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Stuck in the 4-bar loop?

If you make electronic music, you’ve probably been there: you’ve got a nice little 8-bar loop going, but you’ve had it on repeat for what feels like hours, fruitlessly tweaking with no clue where to go next.

Described by creators Color With Live as a “colouring book for Ableton”, Stencils are empty, colour-coded projects that map out an existing song’s structure in detail.

Try Stencils, arrangement templates for Ableton Live based on tracks by Four Tet, Fred Again, Skrillex and more

The process of arrangement – structuring your loops, sketches and ideas into fully-fledged tracks – is one of the most difficult stages of finishing a song, and it’s something that even the most talented artists struggle with.

If that sounds familiar, music education company Color With Live has something that might help. Stencils are empty, colour-coded arrangement maps for Ableton Live based on existing tracks that the company describes as “like a colouring book for Ableton”.

Open up a Stencil in Live and you have a proven structure to work with while writing your own track: all you need to do is fill it with your own material, and the arrangement takes care of itself.

Every element of a song’s structure is mapped out in detail, from builds and drops through to fills and breakdowns. You provide the melodies and chords, the sound design and the effects, but the Stencil helps you mould this material into a coherent layout based on a track that you love.

Color With Live is keen to emphasize that a Stencil is not a recreation of a song or a way to copy another artist’s work. The raw materials are stripped out and what’s left is the structure, a template that you can use to create something that’s entirely your own.

Color With Live recently released a free Stencil Pack that features the arrangements behind Flip It by Levity, Fisher’s rework of World Hold On by Bob Sinclair and Dimension’s Once In A Lifetime.

Also on offer are more than 250 paid Stencils based on songs from artists like Four Tet, Fred Again, Calvin Harris, DJ Seinfeld, Metro Boomin, Skrillex and many more. Each Stencil is priced at £8, and there are discounted bundles available if you want to buy more.

The folks over at Color With Live are a generous bunch: they also have a number of free Ableton Racks available on their site, and a free Extension that can be used to save and organize YouTube tutorials in Live.

“We realized one of the biggest pain points in learning production is arrangement. The advice is always to pick apart your reference tracks, but there’s nothing visual to check your work,” Color With Live’s co-founder Kevin Rea said in a press release.

“Repetition is what makes learning click. Producers download Serum packs to practice sound design and MIDI packs to practice music theory. We were blown away that nothing like that existed for arrangement. Our mission isn’t for our stencil to be a crutch that you rely on for every song, instead something that you can learn from and then apply to future productions.”

Head over to Color With Live website to download the free Stencil Pack.

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This is Loop, an 8-track Performance Looper.

The Polish brand’s latest is a four-track MIDI-syncable “idea machine” aimed at guitarists and electronic musicians alike.

Polyend Loop is part looper pedal, part drum machine and comes stocked with over 100 effects.

Loop is the latest addition to Polyend’s growing line of stompboxes. In typically self-explanatory fashion for a brand that has previously released a drum machine named Drums and a synth called Synth, Loop is a loop pedal. Like those instruments before it though, Loop aims to put an innovative spin on the looper format that is less utilitarian than its basic nomenclature might imply.

Pitched as an ‘idea machine’ for both guitarists and electronic musicians, Loop has four independent looper tracks that can each be either mono or stereo. It can be used for live looping via its stereo input or load pre-recorded loops via a microSD card.

Each track has a maximum recording time of 52 seconds, and can run in either tempo-synced mode – set either internally or via external MIDI – or be free running. There is also a Varispeed mode, where loop speed and pitch will follow changes to the tempo. Loops can also run in forward, reverse and ping-pong playback directions.

Loop goes further than simple looping though, thanks to the inclusion of effect and percussion engines. On the former front, each loop track can have its own independent effect, drawn from a pool of more than 100 effect types, covering reverbs, delays, distortion, modulation effects and more.

For percussion, Loop features a four-track drum machine pre-loaded with over 500 drum kits and 350+ rhythmic patterns. Users can also record drum samples directly into the hardware and create their own patterns using the pedal’s buttons as a step sequencer.

Loop is able to record from line, instrument and dynamic mic sources. It has a pair of 6.3mm jack outputs that can be used for stereo or mono output. Other connectivity includes a USB-C port for bidirectional MIDI, a TRS MIDI port and an expression pedal input.

