Category: ableton live

November 16, 2020

Ableton Live 11 is here – with comping and more favourite features!

Pretty much exactly three years after Ableton’s last major version-release, Ableton Live 10, our all favourite Digital Audio Workstation-creators now delight the community with the announcement of Ableton Live 11. A few days ago the public beta-phase has started, I had a chance to check out and work with the new software for a couple of weeks already. And folks, I could not be more excited! In this blog post I will highlight my favourite new feature and shine some light on a few more very fine changes, overhauls and workflows.
This is by no means a full review of Ableton Live 11, but more of an introduction to a couple of long awaited features. So let’s dive right into it!

Over the years the Abletons in Berlin have achieved to get many producers and musicans to switch to their platform. Still, for a large group amongst artists, especially those, who produce their music in a more classical way, i.e. recording vocalists and analog instruments, such as real drums, guitars, string sections etc., it was lacking of certain possibilities, that other DAWs were offering for a long time.
I, as a drummer and vocalist was one of them. Whenever I needed to record drums, I felt forced to either heavily compromise or switch to another software (such as Cubase or the good old ProTools) for these tasks. The magic word is comping – and now we have exactly that in Ableton Live 11!

What is comping?

„Comping“ stands for the possibility to record different takes within a looped segment of a song, to then being presented those different takes in a visual overview and the ability to choose parts of those recordings and combine them to that one „perfect take“.

Let’s say, you are recording vocals for a song. With Live 11, all you have to do, is set your loop length in Live’s arrangement view (for example over the lenght of „verse 1“) and start recording in a cycle. Whenever a „new round“ has been recorded, Live 11 will automatically add a new lane containing the last take underneath the original track. To make those evolving lanes visible, you need to click on the track header on the right and either right-click and choose „Show Take Lanes“ or use the shortcut „alt-command-u“. If you do so before you start recording, you can see the take lanes being created on the fly. The lanes are renameable.
When finished with the recording, you can listen to all the individual takes one by one by pressing the little loudspeaker symbol found on each lane. From here you can switch to draw-mode (shortcut „b“) and use the pencil to select your favourite parts of the performance by simply highlighting them. Alternatively, you can highlight the part with the mouse (not in draw mode) and press „Enter“. The result that you create by selecting and combining the segments will be displayed in the top-lane. Automatic and editable fades are applied to cossfade between the cuts to prevent unwanted clicks and pops.

Remember that the size of the chunks of audio you can select depends on the current grid size. To be able to freely select a grid-independent-sized part of a take, you need to turn the grid off by right clicking into the arrangement. When you finally have comped your perfect take, you can close the lanes again and will be left with with one clean track – your comped vocal track!

Comping also works on MIDI tracks.

It’s pretty much the same workflow when you are comping on a MIDI track, so just jam away on your MIDI-drums, bass-synth, your lead solo or whatever you are recording with MIDI and then comp your take.

Apart from the „classical way“ of comping, huge creative possibilities for sounddesign, glitchy sounds etc. are coming up when creating new take lanes (right click / insert take lane“ / „alt – shift -t“ and then mixing up and combining parts by comping them together. Awesomeness!!

Combine comping with linked tracks.

If you record a multi-microphoned instrument, such as a guitar with two or three mics placed on the amp or a full drumkit – which can use up a much larger number of microphon-inputs – things can get complicated in terms of workflow, but even more regarding phase issues.
Therefore, Live 11 introduces its brandnew „link tracks“-feature: By selecting the respective tracks (for example all tracks that represent the drumkit-signals) and right click on the track headers to select „Link Tracks“, all drum signals are linked, connected, grouped together – whatever you want to call it – to be simultaniously edited. (A little icon is shown on the header of every linked track.) This regards actions such as creating or editing fades, transpose all linked signals etc., but foremost (at least for me…), the link-tracks-feature enables multitrack comping. That means, every edit done on any track (f.e. kick, snare, overheads etc.) is processed throughout all linked tracks – and they remain phase correct!

Comping and Multi-mic editing the easy, classic way, – finally in Ableton Live 11.
One happy drummer & producer here!

