[Free Ableton Racks] The Theremin Orchestra

This is one dirty instrument that's unlike any theremin you've heard before. NO cheesy 80's or UFO sounds here. The sound starts warm and rich. But with a single knob turn you can flip through three flavors of all analog, high-end distortion that turns this into a screeching wall of sound.

You can listen to it below... It's completely free (and royalty-free) with no strings attached!

We recorded the theremin through a cranked Fender Twin Reverb with a stereo pair of Neumann TLM-103's and processed in post with:

• The Altec 1567A dirtbox (a fave of The Black Keys) absolutely dimed to maximum
• A vintage Neve 1057 pushed to screaming, while of course using its beautiful EQ curve to clean up some mud
• The LTL Silver bullet, a modern outboard box that uses replicates a Neve preamp into an API preamp, or vice-versa

Jonathan and Charlie dialing in the tone at Overit Studios, on Oct. 13th 2022.

Delivered to you via two easy-to-use Ableton racks, you can seamlessly scroll through blended distortion flavors with one knob, like you would on a wavetable synth. Or turn on the chaos LFO to let every note have a randomly selected amount of distortion.

There's also a second, tamer version of the orchestra included where all of the samples were run through a cassette tape to roll-off the high end.

Just like in our other sound pack Beauty there's a number of macro variations and a blendable effects chain using all stock Ableton plugins that lets this one instrument serve so many different functions in your music.

Want to support us? Check out our music.

Credit where credits due:

• Cover art courtesy of Syd
• Big thanks to Overit Studios and recording engineer Dave Parker
• Second big thanks to Jonathan for letting us borrow him, and his theremin, for half a Saturday