Audio Programming Languages
December 12, 2018
During my years making music I’ve managed to horde lots of free samples and free plugins! (Check out my Free Stuff) Here is an ever growing list of the free Ableton Packs I’ve found. It features contributions from Ableton as well as some less well known producers.
There’s a quick description of each pack and a link to download. Many of these packs also contain free samples, so fill yer boots.
UPDATED June 2022
- 500k Pack by Ableton Live
- 64 Pad Lab by Mad Zach
- 182 Live packs by AfroDJMac
- Beat Selection For Live 9 by Sample Magic
- Bomblastic by Uppercussion
- Bongo Sample Library & DrumRack by Subaqueous
- Breakbeats by Kutmasta Kurt
- Break Selection For Live 9 by Sample Magic
- ClapBox by Puremagnetik
- Cyclic Waves by Cycling ’74
- Designer Drums by Ableton Live
- Digicussion 1 by Uppercussion
- Digicussion 2 by Uppercussion
- DM-307A: Free Pack by Heavyocity
- DM ARP 2600 Drums by Flatpack
- Drum Machines by Ableton Live
- DRUMS, SYNTHS, FX & MORE by ELPHNT
- Grand Piano by e-instruments
- Guitars and Bass by e-instruments
- Kalimba by Ghost Syndicate
- Kickbank by Puremagnetik
- Konkrete Breaks by Soniccouture
- Lo-fi Synth & Key Presets by Subaqueous
- Loopmasters Mixtape by Loopmasters
- Mad Beatz by KJ Sawka
- Melange 70 Handpicked Instruments and Loops
- Partner Instruments Compilation by Ableton Live
- Recording Hybrid Kit by Drumdrops
- Rocks To Riches by Subdivizion
- Samplification by Ableton Live
- Singularities by Ableton Live
- Small Tape Collages by Kleine Stücke
- Snare Designer by Puremagnetik
- Solid Sounds by Ableton Live
- Sound Objects Lite by SonArte
- The Forge by Hecq
- The Foundation | 8 Free Packs by Puremagnetik
- Unnatural Selection by Puremagnetik
- Vinyl Classics by Zero G
- Wicked Kits 5 by Puremagnetik
Subdivizion have a range of free effect racks available. I don’t use them for their sounds but I like using them as templates to build your own racks:
Drum MIFI FX – 9 MIDI Effects Racks to use before Drum Racks and Impulse devices.
Dub Delay – Long feedback dub style delays
Scratch-O-Matic – Old School Hip hop samples for adding scratching over beats DJFX – 3 effect racks for DJ performance or production
Mulitband Freq Splitter – Rack that splits up frequencies so you can apply effects to each frequency band.
Simple Sample Selecta – Useful functional rack. Allows you to audition samples from the browser.
Stereo Width – Effect rack to help enhance the stereo image
The Vowels Rack – Formant Filter Effect rack with EQ Vowel Presets
Yay Filter – Basic control over filter sweeps. Designed to emulate the filter sound used in Electro & Dubstep.
This is a fantastic Ableton resource! Sidebrain has kindly made available over 50 free Ableton effect racks. As part of his “Free Rack Wednesday” blog posts you can expect racks to help you make drum fills, sculpt transients, make future bass, techno and much more. There is a lot to check out here!
500k Pack by Ableton Live
When Ableton had over 500K likes on Facebook they released a free Ableton Pack.
Free Live Pack Contains
100 Specially Made presets for Operator, Simpler, Impulse, Electric, Analog, Collison and Tension.
Free Ableton Pack Library by Twidlr
I have been producing music for many years and have started to upload all my sample libraries, bizarre instruments and Ableton Packs. I’ve made them available via this Blog.
Free Live Pack Contains
Lots of random sounds and instruments. Sounds and samples are created from various field recordings, unusual objects, circuit bent electronics, synths & complex sound design.
Learn how to Program Audio: No.1 Digital Analogue Conversion
December 17, 2018
Free Live Pack Contains
Drums Racks that have been designed for use with Ableton Push’s 64 Pad mode.
This is Live pack heaven! AfroDJMac has put together a great amount of live packs, that are free! They consist of drums, synths and weirder sounds such as an instrument made from a Snapple can! Bookmark this page!
Free Live Pack Contains
To date over 180 Live packs for download.
You get 409 loops from Sample Magic’s library covering different electronic music styles. Each loop is provided with four variants.
