Ableton/Live/UG/31 Instrument Reference/08 Meld
- Meld layers two independent macro-oscillator engines. It can do classic analog patches, but its strength is mixing unusual synthesis and filter types.
- Each engine has its own filter, envelopes, LFOs, MIDI- and MPE-aware modulation matrix, and two macro knobs that change with the oscillator type, from overtone control to noise-loop fragmenting, chiptune pulse width and raindrop density.
- Up to two polyphonic engines, in four sections: engines, modulation, filters and global mix.
- Starting points: combine different oscillator types, move each engine's macros, map parameters in the Modulation Matrix, or automate the macros with an LFO device.
- Toggle Expanded View in the header shows every modulation source and target. A and B switch engines; Copy to A / Copy to B copy modulation values; X clears all modulation.
- Each engine has its own on switch; turning an engine off also turns off its filter, but a filter can be turned off alone.
- Octaves, Semitones, Cents per engine. With Use Current Scale on, semitones (st) become scale degrees (sd).
- 24 oscillator types per engine, six of them scale-aware (marked ♭♯), from plain sine to wave swarms, FM, noise loops and ambient generators. Choose from the menu or step with the arrows.
- Each engine's two macro knobs change with its oscillator type. All four can be mapped to a MIDI controller, driven by an LFO device, or modulated in the matrix.
- Macros by oscillator type:
- Basic Shapes — Shape (sine → triangle → saw → square), Tone (pulse width).
- Dual Basic Shapes — Shape, Detune (adds a detuned copy).
- Noisy Shapes — Shape, Rough (noise distortion).
- Square Sync — Freq 1, Freq 2 of two synced squares.
- Square 5th — 5th Amt (morph to a square a fifth up), P Width.
- Sub — Tone (sine toward square), Aux (adds a lower subharmonic sine).
- Swarm Sine / Triangle / Saw / Square — Motion (modulates the swarm), Spacing (moves through more complex chords).
- Harmonic Fm — Amount, Ratio.
- Fold Fm — Amount, Shape (carrier shape).
- Squelch — Amount (FM depth), Feedback.
- Simple Fm — Amount, Ratio.
- Chip — Tone (pitch and pulse width), Rate (speed of the chip interval).
- Shepard's Pi — Rate (below 50 falls, above 50 rises, 50 still), Width (octaves used).
- Tarp — Decay, Tone.
- Extratone — Pitch, Env Amount.
- Noise Loop — Rate (how often noise-loop fragments change; high values become plain noise), Fade (graininess).
- Filtered Noise — Freq, Width.
- Bitgrunge — Freq (square frequency), Mult (number of sub-octaves; maximum gives none, minimum many).
- Crackle — Density, Intensity (spread of loudness and brightness).
- Rain — Tone (resonance of drops and wind, making it pitched), Rate (drop density).
- Bubble — Density, Spread (randomness of bubble size).
- Chord — four saws; Shape (intervals), Inversion. With Use Current Scale it builds chords from the set scale, otherwise from a major scale on the played note.
- Every envelope has Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release, set by number fields, typing, or dragging breakpoints. Red Attack, Decay and Release Slope values, or the diamonds between breakpoints, shape the curves.
- Loop modes for Amplitude and Modulation envelopes: Trigger plays every segment once and ignores sustain; Loop repeats the whole envelope; AD Loop repeats attack and decay.
- The Modulation envelope adds Initial, Peak and Final levels.
- Link Envelopes ties the engines' envelopes together so they act as one instrument.
- Two LFOs per engine, each in Hz or synced, with Phase Offset and Retrigger.
- LFO 1 types: Basic Shapes, Ramp, Wander, Alternate, Euclid, Pulsate, each with Rate and two macros. The LFO 1 FX panel chains two of 18 effects (FX1, FX2) onto it, each with a macro. LFO 1 and LFO 1 FX are separate sources in the matrix.
- LFO 2 — Sine, Tri, Saw Up, Saw Down, Rectangle, Random S&H; a third matrix source.
- Routes sources (columns) to targets (rows) within an engine, such as LFO 1 to Volume or the Modulation envelope to filter frequency. Drag a cell up or down to set the amount.
- On envelope and LFO timing targets, negative values speed them up and positive values slow them down. Some targets add modulation; others multiply.
- Click a parameter to add it to the current engine's matrix; an unmodulated row disappears when you click another parameter.
- MIDI and MPE data become modulation sources:
- Velocity, Pitch — the note's value, held for its duration.
- Random — a new value per note.
- Pitch Bend, Press, Modulation Wheel — standard controller sources.
- Note Pitch Bend, Slide, Press — MPE sources. Without a controller, clip envelopes can drive them.
- Per-engine settings: Osc Key Tracking, Scale Awareness and Glide.
- Osc Key Tracking — off plays C3, or the scale root in that octave, for every note; useful for drones and percussion.
- Phase Reset — fixed start phase per note. Phase Spread then spreads start phase by the matrix's Spread source; off starts at zero.
- Oscillator Scale Awareness — keeps scale-aware oscillators in scale: Dual Basic Shapes, the four Swarms and Chip.
- Filter Scale Awareness — keeps Plate Resonator and Membrane Resonator in scale.
- Glide — Glide Time for overlapping notes, in Mono or Poly. Porta slides smoothly; Gliss steps, by scale degree when scale-aware. Needs Glide Time above zero.
- Filter A and Filter B have their own on switches, a Frequency knob, 17 types and two macros per type, most often Q (emphasis at cutoff) and Drive (input saturation).
- Types:
- SVF 12dB / 24dB — state variable; L-B-H-N morphs low-pass, band-pass, high-pass and notch.
- MS2 — low- and high-pass from a Sallen-Key design in a well-known Japanese semi-modular mono synth, with soft clipping on resonance.
- OSR — band-pass from a rare British mono synth, resonance limited by a hard-clipping diode.
- LP Crunch 12dB — feeds its own distortion back in.
- LP Switched Res — resistors replaced by fast switches for downsampling artifacts; Lofi high is crushed, low is smoother.
- Filther — low-pass with hard diode clipping in and soft saturation out.
- Eq Peak / Eq Notch — Boost or Cut around the cutoff.
- Phaser — six-stage with Feedback and notch Spread.
- Redux — resampler and bitcrusher; Crush sets bit depth, Lofi mixes filtered downsampled signal with raw artifacts.
- Vowel — formant filter; Morph moves between vowels.
- Comb + / Comb - — feedforward and feedback combs with Feedback and Damp.
- Plate Resonator — 32 modes of a rectangular plate; size, resonance and ratio. Scale-aware.
- Membrane Resonator — 32 modes of a round membrane; size, resonance and high-frequency damping. Scale-aware.
- Per engine: Volume, Pan and Tone Filter, which cuts lows at positive values and highs at negative values.
- Limit — a per-voice limiter after both engines are mixed and Drive is applied.
- Mono/Poly — Mono offers Legato (new notes continue the held note's envelope); Poly sets 2 to 12 voices.
- Spread — range of the matrix's Spread source: an offset between stacked voices, or across a chord's notes when stacking is off. Does nothing unless routed.
- Stacked Voices — duplicates both engines per note, filters and modulation included; heavy on CPU.
- Mixer Drive — per-voice saturation after the mixer and before the limiter.
- Volume — output.
- Use Current Scale — follows Live's Scale Mode, so transposition, including the Pitch Quant target, moves in scale degrees.
