Meld: Ableton Live 12's most advanced synth?

Ableton Live 12 has a new synth called Meld. Is it any good? In this video I explore it with you, and in the process discover I actually vastly prefer Ableton's other synth: Drift 😂 But Meld is pretty cool too, especially for deeper sound design and weird leftfield stuff. Check it out!
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Contents:
0:00 Meld 12 review
0:19 What's important to me?
1:16 Meld's oscillators are pretty wild
6:56 How to make a simple synth patch
8:33 The presets are frustrating
10:09 Can't get no instant gratification
12:36 I discover I actually love Drift
14:08 In conclusion, what's my advice?

[@OscarUnderdog]

My Foundations courses ► courses.underdog.brussels Underdog Mailing List ► eepurl.com/gZmNbv Patreon ► www.patreon.com/underdogmusicschool Discord ► discord.gg/trDbVcDHB3

[@lmagico]

Absolute pure energy in process when i make music,respect for your hard job,great content

[@DaddaPsy]

They should include Instrument Racks with Meld inside of it to REALLY show what it can do.

[@NgaTaeOfficial]

They do, don’t they? In my Live 12 opening the Meld folder in the browser shows a combination of just-Meld and Meld-in-Racks presets. Some of the Meld Racks include multiple snapshot variations.

[@DaddaPsy]

@@NgaTaeOfficial I have to check again then. What I mean is that they should craft "ready-to-go" presets utilizing Instrument Racks. These racks should obviously contain more than the actual synth. Is that what you find?

[@NgaTaeOfficial]

@@DaddaPsyTry this: drag Meld into a MIDI track, then click the Hotswap button. Live’s browser should now show you a list of presets (under the Meld heading). On my machine, this list includes Meld by itself and some racks with Meld + effects, and in some cases Racks with multiple Snapshot Variations to choose from.

[@xlat808]

It's really easy to slap a reverb and chorus after a synthesizer, but if your synth has reverb built in, no post processing will take it off. When you want a sound that sits in the mix, you don't want all those effects on it. It's often better done on a master bus where you can have some consistency. I love your channel. Thank you so much!❤

[@barronbarr]

Im a dubstep music producer and I cant begin to tell you how much Underdog has helped me. That say A LOT when techno seems to be the main genre on this channel. Thank you for being articulate and sharing your knowledge. Truly Priceless.

[@DoctorSoctopus]

on the one hand, I love meditating with my synths! on the other hand, that is the number one reason I end up not producing a track when I'm in the studio. oh well

[@raptor.1]

just melt in acid with meld

[@mrstarforge3572]

What I've learned since I've started fiddling around in Live, it's all about creating racks and building your own 'synth' with effects, it is a hard-to-learn DAW, but so damn powerful UPD: Well yeah, Ableton team also created series of racks with Meld, which sound cool! Macros included too, for random and endless-ish possibilities :)

[@maykit]

I haven't "felt" Meld, but i also haven't felt Operator some 10- years and now it is my favourite soft synth. It doesn't sound special by itself at all, it's just so useful and convinient.

[@billpayer3745]

I've always loved my UHE synths, with DIVA being an obvious stand out. But with DIVA I've always struggled to get it sitting in the mix properly. With the native Ableton synths though, they might not sound quite as good in isolation, but they always sit in the mix really well.

[@marcosrotllan]

Meld/ drift and roar made live almost autonomous

[@Hoihaufen]

I am so thankful for your channel. Now that I ordered the new Digitakt and need to make use of Ableton to produce my own stereo samples :D The Elektron workflow is just amazing and it became even better with the Digitakt II. There are endless new possibilities and there is finally enough space on it! Playing on it is so convenient that it gives you tons of new inspiration! As soon as I have created enough patterns I will come back to Ableton to polish and finally release songs :) I spend the whole night in Ableton just sampling and putting effect chains on them. The sounds truly came alive but I needed my time with all those tiny buttons to click... Ableton can do it all but the workflow on a Elektron machine is just superior and so much more fun! Keep up the good work, I can make good use of that right now! ♥

[@19Lqueen17]

As a sound designer I am happy with wavetable. It's my main synth today. I'm really looking foward using Drift and Meld

[@thidominado1377]

Your channel is super great🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@budsticky]

Please tell me the thing behind you with the rectangles is an Ableton midi clip on your wall.

[@moodlesmodular]

Drift is great! Ive been using it a lot lately, especially for bass sounds. I need to play with Meld more. One sound design question I'd like to see you explore is how to approach having two engines in Meld. What does a sound designer consider when combining two voices to make a single patch?

[@lecabinethermetique]

I totally agree with what you say about Ableton's default presets. And it happens not only with Wavetable, but it has always been the case with other instruments (Operator, Analog...). They all sound absolutely horrible. It's really frustrating, I think they should either include effects directly in the preset or remove the presets from the instrument and be able to choose options from Instrument Rack.

[@hotsoupmouth]

Haha love the ending. Drift is so good as a basic workhorse.

[@johnsexton8082]

The best thing for me in Live 12, is screen reader support. Imagine trying to use a DAW without a mouse or display, now Live has screen reader support you can.

[@viviansutherland2169]

Yea Drift would have been a life saver when I first used Ableton. Meld is definitely for all the weird modular-esque sound effects imho. In regards effects on synths I wonder if anyone has ever made a rack to emulate the FX section in Serum/Vital?

