimension, the morph section beckons where up to eight presets can be blended, introducing an element of performance as you intuitively navigate the XY quadrants and blend slider. Here, you blend the synths' evolving sounds with the evolving rhythms in real-time, creating a performance that is both premeditated and serendipitous.
Encouraged by the sound's evolution, you subtly introduce modulation via LFOs to filter cutoffs and apply slight distortions and delays from the onboard Effects System, crafting a soundscape that feels both cultivated and wild. The final touch comes from the partials system. As your session reaches its emotive peak, you increase the number of partials, spreading them finely to a near-celestial shimmer, maximizing the harmonic content and adding to the CPU load, but making the ephemeral nature of your soundscape all the more haunting.
This generative process with Natural Selection S 1.0 is a reminder that sound design can be a living, breathing process—one that transcends the mere tweaking of parameters and enters the realm of organic growth. Your ambient soundscape is now a thriving sonic environment that has evolved under your guidance—a testament to the power of generative synthesis with Max4Live devices in Ableton Live.