Follow Actions: Overhauled & finally available for scenes!

As someone who builds Live sets for performances on stage, prefering using Live’s session view, Follow Actions are a fantastic tool to automate a show-order, effects etc. – apart from all other creative possibilities they can provide. In Live 11 we finally get „Follow Actions for scenes!
Before L11 one could built a „hack“ utilising a virtual MIDI port (such as IAC Driver on a Mac or Midiyoke on PC) to MIDI-map dedicated clips to the „fire scene buttons“. Alternatively and more convenient, a nice Maxforlive solution had been available for a while now („Follow“ by Isotonic Studios) to have this feature available. Luckily, no need for all that anymore, since Live 11 does provide Follow Actions for scenes now:

By expanding the Master section to the left, you can see that every scene has it’s own dedicated number now, and next to those, slots for BPM values and time signatures become visible. All you need to do is determine the desired tempo and metrum for each scene in those slots.

Whenever you click on a scene, you are presented with a dedicated „Scene“-window down in the clip view (alt-command-l or double click on a scene to open that window). Here you will find the same editable parameters again (tempo & time signature) as well as an Follow Action -toggle-button, which needs to be clicked in order to make the individual action active. If a scene is activated for a Follow Action, the appearance of the respective fire scene button changes. The „Scene“-window has a new, more transparent look, which makes it more pleasant to tweak the usual Clip Follow Action parameters, such as probability and Action Time. Also, one new action has been added to the concept: „Jump“, which allows to jump to specific scene, since now they are numbered. Very helpfull, love it!

Next to the „Back to Arrangement“-button in the master section we now have a global Follow Action activation button, which, when not turned on, hinders any Follow Actions (scenes or clips) to be executed, independent of their individual status. When turned on, it activates all individually activated Follow Actions.

Speaking of Clip’s Follow Actions:

Yes, Clip’s Follow Actions also recieved an overhaul. The whole clip view section in Live 11 has a different, more userfriendly look, as I find.
Click on the little arrow to make the Follow Actions-tab visible, and you are presented with the new, improved FA window. As descibed regarding scene’s Follow Actions, each clip also needs to have its respectable Follow Actions-button activated in order to perform the action. The new „Jump“ action is also available here, connected to the scene number, in which the clip lives. Additionally, you find a toggle button named „Linked / Unlinked.
When „Linked“ is chosen, the Follow Action will be executed after the clip has finished playing out its full length; alternatively a new option of multplying rounds of the clip lengh can be dialed in. Again, really nice..
When „Unlinked“ is checked, the time before the action takes place can be dialed in (bar – beats – sixteenth) or, also very convenient, by moving the then appearing little flag inside the clip to the desired unlinked clip length. Lastly, there are two Nudge buttons, backward and forward, which can be used to control a playing clip`s launch time by the note value of global quantisation.

The improvements of the whole Follow Actions concept are really awesome, together with the comping features they are probably my favourite new additions to Live 11.

MIDI: Fold to Scale, Velocity, Probability & Ramdomize.

Since I mentioned the changes in clip view, I now would like to adress a couple of more new options regarding MIDI clips, which I really enjoy:
Ableton Push users have loved the „Cannot play a wrong note“ -feature (Scale Button on the Push Controller) for years now, which allows to define a key and scale from Push and then just play notes without ever producing a „wrong“ note. In Live 11 we now have an option (Fold to Scale) in the third tab of the new MIDI clip view, which allows to fold the piano roll down to displaying only notes from the chosen scale. This way you can define your scale and from there draw in any note and it will always fit into the selected scale. Still, this is only an option, of course the whole piano roll is still available. As an improvement, the classic piano roll now highlights those notes in the piano roll, that belong to the chosen (and activated) scale. The classic „Fold“ option, which folds the piano roll down to only notes which currently contain MIDI notes, is still available.
The combination of these three piano roll-views gives us a great deal of freedom, transparency and assistance, no matter how firm we are in music theory.

The MIDI Velocity-Editor has also recieved a make up. The handles, which each represent one MIDI note, are now layouted horizontally, mirroring the length of each note. This makes editing the values and also editing the velocity range of each note (hold „command“ and click drag) much more convenient and visually transparent.