Thank you for your honest opinion about Meld. Especially without being judgemental. My favourite synth is Ana2 from sonicacademy but I will also have a closer look at drift ;-)

[@beltofawetfish]

Thanks for the video

[@martinb5367]

Hey bro, I appreciate your content. Please could you tell me which plug in do you use to add a keyboard bellow for native ableton instruments? That is something which disturbed me a lot...don't see the keys when I am playing, as bass player I always fell bad. lol.... thank u bro

[@OscarUnderdog]

Im using Scaler2 vst but then i edit out the rest of the plugin… i dont have a really elegant solution for it tbh!

[@lawrencekelly5038]

I'm in the same boat as many I guess: I've not really got into drift simply because I'm so used to opening up Wavetable and carving a sound out of that. It does disappoint me though when I want to get a certain sound, just so I can get on with song writing and not get lost in a sound design maze, and everything sounds like it's from a casio as standard. Also, is it just me seeing Oscars earing here and wondering if it's half of a tiny nunchuck from a special Bruce Lee lego set? This then led me to wonder if it's actually Oscar himself that's the other half of the nunchuck. Listen, I'm tired, I've not had a lot of sleep, it made sense to me at the time...

[@OscarUnderdog]

This is definitely up there w my fav comments ever hahahahaha. Feeling blessed to be half a nunchuck.

[@florianbender3418]

Loving Push 3 for its MPE capability and user interface. Browsing the presets in live 12 suite makes me feel like a food looter having a bad day. Is there any reliable and fast solution out there, to get rid of the preset trash all over the place and replacing it with something well made? I’m a hobbyist wanting to play music, not clicking around the whole day and fatiguing.

[@remyvegamedia]

I'm hyped for the possibilities of Meld... but Drift is my favorite software synth in general. I prefer the simplicity of Ableton's design and don't have any interest in getting any third party VSTs. I like the ability to just create and craft an instrument rack and prepare for quick access later. Drift is perfect for me, when I'm not using my Prophet 08. I get why people like a lot of the other VSTs but I'm happy with what I have in Suite haha.

[@JimJohnMarks]

1) what’s your favorite pack for Vital? Particularly for like arps or leads. 2) We agree the presets in Live aren’t amazing but we have the opposite perspective 😂 to me, far too many of them are built into an instrument rack with a ton of FX & macros which means you can’t use them to learn what the synth itself sounds like. Maybe we mean different libraries of presets? 😂

[@porleg]

Sounds cool

[@thidominado1377]

Hi Oscar I need your help.. do you by any chance have a chart of ableton keyboard shortcuts, whats stuck im my head is shortcuts of flstudio, Reason Essentials amd Pro Tools.. please hook me up

[@sinefabula]

I don’t know, every time I see a new synth added I feel so overwhelmed. They’re cool and all that, but sometimes I feel I just want to have a single mono synth and tweak and layer the hell out of it.

[@SIDEEYEmusic]

Meld is SO cool if you already know what you’re doing but yeah, I’m starting to think that Ableton does not know how to make a synth preset to save their lives. They are always so dry and sound like toys. It’s such a weird thing to hear that the Ableton stock devices are so cool but the presets themselves are bad. You’d think they’d even hire more people to make official preset Live Packs or something, but no…?

[@theall-seeingeye3973]

Спасибо! Люблю тебя и твой канал

[@turbochargedfilms]

11:59 "to me it feels like Wavetable++" well, except for the... yknow... wavetable... cant import any custom wavetables into Meld, and the oscillator types really do end up being more like full-on synthesis engines. It honestly reminds me more of Plaits.

[@SovietSpy95]

oskar from underdog im love you

[@amosluyk]

So... is Live 12 update really worth the £170 they are asking? New synth... hardly going to use that. Distortion... got loads already. Midi tools... really enough to justify the cost? Am I missing something?

[@OscarUnderdog]

Nope honestly it’s not crucial so far! Nothing i couldn’t do without… especially if you’re already pretty handy w 11 and youre not missing anything.

[@jazzsong8566]

Great, Oscar. Agree with you. Honestly, Ableton doesn’t have a flagship synth of its own. The DAW is amazing, but Meld for me has also been a disappointment

[@viviansutherland2169]

I do think all versions of Live now include Drift so maybe that’s the flagship actually, especially since it was deliberately made to be beginner friendly.

[@JimJohnMarks]

Also, I will say, it is nice to know there is one feature (synth) in 12 which is for those of us who already know what we are doing. So much of 12 seems to be aimed at “No clue to know how to make music? Here, let AI guide you through accidentally making something awesome” - which after nearly 20 years of using the product feels a bit insulting.

[@stuartleighton]

Yeah Wavetable presets are fucking shit for sure.

[@blackradowan8465]

Less talking more examples please 😜

[@mikebon8352]

All talk aan no play... When is ur hitsingle out..???!!! Same crapp as Doctor mix...

[@turbochargedfilms]

I mean you literally hear the synth less than 3 seconds into the video but sure go off

[@BelgianBilly]

Seems like you could do with this vid: kzbin.info/www/bejne/g5aseKx4bNqfe8Usi=NKKsD4Rkjh5aKOqk

[@alipaulstagram]

Totally agree about abletons presets. Their synths are very powerful, but it's so much nicer to scroll through arturia's massive preset browser and get inspired than use abletons system where you have to hot swap out the whole synth and it isn't useable out of the box.