Undulae on Sound Design, Phase & Building Max for Live Tools

Producer Undulae joins us to unpack his approach to sound design, phase relationships, beat battle wins, and the custom Max for Live devices he builds in Ableton Live.

Undulae is an electronic music producer whose work sits at the intersection of experimental sound design, atmospheric textures, and bass-driven energy. In this episode, we get deep into the creative thinking behind his production workflow, from winning beat battles hosted by Mr. Bill and Andrew Huang to building custom Max for Live devices that push what Ableton Live can do.

What It Does

The conversation covers a huge amount of ground. Undulae walks through his philosophy of extracting rich, complex sounds from the simplest possible starting points. One standout technique: stacking long sine wave notes in Ableton with subtle differences in amplitude movement and pitch flutter across each layer, then bouncing the result down and loading it into Sampler as a new instrument patch. The outcome is a lush, organic bell texture that additive synthesis inside something like Serum simply cannot replicate.

Phase relationships sit at the core of Undulae’s approach to both mixing and sound design. He traces his understanding back to aligning kick and sub phase to eliminate destructive interference, then explains how that same thinking unlocked concepts like phase dispersion, spring reverb emulation, and the chirp patterns that give analogue spring reverbs their character. Once you understand phase at that level, he argues, the next ten levels of production open up.

He also digs into his Max for Live device Relay, a delay unit with a diffusion algorithm and OTT compression inside the feedback loop. The diffusion blurs copies of the signal by altering their phase relationships before blending them back together, producing everything from tight spatial smearing to rich, evolving reverb tails. A companion spring reverb device built on similar principles also gets a live demonstration during the episode.

How to Use It

• Lush bell stacking: Create multiple Operator or sine wave tracks with long notes, apply slight amplitude oscillation and pitch modulation to individual layers, then bounce the combined result and import it into Sampler as a new playable instrument.
• Phase alignment on kick and sub: Use a spectrum or phase meter to check the relationship between your kick tail and sub bass entry point, adjusting the sub’s start phase or timing until the two reinforce rather than cancel each other.
• Metering while listening: Keep a spectrum or level meter like Mini Meters visible during both writing and reference listening sessions to build a visual vocabulary for how different sounds and mixes behave, particularly useful for understanding where energy sits and where space opens up.
• Relay feedback loop: Load Relay on a return or directly on a sound source, bring diffusion up gradually to add spatial blur, then introduce feedback and OTT compression inside the loop to generate textured, self-sustaining delay tails with harmonic movement.
• TouchDesigner and Ableton sync: Route MIDI triggers from Ableton into TouchDesigner keyed to rhythmic events like kick and snare hits, so visuals respond directly to the groove of a produced track during live performance.

Why It Matters

What comes through clearly in this episode is that the most powerful production tools are not always new plugins or hardware, they are conceptual frameworks like phase, metering, and constraint-based sound design that compound over time. Undulae’s approach to staying authentic in the attention economy, sharing dense, practical knowledge in the shortest possible form, is itself a model worth studying. Whether you are building your first Max for Live patch, trying to understand why your kick and sub fight each other, or looking for a fresh way to generate source material from almost nothing, this conversation gives you concrete techniques to take straight back into your session.