Novel Music Staircase, new M4L device with three independent and mixable modulators

Novel Music Staircase, new M4L device for Ableton Live with three flexible, independent stair-like modulators with a mixing option.

Ableton updated Live to 12.1 this week with some new features and devices. These include the new pitch corrector called Auto Shift and two revised devices. This means the number of devices in the Suite version is growing again. 

If the arsenal is not enough, you can explore a variety of third-party devices. Novel Music has a new one that breathes fresh air into Live’s modulation engine.

Novel Music Staircase

Staircase is a new M4L modulation device with three fully configurable stair-like modulation source channels (A, B, C). Each channel can be a sequencer, a probability generator (weights), or MIDI data. All three engines offer a variety of input configurations, such as MIDI note triggers or fixed clock pulses.

Each source hosts various probability controls, allowing you to dial in the perfect modulation system. 

The engines, in turn, generate modulation signals that can be mapped to up to six parameter targets in the mod matrix. Besides the amount of modulation, you can set for each target an offset and a smooth in the form of rise and fall parameters.

A highlight of Novel Music Staircase is the built-in sum functionality. You can mix all three sources and route them to a single target, allowing for complex modulation shapes.

First Impression

It is a beautiful, easy-to-use modulation generator. I’m always happy to see new, inspiring ideas for animating parameters in Ableton Live. This looks great and fun. 

Novel Music Staircase is available now for $22. It requires Ableton Live 12 Suite or Standard + a license of Max For Live. It runs on the Push 2/3 and Push 3 standalone. 

More information here: Novel Music 

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