The pedal allows for unlimited overdubbing, with a single-level undo function for erasing the most recently overdubbed loop. Loop is also able to save and recall up-to 1000 scenes, which store loops, drum patterns, tempo and effect settings.

Loop is available to pre-order for $599/€599, with orders expected to ship in mid-October 2026. Visit the Polyend site for more details.

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Maschine 3.7 adds probability and Euclidean sequencing, and launches alongside a new Maschine Expansion packs.

In May, following a turbulent few years of leadership changes, mergers and financial struggles, Native Instruments was acquired by InMusic, joining a roster of brands that already includes the likes of Moog Music, Akai, Rane and Alesis.

While some longtime users might be wary of the move, it promises to bring stability to a brand responsible for some of the most notable – and widely used – product lines in the music technology space, including Kontakt, Traktor and Maschine.

Against this backdrop Native Instruments is also approaching its 30th anniversary, having released its first software instrument, the Reaktor precursor Generator, back in 1996. To mark the anniversary the company is releasing Maschine 3.7, the platform’s first major update since the InMusic acquisition, as well as three Maschine-focused sound packs. (Maschine 3.6 did land after the announcement, focused mostly on compatibility, bug fixes and UI/audio improvements).

The main focus of Maschine 3.7 is a trio of sequencing tools designed to add spontaneity and variation to patterns. The first of these is a random note generator designed to generate patterns based on probability. This can be used to create randomised percussive, melodic or chord patterns. Users also get the option to control the level of velocity randomisation within the notes created.

This is joined by note probability, which lets users dictate a chance level for each note in a sequence. This dictates the level of randomisation for each note every time the sequence cycles. Probability Lock allows users to capture a cycle of randomised notes, offering another way to generate pattern ideas using the randomisation tools.

The third new tool is a Euclidean sequencer, a popular tool in the modular realm that lets users program sequences by distributing events as evenly as possible over a set number of steps. Here, a real time mode lets Maschine users alter the step length, events and rotation in real time to create shifting patterns. These are undoubtedly welcome additions to the Maschine toolkit.

Native Instruments is clearly aware of the need to reassure longtime users that Maschine hasn’t been forgotten with the move to InMusic, issuing a press release that pitches the update as: ‘New update. New sounds. Continued support. Maschine is alive and evolving, and this update packs in a host of fresh features.’

Alongside the new features for Maschine 3.7, the company is launching new Maschine Expansion packs. The first of these, Thirty, is a compilation of sounds ‘resampled’ from the company’s own back catalogue, drawing on samples from Reaktor, Spotlight Series, Play Series, Massive X and more to create 30 Maschine kits, 89 loops, 291 drum samples and 85 one-shots. Whether you call this a celebration of NI’s legacy or a bundle of repackaged sounds probably depends on how generous you’re feeling towards Native Instruments.

The second pack is named Paris Heat and focuses on the classic French house sound of the ‘90s and early-’00s. This totals 40 Maschine kits, 108 loops, 314 drum samples and 127 one-shots, aiming to capture the crunchy drum machines, filtered samples and warm synth tones that defined the sound.

The final pack is more forward-looking. Titled Rage Circuit, it focuses on the sound of the EDM-adjacent trap sub-genre associated with artists like Lil Uzi Vert and Playboi Carti. The pack is created in collaboration with US producer Snipe Young, who has worked with the likes of Beyonce and Justin Bieber, and has created a variety of other NI and Akai sound packs in the past.

“30 years is a moment worth celebrating. This milestone couldn’t be reached without the producers and musicians who took NI’s instruments and made history with them,” says Tim Adnitt, Senior Director of Product Management at Native Instruments. “Maschine 3.7 gives those producers and musicians new ways to write, sequence, and perform, and with Thirty, Paris Heat, and Rage Circuit arriving together, this is one of the biggest weeks for Maschine sound content we’ve ever had.”

Maschine 3.7 is available now as a free update for Maschine 3 users. The new packs are all available now. Paris Heat and Rage Circuit are $49/49€ each, while Thirty is available for $30/30€. Visit the Native Instruments site for more info.

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