Another Ableton Live Tutorial (I know the last one has been published a looong time ago). In this tutorial I’m describing how a filter’s sidechain can be used to trigger a distortion unit. The sound produced by an “Effect Rack” like this changes enormously.

Routing options and tips:

• Set Auto-Filter’s Resonance to a very high value
• Use another track holding the original signal, but gated OR use another track holding just the peak values (Extract Groove or use Slice to New MIDI Track to get a MIDI file with the peaks) and use a synth which is set to very fast attack and release times with almost no dynamic — it doesn’t matter if it’s crackling.
• For “the big effect” boost Auto-Filters gain knob (found in the sidechain section)
• The filtered track can have it’s own Auto-Filter to separate each transient from another.
• Use either a mid-high (4k-8k) or mid-low to low (200-50 Hz) frequency setting in Auto-Filter. The first one will produce low growly sounds, while the latter one will produce high crackling and squeaky sounds.

Video: