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Ableton Live

Ableton Suite 8 on Microsoft Windows 7
Developer(s)	Ableton
Stable release	8.0.5 / 2009-09-10; 2 months ago
Written in	C++
Operating system	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X
Type	Digital Audio Workstation
Website	www.ableton.com

Ableton Live is a professional loop-based software music sequencer and DAW for Mac OS and Windows by Ableton. The latest major release of Live, Version 8, was released in April 2009. Unlike other software sequencers, Live is designed around the notion of being as much an instrument for live performances as a tool for composing and arranging. It is also often used for precision mixing of tracks by DJs, as it offers an entire suite of controls for beatmatching, crossfading, and many other effects often used by turntablists. However, not unlike other DAWs, it has no support for traditional musical notation.^[1]

Contents 1 History 2 Features 2.1 Views 2.2 Instruments 2.2.1 Built-In 2.2.2 Add-On 2.3 Effects 2.4 Working with audio clips 2.5 Envelopes 3 Versions 3.1 Live Intro and Live LE 3.2 Live 8 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] History

Ableton Live is written in C++ with the first version released in 2001 as a commercial piece of software. Contrary to popular belief, Live was not prototyped in Max/MSP, although it was used to model some of the audio devices. The German Company "Ableton AG" is run by Gerhard Behles (CEO), formerly a member of Monolake, and Bernd Roggendorf (CTO), its original founders, and Jan Bohl (COO/CFO). ^[2]

[edit] Features

Much of Live's interface comes from being designed for use in live performance as well as for production.^[3] As such the interface is more compact than most sequencers and clearly designed for use on a single screen. There are few pop up messages or dialogs. Portions of the interface are hidden and shown based on arrows which may be clicked to show or hide a certain segment (e.g. to hide the instrument/effect list or to show or hide the help box).

[edit] Views

Live is composed of two 'views' – the arrangement view and the session view. The session view is primarily used to organize and trigger sets of MIDI and audio called clips. These clips can be arranged into scenes which can then be triggered as a unit. For instance a drum, bass and guitar track might comprise a single scene. When moving on to the next scene, which may feature a synth bassline, an artists will trigger the scene, activating the clips for that scene. As of Live 6, "device racks" have been implemented which allow the user to easily group instruments and effects, as well as map their controls to a set of 'macro' controls.

The other view is the arrangement view, which is used for recording tracks from the session view and further manipulating their arrangement and effects. It is also used for manual MIDI sequencing, something for which a classical composer would have a greater affinity. This view is fairly similar to a traditional software sequencer interface.

Clips may either be an audio sample or MIDI sequence. MIDI triggers notes on Live's built in instruments, as well as third party VST instruments or external hardware.

[edit] Instruments

[edit] Built-In

By default, Live comes with two instruments – Impulse and Simpler.

• Impulse is a traditional drum triggering instrument which allows the user to define a kit of up to eight drum sounds, each based on a single sample. There are a number of effects available such as basic equalization, attack, decay, pitch shift, etc. Once the kit is defined, rhythms and beats are created through Live's MIDI sequencer.

• Simpler is a relatively easy-to-use sampling instrument. It works using a single sample, applying some simple effects, envelopes, and timing, and then applying pitch transformations. In this case, incoming MIDI does not trigger drums as it does in Impulse, but selects the final pitch of the sample, with C3 playing the sample at its original pitch.

[edit] Add-On

There are a number of additional instruments which may be purchased separately or as part of the Ableton Suite. ^[4]

• Sampler is an enhanced sampler.
• Operator is an FM synthesizer.
• Electric is an electric piano instrument.
• Tension is a string physical modelling synthesizer.
• Collision is a mallet percussion physical modelling synthesizer.
• Analog simulates an analog synthesizer.
• Drum Machines is a collection of emulators for classic drum machines.
• Session Drums is a collection of sampled drum kits.
• Latin Percussion is a collection of sampled latin percussion hits and loops.
• Essential Instruments Collection is a large collection of acoustic and electric instrument samples.
• Orchestral Instrument Collection is a collection of four different orchestral libraries, which can be purchased individually or as a bundle. They are as follows: Orchestral Strings, Orchestral Brass, Orchestral Woodwinds and Orchestral Percussion. The Orchestral Instrument Collection is not included in Live Suite.

[edit] Effects

Most of the Live's effects are already commonly effects in the digital signal processing world which have been adapted to fit Live's interface. They are, however, tailored to suit Live's target audience – electronic musicians and DJs – and would not typically be used for other recording tasks such as post-processing a guitar rig.

Audio Effects	MIDI Effects
Auto Filter Auto Pan Beat Repeat Chorus Compressor Corpus Dynamic Tube EQ Eight EQ Three Erosion Filter Delay Flanger Frequency Shifter Gate Grain Delay Limiter Looper Multiband Dynamics Overdrive Phaser Ping Pong Delay Redux Resonators Reverb Saturator Simple Delay Spectrum Utility Vinyl Distortion Vocoder	Arpeggiator Chord Note Length Pitch Random Scale Velocity

Live is also able to host VST plugins and, on the Macintosh version, Audio Unit plug-ins.

[edit] Working with audio clips

In addition to the instruments mentioned above, Live can work with samples. Live attempts to do beat analysis of the samples to find their meter, number of bars and the number of beats per minute. This makes it possible for Live to shift these samples to fit into loops that are tied into the piece's global tempo.

Additionally Live's Time Warp feature can be used to either correct or adjust beat positions in the sample. By setting warp markers to a specific point in the sample, arbitrary points in the sample can be pegged to positions in the measure. For instance a drum beat that fell 250 ms after the midpoint in measure may be adjusted so that it will be played back precisely at the midpoint.

Some artists and online stores, such as The Covert Operators and Puremagnetik, now make available sample packs that are pre-adjusted, with tempo information and warp markers added. The audio files are accompanied with an "analysis file" in Live's native format.^{[5] [6]}

[edit] Envelopes

Almost all of the parameters in Live can be automated by envelopes which may be drawn either on clips, in which case they will be used in every performance of that clip, or on the entire arrangement. The most obvious examples are volume or track panning, but envelopes are also used in Live to control parameters such the root note of a resonator or, more commonly, a filter's cutoff frequency. Clip envelopes may also be mapped to MIDI controls.

[edit] Versions

[edit] Live Intro and Live LE

As of version 4, Ableton also offers a stripped-down version of Live targeted at the non-professional market. It has limitations on the number of audio channels and effects and does not feature some of the synchronization (MIDI Clock, ReWire) utilities the full version has to offer. The current Live LE version is 7.0.18 ^[7]

Part of the Able10 celebrations, Ableton introduced Live Intro, effectively replacing Live LE. The registered users of Live LE receive a free copy of Live Intro - current version 8.0.9.

[edit] Live 8

On January 15, 2009, Ableton announced version 8 of Live. Live 8 includes a wealth of new features, including an integrated Max/MSP platform, internet collaboration features, and many new effects and workflow enhancements, as well as a refined piracy protection system. Also announced was a dedicated hardware controller developed in collaboration with Akai, called the APC40. Live 8 was released on April 1st of 2009^[8]. Max for Live was released on November 23rd of 2009^[9].

[edit] See also

• Category:Ableton Live users
• Pro Tools
• FL Studio
• Reason
• Steinberg Cubase
• REAPER
• Mainstage

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Ableton's Official Website