“Iftah” used to be known as Skinnerbox, which was also the name of a music production team prior to breaking up a few years ago. As developers, they created a bunch of simple but lovely devices for use in Ableton Live, including the sbx 2049 synth drum but they’re mostly known for Sting! Sting! was something like a randomizer built on top of an emulated TB-303. It was immensely popular largely because it was so simple: you clicked on the eyes of a smiley face to get an acid line, and twiddled with some controllers to tweak the results.

Sting 2 is the next iteration and it’s an improvement in every way that I can think of. The layout is more compact and it’s been adapted to work with Ableton Push 2 and 3 but it still works the same way: push the button and twiddle the knobs and see if something interesting happens. The algorithm has been changed and the output feels less random and more interesting than Sting. The editing is pretty tight and there are several features that were built in to aid in live performance. I can’t really imagine doing that, not at least without pregaming a few beers, but it’s there if you’re brave enough with or without liquid courage.

Sting was one of the most downloaded Max For Live devices and Sting 2 will probably follow in its footsteps. There’s also a free version. The developer has an option to pay for Sting 2, but makes it clear that he wants the device to be available to everyone, so the free and paid versions are exactly the same. With that in mind, Sting 2 might be interesting for a learning environment with absolute beginners who want a little encouragement and see something real happen when first learning music production in Ableton.

⚪️ more music making apps and plugins /

⚙  Emulating the classic Rhodes sound with Magic Tines
⚙  Granular synthesis made beautiful with Motion: Fractal
⚙  AudioThing RES-09 emulates the warm strings of the Roland RS-09
⚙  Hands-on looping with Audio Damage’s Circa
⚙  Download ReCycle and sample like it’s 1994 again
⚙  Lo-Fi & downtempo by design: adventures with Orange Dreams
⚙  Adding space, texture and ambiance to your music with Airspace