Drums+
Documentation
Max for Live devices for Ableton Live 12. Last updated 24 October 2026.
Max for Live · Live 12 · two devices · €27
A drummer with one fader
Thoow Drums+ plays grooves for a Drum Rack, learned from hundreds of real drum patterns, from dub techno and house to broken beats and half-time. One fader, Energy, builds a groove up and strips it back down, and when you turn it back, the same groove returns.
It comes in two devices: Thoow Drums+ (the generator, plays a Drum Rack on its own track) and Thoow Drums+ Receive (plays one lane, say the kick, on another track for its own processing or sidechain).
Set up
You need Ableton Live 12 with Max for Live (Live 12 Suite, or Live 12 Standard with the Max for Live add-on), on Mac or Windows.
- Drag
Thoow Drums+.amxdonto a MIDI track, in front of a Drum Rack. Any of Live's kits works, 909 Core Kit is a good start. - Press play. A groove starts right away and follows the tempo of your set.
The eight lanes play these notes, the layout of Live's kits and General MIDI. Each lane's note can be changed under More.
| Lane | Note | Lane | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kick | C1 (36) | Hat | F#1 (42) |
| Rumble | F1 (41) | Open | A#1 (46) |
| Clap | D#1 (39) | Perc | A1 (45) |
| Rim | C#1 (37) | Ride | D#2 (51) |
Notes you play into the track pass through, so the pads of the Drum Rack stay playable.
Energy
The fader on the left. Every hit of a groove has a rank: the core first (kick, backbeat), the details last (ghost notes, extra percussion). Energy decides how many of them play. Up and down again brings back exactly the same groove, so you can ride it like a filter.
| Energy | Word | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| 0–11 | still | Kick and little else. |
| 12–31 | breathing | The skeleton of the groove. |
| 32–54 | rolling | Hats and claps in place. |
| 55–79 | driving | Most of the groove. |
| 80–100 | peak | Everything, ghosts and details included. |
In the display, hits that wait for more Energy are shown as small grey dots, so you can see what is coming.
Character, Move, Feel
| Control | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Character | Straight, Offbeat, Broken, Half | The family New picks from. Straight: four to the floor with driving hats. Offbeat: dub and house, hats between the beats. Broken: the kick leaves the grid. Half: half-time feel, garage and jungle. Changing it brings a new groove at the next bar. |
| Move | 0 … 100 % | How much the groove changes from bar to bar. Variations are drawn from a model learned from real patterns, more at the end of every four bars, and every eight bars one lane moves on for good. Locked lanes stay. |
| Feel | 0 … 100 % | 0 % = exactly on the grid, 50 % = the micro-timing of the original grooves, 100 % = exaggerated, plus swing. |
New and Back
| Control | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| New | A new groove from the next bar on. Until then the button says Cancel; press it again to stay with the current groove. Locked lanes keep their pattern. | |
| Back | The previous groove, step by step, up to 16 grooves back. An edit in the Editor counts as a step too. Grey when there is nothing to go back to. |
Fill, Break, Build
| Control | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Fill | A one-bar fill in the next bar, then back to the groove. A green frame shows it is waiting. | |
| Break | on / off | Takes kick and rumble out from the next bar until you press it again. |
| Build | Energy rises from where it is to the peak over the number of bars set under Bars, with a fill at the end, then drops back to where it was. | |
| Bars | 4 / 8 / 16 | Length of a Build, and the length of a clip written with → Clip. |
The status lines at the bottom left of the display say what happens next: Fill next bar, Build 3/8, Break.
Lanes
The display shows the bar that is playing: eight lanes, sixteen steps, bar height = velocity. The step that sounds lights up in green.
- Click the dot in front of a lane to mute it (hollow dot).
- A lane with its own Length shows only its steps and has its own playhead, so you can watch it drift against the others.
- Click the name to open More for that lane. ◆ means the lane is locked, ↗ that it plays on another track through a Receive.
More
More replaces the right column with the details of one lane. ‹ › switch lanes, × or another click on the name closes it.
| Control | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Note | 0 … 127 | The note this lane plays. Drag up or down, double-click for the standard note. |
| Energy | −50 … +50 | Moves the lane in the Energy order: + comes in earlier, − later. |
| Velocity | −60 … +60 | Adds to or takes from every hit of the lane. |
| Dynamics | 0 … 200 % | The distance between accents and ghosts: 0 % all equal, 100 % as learned, 200 % exaggerated. |
| Shift | −40 … +40 % | Moves the whole lane ahead of or behind the beat, in % of a sixteenth. Works at Feel 0 too. |
| Length | Groove, 1 … 16 | Gives the lane its own length: it repeats its first steps and drifts against the others. Hats on 12 meet the kick on the one again after three bars; percussion on 5 or 7 gives the lopsided figures of dub. Counts from the bar the groove started. Groove = as long as the groove. |
| Lock | on / off | New and Move leave this lane alone. |
| Mute | on / off | Same as the dot in the display. |
Editor
Click EDIT ↗ next to ENERGY to open the editor window. It shows the whole groove, one, two or four bars, with the same colours as the display: bright = plays at this Energy, grey = waits for more.
