LIL Groover

LIL Groover: an analog-style drum machine for house and techno

LIL Groover is the drum machine plug-in made by Lessons in Live, built for Ableton Live: warm 909-style voices, a sequencer made for grooves, and lessons that show you how the classics are put together.

• A warm machine. Eleven synthesised voices modelled on the 909 (kick, snare, three toms, rim shot, clap, closed and open hat, crash, ride), each with its own character knob, filter, drive and LFOs, and a little analog drift on every hit so nothing sounds frozen. The 808 switch turns the toms into congas or bongos, the rim into a clave or cowbell, the crash into a shaker or tambourine.
• 25 sample kits made from Lessons in Live’s own samples, in the packs Chicago (house), Berlin (techno), Valencia and LIL Groover, some with a chord stab built in, plus ten synth kits. Load your own samples on any sound, drop a folder to make a kit, layer the circuit under a sample, play samples backwards, add a pitch sweep.
• A sequencer for grooves. 32 steps, accents and ghost notes, and every sound its own length, so polyrhythms come for free. Per step: chance, conditions (every 2nd, 4th or 8th time round, only in a fill, …), nudge, its own tune and decay. Swing, human feel, 16 patterns, a song chain, FILL and BREAK keys.
• A groove generator that writes real house and techno patterns in nine styles (classic and deep house, garage, minimal, Detroit and Berlin techno, acid, Afro house, electro), each with its own swing. MUTATE varies a groove, the dice rewrite one part.

• Lessons. Seven famous grooves (Chicago jack, deep house, UK garage 2-step, Detroit and Berlin techno, minimal, Afro house) built up one sound at a time, each part explained; then keep the groove or go back to your own set. Made by an Ableton Certified Trainer.
• Straight into Live. Drag any lane, or the whole kit, into Live as a MIDI clip or as audio; export every sound as its own file; an output per sound; MIDI out to play a Drum Rack. Five effects: tape drive, crusher, a sidechain pump, a tape echo and a plate reverb, with an echo and reverb send per sound.

Hear what it does: the LIL GROOVES PACK

900 drum loops in nine house and techno grooves, all played on LIL Groover. Listen to eight of them in the LIL GROOVES PACK.

Formats and systems

VST3 for Mac and Windows, Audio Unit for Logic Pro and GarageBand (Mac), plus a standalone app. macOS 11 or later (Apple Silicon and Intel), 64-bit Windows 10 or 11. Made for Ableton Live.

One purchase, both systems

Buying gives you both the Mac and the Windows version and one serial number for two of your computers, for example a desktop and a laptop. You’ll find the serial in your order e-mail and under My account. Updates are free and announced inside LIL Groover.

Free 30-day trial

The download works as a free 30-day trial with everything working: install it and play. After the trial it keeps playing in demo mode (about two seconds of silence every minute) until you enter your serial.