An evolving series of percussion instruments and nifty gadgetry, combined into one nicely organized pack which installs into Ableton Live. It expands over time gradually with new instrument sets, generally containing one to two instrument racks (sometimes more) plus bonus content. While generally specializing in signal processing, PerforModule occasionally comes up with ideas for interesting percussion sources to record samples of and even more interesting ways to present them as high-quality, usable Ableton Live instruments. This pack is a solution for presenting all of those instruments together in a cohesive and  continually relevant collection without having to worry about any file-organization woes.

Each update includes one or more instruments based on eccentric concepts with novel functionality and custom macro schemes. It currently contains 6 instrument sets…

NEW dropdownsticks – Have you ever played the game “pickup sticks” and loved the sound that the sticks make as they fall and scatter?

Based on that idea, the latest addition to the performoducussion pack of odd and interesting percussion instruments for Ableton Live, “dropdown sticks”, includes a drum rack containing twenty-three instances of such an occurence — each on a different household surface, resulting in a variety of unique timbres.

Recruiting the assistance of his 8-year old son for the drops, Animus used three very different portable recording devices (Samsung Galaxy S7, RCA VR5220-A Hand Recorder, and Nintendo 3DS) to capture the sonic signature simultaneously from the front, left and right.

Each of these layers on their own sound pretty thin, but blended together they become suprisingly full, rich, and highly dimensional. Care was taken to time-align the three layers perfectly for mono-compatible, realistic stereo width. Each sound is provided with a custom-calibrated macro control which allows to “morph” from a clattery slosh to a single solid thwack, more suited for staccato percussion programming.

newton’s percradle – 3-mic layered multisampled metallic click instrument recorded from colliding spheres. The mic chain layering leads to realistic natural room space which can be adjusted directly. The velocity affects the chosen sample rather than simply volume level, so that by playing quieter you are triggering the softer hits of the newton’s cradle, resulting in a very organic feel. Also includes a template set, loops and a MIDI clip to experiment with pedular momentum timing.

toy gears – 2 instruments recorded from rotating toy gears. The Toy Gears Rotator plays a rotating gear that continues while the note is held, good for sound design of things like grinding wheels; the other is a percussive instrument triggering transient slices, providing a bunch of instances of a mechanical thwack sound which vary slightly from each other.

tinkular chimes – Unlike most of the performoducussion instruments, these are melodic, great for when you need clear, crisp, ringing bell chime tones which poke through with sharp transients. Includes 22 mallet instruments crafted from 164 metal rod strike samples (x3 mic layers), with a unique “random-robin” sample playback which adventurously randomizes hits of the same chime among the three mic layers, preventing the digital boredom of successive hits sounding the same.

brokwurl – 2 percussion instruments crafted from samples of an old, broken down wurlitzer piano lying decrepit outside… “brokwurl cghrg perc” uses Ableton’s Impulse device for trippy stretchy special effects… “brokwurl tak perc” plays tasty wooden percussion samples, great for adding a rustic, folksy feel to tracks.

wine corker – A 16-pad drum rack playing samples recorded from a winery’s bottling station. Sounds include pneumatic air compression, the thump of corks being placed, clicks, taps, and bottles sliding around on the counter. Built with parallel effect chains included.

cracklecough – Instrument and drum rack honoring the history of Colorado, USA, plus three rad audio effect racks. The “coff rack” is a fun beatbox-style kit set up in standard 16-pad drum pad layout, “crackeler” is an alternative to layering vinyl crackles or tape hiss, “fuzzer” provides multiple means of adding fizz and fuzz to audio, “dualshift” pitch-and frequency-shifts the lower and upper spectra separately, and “gatepong”, ping-pong delay with an unusual rhythm and anti-congestion.