STING by IFTAH: The Acid Line Generator, Still Worth Installing
Ten years before it was published in this form, STING by IFTAH started as a question the author describes as half a joke: could a patch generate acid lines on its own? The answer turned into a device that has been downloaded 62,177 times and carries a 5/5 rating, and one that its maker kept using on stage through the final years of a live setup before releasing this concluding version to the public.
It is now marked discontinued, replaced by a second version. That word scares people off more than it should, so it's worth being precise about what it actually means here, and what the device still does inside a Live set.
What the device is
STING is a MIDI effect: you drop it on a MIDI track ahead of an instrument, and it generates note patterns for whatever sits downstream. The stated purpose is acid lines — the single-voice, accented, sliding kind of sequence that a bassline synth wants — and the controls follow from that. There's a density algorithm that governs how busy the generated sequence is, an offset control that shifts the pattern, and accent handling added in version 1.5.
Two things make it practical rather than a toy. First, generated patterns save with the set and with presets, added in 1.03. A generator that forgets what it made is a novelty; one that recalls the pattern you liked is an instrument. Second, since 1.5 the clip button writes the current sequence into a MIDI clip, in Session view, on Live 11 or later. That turns a random pass into editable material you own.
Version 1.6 added Push 3 support. Version 1.7 fixed offset bleeding between instances — meaningful if you plan to run several copies at once — and improved the density algorithm. The current 1.8 restores backwards compatibility with pre-array Max versions. The device targets Live 11.1 and Max 8.3, and was last updated on 2 July 2025.
Three ways it lands in a session
The 303-shaped bassline you don't want to program. Put STING in front of a monophonic bass instrument, set the density where the line breathes rather than chatters, and let it run while you work on drums. When something catches, hit clip and the sequence lands in Session view as a real MIDI clip. Do that four or five times over a session and you have a folder of candidate basslines to arrange later, all in the same idiom, none of them hand-drawn. The accent parameter matters here: acid patterns live or die on which steps get pushed, and having that generated alongside the notes saves you a pass of manual velocity editing.
Live performance with a scene per variation. Because patterns save with the set, you can build a row of instances — or a set of presets on one instance — that each hold a pattern you already trust, then use offset as your live hands-on control to displace the sequence against the drums. The 1.7 fix to per-instance offset is exactly what makes the multi-instance version of this workable. On Push 3, the device's own controls come up on the hardware, so the generate-and-judge loop doesn't require the laptop.
As a writing partner for non-acid parts. Nothing stops you routing STING into a plucked instrument, a short mallet, a percussion rack or a sampler with one-shots mapped across the keyboard. The pattern logic is built for basslines, but sixteenth-note material with accents works on anything that reacts well to short notes. Generate, print a clip, then delete the device and edit the clip by hand. Used this way STING is less a live generator and more a way to break out of the patterns your own hands keep drawing.
What "discontinued" actually costs you
The device page is explicit: this version is discontinued and replaced by Sting 2. What that means in practice is that fixes and features are going into the successor, not here. What it does not mean is that the patch stopped working — 1.8 arrived in July 2025 specifically to repair backwards compatibility, which is a strange thing to do to an abandoned device. If you already have sets built on this version, that update is the reason they still open.
The other thing to read before you commit is the license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. That's the most restrictive of the common Creative Commons terms as far as the patch itself goes. If your plan involves opening it up, reworking the generator into your own device, or bundling it into something you distribute, this isn't the one to build on.
Where it sits among comparable MIDI effects
The closest comparison in the MIDI effect category is Aicd by mganss, which is also an acid pattern generator but reaches the result differently: it uses a maximum likelihood n-gram model, and its feature list has grown in the same direction as STING's — clip creation, a separate MIDI-mappable generate button, an output clip and a play toggle. At 33,745 downloads and 5/5 it's the obvious second install if you like the approach and want a different flavour of randomness. It also carries no stated license, which is its own kind of ambiguity.
Away from acid, Chord Generator by nordmann covers the harmonic side of generative writing with 64,244 downloads and a 5/5 rating, though its version 1.1 dates to 2011 and targets Live 8.2.2 with Max 5.1.8 — old enough that you should test it in your current Live before relying on it. Group Humanizer solves a different problem entirely: it links two or more tracks so their timing drifts against each other the way players in a room do, implementing a method credited to James Holden. Pair it with a generated STING line and a programmed drum part and you get machine notes with non-machine timing.
One catalogue quirk worth flagging: Grain.Freeze by monolake appears in this same type listing at 68,843 downloads, but it's a granular audio freezer, not a note generator. Useful device, different job — there's more on its author in the monolake spotlight.
What 62k downloads and 66 comments suggest
A 5/5 rating on its own tells you little; plenty of niche devices sit at five with three votes. Sixty-two thousand downloads alongside it tells you the rating survived a lot of exposure. The 66 comments are the more interesting number: that's a device people came back to, and the version history reads like a direct response — a bug where switching tracks kept writing clips to the previous track, the multi-instance offset issue, the pre-array compatibility break. Devices with that shape of changelog have been used hard by people other than their author.
Who should skip it
- Anyone on Live 10 or earlier. The device targets Live 11.1, and clip generation is explicitly Live 11 and Session view only.
- Anyone who wants to modify the patch. The NoDerivatives term rules that out.
- Anyone starting a long-term project today. If you're building a live set you'll maintain for two years, start on the successor version rather than the one whose page tells you it's been replaced.
- Anyone who wants step-level control. STING generates; it isn't a grid you draw on. If you want to place every step yourself, a sequencer like the ones covered in the Advanced Step Sequencer deep dive is the better fit.
Everyone else: it's free, it's one MIDI track away from a bassline, and the clip button means you can take what it gives you and walk away.