ABLETON LIVE 4
Nov 1, 2004 12:00 PM, BY JASON BLUM
It's been only a few years since Ableton burst onto the scene with the first version of Live, and in that short time, there's no denying that this program has changed the landscape of modern sequencing. Live may have modest roots as a simple and effective live-performance tool, but this powerhouse program — and its ability to transparently time-stretch audio samples — has changed the way thousands of producers think about writing music.
Ableton has further enhanced its flagship program by delivering an update that signals a paradigm shift in the world of professional sequencing. Live's long-awaited version 4 is finally here, and with it comes all of the features that have made Live great throughout the years, coupled with a simple yet powerful MIDI engine that brings limitless creative potential to this program.
DIGGING IN
Installing Live is simple and does not require any special CDs or complicated hardware dongles like a lot of other sequencers do. All you need is a good Mac or PC, and the minimum requirements are reasonable enough that any laptop or tower made in the past couple of years should have a compatible operating system and more than enough power to run Live comfortably. As a side note, Live's interoperability between Mac and PC is wonderful — I have transferred projects between both platforms and it's worked without a hitch.
Live can be installed using the CD included with the retail boxed version of the product; alternatively, the installation package can be downloaded from Ableton's Website. Once the program is installed, you're asked for your serial number, and as with many programs these days, you're also required to unlock the program by registering on the Internet. The registration process locks the serial number to your specific hardware configuration, but if you use more than one computer for writing music, don't sweat it — Ableton permits you to install Live on two computers, so if you're like me and prefer to write on a desktop and then transfer projects to a laptop for live shows, you're covered.
GETTING AROUND
Live's look hasn't changed much in the past few years. The program's user environment is a reflection of its underlying concept: clean, elegant and straightforward, with a minimal learning curve that lets you get down and dirty in no time. The default skin is easy on the eyes and works well for long sessions. The folks at Ableton realize that creative individuals need to change things up on occasion, though, and to that end, they've included a wide variety of selectable color schemes to suit your tastes.
One of the things I've always liked most about Live is that all of the information you'll ever need is right there on one screen. In all likelihood, this is a beneficial result of Live's heritage as a live-performance tool — after all, the last thing you want to do onstage is waste time digging through menus looking for some hidden option or setting. You won't ever have to worry about that with Live. It never buries important functions in obscure menus, and there are few cases in which you'll have to open extra windows to view additional settings.
Live offers convenient, Explorer-style access to samples, native effects and any VST and Audio Units instruments or effects that you may have installed through its browser pane. All of these elements are grouped into separate folders and can be applied to any channel by simply dragging the desired effect to the target channel. For easy access to commonly used folders, Live offers three user-definable folder locations that can be quickly recalled by clicking on one of the three folder buttons to the left of the browser pane.
You can audition audio files by engaging a prelisten function and highlighting any audio file in the browser. Auditioned files are played back through a monitor channel that can be routed to any audio port, allowing you to use audition like a cue function on a DJ mixer and providing an easy way to preview clips during a performance.
CLIPS
The basic building blocks in Live are called Clips. Clips can contain either audio or MIDI data, and the beauty of Live is that both types function in a nearly identical fashion. In fact, mixing and matching different types of Clips is so transparent that sometimes it's difficult to keep track of what's audio and what's MIDI. Fortunately, Live displays the relevant data right in the main interface; audio Clips are displayed with waveform data, and MIDI Clips show notes in piano-roll notation, so everything you need to know is available at a glance.
The Clip window resides at the bottom of Live's interface and provides a central location for adjusting extended properties of audio samples and MIDI instruments. For audio Clips, an overview of the waveform is displayed along with relevant data such as bpm, pitch, and loop position and length. MIDI Clips offer most of the same data but replace the waveform overview with a piano-roll MIDI editor.