Another very interesting idea is the brandnew MIDI Probabilty-Editor, found in the Expression Editor Lane under the Note Tab. Both editors (Velocity and Probability) are made visible by checking their new, dedicated „Show / Hide“-buttons.
As the name suggests, in this new editor we can define a percentage of probabilty for each individual note to be played out. A supernice tool to create unexpected variations of a given idea, bring life to drum pattern (for example broken HiHat figures) or whatever one could come up with.

Together with the also brandnew „Randomize“-button under the Note Tab, which can target the data in the Velocity Editor as well as in the Probability Editor, endless and inspirational results are just one click away.

These are only a few of many great new features inside Ableton Live 11, which are amongst my very favourites for now, but there is so much more:

Some really exciting new devices, for example: The crazy „Spectral Resonator“ and „Spectral Time“, a new Hybrid Reverb (Convolutiuon & Algorhythmic Reverb -combo), or the overhauled Redux, which now- amongst other improvements – has a dry/wet control.
Also, there is MPE-support (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) for Live’s instruments Simpler, Sampler and Wavetable as well as for selected third party plugins. Racks & macros have been improved, so has the browser. So much to explore and to get creative with.

For me personally, this new version of Ableton Live is a true gamechanger, defining Ableton Live as a true “complete DAW”. I enjoy it to the fullest and can only encourage you to have a close look.

Stay happy & healthy, make music and enjoy!

Comping and all other discussed features are available for all Ableton Live 11 users,
from Live Intro to Live Standard and to Live Suite.

* Note: Ableton Live 11 is still in beta at the time of this blogpost, features may differ in detail at final release.

November 21, 2017

Ableton Live 10 – Overcoming the recording blockage with „Capture“

On November 2nd Ableton Live 10 was announced and will be available to the public from early 2018. The full update features countless new improvements, a sharp new 60 frame look, some brandnew devices and even a spectacular wavetable synth – plus it has tons of workflow improvements, such as the longly begged for ability to group-in-groups. But there is one new feature, that i immediatly fell in love with, as soon as i first got an early beta version of Live 10 a couple of months ago: „Capture“.

What is Capture?
We all have encountered the phenomenon of mentally choking, as soon as the „red light“ turns on. While playing around with ideas, you might find something you like (a beat, a bassline or chord progression) and then want to record it – but as soon as you try to make the recording, you cannot reproduce the exact, original idea. This is where Capture comes into place. In Version 10, Live is constantly monitoring, i.e. memorising all Midi notes played into the programm with a computer keyboard, Ableton Push or whatever inputting controller you use.

How to use Capture?
It’s actually really simple: just play music and don’t worry about preparation and the eventual pressure of recording. If you start a new set, song or project in Ableton Live 10, you now don’t have to priorly decide on a tempo, turn on the metronome and then start recording. No, all you do is play. The necessety to define a tempo up front was something i always didn’t like; especially since Ableton brought us Push, it seemed kind of counterproductive to the actual concept of the controller being an integrated musical instrument. Now you can just jam beats or other ideas and whenever you are am happy with what you played, simply click the „Capture“ Button next to Live’s Transport or press [Record] + [New] on Push. Live will create a new, looped and timed-up clip, which contains the Midi-Notes, that you have played since you selected that track and record-armed it, respectively turned it’s monitor to „in“.

A few rules with Capture.
Even though Capture is really easy to use – to fully benefit from the feature and don’t get confused with the results, let me quickly explain Capture’s behavior a bit more in detail:

