Favourite Max For Live Sequencers

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

I’ve been exploring the rabbit hole that is Max For Live within Ableton Live 10 Suite and have been blown away by how productive it’s made me. I’ve been utilizing the incredible MDD_SNAKE sequencer (Make Noise René clone) to create incredible percussive loops with drum racks - fill all 128 slots of a drum rack with kicks, randomise the MDD_SNAKE parameters and hit play! I’ve made loads of percussive loops this way, chopped them up, mixed them together and come up with loops I would never have thought of. They’re so organic and alive sounding, it’s hard to explain.

What Max For Live sequencers do you use in your workflows and how do you use them? I have a few other Max For Live sequencers but none of them scratch that itch for versatility and instant inspiration like MDD-SNAKE.

8 Likes
Ableton Live 11
Ableton Live 11
#2

Wow good timing, I’ve just started looking into this more today when playing around with the Ableton synths and drum racks I use, as I remembered that I was always more productive using a step sequencer kind of format and playing around that way.

I have MDD_SNAKE but haven’t used it yet, been meaning to get around to it. Started using plain old Step Sequencer (from the M4L Big Three) which is fine for general messing about, and can always record the MIDI sequence into another track for finer editing.

Also just came across 3x Paramseq, Octoseq and Stepper for modulating effects in a step-sequenced way, which is a really fun way of doing things. Of the 3 I got on best with Paramseq, though they’re all fairly similar. Stepper is a MIDI rather than audio effect and you can draw some interestingly-shaped envelopes so I imagine that’ll be fun.

2 Likes
#3

I’ll have to check out Paramseq, Octoseq and Stepper, thanks!

Another one I HIGHLY recommend is Aicd. It’s a very nice TB-303 bassline generator. I’ve used a couple (including the one on the Behringer TD-3) and this one is the best of the bunch in my opinion. Stick a MIDI Scale utility after it and record the notes into a track set to receive MIDI data and you could stock up on lovely MIDI sequences for future use in Ableton Live or any device which can record MIDI data such as an MPC or 1010 Blackbox.

2 Likes
#4

This guy has some nice tutorials on some of the max4live sequencers mentioned already.

These are pretty cool and work with Push.

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/probability-pack/

4 Likes
#5

Aicd is great, cheers for that! Had always been missing that easy 303 slide function and this fits that perfectly.

Haven’t explored the MIDI Scale utility yet, are there any that you find especially useful?

2 Likes
#6

Glad you like Aicd, I think there are some relatively under the radar gems in the device library.

The C Major and C minor scale utilities are my go-to for recording samples, or if I’m writing a song in say, A Major I’ll load up the C Major scale utility and change the root note to A. If I want something more exotic I can always use a more spicy scale but I’m not too fussed about those.

#7

Sweet, yeah I’ve been returning to synth sounds that got me into the whole thing and I think a large part of it was the sequencing / rhythms above all else. Had thought for a while that acid was dated but there’s something instantly fun about that kind of pattern :smiley:

That seems like a fairly useful way of doing it - easy to switch things around depending on the song tha way. Everything’s making a lot more sense at the minute, becoming way more productive with synths of late.

#8

Definitely the coolest looking parameter sequencer:

2 Likes
#9

This ones pretty fun.

https://maxforlive.com/library/index.php?by=any&q=Droplets

2 Likes
#10

reviving this.

anything new in 2022? euclidean sequencer pro seems to be a good one too.

#11

any idea why mdd snake resets when opening a saved file.

wish it would remember my sequence!

1 Like
#12

I don’t know if I can help with that as I only use MDD_Snake for resampling. I hear the developer is open for providing assistance though! And are you on the latest version?

#13

The ML-185 is my favorite sequencer. Old but gold.

ML-185 Stage Controlled Sequencer version 0.9 by 3st on maxforlive.com

Also a highlight for me, the Monosequencer that comes with Live. They do very little compared to the other sequencers mentioned in this thread, but what they do, they do very well.

2 Likes
#14

A fave topic: Turing Machine, STING! (new 2022 iteration/update available), Melodic Steps and the full Probability Pack (if they count), gtm.MIDIDrone (designed for drones, yesss), Strokes by Cong Burn (now a VST), TATAT by K-devices (now a VST rather than M4L), IDMDrums1.6

1 Like
#15

I spoke to a friend about this recently (noticed this with other M4L seqs too) - they said that for whatever reason, grouping the sequencer into a rack was a means of preventing this - not tried so can’t vouch for this but quite simple if so!

Out of fear (but productivity too I know), having experienced this a few times - losing everything - as @Claid touched on, I’m either tracking out the audio/MIDI or both as soon as I hear anything cool but yes, would be nice if we could come back to the sequencer, not just the output!

2 Likes
#16

cool! thanks

#17

Yeah tracking out the MIDI is another, less destructive option to tracking out the audio. For some reason I have an aversion to MIDI and convert to audio as soon as possible… Which leads to issues when I want to change say, the velocity of a hit. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Grouping into a rack is a nice way of getting round it, if it works. I’ll give that a go. Would be nice to have MDD_Snake in my permanent template setup with macros for controlling bits and bobs.

1 Like
#18

Hmm… wondering is there any m4l seq which can mimic Erica Perkons behaviour?

Like 4 seq lines, independent length, direction, time division per line, parameters modulation.

Perfectly - with Push 2 integration

2 Likes
#19

Not a like for like but ‘Step Divider’ from the Probability Pack might do a lot of what you’re needing here…think it’s 8 lanes, running to own divisions and lengths…some Push integration I believe.

1 Like
#20

I have another mimicking question for anyone with the knowledge. I really like the look of Polyend Play, and these features: chance, fill, repeat, randomise, play direction (forward/backwards/random) multiple patterns.

Does anything do something like this in M4L? In this case, I’m more thinking about working alongside a somewhat generative sequence to generate interest across patterns (as a pose to glitchy mayhem.) The Play seems to work best with one shots, so that would be the focus here.

1 Like