Pad Rack
Three-chain Instrument Rack (Wavetable, Drift, Granulator III) with a chain-selector crossfade and six macros: Morph, Movement, Space, Darkness, Width, Air.
A pad rack that behaves like one instrument but hides three engines: a Wavetable chain for harmonic body, a Drift chain for analogue-style warmth, and a Granulator III chain that turns a bounced sample of the other two into a cloud. The chain selector is mapped to a Morph macro so you crossfade between engines instead of switching patches, and the remaining five macros (Movement, Space, Darkness, Width, Air) are the only things you touch in a session. Use it for ambient beds, dub techno washes, trip-hop underscores, deep house chord pads and anything in a film-score register. It is deliberately slow: attacks are long, filters are dark, and nothing in it is meant to cut through a mix.
Layout
How it's built
- Create a MIDI track, drop an empty Instrument Rack. Open the Chain List (Cmd+Alt+C) and the Chain Select Editor via the "Chain" button.
- Chain 1 "WT Body": add Wavetable. Osc 1: Harmonics → Organ, position 30%. Osc 2: Basics → Saw, −12 cents, gain −14 dB. Sub off. Unison: Shimmer, 4 voices, amount 30%. Filter 1: MS2, LP 24 dB, 1.1 kHz, resonance 10%. Amp envelope A 900 ms / D 2 s / S 0.85 / R 2.5 s. Env 2 → Filter 1 freq +25% in the mod matrix, Env 2 A 1.5 s. LFO 1 sine 0.07 Hz → Osc 1 position 10%.
- In front of Wavetable put a MIDI Chord device: Shift 1 +7 st at −10 dB, Shift 2 +12 st at −14 dB. This makes single-note MIDI already sound like a pad voicing; leave it off if you play full chords.
- After Wavetable: Chorus-Ensemble in Ensemble mode, 3 voices, rate 0.4 Hz, amount 20%, then Utility with width 110%.
- Chain 2 "Drift Warmth": add Drift. Osc 1 Saw, Osc 2 Sine at −12 st and −6 dB (gives a sub-ish floor), noise 0. Voice mode Poly, 8 voices. Drift 25% (this is the analogue pitch/filter wander, the main reason this chain exists). Filter MS2 LP at 900 Hz, resonance 15%, filter env amount 20%. Env 1 (amp) A 1.2 s / D 1 s / S 0.9 / R 3 s. LFO sine 0.1 Hz routed to filter freq, amount 0 (the Movement macro raises it).
- After Drift: Auto Filter LP 12 dB at 2.4 kHz, LFO 0.08 Hz, amount 15%, then Saturator Soft Sine with 3 dB drive and Soft Clip on.
- Chain 3 "Grain Cloud": first bounce 8 bars of chains 1+2 playing a sustained chord to audio (Freeze then Flatten on a duplicate track, or Resample). Drop that clip into Granulator III. Grain size 180 ms, Spray 45%, Scan rate 0.1 Hz so the file position drifts slowly, Pitch 0, 6 voices, FM off. Set the granular amp envelope A 1.5 s / R 4 s.
- After Granulator III: EQ Eight HP 180 Hz (24 dB) and LP 9 kHz, then Hybrid Reverb in Shimmer algorithm, shimmer pitch +12 st, decay 8 s, dry/wet 55%, pre-delay 40 ms. Send mode off (this reverb is part of the sound, not the mix).
- Set chain volumes: WT Body −4 dB, Drift Warmth −6 dB, Grain Cloud −9 dB. Sum them and check the rack peaks around −6 dBFS on a four-note chord.
- Chain Select zones: in the Chain Select Editor set WT Body to 0–80, Drift Warmth to 40–127, Grain Cloud to 90–127. Add a 20-value fade on every zone edge so the crossfade is smooth, not a gate.
- Macro 1 Morph: click Map, click the Chain Selector ruler, set range 0–127. Rename "Morph". At 0 you hear only Wavetable; at 64 WT + Drift; at 127 Drift + grain.
- Macro 2 Movement: Map mode, then map Wavetable Osc 1 position (10–85%), Drift LFO → filter amount (0–40%), Granulator III Spray (20–90%). All three ranges run low to high, so one knob makes the whole rack wobble.
- Macro 3 Space: Hybrid Reverb dry/wet 15–70% and decay 3–14 s. Keep this on the Grain Cloud chain only; Space on chains 1 and 2 comes from the send on the track, not the rack.
- Macro 4 Darkness: map all three filter cutoffs inverted: Wavetable Filter 1 6 kHz → 400 Hz, Drift filter 5 kHz → 350 Hz, EQ Eight LP band 12 kHz → 2 kHz. Turning the knob up makes the pad darker, which matches how you reach for it during a breakdown.
- Macro 5 Width: Utility width 60–160%, Wavetable Unison amount 0–60%, Chorus-Ensemble amount 0–45%. At 0 the pad is near-mono, useful for layering under a wide lead.
- Macro 6 Air: Wavetable Osc 2 gain −inf → −8 dB, Granulator III pitch 0 → +12 st, Grain Cloud chain volume −18 → −3 dB. This is the "add top end" knob.