– To make Capture define the global set tempo by a captured clip, simply play the notes – while Live’s transport is not running. Capture will define the tempo of the set as it interpretates the input.
– When adding another captured clip to the track or set, Capture will then interpretate this clip and again adjust the global tempo, if Live’s transport is not running.
– Opposed to Live’s transport running: Here, Capture will not set a new global tempo to the set, but stay where the tempo was set last.
– Capure will deliver the best results, if you play one more note landing on „one“ after your x-bar-long idea.
– Capture’s range of tempo-analyzing lays between 80 and 160 bpm. If you are looking for a faster or slower tempo, you will need to adjust it afterwords.
– If your first clip has a length of f.e. four bars, Live 10 will assume, that the next clip on another track that you are jamming in, will also be four bars long. If that second clip differs in lenghts, you will have to adjust it to your needs.
– You can always tell, if Capture still has something memorised by looking at the Capture button: if it’s greyed out, Capture’s memory is empty, if it is white, it indicates „press me and i will create a new clip or overdub.“
– Yes, Capture also allows overdubbing: if none of the clips in a track are playing, a new capture will create a new clip in that track containing that last jam-idea. If a clip in that track is playing while you are jamming, it will add those new notes to the playing clip.
– If you have f.e. jammed on track 1, but did not make use of the memorised notes by pressing either Live’s Capture Button or [Record] + [New] on Push, and then jam on track 2 and do capture that idea, the previous idea on track 1 will be deleted from Capture’s memory. This means, Capture will only remember what you played on a track as long as you do capture it before you capture another idea on another track.

Those „rules“ feel logical and one gets used to the mechanics of Capture quickly. In my workflow the use of Capture is implemented already and i hardly ever go „old school“ and press „record“ to lay down a spontanious idea.
Capture is a groundbreaking new feature in Ableton Live 10, which significantly supports the Idea of spontanious music-creation and helps to eliminate the known phenomenon of „red-light-anxiety“.

* Capture will be available for all Ableton Live 10 users, from Live Intro to Live Standard and to Live Suite.

* Note: Ableton Live 10 is still in beta at the time of this blogpost, features may differ in detail at final release.

October 13, 2017

Bum Tschak Groove Lab: Creating fun loops from a simple 2-mic-drum-recording

this two-part video workshop shows, how simple drum recordings, done with just a laptop-mic, a smartphone or one or two drum microphones, can be manufactured to create individual and fun loops. the (video)-series, produced exclusively for bonedo, is in german language only (sorry abou that..) and has corresponding text-info for part 1 and part 2, which you can also find at bonedo.

May 3, 2017

electronic drumming 4.0

with sensory percussion, new york / los angeles based drumtech-company sunhouse have started a true revolution. their unseen sensor-technology in combination with their software application enables the modern drummer to enter a whole new world with a sensory-percussionized acoustic kit – including all new and creative possibilities to manipulate sounds. i was lucky enough to get a four-sensor-complete-kit, which i recently introduced, explained and reviewed on bonedo.de in word, pic & video
(only in german language).

November 6, 2015

why ableton loop 2015 was rad – a little review

last weekend ableton held their first summit under the name “loop” . three days of workshops, panels, discussions, concerts and personal encounters, all around the main topic of “making music”.  the summit was located at the impressive event location radialsystem v, a former industrial building transformed into a cultural center right at the river spree, close to where the berlin wall used to be. right after entering and getting registered, everybody’s warm vibe, coming from sheer happiness to be there, mutual respect and the desire to unprejudicetly communicate with everybody was felt. i am only pointing this out, since this is not always the case at meetings of the so called “creative branches”.

the only panel-talk at day one of the summit featured no one less than robert henke,  who was eloquently introduced by ableton’s dennis desantis. henke, musician and artist (monolake), co-founder of ableton (1999) and creator of the mighty granulator, entertained and informed the crowd in the main hall with profound whisdom and fun anecdotes on his career and on the topic “success = failure” – and all that while he was suffering from a serious flew.
as with every evening at loop, there were concerts connected to the event to be seen, james holden & camilo tirado kicked it off at babylon cinema, amongst other acts.

day two started just as ensouled as the first one ended. again and again participants needed to make decisions, which of the workshops, discussions etc. one wanted to attend next. and cleverly, things were organised in a way, that mass-movement of people to the same events was avoided, so that at all times there were plenty of people outside the building at the riverside to meet and get to talk to. luckily, berlin was gentle and gave us sunny and warm weather all weekend long.