Free Live Pack Contains
409 Live Clips, 2 Presets
Hip Hop drum kit library with toms, cymbals, hats, shakers, snappy snares, cracking claps and kicks. Samples can also be used for Dubstep, RnB, Dance and Urban Pop.
Features “Acoustified Kits” that have samples taken from processed acoustic and organic recordings. Electrified kits samples are founded in analog and digital synthesis.
Free Live Pack Contains
800 samples grouped into Drum Racks
14 Live Clips
50 Presets
Straight up pack of Bongo samples via Gumroad download. Also check out Subaqueous’ site for more free packs.
More free hip hop samples! Kutmasta Kurt has put together a set of chopped and cut up breakbeats honouring the Beastie Boy, Dj Qbert, Kool Keith vintage style.
Features complete drum racks with effect presets and MIDI Clips to create your own beats.
Free Live Pack Contains
10 Construction Kit Live Sets
63 Live clips
10 Presets
10 Live Sets
More free drum samples! A collection of vintage drum breaks recorded by “some of the best drummers in the business”. Contains drum recordings using rare mics, pre-amps and vintage outboard equipment.
Free Live Pack Contains
175 Live Clips
Clap Box is modeled on the 1980s Simmons Electronics Clap Trap. Slap a bit of 1984 clap into your mixes.
Free Live Pack Contains
Puremagnetiks samples of Clap Trap
Ron MacLeod has used the processing tools from Cycling ’74 to create a premium selection of audio loops. Includes Drum Loops, acoustic instruments, ambience and weird shit. (Bit weird!)
Free Live Pack Contains
143 Live Clips
Using Abelton’s Operator synthsizer, Designer Drums contains 16 drums racks including 249 sounds. All the sounds are synthesised which allows for some in depth editing and tweaking if you really want to craft your own sounds.
Free Live Pack Contains
64 Live Clips
265 Presets
64 MIDI Clips
Contains 50 different drum racks that allow you to edit and morph over 800 samples. The free pack includes: Filthy Kicks, Clangs, Dings, weird bangs, soft stabs, snares & mangled ambience.
Free Live Pack Contains
800 Samples
17 Live Clips
50 Presets
More drum samples! Following on from Digicussion 1 this pack provides more ambient stabs, heavy kicks, mangled snares and drums racks. Fully customisable to enable you to create your own unique samples. When combined with Digicussion 1, it creates an inspiring sample pack for electronic productions.
Free Live Pack Contains
800+ Samples
15 Live Clips
50 Presets
Daniel Miller from the Mute label brings you a large selection of drum and percussion patches created with the DM ARP 2600.
Features the characteristic touch of Dan Miller’s sound design, effects and presets.
Free Live Pack Contains
150 Original Analogue Percussion Samples
8 Drum Racks
Real time tweak controls
DM-307A collection offers production ready modular synth drums, drum machines, and live percussion. Contains gritty drums, industrial techno & house loops, latin woodblocks, shakers, congas from leading electronic music producers.
Free Live Pack Contains
1 Live Set
5 Presets
As you might expect, this is a drum machine pack! Sampled from the classic drum machines 606, 707, 808, 909 this pack provides you with drum racks and MIDI patterns to re-create the sound of the programmed machines. If you like more tweaking you can delve deeper in to the edting and customise your own drum grooves with the mapped macro controls.
Free Live Pack Contains
170 Live Clips
170 Presets
MIDI patterns
Many patterns can be modulated
This is a mighty free pack! In this download ELPHNT is giving away 12 Instrument Packs & 7 demo packs. The free pack contains 522 drum machine samples, a 707, Drones x Noises, Drumr (drum synth), Electric (electric piano), Inspir Paper, LM-1 (Drum Machine), MS-20 Waveforms (Synth), ONE Knobs (effects), SH-101 (drum samples from SH-101), Shake, Splitter & Tape (Tape Machine)!
Free Live Pack Contains
FREE PACKS
522 Samples – samples of a tiny drum machine.
707 – a classic hardware drum machine.
DRONES x NOISES – drone textures and noise samples.
DRUMR – simple drum synthesis.
ELECTRIC – that classic electric piano sound.
INSPIR Paper – creative inspiration for musicians.
LM-1 – a classic hardware drum machine.
MS-20 Waveforms – classic monophonic synth samples.
ONE KNOBS – powerful 1-knob effect racks.
SH – SH-101 drum samples.
SHAKE – loops and samples of things you shake.
SPLTTR – multi-band anything.
