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Ableton Live 11

ableton.com

71–80 of 268 posts

Re: Ableton Live 11

#71
post #13

Not to thread-jack, but are there any worthy open-sourced competitors to Ableton? I'm just getting into DAWs and was thinking of buying Ableton Live but haven't had the time to explore/compare other options. My musician buddies all tell me not to waste my time and just buy it.

If you buy hardware they usually throw in software for free. I bought a usb-c audio interface and it came with cubase, and my midi controller came with ableton. They are light versions but they get the job done. It's enough that you can at least compare DAWs.

It's not free but I like to plug renoise whenever I can. It's more of a tracker than a traditional DAW, scriptable in lua. If you are a programmer you might like trackers.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#72
post #4

As a UI and UX nerd, one thing I really love about the digital music production scene is that software companies writing DAWs and VSTs know their audience and strive to give power users all the tools they need to be as productive as possible. Knobs, curves, programming (Max for Live), integration with external tools. In other fields of software development instead we dumb everything down to the lowest denominator, an…

Have you checked out bitwig? I love the help overlay. Explains everything while you can turn the knobs.

Same for their graphical programming thing ("grid" I think). A nice hybrid between skeumorphic and digital with e.g. stylized wires hanging down in gravity, but becoming transparent when crossing components.

Also super nice that most "visualizations" are also interactive (see the direct manipulation of the envelope at the end of the following vid)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWjYedds-RQ

Re: Ableton Live 11

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the advice. But even that sounds difficult for a novice like me. How do I "adjust warp settings" so that two tempos are the same? And I don't want to just have the same tempo, I want to align specific beats. I know there is a forum and documentation but if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions then all my creativity goes into finding technical solutions, rather than solving artist…

> if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions Any musician has to learn their instrument. Commit to that.

> Any musician has to learn their instrument

I don't have the time or resources to 'commit to that". Ableton Live is NOT my instrument, I would like to just use it as a tool.

It takes years of practice to learn any musical instrument and become a musician that other people would want to listen to. Maybe the same applies to Ableton? It takes years of hard practice to master it? If so it would be proper that their sales literature would be up front about it. You will need years of study to master this instrument in order to produce something that other people would want to listen to. You will need to commit to it :-)

The difference between Ableton and "ordinary musical instruments" is that Ableton runs on a computer, therefore its use should be easy enough to not require years to learn.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#74
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the advice. But even that sounds difficult for a novice like me. How do I "adjust warp settings" so that two tempos are the same? And I don't want to just have the same tempo, I want to align specific beats. I know there is a forum and documentation but if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions then all my creativity goes into finding technical solutions, rather than solving artist…

I hear you, Ableton actually has pretty great tutorials in the program itself that can help to learn the software as well.

I understand that and not saying it is not great, just that it seems to be more difficult to master than I expected. It can be fun to tinker with and learn if you have the time. One problem I think is that the documentation is scattered there's not single Bible to read to learn all about it, is there?

In the world of programming languages there's a lot of books called "cookbooks" - recipes for how to do things that many programmers will need to do. Say "C# CookBook". Is there such a book or resource for Ableton? If not maybe there should be. It might be a best seller :-)

Re: Ableton Live 11

#75

Something I find interesting is that they're adding built-in entropy to this update. You will now be able to set the probability that a MIDI note will fire in a melody. Or set a range of probabilities for the velocity value of a MIDI note. I'm sure that you will be able to map the range probabilities to the ADSR of synths etc... I'm curious if that is more of a novelty or will actually be a valuable tool for explorin…

Probability-based triggers are one of my favorite things, and something that I thought was pretty lacking here (I only came to Ableton just recently, but nearly every arpeggiator I've used up until now has had a note probability feature and it does wonders for variation in patterns).

So I'm extremely glad to see it being integrated.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#77
post #76
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you liked the old Fruity, you might enjoy this: https://dunkadunka.com

I do like this, thanks!

Cool, I made it just for fun when the corona started and business was slower than usual.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions Any musician has to learn their instrument. Commit to that.

> Any musician has to learn their instrument I don't have the time or resources to 'commit to that". Ableton Live is NOT my instrument, I would like to just use it as a tool. It takes years of practice to learn any musical instrument and become a musician that other people would want to listen to. Maybe the same applies to Ableton? It takes years of hard practice to master it? If so it would be proper that their sale…

I mean, it takes years to be a "good programmer" as well as years to be "good at photoshop" as well as years to be effective with any professional tool.

You are expecting Ableton, a professional tool, to act as a toy.

Spend $100, Take a course, or watch some tutorials in the styles you want to make, and you'll build to proficiency.

Tools take time to learn. Toys less so.

I found that Ableton push was actually extremely helpful to take my understanding of Ableton to the next level. I then sold my push, and am more proficient with the software now.

If you don't have the "muscle memory" of other DAWs then ableton will be a new paradigm and absolutely hard to use and understand. Esp the difference between midi and audio.

Edit: I had a long day, so I might sound harsher than you expect, but the core of my message is: learning new powerful instruments is hard. Best of luck learning ableton, it's great. Go make some drones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdRcpRxYJK0

Re: Ableton Live 11

#79
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, Ableton actually has pretty great tutorials in the program itself that can help to learn the software as well.

I understand that and not saying it is not great, just that it seems to be more difficult to master than I expected. It can be fun to tinker with and learn if you have the time. One problem I think is that the documentation is scattered there's not single Bible to read to learn all about it, is there? In the world of programming languages there's a lot of books called "cookbooks" - recipes for how to do things that m…

https://www.adsrsounds.com/product/courses/ableton-live-10-t...

I used one of these a few years ago for an earlier version. Was helpful. I suspect this one would be just the same.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#80
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drag the mp3 onto an audio track, and turn on / adjust the warp settings to set it to the correct tempo.

Thank you for the advice. But even that sounds difficult for a novice like me. How do I "adjust warp settings" so that two tempos are the same? And I don't want to just have the same tempo, I want to align specific beats. I know there is a forum and documentation but if all my time goes to trying to figure out technical solutions then all my creativity goes into finding technical solutions, rather than solving artist…

What you want to accomplish here is one of the most basic tasks in Live. If you can’t commit to learning at least this small thing you might as well not even attempt to use Live.
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