around lunch time for example i attended a true all-star-panel, featuring some of the most visionary instrument- and software-designers in the world: roger linn, creator of the first sample-based drum machine (linn lm-1) and akai’s iconic mpc workstation, stephan schmitt, founder of native instruments and creative mind behind modular software instrument reaktor, carla scaletti, creator of kyma sound design language and gerhard behles, ableton’s ceo, who in the mid 1990’s was the other half of monolake, henke’s band, mentioned earlier. super interesting to listen to those people discuss their stories and ideas.
obviously it’s simply impossible to describe all the events i attended in detail here – those, who could not paricipate the summit in person should keep an eye on ableton.com in the near future; it was communicated, that since all events were recorded in audio and video, they will be published sometime soon.  

not only as an artist i’ve had a long time relationship with ableton, since six years i am also a certified trainer. saying that, it was extra special to meet up with 30 other fellow ct’s at the ableton headquarters on saturday night for beer & pizza after the official part of loop had ended for the day. meeting some of the boys and girls in person, who were flown in from all over the world, for the first time, after exchanging information with them for years in our closed social media group, was just awesome. names became faces became characters – what a fun evening. and when then, later on that night, this unique group of people were each handed a device of ableton’s new mega controller push 2 prior the official launch, my day was just perfect. xmas in november.

on sunday, after too little sleep, the last day of loop started early for me – with a workshop, that i have especially been looking forward to: “on and off the grid – acoustic drummers and electronic music”. although one of my favourite creative fellow drummers, zach danziger from new york, was one of three guests on the stage, i have to say, this was the only round of loop i was really disappointed with – and from what i’ve heard from others who were there, i was’nt the only one feeling that way. due to karma-reasons, i will not go into detail here. those, who are interested in the causa, should make up their own opinion by watching the event’s video broadcast when it will be published on the ableton website some time soon. it surely had nothing to do with zach.  
after some more inspiring workshops, conversations and establishing contacts, it was now time for the final showdown. and that came like a bomb. while ableton had carefully avoided to make loop a brand-presenting self-show-off event, and instead successfully put the focus on “music making” in general during the whole weekend, gerhard behles and his leading team eventually presented the magical news of the company: push 2. live 9.5. link.

this final keynote was highly emotional, and that was not only for the mindblowing technological news which were presented to the aweing audience, but especially for the unique social path that the company has decided to take:  the “trade your push 1 for a push 2 unit and get 30% off the price and we will donate all returned push 1 units to underpriviliged schools and students around the planet (including a full live license) ” simply blew me and the rest the audience away.  that was a rad, unforgettable moment.  even though i knew about all that before the event, it was overwhelming to feel the crowd’s respect and love for this decision. gerhard himself was obviously deeply touched recieving this kind of reception.  one can watch the whole final workshop here, although the atmosphere in the room is hard to recreate on a screen.

to me, ableton loop 2015 in berlin and everything around it, was one of the greatest and most beautiful experiences of my recent life. i am happy and proud to be a part of the ableton family.

August 28, 2015

the drummer makes the tempo

in the past years i have been in regular contact with andrew robertson from the centre of digital music at london’s queen mary university. he has been working on his vision of a device to make ableton live follow the tempo provided by a live drummer. he later came up with “b-keeper” a maxforlive device, which did quiet a good job. and now, this has turned into “beat seeker”, a handy and simple to use piece of magic. just switch between variable and fixed tempo using a midi controller or footswitch. this maxforlive device is fantastic for everyone who wants to free himself from having to play to a clicktrack, as soon as a sequencer running.

more about beat seeker on ableton.com

August 10, 2015

reverse engineering – inner vision of a legendary track

dj & producer jim pavloff impressing us with his mindblowing reconstruction of the prodigy’s big beat classic “smack my bitch up”. done in 2009 on ableton live 8,
the video is unveiling the original samples and production methods used for the creation of the track, clearly showing the genuis of the 1997 original. Isn’t it amazing, what big ears, skills, creatitivity and ableton live can do..?!

July 18, 2015

gaming with push

ableton live: hidden new devices under max 7

the update to version 9.2 of ableton live has brought us max 7 – and a bunch of new max- effects- and devices, amongst them finally also a pitch shifter.
this article on ableton.com explains, how you get those new tools into your library.