TAPE – an analog tape machine for Ableton Live.
FREE DEMO PACKS
522 Free – a tiny drum machine with a big sound
ANLG Free – analog-style synth sounds
ARPS Free – arpeggiated synth presets
B3 Free – a classic tone wheel organ
EARTH Free – versatile drum creation
INSPIR Lite – creative inspiration for musicians
NTPD Lite – a simple notepad for Ableton Live
NOTE- Requires NI Massive.
This free pack combines patches from Native Instruments Massive with loads of effects. The genre and style is not for me, but… If you’re into this style its a decent quality bass sound.
E-Instruments have recorded a concert grand on a classical orchestra hall. This provides you with an 88 key piano with subtle nuances, dynamic layering, sustain resonances and release samples. At 1.5GB the free pack offers you 12 piano presets and 9 hybrid presets that blend synths and effects with the acoustic piano samples.
Free Live Pack Contains
23 Presets
4 Live Sets
Need electric guitars and bass for your productions? This pack has it. Guitars and basses features 17 multisampled Instrument racks covering jazzy basses to metal guitars. Some sample packs miss the nuances of playing string instruments, this pack addresses that by providing multiple articulations such as palm muted, slap bass, open etc. Have a listen to the soundlcoud link below, the pack sounds very good. These instruments would sit well in your mix or used to write guide parts with.
Free Live Pack Contains
60 Live Clips
20 Presets
10 Live Sets
I strongly recommend checking out www.ghostsyndicate.net ! There are a bunch of free Ableton packs available, free samples and paid content. I’ve included a few of their downloads in this list, however the Kalimba pack stands out for me because it sounds great! With or without the effects this is a very versatile instrument. Check out the video below:
Free Live Pack Contains
134 Kalimba Samples
Effect Rack
Puremagnetik is another favourite of production team of mine. They often do production work for Ableton Live building packs and sample libraries. Their own website sells plugins and packs too and is worth checking out.
Kickbank is 200 kick drum samples taken from analog modular synths, 1980s digital synths and analog beatboxes.
This live pack features MIDI drum loops paired with sounds from the Konkrete Drum series by Soniccoutre. You get 100 MIDI clips from some well known IDM/EDM producers, five live sets and Glitch Machine 2. This is a useful pack if you want to improve your breakbeat productions as you can to open up the live sets to see how the featured artists cut up and edit their beats.
Free Live Pack Contains
101 Live Clips
16 Presets
5 Live sets
Subaqueous has offered us up some 80s style, retro synth action. If you are after the sounds from 80s movies where the VHS has gone a bit wonky, this is for you. Subaqueous made these synths by running Juno samples through old tape cassettes and VHS machines.
Features Poly synth, reverse tapes, Lo-Fi Casio piano, Tubular, leads.
If you like Boards of Canada, you might like.
Check out the video below:
Free Live Pack Contains
7 Synths
Effect Racks
Found sounds, instrumental loops, acoustic drums and synthesised sound design from Puremagnetik, Soniccouture, Digable Planet, Todd Terry & Coldcut.
You get 2289 live clips and nearly 3.5GB of samples! Includes Instrument and effects rack, Impulse Kits, modular synths, strings.
Free Live Pack Contains
2289 Live Clips
23 Live Sets
Effect Racks
DJ Sawka has created a loop library which includes Ableton groove templates, MIDI grooves, bass loops, melodic and drum loops. Will suit the drum & bass, dub step & breakbeat genres.
The video alone is worth checking out, just to watch DJ Sawka go through his production process.
Free Live Pack Contains
337 Live Clips
15 Presets
Melange offers up 70 instruments and over 1GB of electronic sounds. This free Abelton live pack features instruments inspired by film scoring techniques, legendary synths, and retro games.
The free pack is assorted in to Modular Loops, Film Score, Transwave, Vintage Chips and Omnichord categories.
Modular Loops – Kick & Bass Loops and audio effect racks: Alien Filter & Glitch Rack
Film Score – Handy for sound designers and producers working in games or picture.
Transwave – A selection of sounds from Puremagnetik’s Waveframe library that emulate the Ensoniq Fizmo (Transwave Synthesis)
Vintage Chips – 8 bit flashback!! Think sounds from early digital synthesis: Atari, Intellivision & Commodore 64 instruments taken from Puremagnteiks “Retro Computers” library.
