Grain Forest by Dillon Bastan

Grain Forest requires Ableton Live 10 or higher with Max for Live. It works with both Ableton Live Suite, which includes Max for Live, and any edition paired with a separate Max for Live licence.

It is both. You can use it as a granular synthesiser that generates evolving textures from audio sources, or as an effect that processes incoming audio through granular playback driven by the forest simulation. This makes it incredibly versatile across sound design and live performance contexts.

Each tree in the forest acts as an individual grain or voice, and its DNA directly modulates granular playback and effects parameters. As trees grow, exchange pollen, and mutate across generations, the sound evolves organically without you needing to touch a single control.

You have meaningful control over the process. You can define up to four distinct tree species, each with its own behaviour and audio source, and configure how mutations and DNA mixing occur. This lets you guide the overall character of the evolving soundscape rather than leaving everything to chance.

Different soil types within the simulation can each draw from their own unique audio mix, meaning the device can pull from multiple audio sources simultaneously. This allows for rich, layered textures that shift as the forest evolves and trees grow across different soil regions.

Grain Forest excels at creating granular delays, evolving ambient textures, glitchy sound design, and generative soundscapes. It is equally at home processing vocals, synths, or field recordings as it is generating entirely new material from scratch.

After purchase you will receive a download containing the Max for Live device file. Simply drag it into your Ableton Live session or save it to your User Library for easy access. No additional installation steps are required beyond having a working Max for Live setup.

V1.0.0 – Initial Release

Our Products are generally provided as Zip file downloads which in all cases will need to be extracted and saved to your hard drive prior to installation. Details on the different file type provided and what to do with them are below.

.alp Files – These are Ableton Live Packs and will either install directly into the Packs Section of the browser of Ableton Live or ask you to save them to your hard drive. For packs that install to the library, when you double click on them you will see a pop up window asking you to confirm that installation is ok as the files are described as “Legacy”. This is fine and you are ok to proceed, the packs are created using the format for an earlier version of Live and so remain compatible with the current version.

.amxd files – These are individual MaxforLive Devices and can be stored anywhere on your hard drive. We’d advise creating a folder for them and then adding that folder as a location within the Places section of Lives Browser.

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