If you've used other sequencing programs, you'll feel right at home with Live's piano-roll view. You can create and modify notes simply by double-clicking on an empty area or dragging an existing event, and a second editor lane provides easy access to note velocity. A handy Fold option removes piano-roll lanes that don't hold any notes and helps conserve space. If you prefer to play your parts in from a keyboard but find that your timing is a bit sloppier than you like, the entire Clip can also be easily quantized.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
The Arrange view will probably look pretty familiar to anyone who's used a computer-based sequencer in the past. Songs are built by lining up audio and MIDI Clips on multiple tracks, and the entire arrangement plays back from left to right. Basic parameters like pan, volume and send levels are located to the right of each track, along with buttons for mute, solo and record. There's also a small VU meter so that you can see just how hot each track is hitting.
Live also puts a comprehensive automation system at your fingertips in the Arrange window. Standard parameters for each track — such as volume, pan and mute — are always available for automation, as well as additional parameters for any effects that you might have added to the channel. Live can automate virtually anything: Simply select the desired parameter, and draw in the data with the Pencil tool.
Most people tend to do their automation on a track-by-track basis, but version 3 of Live introduced the revolutionary notion of envelopes within Clips themselves. Clip-based envelopes offer an unprecedented level of control of your source material; imagine being able to adjust a single flat note, arpeggiate a prerecorded synth riff or apply an effect to a single snare in a drum loop — all in real time, without changing the source file. You can accomplish all of this and more by automating effects and parameters inside each individual Clip.
IN SESSION
Live's Arrange view is a perfect tool for composing songs in a studio environment, but in live-performance situations, it's terribly cumbersome. Fortunately, Live offers the perfect solution with its Session view, a unique interface in which audio and MIDI clips can be prestaged and controlled in real time using MIDI controllers or even your computer's keyboard if you're traveling light.
Each column in the Session view corresponds to a track in the Arrange window, and horizontal lines split these columns up into gridlike cells that can contain one Clip. Clips can be mapped to MIDI controllers using Live's MIDI Learn function, or in lieu of an external controller, they can be mapped to your computer keyboard and controlled from there. From that point, it's a free-form jam: You can start and stop multiple loops from your controller and thus create music in real time by simply layering Clips.
If you integrate live instruments in your performances, you'll love the way that Live allows you to capture audio Clips on the fly and insert them into a session. Live treats recorded audio just like any other Clip. You can drag and drop recorded audio anywhere you like in the arrangement, then cut it up, copy it, slap some effects on it — anything you can do with canned Clips can be done in real time with recorded Clips. The possibilities for recording loops and riffs live and then building on top of them to create entire improvisational songs are endless.
21ST-CENTURY DJ RIG
The Session view is also the ideal environment for users who plan to use Live as a DJ tool. If you think of each channel in the Session view as a DJ channel fader, Live's advantage over the traditional setup becomes clear. You can have as many of these channels as you like, allowing you to mix countless sources simultaneously. And don't forget: Because Live's audio engine time-stretches Clips for you, you won't have to worry about matching beats.
It might sound like Live takes some of the art out of DJing, but consider that if you aren't busy matching beats, you have plenty of free time to experiment with adding loops and effects to your mixes, thereby changing the entire nature of your performance. Throw in an external controller like the M-Audio UC-33 or X-Session, and you have a full-featured DJ rig that puts the power of live remixing at your fingertips.
AUDIO EFFECTS
Once you've built an arrangement or session that you're happy with, chances are, you'll want to drop in a few effects here and there to spice things up. Live has you covered in that department, boasting a respectable stable of 17 quality effects. You'll find all of the oldies but goodies here — chorus, EQ, compressor, delay, reverb and so on — along with a couple of unique modules like Grain Delay and Resonators. There's also a utility plug-in featuring simple gain and phase controls, which makes it perfect for handling miswired sound systems at live gigs.
If Live's built-in effects aren't enough for you, don't sweat it. Live is perfectly happy running any third-party VST and Audio Units effects or instruments and even takes them one step further by running them in a sort of “shell” that lets you assign two automatable parameters to an x-y grid for some real hands-on control. This is a real bonus during live performances when you don't have time to poke around in a plug-in's interface to find that one parameter you need to tweak.
Of course, if you prefer the control offered by the plug-in's native interface, Live is happy to oblige. Clicking on the Edit button in Live's effects interface displays the entire plug-in in a floating window, just like you'd see in any other sequencing program. All plug-ins — VST, Audio Units and native — can be fully automated in Live's Arrange view and can also be mapped to any MIDI controller or keyboard stroke.
