Ableton Live
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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 ...
for
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and
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developed by the German company Ableton. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Live is designed to be an instrument for live
performance A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Performance has evolved glo ...
s as well as a tool for composing, recording, arranging, mixing, and mastering audio. It is also used by DJs, as it offers a suite of controls for
beatmatching Beatmatching or pitch cue is a DJ technique of pitch shifting or time stretching an upcoming track to match its tempo to that of the currently playing track, and to adjust them such that the beats (and, usually, the bars) are synchronized†...
, crossfading, and other different effects used by turntablists, and was one of the first music applications to automatically beatmatch
song A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. The voice often carries the melody (a series of distinct and fixed pitches) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs have a structure, such as the common ABA form, and are usu ...
s. Live is available directly from Ableton in three editions: Intro (with fewer features), Standard, and Suite (with the most features). The Suite edition includes "Max for Live" functionality, developed in partnership with Cycling '74. Ableton has also made a fourth version of Live, Lite, with similar limitations to Intro, which is only available bundled with a range of music production hardware, including
MIDI controller A MIDI controller is any hardware or software that generates and transmits Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data to MIDI-enabled devices, typically to trigger sounds and control parameters of an electronic music performance. They mos ...
s and audio interfaces.


History

Live was created by Gerhard Behles, Robert Henke and Bernd Roggendorf in the mid-1990s. Behles and Henke met while studying programming 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 ...
, and wrote software in the music programming language Max to perform techno as their band Monolake. Henke and Behles identified a need in Berlin's electronic music scene for user-friendly software for live performances, and worked with local acts to develop it. Though Live was not developed in Max, Max was used to prototype most of its features. Henke said later of Live's creation, "I think the feeling we had was
hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...
there was enough like-minded people in our closer community who could appreciate a product like this, and that it could work commercially. That gave us confidence to believe that a small company could actually survive on the market." He said one of the first industry figures to recognize Live's potential was the Hollywood composer
Hans Zimmer Hans Florian Zimmer (; born 12 September 1957) is a German film score composer and music producer. He has won two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, five Grammy Awards, and has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards, Emmy Awards and a Tony ...
, who was impressed by Live's ability to change the
tempo In musical terminology, tempo (Italian for 'time'; plural 'tempos', or from the Italian plural), measured in beats per minute, is the speed or pace of a given musical composition, composition, and is often also an indication of the composition ...
of a loop without altering its pitch. Roggendorf, another programmer, joined Behles and Henke in the late 90s and helped them turn their Max patches into a general set of software for retail. They released the first commercial version of Live on October 30, 2001. Unlike Pro Tools, which focuses on
multitrack recording Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking, is a method of sound recording developed in 1955 that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources or of sound sources recorded at different times to create a cohesive who ...
, the first version of Live was designed for performing live with loops. It offered sophisticated tools for triggering loops, playing samples and time stretching audio, and was immediately popular with electronic music producers. Live's time stretching algorithm, known as "Warping", was particularly notable and gave DJs greater control over mixing and
beatmatching Beatmatching or pitch cue is a DJ technique of pitch shifting or time stretching an upcoming track to match its tempo to that of the currently playing track, and to adjust them such that the beats (and, usually, the bars) are synchronized†...
, smoothly blending tracks of different tempos. In 2004, Live expanded to become a DAW with a
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
sequencer and support for virtual studio technology (VST). In 2010, Ableton introduced Max for Live, enabling connectivity between Max and Live. Live made it easier for musicians to use computers as instruments in live performance without programming their own software, influencing the rise of global
festival A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A ...
culture in the 2000s. In 2016, Henke left Ableton to concentrate on his artistic project Monolake.


Features


Views

Live's user interface is composed of two 'Views' – Session View and Arrangement View. Session View offers a grid-based representation of all of the Clips in a Live Set. These clips can be arranged into scenes which can then be triggered as a unit. For instance a drum,
bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...
and
guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...
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. Arrangement View offers a horizontal music production timeline of Clips that is more similar to a traditional software sequencer interface. The Arrangement View is used for recording tracks from the session view and further manipulating their arrangement and effects. It is also used for manual MIDI sequencing. Live utilizes audio samples or
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
sequences, referred to as Clips, which are arranged to be played live (i.e. "launched") or played back in a pre-arranged order. MIDI information received by Live can trigger notes on Live's built in instruments, as well as third party VST instruments or external hardware.


Instruments

Live Intro includes four instruments (Impulse, Simpler, Instrument Rack, and Drum Rack). Live Standard additionally includes External Instrument, with users having the option to purchase additional instruments. By contrast, Live Suite includes all available instruments. * Analog - physically-modeled
analog synthesizer An analog synthesizer () is a synthesizer that uses Analogue electronics, analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a var ...
. * Bass - a monophonic virtual analog bass synthesizer. * Collision - a mallet
percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...
physical modelling synthesizer. * Drift - a subtractive synthesizer enabled with MIDI Polyphonic Expression functionality. * Drum Rack - an instrument framework that maps individual MIDI notes to separate instrument chains, supporting up to 128 notes at a time. Any Ableton or VST instrument can be used inside a chain, such as a sampler or synthesizer, and you can set which note is sent to the instrument. Each chain is capable of having its own effects. * Drum Synths - 8 devices for creating drum and percussion sounds via synthesis. * Electric - physically-modeled electric piano instrument. * Granulator III - a granular synthesizer * Impulse - 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. * Instrument Rack - allows the user to combine multiple instruments and effects into a single device, allowing for split and layered sounds with customized macro controls. * Meld - A synthesizer with two macro oscillators, meaning the user can choose between multiple different synthesis modes. * Operator - an FM synthesizer. * Poli - a virtual analog synthesizer that combines subtractive and
FM synthesis Frequency modulation synthesis (or FM synthesis) is a form of sound synthesis whereby the frequency of a waveform is changed by modulating its frequency with a modulator. The (instantaneous) frequency of an oscillator is altered in accordance wi ...
* Sampler - an enhanced sampler. * Simpler - a basic sampling instrument. It functions using a single audio sample, applying simple effects, and envelopes, finally 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. * Tension - a string physical modelling synthesizer. * Wavetable - a wavetable synthesizer featuring two oscillators and re-mappable modulation sources. Ableton also offers a selection of Add-on Sample Packs with which a user can expand the sound libraries for their instruments. These include: * Session Drums - a collection of sampled
drum kits A drum kit or drum set (also known as a trap set, or simply drums in popular music and jazz contexts) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and sometimes other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The drummer t ...
. * 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 included upon purchase of Live Suite but must be downloaded separately.


