My main, indispensable tool for the last several years has been Ableton Live. This may not be the perfect music and audio production software, but it’s closer than anything else I’ve ever tried, and I’ve tried pretty much everything. It’s currently (Jun 2009) at version 8*. If I was only allowed one sequencer on my computer it would be Live.
I’ve been using it for most of my composing, arranging and production since 2001 or so. What appealed to me about it at first, and still does, is the rapidity with which you can “prototype” an arrangement. It may not have the intricate editing capabilities of a full-featured DAW like Logic or Sonar, but over the years that has been largely remedied.
An analogy came to me the other day as to why I think this is such a good tool. Although I’m not a sculptor or craftsman, I’m imagining a set of tools that are so convenient and so powerful that it makes going from a concept to a finished piece much faster than any other technique. For instance, suppose that you had discovered a scuplting medium and special tools that allowed you to sculpt statues or busts in a fraction of the time it took when you used classic materials and methods such as clay, marble, wood, etc. That’s the way I feel about Live.
Live was originally aimed primarily or at least largely towards live performance (thus the name) with the arranging and mixing capabilities added in. But I never use it for that function. Still, with the features that have been added over the years (MIDI, VST, ReWire) it has 90% of what I need to do what I want to do.
The only significant thing it doesn’t have compared to big DAWs/sequencers is event lists/quantitative data fields (i.e, allowing you to enter specific numeric values for velocity, envelope values at times, etc.) but that’s really a small limitation considering all the unique features and design genius it possesses. Basically, their design philosophy for the program is that the controls for the things you spend 90% of your time working on are all quickly available, but beneath that are controls to do those less frequent but still crucial functions.
Things I like and don’t like about Live
(Note: the problem with lists like these are that each line gets the same apparent weight. But for me, the “likes” outweigh the “dislikes” by a huge factor. So I’m going to put a number next to each item from -5 (major annoyance) to +5 (awesomeness).)
I like…
+5: gapless audio! As far as I can tell, it’s almsost impossible to get the audio engine to stop, no matter what you do. Even though I don’t play live, this is a great feature while you’re composing. You can throw in new audio, turn loops off and on while playing, and Live’s audio engine just seems to keep steaming along.
+5: ultrasimplistic interface
+5: phenomenal attention to workflow; logical keyboard shortcuts for almost everything
+5: rock stable on all the machines I’ve used it on (all Windows 2000 and XP based. But Macintosh users seem to report the same stability)
+1: “Library” concept. At first I didn’t like the way they implemented this, but it’s growing on me…
I don’t care for…
-2: everything in one executable. Support for all the control surfaces, and code for all the optional instruments, are all globbed together into one huge executable. I’m sure Ableton thought a lot about that architectural approach, and they have tradeoffs in terms of distribution, but it does seem sort of cumbersome.
-2: MIDI is supported, but only in GUI mode (i.e., no “event list” or quantitative MIDI editing.)
-1: routing a bit weird – but powerful overall I must admit
-5: “ARGHH” – running the “Manage Library” command takes as much as an hour! I can’t believe my Live Library is that much bigger than anyone else’s. (It’s about 4 GB, roughly 24,000 files.) Anyway, I’ve learned that to do grooming on my Live Library I just have to set it running and look in on it every half hour or so. Possibly once all the missing links are fixed it will be snappier.
It appears that even if you don’t own the add-on instruments, live Analog, Tension, Operator, etc., you still need to install the demo versions in the Library or it will report problems when you groom it. Hmmmmmmm….
Major feature additions over the versions
These are not necessarily the touted ones, but those that I found that made it worthwhile to upgrade.
1.0 Initial release (actually, the very first time I used Live it was version 1.5. You only had one warp mode, it didn’t support MIDI, most of the GUI was not resizeable, etc.
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
6.0
7.0
8.0: Track grouping. When arrangements get to contain too many tracks, being able to group them away in these virtual “folders” is really helpful. I have a 23 inch monitor and it still gets too crowded. And finally! A way to access plugins with more than 128 controllers! (especially Dimension Pro which I use a lot). This is huge.
Also: custom colors for racks and other GUI elements: to wit
Page#71/last updated 20100605
