Gliss Bliss Max for Live Device

A gliss, short for glissando, is a continuous slide upward or downward between two notes. Gliss Bliss Max for Live Device contains two independent simple synthesizers capable of creating "glissandos." However, although they can produce glissandos in the traditional sense of the word, the real fun is in creating ascending and/or descending runs defined by interval, duration, and grain.

Set a bottom note or range of possible bottom notes and an interval to a note above. Set a MIDI note to trigger the gliss from inside (i.e. MIDI clip) or outside Ableton (i.e. drum trigger or keyboard). Next set a duration of time from the start at the bottom note to the arrival at the top. Then set the grain. Grain determines how often a new pitch is played during the duration of the gliss. Duration can be determined by beats or milliseconds. Grain can be determined by rhythmic subdivisions which we're calling tuplets, or in milliseconds. Tuplets are evenly spaced notes or rests inside a bigger beat or pulse.

Pitches played during the gliss can be tempered or non-tempered.

Instead of predetermined, triggered bottoms notes, incoming MIDI notes can also determine the bottom of the gliss and trigger the gliss.

Glisses can go up, down, or alternate between up and down.

There are 3 modes for each synth: Mono Gliss, Poly Gliss, and Pan Gliss.

Mono Gliss, which was originally the only mode, can only play one gliss at a time. If a new gliss is played before the current gliss has finished, the current gliss is interrupted for the new one. The same way a current note is interrupted for a new note on a monophonic synth.

Poly Gliss allows for up to four glisses to be playing at the same time. Like a polyphonic synth capable of playing more then one note.

Pan Gliss allows for each note in the gliss to have one out of 20 possible panning positions per gliss. If there are more then 20 notes in the gliss, the panning pattern repeats a new. With extreme right and left panning, panning creates an additional polyrhythm in Pan Gliss Mode.

Each synth has an amplitude filter applied to each note the gliss. An "amplitude graph" is also available to shape the amplitude of each over all gliss.

Each synth can produce noise and contains a seperate noise amplitude filter, and high and low filters for both sound wave and noise. Presets for Poly Gliss Mode panning, Pan Gliss Mode panning, and synth settings can be stored and recalled. MIDI triggering options are available for synth presets as well as Poly Gliss Mode panning presets and random panning settings.

Know that Poly and Pan Gliss Modes can drain CPU in larger amounts, especially if amplitude filters are set to produce long sounds within the gliss.

Also know that if your attempting automate presets and the settings that are saved in the presets this result in the disabling of your automation.

If you've recently upgraded Max to 8.5 be sure that you have the most recent version (8.5.3 as of March 4, 2023). I experienced some issues with this device after 8.5 was introduced.

*Ableton Live and Max For Live are required.

*Made and tested with Ableton 11.0.12 & Max 8.3.1

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