Drones

Operator additive drone with loop envelopes

Four sines on harmonic multiples, each with a looping envelope at a different period, so partials fade in and out against each other. It is the purest drone Live makes and it costs nothing.

1. Operator, rightmost algorithm (all four to output). Osc A Sine Coarse 1 at 0 dB. Osc B Sine Coarse 2, Fine +5 ct, −6 dB. Osc C Sine Coarse 3, Fine −7 ct, −10 dB. Osc D Sine Coarse 4, Fine +11 ct, −14 dB.
2. Envelopes: A: Attack 4 s, Sustain 0 dB, no loop (anchor). B: Loop mode on, Attack 3 s, Decay 5 s, Sustain −20 dB, Loop time around 11 s. C: Loop, A 7 s, D 4 s, Loop ~17 s. D: Loop, A 2 s, D 9 s, Loop ~23 s. Prime-ish periods never align.
3. Set the clip to one held note (C2 or the set's root), 64 bars, or use a Sustain-pedal-held note on a looped clip with Legato so retriggers do not restart envelopes.
4. LFO: Sine 0.05 Hz → pitch of Osc D only, ±8 ct — a slow wobble on the top partial.
5. Spread 30% for stereo per-voice detune; play the note twice (two voices) so Spread has something to spread.
6. Saturator Soft Sine 3 dB adds the missing in-between harmonics; HP 60 Hz removes DC-like rumble from the beating.

Variations: Osc B at Coarse 1.5 (a fifth) for a power-chord drone. Osc D set to Noise with a looped envelope and a tiny level for air. Osc C as an FM modulator of A at ratio 1, −35 dB, with a loop envelope: the drone's timbre flutters.

Wavetable drone with slow LFO scanning

A single held note where the table position, the second oscillator's detune and the filter are all scanned by LFOs at different unrelated rates. Timbral motion with no envelope at all.

1. Osc 1: Harmonics category, Position 30%. Osc 2: Vintage category, −12 semis, Fine +6 ct, −4 dB. Sub: on, −10 dB, one octave below Osc 2 for a sub drone built in.
2. Amp env: Attack 3 s, Sustain 1, Release 6 s. Env 2: unused for drones — everything is LFO.
3. LFO 1 Sine 0.03 Hz → Osc 1 Position +35%. LFO 2 Triangle 0.11 Hz → Osc 2 Position +20% and → Osc 2 Fine ±5 ct. In the matrix, also LFO 1 → Filter 1 Freq +12%.
4. Filter 1: MS2 LP 12 at 1.2 kHz, Res 15%, Drive 20%. Filter 2: Clean HP at 45 Hz in series.
5. Unison: Phase Sync, 4 voices, Amount 25% — keeps the fundamental solid while the upper partials swirl. Switch to Classic 30% for a bigger, phasier bed.
6. Auto Filter after: LP 24, 1.8 kHz, its own LFO at 0.09 Hz, 25%, plus Envelope follower from an external sidechain (the kick) at −15% so the drone darkens on every kick.

Variations: Distortion category table on Osc 1 with LFO on Position for an industrial drone. Formant table with Position scanned over 60 s for a slowly vowel-shifting throat drone.

Drift Unison drone

Drift's Unison voice mode with a high Drift amount is an analogue-style multi-oscillator drone: every voice wanders in pitch independently, so beating is continuous and random.

1. Osc 1 Saw, Osc 2 Triangle +12 at 40%, Noise 5%. Voice mode Unison, voices 4–8, unison detune moderate.
2. Drift amount 45–60%: the instability of pitch and timing per voice. On a held note this is pure beating.
3. Filter MS2 LP 24, 900 Hz, Res 10%; LFO Sine 0.06 Hz → cutoff 25%. Env 1: Attack 2.5 s, Sustain full, Release 5 s.
4. Mod matrix: LFO → Osc 2 pitch 4 ct, Velocity → nothing. Legato on so re-triggering the held note during a loop boundary does not restart the swell.
5. Play root + fifth; triads on a unison drone get muddy below C3.

Granulator III frozen drone

Freeze any recording into an endless cloud: scan speed zero, a few milliseconds of spray, and the grain cloud holds one instant of sound indefinitely. Then creep the position through the file over minutes.

