Berlin
Documentation

Max for Live · Live 12/13 · two devices · €24

Four sequences that drift apart and meet again

Thoow Berlin is an ensemble sequencer in the spirit of the Berlin School: four lanes in one key, each with a role, its own length and its own pace. The lanes slide against each other and only meet again after many bars, so the music is always a little different and always the same.

It comes in two devices: Thoow Berlin (the sequencer, silent itself) and Thoow Berlin Receive (plays one lane on the track of an instrument).

Set up

You need Ableton Live 12/13 with Max for Live (Live 12/13 Suite, or Live 12/13 Standard with the Max for Live add-on), on Mac or Windows. Unzip the download first.

1. Drag Thoow Berlin.amxd onto an empty MIDI track. This track makes no sound.
2. On up to four other MIDI tracks, put Thoow Berlin Receive.amxd in front of an instrument and choose the lane: 1 · Floor, 2 · Cycle, 3 · Haze or 4 · Glint.
3. Press play. Berlin follows the tempo of your set.

A good start: a round bass for Floor, a short pluck for Cycle, something soft with a long echo for Haze and Glint. Several Receives can play the same lane, for layers.

Four lanes, four roles

Every lane has a role. The role decides how Roll invents its notes:

• Floor: the ground. Roots and fifths, now and then a third or one note out of line.
• Cycle: a tight loop of chord tones. Mutate never changes it, everything else turns around it.
• Haze: high fifths, sevenths and ninths, the air above.
• Glint: wanders slowly around the fifth.

The display shows the four lanes as rows: bar height is the pitch, dimmed boxes are rests, the playhead runs along. Click a lane name to select it, click a box to switch a step on or off, drag a box up or down to change its note (the note name appears while you drag). M in a row mutes the lane, K shows that Keep is on. Meet in N bars tells you when all lanes start together again.

Lane controls

The tab with the lane's name shows its eight controls (one Push page) and its role:

• Steps (2–16): length of the lane.
• Hits (1–16): how many notes, spread evenly over the steps.
• Rate: step length, from 1/16 to 1/2.
• Octave (−2 to +2).
• Mutate: how much the notes drift each time the lane comes round. Cycle never drifts; Keep protects a lane.
• Velocity (1–127).
• Gallop and Swell: see below.

Roll, Keep, Back, Mute

• Roll invents new notes for the selected lane, following its role and the key. Roll all does it for every lane without Keep.
• Keep protects a lane: Roll all, styles and Mutate leave it alone.
• Back returns the selected lane to how it was before the last Roll or style.
• Mute silences a lane; it keeps running, so it comes back in time.

Styles

Style (top row) sets all four lanes to one of eight sequence types and rolls new notes. Lanes with Keep stay, Back undoes per lane. Loading a set never applies a style.

• Pulse, Drone, Modal (switches the scale to Modal 1·4·5), Polymeter, Gallop, Swell, Sparse and Ostinato.

Root and Scale sit next to Style: Minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Harmonic minor, Major and Modal (1·4·5).

Gallop and Swell

Gallop adds up to three MIDI echoes of every note on the dotted eighth, each one quieter: the galloping delay of the Berlin School, before any effect.

Swell is a slow wave per lane (7, 9, 11 or 13 bars long). Receive turns it into movement: with Map it moves any parameter in your set, say the filter of the synth, or it is sent as a MIDI controller.

Global

• Ratchet: chance that a note repeats half a sixteenth later.
• Swing (50–75 %).
• Harmony: Static, you play chords over the lanes. Follow, the ticked lanes move with the chord progression. Keys, the key you play on the Berlin track sets the root.
• Chords: six progressions (i VI v i, i iv v i, i VII VI VII, i III VII iv, i v, i VI III VII), one chord per 1, 2 or 4 bars.
• Apply to: which lanes follow the chords. The hint below says how many follow and which stay on the root.

Receive

• Lane: which lane plays on this track. Octave (−3 to +3) shifts it for this track only.
• Map: click Map, then click any parameter in Live. Swell now moves it between Low and High; × removes the mapping. The mapping is saved with the set.
• Swell CC: also send Swell as Mod wheel, Breath, Expression or Cutoff (CC 74), for plugins with their own MIDI learn. Off by default.
• The status line shows the lane's role and whether Berlin is running.

Record and automate

Every Receive track plays plain MIDI. To keep a part: create a MIDI track, set MIDI From to the Receive track, arm it and record.

Style, Harmony, Progression and every lane control are Live parameters: automate them, map them to a controller or let Thoow Motion move them.

Push

On Push 2 and Push 3 the knobs control Berlin in banks: Perform (Style, Harmony, Progression, Bars, Ratchet, Swing, Roll all, Push Takeover), one bank per lane (Steps, Hits, Rate, Octave, Mutate, Velocity, Gallop, Swell), Lanes (Mute and Keep) and Key (Root, Scale, Follow per lane).

Turn on Push Takeover and the pads belong to Berlin while its track is selected. The pad at the bottom right switches between two pages:

• LANES: the steps of each lane; tap to set its length.
• PLAY: Mute, Keep, Roll, Back, Octave and Hits per lane, plus Style, Harmony, Bars, Roll all and the progressions.

Tips

• Start with a style, then roll single lanes until it clicks, and Keep what you like.
• Odd lengths: Cycle on 16 steps, Haze on 13 and Glint on 11 meet only after a long time.
• Breathing filter: Swell around 60 on Cycle, Map on the Receive to the cutoff of the synth.
• The classic echo: Gallop on Cycle, a short pluck, and nothing else is needed.
• Slow motion: Glint on Rate 1/2 over a fast Floor.

Changelog

1.0.0 · 11 November 2026

• First release for Ableton Live 12: Thoow Berlin and Thoow Berlin Receive.

Credits

Thoow Berlin. Design, code and display by thoow, Hamburg.

Ableton and Live are trademarks of Ableton AG. Max is a trademark of Cycling '74.

Questions or feedback: service@thoow.com