- Click an empty step to add a hit. It plays from the current Energy on.
- Click a hit to remove it, drag it up or down for velocity.
- Alt-click switches between ghost, normal and accent.
- Bars 1 · 2 · 4 changes the length; longer copies the bars you have.
- A lane with its own Length shows only its own steps, with its own playhead, as in the display.
The editor shows the groove itself; Move adds its variations while it plays. Back undoes a whole editing session.
→ Clip
Writes the next bars, as many as set under Bars, exactly as they would play (Energy, Move, Feel, fills, the settings under More) as a MIDI clip. Select a clip slot in Session View first, on any track. If the slot is taken, the clip goes into the next free slot below; nothing is overwritten.
A clip on the Drums track plays together with the device. Turn the device off, or put the clip on another track with its own Drum Rack.
Thoow Drums+ Receive
Plays one lane of Thoow Drums+ on its own track: the kick through its own compressor, the hats into a sidechain, the rim into a long delay. Put a Drum Rack after it. The main device then leaves that lane out, unless Also in main is on.
| Control | Range | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Bus | A / B | Thoow Drums+ sends on both buses; use B for a second Drums+ in the same set. |
| Lane | 8 lanes | Which lane this track plays. Several Receives can take different lanes. |
| Also in main | on / off | The lane keeps playing on the Drums track as well. |
The lane arrives on its standard note (Kick C1, Clap D#1, Hat F#1 …), also when you changed its note under More. The dot shows whether Thoow Drums+ is running.
Automation
Energy, Character, Move, Feel, the buttons and Bars are Live parameters: automate them, or map them to a controller. Energy, Velocity, Dynamics, Shift and Length of every lane are parameters as well, named Kick Energy … Ride Length. They appear in the automation lanes of the track at any time. To map one to Live's LFO or to Thoow Motion, open More for that lane, press Map and click the control.
Push 2 and Push 3
The knobs control Drums+ in five banks: Groove (Energy, Character, Move, Feel, New, Fill, Break, Push Takeover), Build (Build, Bars, To clip, Back), Lane Energy, Lane Shift and Lane Length (all eight lanes). Switches show Off / On.
Turn Push Takeover (knob 8 of the Groove bank) to On and the pads play Drums+ while its track is selected. The blue pad at the bottom right switches between two pages.
PLAY
- Row 1, lanes: Kick to Ride, flashing green on every hit, red when muted. Tap a lane to mute it.
- Row 2, lock: white lanes are locked, New keeps them.
- Rows 3–4, Energy: sixteen steps from silence to peak. They show the Energy that is playing, also during Build.
- Row 5: Character (Straight, Offbeat, Broken, Half), Bars (4, 8, 16) and → Clip.
- Rows 6 and 7: Move and Feel in eight steps each.
- Row 8: Fill, Break, Build, Back and New. They light up green while they are waiting for the next bar or running.
GRID
One row per lane, one column per sixteenth of the running half bar: steps 1–8, then 9–16, following the playhead (green). White and grey are loud and soft hits, dark pads are hits of the groove that wait for more Energy. Tap an empty pad to add a hit, its velocity is how hard you hit the pad. Tap a hit to clear it. Like in the editor, Back returns to the groove before your first change. The page pad takes the last pad of the Ride row, so steps 8 and 16 of the Ride are edited in the editor window.
Tips
- Ride Energy instead of muting tracks: from breathing to peak and back is a whole arrangement.
- Breathing hats: map Thoow Motion or Live's LFO slowly to Hat Shift, about ±10 %.
- Percussion that comes and goes: a slow LFO on Perc Energy.
- Keep what works: lock the kick and clap, then press New until the hats fit.
- Polymeter: Perc on Length 7 and Rim on 5 over a straight kick: the groove never quite repeats, but always lands.
- Dub sidechain: kick to a Receive on its own track, its output into the sidechain of your chord or pad compressor.
Changelog
1.0.0 · not yet released
- First release for Ableton Live 12: Thoow Drums+ and Thoow Drums+ Receive.
Credits
Thoow Drums+. Design, code and display by thoow, Hamburg. Variations follow the incremental-parsing method of G. Assayag, S. Dubnov and O. Delerue, Guessing the Composer's Mind: Applying Universal Prediction to Musical Style (ICMC 1999), in our own implementation.
Part of the groove library is generated from the pattern model of DrumBrain by Michael Ganss, used under the MIT License (full text in THIRD_PARTY.txt in the download).
Ableton and Live are trademarks of Ableton AG. Max is a trademark of Cycling '74.
Questions or feedback: service@thoow.com