MORE ABOUT MIDI
Live 4 also has some impressive MIDI capabilities, and it wouldn't be quite complete without a couple of MIDI instruments to get you started. Live only offers two sample-based instruments, Impulse and Simpler, and though it would have been nice for Ableton to include a couple of extra synths, these two sound great and are flexible enough to tackle most jobs.
Simpler is a sample-playback device that can be used to quickly turn any sample into an instrument that can be played from a MIDI keyboard. It's incredibly easy to use: Just drag and drop any sample from the browser window onto the instrument, and you're ready to rock with an ADSR envelope, LFO and seven filter types, all at your fingertips. Simpler lacks many of the advanced routing capabilities that you will find in third-party plug-ins like Steinberg HALion or Native Instruments Kontakt, but it does provide basic sound-shaping tools and is perfectly adequate for most tasks that call for a sampler. Impulse is also a sample-based instrument but focuses solely on single-shot drum sounds. It uses the same drag-and-drop interface as Simpler, but instead of mapping a single sample across an entire keyboard, Impulse offers eight slots with a wide variety of parameters like tune, stretch, pan and the same seven-mode filter available in Simpler.
Live 4 further extends the capabilities of these instruments with five additional plug-ins for use with MIDI data. The chord, pitch, random, scale and velocity effects don't modify audio output like Live's other plug-ins, but work their magic by changing MIDI data in real time. At first glance, Live may seem somewhat limited with only two MIDI instruments and a basic array of audio effects, but don't forget that you can add any VST or Audio Units plug-in to your arrangements, as well. Serious producers will probably want to take advantage of Live's extensible architecture and add third-party plug-ins to their arsenals.
REWIRE CONTROL
Prior to version 4, the only way to synchronize Live with MIDI parts was by using ReWire to connect it to a compatible sequencing program. Fortunately, that's no longer an issue, but Ableton continues to offer ReWire support in Live, and that's a good thing because there are still a number of instances in which you might need to integrate Live with another application. A good example would be running Live in conjunction with a stand-alone studio program like Propellerhead Reason or Cakewalk Project5. Producers who started out making music with these applications might want to bump their creative potential up a notch by throwing Live in the mix but may have existing projects that would be difficult to convert. Or they may simply feel more comfortable producing in these environments. Either way, ReWire is a perfect way to integrate these types of applications with Live.
Producers who do work for film or TV will also need to ReWire Live into a host that can handle video playback. One of the few remaining shortcomings in Live is its lack of support for video and surround audio, so if you're working on film or TV projects, you'll need to run Live as a slave to a host sequencer that provides these facilities.
LIVE AND KICKIN'
Having used Live as a studio and live-performance tool since version 1.5, I can safely say that with this new version, the folks at Ableton are approaching the perfect fusion of audio and MIDI. Yes, it has a few minor omissions, like lack of support for additional audio-file formats and CD-burning tools, but I'd rather see Live continue to focus solely on what it's good at and resist the urge to become watered down by features that aren't absolutely necessary.
Live has always been a valuable studio tool that's enjoyed widespread use, and now that long-awaited MIDI support is finally here, Live has proven its mettle as a full-featured sequencing environment and will no doubt win over a whole new crop of devoted fans. It's solid, reliable and powerful, yet its intuitive interface gets you up and running in minutes. If you're looking for a robust sequencer that's equally at home onstage or in the studio, Live can't be beat.
Product Summary
ABLETON (DIST. BY M-AUDIO)
LIVE 4 > $499
Pros: Seamless integration of audio and MIDI. Clean, simple user interface. Clip-based envelopes. Support for VST and Audio Units instruments and effects. ReWire.
Cons: Supports only WAV, AIFF and SDII files. No CD tools.
Contact: tel. (626) 633-9050; e-mail info@m-audio.com; Web www.ableton.com or www.m-audio.com
System Requirements
MAC: G3; 256 MB RAM; Mac OS 9.2/OS 10.1.5
PC: Intel-compatible/600; 256 MB RAM; Windows 98/2000/XP; Windows-compatible soundcard
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