Dedicated hardware instruments

Akai Akai (, ) is a Japanese brand & former electronics manufacturer, established as Akai Electric Company Ltd in Tokyo in 1929. It was best known outside Japan for its tape recorders during the 1960s and 1970s. The company became bankrupt in 2000 ...
Professional makes the APC40 mk II, a MIDI controller designed to work solely with Live and closely maps the layout of Live's Session View onto a physical control surface. A smaller version, the APC20, was released in 2010. Novation offers the Launchpad, a pad device that has been designed for use with Live. Ableton has also released their own MIDI controller, the Push, which is the first pad-based controller that embraces scales and melody. In November 2015, Ableton released an updated MIDI controller, the Push 2, along with Live 9.5. Push 2 features a new color display, improved buttons and pads, and a lighter frame. In May 2023, Ableton released the Push 3 as Controller and as Standalone-Version. On October 8th, 2024 Ableton released their second hardware product, Move, which functions as a compact standalone groovebox, or as a MIDI controller for Ableton Live.


Effects

Live features a suite of built-in audio effects that are common amongst digital audio workstations; including EQ, delay, reverb, compression, and distortion. In addition, Live has numerous other effects that can be used creatively for composition and sound design. Beat Repeat slices loops and adds variations left to chance. Spectral Resonator, Spectral Delay and Spectral Time use spectral processing to make glitchy, metallic sounding delay, reverb, and vocoder-like pitch effects. Some effects are reproductions of classic hardware, such as the Glue Compressor (styled from SSL bus compression) and the Echo (simulates noise and delay-time wobble as characteristic in analogue delay). Furthermore, Live features effects that can simulate a guitar rig and other signal degradation effects, including an amp-sim, Overdrive (band-pass filtered clipping with built-in distortion), Pedal (circuit-level modelled overdrive, distortion, and fuzz from guitar pedals), Erosion (uses filtered-noise or a sine wave to modulate the time of a very short delay), Saturator ( waveshaping distortion with controls to dial in a custom curve), Redux (bit-depth reduction and downsampling), Dynamic Tube (models saturation produced by vacuum tubes), and Vinyl Distortion (harmonic distortion models with a crackle generator.) Live also supports hardware audio effects routed into its signal chain through the External Audio Effect device. As well as audio effects, Live features MIDI effects that shape the incoming MIDI data (either from the arrangement or from live input) before it reaches the instrument. These include an
Arpeggiator A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis an ...
, that can conform to the key of the song as well as play in higher octaves than the input, as well as a Chord device that automatically plays musical intervals when a single note is pressed according to the user's preference. Live is also able to host VST plugins and, on the
macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
version, Audio Unit plug-ins as well as Max for Live devices since Live 9.


Working with audio clips

In addition to the instruments mentioned above, Live can work with audio samples. Live attempts to do beat analysis of the samples to find their
meter The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...
, number of bars and the number of
beats per minute Beat, beats, or beating may refer to: Common uses * Assault, inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact * Battery (crime), a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact * Battery (tort), a civil wrong in common law of in ...
. This makes it possible for Live to shift these samples to fit into loops that are tied into the piece's global
tempo In musical terminology, tempo (Italian for 'time'; plural 'tempos', or from the Italian plural), measured in beats per minute, is the speed or pace of a given musical composition, composition, and is often also an indication of the composition ...
. 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. 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. Audio to midi conversion is not always 100% accurate and may require the artist or producer to manually adjust some notes.


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 and track panning, but envelopes are also used in Live to control parameters of audio devices such as the root note of a resonator or a filter's cutoff frequency. Clip envelopes may also be mapped to
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
controls, which can also control parameters in real-time using sliders, faders and such. Using the global transport record function will also record changes made to these parameters, creating an envelope for them.


User interface

Much of Live's interface comes from being designed for use in live performance, as well as for production. 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). The user is warned when an attempted action will stop the audio playback as a preventative measure for live performers. Live now supports latency compensation for plug-in and mixer automation.


See also

*
List of music software This is a list of software for creating, performing, learning, analyzing, researching, broadcasting and editing music. This article only includes software, not services. For streaming services such as iHeartRadio, Pandora (service), Pandora, Prime ...
*
Multitrack recording Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking, is a method of sound recording developed in 1955 that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources or of sound sources recorded at different times to create a cohesive who ...


References


External links


Official websiteAbleton Live how-to database Free Ableton Courses for Ableton Live users.
{{Authority control C++ software Digital audio workstation software Music production software Electronic music software DJ software Music looping Windows multimedia software MacOS audio editors MacOS multimedia software