5 Frequency Shifter Techniques + Free Cheat Sheet

Our first free cheat sheet on Ableton’s Looper received great positive feedback from ya’ll producers. This is part of the full collection we offer our students but, we got another free one for you (HQ PDF at the bottom of the page).

This time we covering the Frequency Shifter. Sometimes overlooked the frequency shifter can be a very useful studio tool with some tricks up his sleeves. Can create chorus and phasing effects, as well as alien/robot voices, but there are some other uses for frequency shifting. Lets check out few tips for using the shifter.

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Instant Percussion Sound Design

1. Add a Frequency Shifter to your drums group
2. Turn Frequency all the way down
3. Resample

This technique will shift all the frequencies down 10000Hz. Which will result in a very low, stretched noisy type of sound. You can even throw a Gate after it to isolate all the new created perc sounds.

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Tremolo

1. Switch to Ring Modulation
2. Turn down Frequency almost all the way down
3. Adjust Fine tune for speed of Tremolo modulation
4. Adjust Dry/Wet to taste

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Instant Lazer Sound Design

1. Take any sound
2. Turn the LFO Amount all the way up
3. Turn the LFO Rate all the way up and slowly take it down

Using the LFO to the extreme will shift all the frequencies up and down very quick creating the lazer effect.

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Stereo Widener

1. Turn on Wide
2. Take Spread slightly up or down (max +/- 40Hz)

When wide is enabled the Fine tune knob turn to Spread, the polarity of the left channel is inverted to create a stereo difference between the left and right resulting in a stereo widening effect.

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Secret Distortion

1. Change to Ring Modulation
2. Turn Dry/Wet all the way down to 0%
3. Turn on Drive and boost the Drive amount (3-6dB for light Saturation)

Hidden distortion unit we can use in Ableton Live without really using the Frequency Shifting.

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Frequency Shifter Cheat Sheet

We made a cheat sheet for you to quickly reference, master all the functions and possibilities of the Shifter.