1. Load a sample with sustained content (a vocal note, a bowed string, a chord, a field recording). Grain Size 120–200 ms, Spray 20–40 ms, Density high enough that the cloud is seamless.
2. Scan 0 (frozen). Set the File Position to the richest instant. Random Pitch 2–4 ct, Random Pan 30%.
3. Amp envelope Attack 2 s, Release 5 s. Hold a note (C3 keeps original pitch; the device transposes from there).
4. Map an M4L LFO (Sine, 240 s period, i.e. ~0.004 Hz) to File Position with a small range: the frozen point drifts through 10% of the file over four minutes.
5. FM: 5–8% with a low ratio for a metallic sheen on dark sources; 0 on bright sources.
6. Spectral Resonator after it at 20% wet, Mode set to the set's key via MIDI sidechain: the cloud is pulled toward the harmony.

Variations: MPE slide → File Position on Push for a performed scan. Granulate the Operator drone from recipe one: the granular copy of a drone is a drone with a second layer of motion.

Spectral Time freeze drone

Spectral Time's Freeze captures the spectrum of whatever passes through and holds it as a sustained tone. Freeze a chord stab, a hat loop or a vocal: a drone that is spectrally identical to the material it came from.

1. Spectral Time on a return track. Send one hit of the stab at 100%. Click Freeze (or automate it) — the current spectrum sustains.
2. Freeze section: set the fade-in time to 1–3 s for a swell instead of a snap; Retrigger via sync so a new freeze lands on the bar if you perform it.
3. Delay section: on, 1/2 bar, Feedback 30%, Tilt/Spray small — the delay re-injects the frozen material into itself for slow internal motion.
4. Dry/Wet 100% on the return. Automate the send of different sources into it across the arrangement: the drone changes identity every 32 bars while never stopping.
5. Auto Filter after with a 0.07 Hz LFO so the frozen spectrum breathes; EQ a dip at 400 Hz where frozen stabs pile up.

Variations: Hybrid Reverb's Freeze does a similar thing with the reverb tail — darker and more diffuse. Chain both: Spectral Time freeze into a frozen Hybrid Reverb for a drone that cannot die.

Feedback drones with Roar and Echo

Roar's Feedback routing is a saturator with a tuned feedback path: push it past unity and it sustains a pitched tone on its own. Echo at 100% feedback does the same with a delay line. Both make drones from silence or from a seed.

1. Roar: Routing Feedback. Feedback section: amount 80–95%, Pitch set to a note (the delay-length control is pitched; choose the set root or fifth), Filter in the loop: LP 2–4 kHz to keep the tone round. Stage shaper Soft Sine, Drive moderate; the shaper is what keeps the feedback from clipping into a square.
2. Send a short seed: a sine blip from Operator, a drum hit, or just raise feedback to 100% and let the noise floor bloom (takes 5–20 s). Then lower feedback to the point where it sustains without growing (usually 88–94%).
3. Roar's modulation matrix: LFO 1 (0.05 Hz) → Feedback pitch ±10 ct for beating; Envelope Follower from the kick → Feedback amount −10% so the drone ducks and re-blooms.
4. Always a Limiter right after, ceiling −6 dB, before anything else. Feedback drones can jump 20 dB in a second.
5. Echo version: Echo, Sync off, Left 7 ms Right 7.1 ms (comb-filter territory, pitched roughly at 143 Hz), Feedback 100%, filter in the loop LP 3 kHz, Dry/Wet 100%. Modulation 5% at 0.1 Hz. Feed one click. The two slightly different delay times beat against each other.
6. Echo's time in ms maps to pitch: 1000 / f(Hz) = ms. For C1 (65.4 Hz) set 15.3 ms; for A1 (110 Hz) 9.1 ms. Fine-tune by ear against the bass.

Variations: Put an Auto Filter inside the feedback path (Roar's post filter) with an LFO: the feedback pitch hunts. Multiple Echo instances in parallel tuned to root, fifth and octave feed a chord drone. More in No-input & feedback and Feedback rack.

Corpus and Resonators resonant drones

Resonators adds five tuned resonances to any input; Corpus adds a physical body (string, plate, tube, pipe). Feed either with noise or a drum loop and you get a drone pitched to the set that still carries the rhythm of its source.

