Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ableton Live 11

ableton.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 268 posts

Re: Ableton Live 11

#121

Post by BuildTheRobots »

packetlost wrote: post #17
sph wrote: 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…

You'd end up with GarageBand. It all depends on the target audience. If you have a piece of software meant to be used by experts, it should be powerful enough that it doesn't restrict them. I disagree that software has a tendency to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator, simplifying and automating things is the purpose of software in the first place, but there's a huge amount of software out there tha…

> everything Adobe makes

When Lightroom moved from v6 (iirc) to Creative Cloud a stunning amount of functionality seems to have been lost for the sake of making it idiot friendly.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#122

Post by scarecrowbob »

salimmadjd wrote: post #5
breakfastduck wrote: post #3

They did it. They finally added comping. I would be buying the upgrade if that was the only feature but there's so many!

For someone like me who uses Logic, is there a reason to use Ableton? Logic is only one $200 lifetime fee

I dunno if there is one. I get a lot of work done in logic.

I ended up with an octatrack for doing what a lot of folks are using live for, tho, and that's been super fun for me.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#123

Post by dumpsterdiver »

packetlost wrote: post #112
teucris wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Ableton Live for music production for over a decade, and I can say that if it were ported to work on my iPad, I’d use it every day.

What advantages do you think it offers over using a MBP?

One advantage is that recording drum pad sessions would be more convenient on an iPad (you could just tap out a beat right on the screen). On the other hand, there's something to be said for high quality midi controllers that allow you to do the same.

For instance, an iPad would be a great place to experiment and get an idea down, and then you could bring the idea to your other, more professionally oriented tools.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#125

Post by scarecrowbob »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #73
GavinMcG wrote: post #27

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…

The advice about treating it like an instrument is good, IMO

I play a bunch of instruments and have been on quite a few recording, but I had to spend the last couple of months learning a novation circuit and an electron octatrack for a project I am working on.

TBH, it took me about a week with abelton and a DVD course to learn enough to be fairly productive with it... that was back when there wasn't much on YTube.

These things are instruments and require just as much work to learn.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#126

Post by huhnmonster »

jancsika wrote: post #86
sph wrote: 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…

> Knobs Can someone explain to me the point of a GUI knob? Is it just the analogy to physical knobs on mixers that makes people comfortable with them in GUIs?

It is not only the analogy. I like to use Midi controllers which have hardware knobs mapped to software knobs for live performances.

Sure, you could map a knob to a slider or anything really, but it makes the interaction easier

Re: Ableton Live 11

#127

Post by scarecrowbob »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #74
dmicah wrote: 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…

"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?"

Just to commiserate, I feel the same way about the pedal steel guitar :D

Re: Ableton Live 11

#128

Post by dumpsterdiver »

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #121
packetlost wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd end up with GarageBand. It all depends on the target audience. If you have a piece of software meant to be used by experts, it should be powerful enough that it doesn't restrict them. I disagree that software has a tendency to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator, simplifying and automating things is the purpose of software in the first place, but there's a huge amount of software out there tha…

> everything Adobe makes When Lightroom moved from v6 (iirc) to Creative Cloud a stunning amount of functionality seems to have been lost for the sake of making it idiot friendly.

I was really let down when Adobe After Effects removed the ability to randomize "effect groups" (for lack of a better name, basically a group of layered effects that creates a single, easily recognizable effect, such as "grainy movie film").

I spent so many hours playing with that thing. Don't get me wrong, I still do, but now I have to make all those tweaks manually instead of rolling the dice and hoping for a gem. Sadly, I don't find nearly as many gems as I used to when I was able to roll the dice.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#129

Post by pvarangot »

jlarocco wrote: post #49
sph wrote: 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…

My impression is that's only true in consumer software and web development. CAD, rendering/animation, high end photo editing, and a lot of other higher end, professional software are script-able, provide libraries and APIs, and work closely with their end-users to give them what they want.

Yeah I was thinking about Photoshop and Lightroom, which I also use, as other examples of what OP said.

Photoshop is scriptable/extendable and Lightroom has the more intuitive GUI. Apple started the Lightroom paradigm with Aperture, which was kind of the GarageBand of photo editing softwares until Lightroom caught up with the ease of use.

Re: Ableton Live 11

#130

Post by mollusk »

taffer wrote: post #104
sph wrote: 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…

Interestingly, DAWs have always had flat UI designs, something that many HN commentators seem to frown upon.

DAWs, maybe, but the VSTs that live in symbiosis with them have had (and a lot of them still do) the most skeuomorphic designs ever, replicating the look and feel of audio hardware.
Post reply on HN