Ableton Live is not just a beat-maker and music sequencer software, it can be used for a whole range of tasks and purposes as a digital audio workstation too. The latest version, Ableton Live 9, can do, well, almost anything you like…

In contrast to many other software sequencers, Live was always designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for composing, recording, arranging, mixing and mastering.  For example it is used to perform live by DJs, as it offers a suite of controls for beatmatching, crossfading, and other effects used by turntablists, and was one of the first ever music applications to automatically beatmatch songs and tracks.

Much of Live’s interface comes from being designed for use in live performance as well as for production.  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 section (e.g. to hide the instrument/effect list or to show or hide the help box).

Views

Ableton Live 9 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, the artist 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.

Built-In Instruments

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 the form of Granular synthesis. 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.

• Drum Rack Is a sampler for drums. Midi notes trigger individual “Samples” so rather than triggering one sample at multiple pitches, individual samples are triggered at predefined pitches, as is suitable for midi drum programming. As is usual with Ableton, almost anything can be drag dropped to or from the drum racks. For example you can drop a clip or part of a clip into the drum rack to isolate drum parts from audio.

Below are examples of some of the basic beat patterns that come with the Ableton Live 9 Drum Rack .

Dedicated hardware instruments

Akai Professional makes the APC40, a MIDI controller designed to work solely with Ableton Live. A smaller version, the APC20, was released in 2010. Though there are hundreds of MIDI controllers compatable with Ableton, these Akai units try to closely map the actual Ableton Live layout onto physical space. Novation Digital Music Systems has created the “Launchpad” which is a pad device that has been designed for use with Ableton. Ableton has also released their own MIDI controller, the Push, which is the first pad-based controller that embraces scales and melody.

Add-ons

There are a number of additional instruments which may be purchased separately or as part of the Ableton Live 9 Suite.

• Amp – a device that delivers the sounds of various amplifiers and cabinet combos. It is the newest add-on and a part of Suite 8.2.
• Sampler – an enhanced sampler.
• Operator – an FM synthesizer.
• Electric – an electric piano instrument.
• Tension – a string physical modelling synthesizer.
• Collision – a mallet percussion physical modelling synthesizer.
• Analog – simulates an analog synthesizer.
• Drum Machines – a collection of emulators for classic drum machines.
• Session Drums – a collection of sampled drum kits.
• Latin Percussion – a collection of sampled Latin percussion hits and loops.
• Essential Instruments Collection – a large collection of acoustic and electric instrument samples.
• Orchestral Instrument Collection – a collection of four different orchestral libraries, which can be purchased individually or as a bundle: Orchestral Strings, Orchestral Brass, Orchestral Woodwinds and Orchestral Percussion. The Orchestral Instrument Collection is not included in Live Suite.

Effects

Most of Live’s effects are already common effects in the digital signal processing world which have been adapted to fit Live’s interface. They are tailored to suit Live’s target audience – ‘electronic musicians’ and DJs – but may also be used for other recording tasks.  The effects featured in Ableton Live 9 are grouped into two categories – MIDI effects and audio effects.

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 OS X version, Audio Unit plug-ins.

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.

Ableton Live also supports Audio To MIDI, which converts audio samples into a sequence of MIDI notes using three different conversion methods including conversion to Melody, Harmony, or Rhythm. Once finished, Live will create a new MIDI track containing the fresh MIDI notes along with an instrument to play back the notes. 

Live Intro and Live LE

As of version 6, 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 that the full version has to offer. The current Live LE version is 8.1.4.

As part of the Able10 celebrations, Ableton introduced Live Intro as an effective replacement to LE. Registered users of Live LE can now receive a free upgrade to Live Intro.  The current version is 8.3.3.

Ableton Live – Performing Live

The much-aclaimed DJ, Sasha, began DJing with Ableton Live in his live acts, using it in tandem with turntables. Having explored its functionality, Sasha found that he could perform entirely through Ableton Live. He then co-developed the Maven controller, which he uses as a physical interface to the Live software.(DJing with a mouse alone, he has said, is “not going to look right or feel right”.) Fundacion NYC was the first album on which he regularly used the Maven controller. 

During DJ sets, clubbers often believe Sasha is playing new, unheard remixes; in fact, he is often playing modifications of tracks created in Ableton.  Sasha most often uses the built-in Ableton plugins, preferring their superior stability and performance over third party plugins. For the first public performance of Involver material, he used a PowerBook running Ableton, but has since changed to a setup that includes an iMac G5 and Ableton Live.  Despite Sasha’s insistence that Ableton Live allows for greater creativity and spontaneity, “vinyl purists” have accused him of taking much of the challenge and mystique out of DJing by using software in performances.

Sasha obtains and uses tracks online for performances.  While he once hunted through record shops for new records on a regular basis, Sasha now regularly receives new tracks from producers and labels via the Internet. These tracks, which number in the hundreds each week, are edited by Sasha and others for use in his live DJ sets.   He still buys hundreds of records on vinyl, which are then recorded and converted into music files prior to being edited in Ableton Live 9 by his team of engineers.

Ableton Live 9

Ableton Live 9
by Keith Robinson, published 2014, 456 pages

 

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