1. Source: Wavetable Noise category table on a held note, or a send from the drum bus at −20 dB.
2. Resonators: Note C2 (or MIDI mode, with a MIDI track routed in so it follows the bass), Decay 85–95%, Const for a fixed pitch. Modes II–V at intervals: +7, +12, +19, +24 for a fifths/octaves drone; +3, +7, +10, +14 for a minor-9th drone. Width 100%, Dry/Wet 100%.
3. Corpus after it: Resonance Type Tube or String, Decay 80%, Material 40%, Tune via MIDI sidechain on, Transpose 0, Fine 0. Brightness 30%. Bleed 10% to keep a little source.
4. Corpus's LFO (Sine 0.08 Hz) → Tune ±6 ct for beating against the Resonators' fixed pitch.
5. Follow with an HP at 60 Hz and a Hybrid Reverb Tides.

Variations: Corpus Plate type at Decay 95% on a drum send: the drums leave a metallic chord hanging. Resonators with Mode I Note swept by Shaper over 64 bars for a drone that migrates between the chord's tones.

Modular and hardware drones through External Audio Effect

A eurorack oscillator pair or the TD-3 with Accent/Slide held into a Live chain gives analogue instability no plugin matches. External Audio Effect lets Live's drone pass through the modular filter and back; CV Tools lets Live's LFOs drive the modular.

1. Modular as source: audio input track, Monitor In, eurorack VCO pair detuned 3 Hz into a VCF. Tune the VCO to the set using Live's Tuner (or a Tuner device) against the set's tuning reference.
2. Modular as processor: External Audio Effect, Audio To your interface outs feeding the modular input, Audio From the return. Set Hardware Latency after a loopback measurement so the processed drone stays phase-coherent with the dry copy if you blend them (Dry/Wet knob on the device).
3. CV Tools: CV LFO device at 0.05 Hz, triangle, routed to a DC-coupled output into the VCF cutoff; CV Envelope Follower from the kick into VCA CV for a hardware sidechain.
4. TD-3: hold one note in its sequencer with Slide on, or play via MIDI; take the output through External Audio Effect (its filter cutoff and resonance tweaked by hand), then Saturator and the usual chain. The TD-3 is a surprisingly good sub drone with Cutoff fully closed.
5. Resample everything immediately: hardware drones drift and your modular will not be patched the same way next week.

Variations: External Instrument on a MIDI track with the TD-3 as the device, plus a Live Arpeggiator at 1/64 on a held note: the acid box's envelope retriggers so fast it becomes a buzzing drone. More in Hardware & modular integration.

Tuning drones to the set key (Live 12 tuning systems)

A drone is the reference everything else is heard against, so it has to be exactly where the bass is. Live 12 lets a set declare a tuning system (12-TET, just intonation, Bohlen-Pierce, Scala files) and Live's own instruments follow it.

1. Set the tuning in the set's Tuning section (load a .scl/.ascl or pick a built-in). Operator, Wavetable, Drift, Meld, Analog, Collision, Tension, Electric, Simpler/Sampler follow it automatically; third-party plugins and hardware do not.
2. For just intonation, a drone on the root and fifth (3:2) beats zero — perfectly static. Add the major third (5:4) for a drone that locks like an organ. In 12-TET the same third beats at ~1–2 Hz around C3: choose which you want.
3. Scale mode on the drone clip with the set key so Push and the generators stay in the tuning.
4. Check tuning against the bass: play drone and bass together, listen for slow beating at the fundamental. Correct with Fine (cents) in the instrument, not by transposing the sample.
5. For sampled drones (Simpler/Granulator), the root key setting in the device must match the sample's actual pitch; use Live's Tuner device on the sample first.

Variations: A drone in a 7-note just scale under a bassline in 12-TET: the bass drifts in and out of consonance with the drone across the phrase, which is a legitimate tension device in ambient and IDM. See Tuning, scales & MPE.

Beating and detune as the composition

Beating frequency equals the difference between two tones in Hz. Control it in Hz (Operator Fixed frequency mode) rather than cents and you can compose the beating rate exactly: 0.25 Hz = one swell per 4 s.

1. Instrument Rack, three chains of Operator, each a single sine with Fixed frequency mode on (so MIDI pitch is ignored).
2. Chain 1: 65.41 Hz (C1). Chain 2: 65.91 Hz: beats at 0.5 Hz (a 2-second swell). Chain 3: two oscillators in parallel at 130.81 and 131.61 Hz: beats at 0.8 Hz at the octave.
3. Map a macro to chain 2's Fixed frequency with a range of 65.41 → 67.41 Hz: the macro is now a "beat rate" knob from 0 to 2 Hz.
4. Saturator 2 dB: beating sines through a saturator produce the difference tone as a sub harmonic — a faint 0.5 Hz "throb" becomes audible as amplitude motion in the harmonics too.
5. Arrange the beat rates: slow (0.2 Hz) in the intro, speeding to 3–4 Hz (roughness) before a drop, back to 0 (unison, static) for the resolution.

