If you are an Ableton Live user and you are looking for some vintage drum sounds that you can modify to your taste, you will be happy to see the free plugins we are showing you below. 

They can be downloaded from the Max for Live library as very light .amxd files, and be immediately used by just dragging them to the DAW, as easy as that. Then you can save your favourite presets in your user’s library. Let’s have a look at them:

Analog Kick

This is a fantastic tool created by subtlesonic, inspired on the bass drum synth of the Roland R-808.

It adds features not found in the original, including FM and distortion, as well as adding the ability to change the tuning curve of the oscillator envelope in order to adjust the sharpness of the attack. 

It has built-in presets and the ability to morph between them easily, and can also be used as an FM monosynth: 

Find more info on how to use it, and the link to be downloaded here: http://subtlesonic.com/analogkick/

Tixx Drum Synth

This plugin is capable of creating different electronic drums sounds (kicks, percussions, hihats, etc.) that have a similar sound from that you would get from a vintage drum machine. 

It is very flexible and visually easy to use. It has 4 oscillators with 2 envelopes each that you can tune and adjust separately so you can create rich sounds to taste. You can also use it as a synth by setting the midi parameter to fixed or to frequency controlled. 

Download Tixx Drum Synth from: https://maxforlive.com/library/device/5371/tixx-drum-synth

Palmas

If you like your electronic stylised claps used in many genres such as techno and house, this is your plugin. It plays wonderful up to 32 pairs of hands with varying stereo position, velocity, pitch, and attack.

The only feature that you could miss is that of decay, so you can achieve shorter or longer claps. But that is something that can be solved by using a gate:

Download Palmas by SufiPlugIns from: https://maxforlive.com/library/device/1138/palmas

Brums

Brums is the most complex drums synthesither tool presented here, but also the most experimental one, having a very synthetic sound with random parameters by default such as the panning and the delay time. It has 4 Operators so you can play 4 differents sounds at the same time, which are triggered by the midi notes: C3, D3, E, and F3

Each Operator has three sound sources with short envelope. Two oscillators, one noise source with 3 different resonant filters, a tape delay, a little reverb, an overdrive and many other abilities like FM possibility between the two oscillators, dephasing, 4 different waveforms for each oscillator, LFO, many velocity routing possibilities etc.

Watch a demo by its creator s8jfou:

Download Brums from: https://maxforlive.com/library/device/6332/brums