Ableton 9: Buffer Shuffler (Max for Live)

Next on my list to explore for you guys and girls in Ableton 9 is Max for Live. There are a wealth of tools that I plan to dive into, but browsing around, the Buffer Shuffler in particular caught my attention.

Being someone who has used a very old version of Fruity Loops in the past to make music, the Buffer Shuffler had a very familiar look.

This tool allows you to edit your audio into up to 32 parts per bar & as few as 2. This makes for loads of flexibility with your editing.

Here are the things the Buffer Shuffler allows you to edit:

Left/Right – Rearrange the way your audio is played in the left & right speaker independently or together. This also includes reversing sections.

Stutter – This is a very cool tool the allows you to set the stutter rate of each step in a pattern. I really liked the glitchy-ness of using 32 steps.
Pitch – Similar to how you can already automate the transpose of a clip but adds flexibility

Shift – This seems to have a Frequency shift effect that sounds cool on drums & percussion & I’m sure can be misused in some excellent ways.
Gate – Just like you would think, this is a gate effect in which you can control the length of the gating at each step.

Amp – This is simply volume level by step.

Pan – This is pretty obvious. Panning left & right amounts be step.

It would be hard to find one effect of packs this much sound manipulation on it’s own. You can really tweak out a sound by adding all these effects at once or just focusing on 1 or 2. Also there is a randomizer that can inspire different ideas as well as several other parameters.

Check out the video & let me know what you think in the comments below:

 

Happy music making,

Jason

 

 

With that said, if you are benefiting from these posts, you will absolutely love my 2 bestselling books:

The Mental Game of Music Production
The Process for Electronic Music Producers

You can also Check out the: Ableton Courses & Instruments

If you are looking for personal guidance with your music production or Ableton, you can set up a free chat with me to go over exactly what your best next steps are to create the best music of your life. If it seems like a good fit, we can move forward from there.  https://musicsoftwaretraining.com/private-coaching

Happy music making!
Jason