Free Live Pack Contains
70 Instruments
1 GB of sounds
A straight forward free live pack for you; recordings of paper! Contains 75 samples of different paper recorded on the Zoom H5 then slightly processed . Ghost Syndicate have created this pack for foley work and sound design uses. Great for creating unusual drums, FX and risers.
Free Live Pack Contains
75 foley sounds
This live pack provides you with MORE drums! It’s a free pack with a multi-sampled, multi-velocity mix of different Yamaha drumsets. The idea being that this provides a more well rounded, well balanced drum rack. More suitable for Rock & Pop.
Free Live Pack Contains
34 Presets
This free pack contains a multilayered synth that was created from an audio recording of rocks being shuffled around! The result is a dubby house organ with a bit of grit.
Ableton put together this pack to help you improve your sampling abilities (or to show off their product ‘Sampler’).
The free pack features new sounds, presets and clips from Puremagnetik, Sonarte & Cycling ’74. Very wide selection of samples are included from Rock, Techno, Sound Effects to Experimental.
Free Live Pack Contains
179 Presets
7 Live Preset
120 Live Clips
Using single samples and tweakable parameters, Singularities offers you the sound of classic samplers and synths.
Free Live Pack Contains
42 Presets
3 Live Preset
150 Live Clips
Do you like analog tape sound design? Kleine Stucke aka HAND is a Berlin based producer who has made available over 20 textural pieces for music producers and sound designers to use.
Features Analog Hum, wowed splices, fluttered oxide and tape hiss to give you a start with tape effects. If you like classic ambient music this maybe for you!
Free Live Pack Contains
20 pieces for sound design artists.
Snare Designer is a free pack that focuses on getting that ‘perfect snare’ sound you always crave! Puremagnetik have sampled the legendary Mapex Birch, Pork Pie Little Squealer and Ludwig Acrolite snare drums.
The samples include, direct, room and special effect mic recordings which are delivered in a custom control panel. The panel allows you to tweak individual microphones and sculpt tone.
I see this pack as more of an ‘Intro’ to Ableton Live. As such the pack contains a wide range of musical styles to cover most genres.
Free Live Pack Contains
186 Live Clips
140 Presets (128 Simpler presets)
400 Loops
12 instrument racks
Another idiosyncratic free live pack! I love the creativity and perculiar production styles of these types of sample packs! I think it’s the more unusual sounds that really help you craft your own unique sound; and this pack definitley has unusual sounds!
Ben Lukas Boysen (Hecq) has produced kick samples, noise loops, pads, leads and bass sounds from recordings made with a coil pick up. The coil pick up registers fluctuations in the electromagnetic field, so when placed on a home appliance it captures strange tones and textures.
The samples created are then laid out in 25 Instrument racks, 5 drum racks and also includes 4 demo songs. There’s a small documentary below that shows Hecq’s production process in making The Forge.
Free Live Pack Contains
8 Max Devices
104 Live Clips
30 Presets
18 Live Sets
100+ MIDI Clips
The Foundation is a collection of 8 Ableton live packs which provide you with a massive introduction to Puremagnetik’s catalogue of goodies. The live pack includes the following:
Foundation Analog Synths – 1970s Moog to Buchlas.
Foundation Digital Synths – Ensoniq Fixmo, Yamaha DX-7, KORG wavestation, Casio phase distortion synths.
Foundation Drums- Classic percussion instruments.
Foundation Guitar & Bass – Instrument racks of Stratocaster acoustic guitar chords & Big Bertha bass instrument.
Foundation Keyboards – Rhodes, electro Wurlitzer, Clavinets. Includes lite versions of Puremagnetiks Mark One.
Foundation Glitch, Toy & Lofi – Circuit bent toy instruments, lofi chip sounds from Nintendo NES, Atari 2600, Commodore 64.
Foundation Atmospheres – Soundscapes, space, ambient sound design and film scoring samples.
Foundation Effect Racks – Glitch Shifters, sonic mutilators, lo-fi beat parsers and more.
The Unnatural Selection features Construction Kits and audio clips to cover a variety of different genres. You get a bunch of pre warped clips of beats and melodic elements including leads, pads and bass.
Free Live Pack Contains
156 Live Clips
2 Live Sets
This free live pack includes Clips, construction Kits and Loops influenced from 70s, 80s, and 90s dance music. Features melodic and percussive elements from soul, house, downtempo & disco styles.
Free Live Pack Contains
426 Live Clips
53 Live Sets
Wicked kits samples classic drum machines, vinyl and synths to porvide you with 5 free Ableton drum kits.