Point Blank’s Weekly Tutorial: Free Max For Live ‘Big Riff Generator’ Plugin

Welcome back to Point Blank’s weekly spot here on MusicTech, where this week we have an amazing Max For Live plugin from Daniel Herbert

Here’s the seventh Max For Live device in this current series from Point Blank. We’ve called it the Big Riff Generator and it’s capable of generating some monster riffs or funky bass lines when it’s in the mood! It only generates MIDI notes, so you’ll need to insert it just before an instrument device and choose a suitably fat sound. It bounces notes directly into the selected clip, and can produce an infinite amount of monophonic patterns.

You can specify the key and select a variety of different scales and modes (if you’re interested in learning more about modes then be sure to check out Point Blank’s EMC2 course) and it also features probabilistic controls over octave leaps, rests and note repeats. You can let it explore a range of rhythmic variations or limit it to something more repetitive and it’s possible to also restrict the range of notes.

It’s great fun to see what musical ideas the Big Riff Generator can come up with, and after some playing around with the parameters you never know it might just produce that killer hook that you’ve been after. It’s not limited to pitched sounds, so try it out with drums, and as with any plugin of this nature, expect to tweak the patterns in the clip window and just use this as a starting point!

If that’s whetted your appetite, check out more on our Ableton courses here

Pick up the Big Riff Generator by clicking here for your FREE download!