The sounds of the ’90s are back, and the cutting-edge (at the time) sampling technology from brands like Akai and E-Mu was a key influence in the early sounds of drum’n’bass and jungle music — in much the same way that Roland’s TR drum machines spawned house and techno in the ’80s.

Those early samplers had primitive time stretching algorithms, crunchy bit rates and abysmal memory, forcing users to find workarounds like pitching samples up to save disk space. But producers of the time lapped it up, this kind of tech hadn’t been seen in the consumer level marketplace before so it was a new world for music makers. Sampling drum-breaks from old funk and soul vinyl (most famously the ‘Amen Break’), then running them through these samplers making stretched, and pitched rolling drum tracks became the new sound — the sound of Jungle.

With this Ableton Instrument rack we’ve attempted to capture that essence, by mapping a handful of Simpler modules carrying drum breaks across the MIDI note range — but not so every note triggers a different drum break. Each sample is mapped to glide over a few MIDI notes, so you can experiment with pitching the samples without leaving the instrument or having to automate the pitch. (hence we couldn’t use a Drum Rack for this one). We then teamed it with sound sculpting fx modules and a classic repeat effect to really make this is a fun and useful tool. Check out the preview track:

We highly recommend you use this rack as a starting point. Un-hide the elements of the racks group until you see the below bank of samples. Load in you own ones, and chop each sample up as you please. Clicking on ‘Key’ will show you what MIDI notes each samples is mapped to. Get creative!

All we ask in return is that you subscribe to our newsletter below, and you’ll be emailed a download link.

(Don’t worry, it’s one email a month with a wrap-up of the month’s best articles, and the occasional giveaway competition (and those comps can be pretty amazing))

Remember to check you SPAM or JUNK folder. Email clients tend to not like these automated emails.

Note – This rack requires Ableton Live 10 Standard or Ableton Live 10 Suite. File is a Ableton Live Project (12mb) with the demo track in the Arrangement view. To save the NG5000XL rack as a preset, click the disk icon on the top right corner of the rack.