Ableton AG is a German music software company that produces and distributes the production and performance program Ableton Live and a collection of related instruments and sample libraries, as well as their own hardware controller Ableton Push. Ableton's office is located in the Prenzlauer Berg district of

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, with a second office in Pasadena,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

History

Ableton was founded in 1999 by Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke, who together formed the group Monolake, and software engineer Bernd Roggendorf. After Behles' work on granular synthesis for

Native Instruments Native Instruments is a German company that develops, manufactures, and supplies music software and hardware for music production, sound design, performance, and DJing. The company's corporate headquarters and main development facilities are lo ...

' Reaktor, as well as earlier software using a

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

workstation at

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin; also known as Berlin Institute of Technology and Technical University of Berlin, although officially the name should not be translated) is a public university, public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was the first ...

, Live was first released as commercial software in 2001. Behles remains the chief executive officer of Ableton. In March 2007, Ableton announced it was beginning a collaboration with Cycling '74, producers of Max/MSP. This collaboration is not directly based on Live or Max/MSP, but rather combines the two companies' strengths in a new product. In January 2009, the Ableton/Cycling '74 product "Max for Live" was announced. "Max for Live" makes it possible to create Max/MSP patches directly inside of Live. The patches act like other plug-ins in Live do, supporting preset saving, automation, and other features. It is possible to create both customized hardware plug-ins and patches as well as actions within those plug-ins that control every aspect of Live, essentially anything that can be clicked with a mouse. Ableton holds many music production sessions and seminars to learn to use their software, and licenses "certified Ableton trainers." In April 2015, Ableton published the hardcover book ''Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers'' written by Dennis DeSantis who is the Head of Documentation at Ableton and formerly a sound designer for Native Instruments. The work is organized according to three main categories: Problems of Beginning, Problems of Progressing, and Problems of Finishing and aims primarily to address "the non-technical aspects of the process of making music." While it shows images only of Ableton Live, the information is not specific to Ableton Live. In June 2017, Ableton acquired Cycling '74, developers of the

digital signal processing Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner are a ...

environment Max/MSP and its integrated version Max for Live.

Products

Ableton Live

Ableton Live is a

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW ) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pr ...

developed by Ableton and is currently in its twelfth version. There are three primary editions of the software: Live 12 Standard (the core software for music performance and creation), Live 12 Suite (adds on Max for Live and an expansive selection of instruments, effects, and samples), Live 12 Intro (an introductory version of Live with track and effect limitations). Live Lite is another more restricted edition bundled with various hardware and applications. Ableton Live is designed to be used with a wide range of USB and MIDI controllers, as well as instruments and virtual instruments.

Ableton Push

In March 2013, the company released the Push controller for Live 9 in cooperation with Akai Professional. It gives access to most performing elements within the digital audio workstation from the one unit, playing notes on a device or instrument, sequencing melodic notes and parameters, and triggering clips via a 64 pad matrix. In November 2015, Ableton released the second iteration of the Push, Ableton Push 2, which features an onboard display and better integration with the Live software. In May 2023, Ableton released the Push 3 as Controller and as Standalone-Version.

Ableton Move

Move is a portable, 4 track groove-box with deep Ableton Live integration.

Ableton Note

Note is a mobile companion app to Ableton Live.

References

External links

* {{Official website , https://www.ableton.com/ Companies based in Berlin German brands Software companies of Germany Music equipment manufacturers Audio software companies