- Store Macro Variations: "Bed" (Morph 20, Movement 15, Space 40, Darkness 70, Width 90, Air 10), "Open" (Morph 64, Movement 50, Space 55, Darkness 30, Width 110, Air 50), "Cloud" (Morph 120, Movement 80, Space 90, Darkness 50, Width 127, Air 90).
- Macro randomization: right-click Morph and Space and exclude them from randomization; a random Morph jump mid-arrangement is never what you want. Randomize the other four for new starting points.
- Save as a Rack preset. The Granulator III sample is referenced, so Collect All and Save before moving the set.
Macro map
| Macro | Device . parameter | Min | Max | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Morph | Rack . Chain Selector | 0 | 127 | Crossfades engines; zones overlap so the middle is a blend, not a hole |
| Movement | Wavetable . Osc 1 Position | 10% | 85% | Wavetable scan = timbral motion without a filter |
| Movement | Drift . LFO → Filter amount | 0% | 40% | Slow filter breathing on the analogue layer |
| Movement | Granulator III . Spray | 20% | 90% | Random grain position = cloudiness |
| Space | Hybrid Reverb . Dry/Wet | 15% | 70% | Reverb inside the rack so the grain chain can disappear into the tail |
| Space | Hybrid Reverb . Decay | 3 s | 14 s | Long tails for breakdowns |
| Darkness | Wavetable . Filter 1 Freq | 6 kHz | 400 Hz | Inverted; knob up = darker |
| Darkness | Drift . Filter Freq | 5 kHz | 350 Hz | Same direction, slightly lower floor for warmth |
| Darkness | EQ Eight . LP band freq (grain) | 12 kHz | 2 kHz | Tames shimmer fizz |
| Width | Utility . Width | 60% | 160% | Mono-compatible at low values |
| Width | Wavetable . Unison Amount | 0% | 60% | Shimmer unison adds stereo detune |
| Width | Chorus-Ensemble . Amount | 0% | 45% | Width via modulation, not just panning |
| Air | Wavetable . Osc 2 Gain | −inf | −8 dB | Saw layer adds upper harmonics |
| Air | Granulator III . Pitch | 0 st | +12 st | Octave-up grains read as air, not as a new note |
| Air | Chain Grain Cloud . Volume | −18 dB | −3 dB | Brings the cloud forward regardless of Morph |
Signal flow notes
WT Body chain
The Organ table gives you odd/even harmonic content that reads as "pad" immediately; scanning position with LFO 1 is what keeps it from sounding static. Keep Filter 1 at 24 dB so the Darkness macro really closes it.
Drift Warmth chain
Drift amount is the parameter doing the work: at 25% each voice wanders a few cents and the filter follows, which is what makes eight stacked voices sound like a vintage poly instead of a chorus plugin. The Saturator at 3 dB is there to glue the Drift voices before they hit the rack sum.
Grain Cloud chain
Re-bounce the grain source whenever you change the chord progression. A grain cloud from a C minor bounce under an E♭ major chord is fine; under an A major it is mud.
Granulator III with 6 voices, Spray up and Hybrid Reverb Shimmer is the CPU hog in this rack. If you hear dropouts, drop grain voices to 4 and switch Hybrid Reverb to Dark Hall.
Variations
- Dub techno: replace the Chord device with a minor 7th/9th voicing (+3, +7, +10), set Darkness default to 80, add Echo (dotted-8th, feedback 55%, Filter HP 300 Hz) after the rack, and automate Morph from 0 to 40 only. See dub techno and the dub chord rack.
- Ambient: remove the Chord device, set all amp attacks above 2 s, map Space max to 100% dry/wet, and replace Drift Osc 2 sine with Osc 2 Tri at +7 st. Add a second Granulator III chain fed by field recordings and give it its own zone 100–127. See ambient.
- Trip-hop / downtempo: swap Wavetable Osc 1 to Vintage → a tape-ish table, add Vinyl Distortion after the Utility (Tracing Model 20%, Crackle 10%), and shorten releases to 800 ms so chords leave room for the drums. See trip-hop.
- Deep house: Morph fixed at 30, Drift chain gets a Compressor sidechained from the kick (ratio 4:1, release 120 ms) before the Saturator, Width default 80. See deep house.
- MPE version: enable MPE in Wavetable and Drift, map pressure to Movement and slide to Darkness per voice via the device mod matrices instead of the macros. See MPE sounds.
Performance notes
- Push: the eight encoders show the six macros plus Chain Selector and rack volume. Put Morph on encoder 1 and Darkness on encoder 4 so they sit under the same hand. Macro Variations are recalled from the rack’s variation buttons on Push 3.
- Automation vs macro: automate Morph and Space in the arrangement; play Movement and Darkness live. Macro automation is written as one lane, which is far cleaner than three filter lanes across three devices.
- Live sets: the Grain Cloud chain alone, Morph at 127, Space at 100, is a usable transition drone. Freeze the track when the rack is not playing to save CPU; unfreeze costs nothing between songs.
- CPU: roughly 8–12% of one core on an M-series machine with four-note chords. The reverb and grain voices scale it; the Wavetable and Drift chains are cheap.
- Gain staging: the three chains summed hit the rack output around −6 dBFS. Put a Limiter after the rack only in live use; in the studio leave headroom for the mix-bus chain.