Evolving drones via Shaper, LFO and Envelope Follower

Instrument-internal motion is not enough for a drone that runs eight minutes. The M4L modulators give slow curves on any parameter: reverb size, Roar drive, EQ gain, stereo width. The Envelope Follower connects the drone to the drums.

1. Shaper: draw a 128-bar (or 256-bar) curve, mapped to Roar drive 0 → 40%; a second mapping to Wavetable Osc 2 level. The drone gets denser across the whole track.
2. LFO: Sine, Sync off, 0.013 Hz (≈ 77 s period), 40% → Hybrid Reverb Decay 4 → 14 s. The room swells and shrinks on a timescale nobody perceives as periodic.
3. LFO 2: Random with Smooth 90%, 1 bar, 8% → Utility Width. Barely-visible stereo wandering.
4. Envelope Follower on the kick track, Gain and Rise/Fall set (Rise 5 ms, Fall 300 ms), mapped inverted to the drone's Utility Gain by 3–4 dB. A sidechain that never pumps obviously but keeps the drone out of the kick.
5. Record all of it as automation once the piece is locked, then disable the M4L devices for a lighter set.

Drone layering by frequency band

One drone trying to cover 40 Hz–12 kHz is either thin or muddy. Build three or four, each owning a band and moving at its own rate, and group them.

1. Sub: Operator single sine (or Drift sine) at the set root, Utility mono, EQ LP 90 Hz, no reverb, sidechained from the kick at 6 dB. The slowest layer — maybe no modulation at all.
2. Root: Drift Unison drone, HP 90 / LP 400 Hz, saturated, Bass Mono below 150. Beating at 0.3–0.6 Hz.
3. Harmonic bed: Wavetable LFO drone, HP 300 / LP 3 kHz, unison Phase Sync, LFOs at 0.03/0.11 Hz. Width 100%.
4. Air: Granulator III freeze or Spectral Time freeze, HP 3 kHz, Shimmer reverb, Width 130%. Fastest motion (Random Pan, grain spray).
5. Group → Multiband Dynamics with gentle (1.5:1) compression per band to stop one layer taking over; one shared reverb on the top two layers only.
6. Level each layer with the kick playing: sub audible on a sub-capable system only, root at −18 dB, bed at −14, air at −20 as starting points.

Mixing drones under beats

A drone under drums is a floor, not a feature: it has to be felt when the drums stop and barely noticed when they play. That means dynamic EQ-like ducking, careful band selection and a level set in context.

1. EQ Eight: HP 45 Hz; a −4 dB bell at the kick's fundamental (find it: usually 50–100 Hz) with Q 1.5; a −3 dB bell at the snare's crack region (2–3 kHz). Use A/B compare (12.3) with the drums playing.
2. Compressor sidechained from the drum bus (not just the kick), 2:1, Attack 10 ms, Release 400 ms, 2–3 dB reduction: the drone breathes with the whole groove rather than pumping on the kick.
3. Level: set the drone so it is clearly audible when the drums drop out, then lower by 3 dB. The listener should notice the drone leaving before noticing it being there.
4. Utility Bass Mono at 150 Hz; width above that is fine and helps keep the drone "behind" the mono drums.
5. Industrial/hard techno: skip the sidechain, add Roar Multiband with heavy mids, and let the drone fight — the drone is part of the drum sound there.

Long-form arrangement of drones

A drone piece has no sections in the drum sense; its form is which layers are present and how fast they move. Plan it like a slow crossfade between four or five states.

1. Start with one layer (the root drone) and let it alone for 30–60 s. Fade the sub in only once the listener has the root.
2. Add the bed at the first "section" with a 16-bar fade; its LFOs are the first real motion.
3. Automate the beat-rate macro (recipe above) from 0.3 Hz toward 3 Hz across 48 bars, then the Roar feedback into the roughness section. This is the tension.
4. Resolve by snapping the beat rate to 0 (perfect unison), swapping the granular air for a spectral freeze of the bed, and letting reverb decay fall from 14 s to 6 s.
5. End by removing layers in reverse order; the last thing left is the sub, then nothing.