Ableton/Live

Personal Message:
As a leading member of our community (GZP) for quite some time now, i have seen so many "COMMON QUESTIONS" asked to the pro's. I have decided that i should post discussions up in here to bring to everyone's attention so than everyone can see it. (since in the forum, it gets lost). These discussions are the discussion topics that start with "CQ" as you might see below. Anyone could upload software related topics/discussions up at any time after they become members (as many know). Also, i would much appreciate it if you guys can give me a week or more to fix everything up...

[makina]

Now, on with our group:

This is a meeting place for everyone interested in LIVE. Please try to stay loosely on topic and please respect the friendly atmosphere around here - no flaming! If you are a newcomer or just unfamiliar with some of the new group features, please ask our fellow admins.

Features:
Much of Live's unique interface comes from being designed to use in live performance as well as for production. As such the interface is more compact than most sequencers and clearly designed for use on a single screen. There are few pop up messages or dialogs. Portions of the interface are hidden and shown based on arrows which may be clicked to show or hide a certain segment (e.g. to hide the instrument/effect list or to show or hide the help box).

Views
The arrangement view in Ableton Live 6.

There are two views which are central to Live – the arrangement view and the session view. The session is primarily used to organize and trigger sets of sounds called clips. These clips may be arranged into scenes which may be triggered as a unit. For instance a drum, bass and guitar track might comprise a single scene. When moving on to another portion of the composition – a new scene – some or all of those parts might differ and could be triggered in parallel. In Live 6, there is also the addition of "racks" which allow the user to easily group instruments and effects.

The other view is the arrangement view, which is used for recording tracks from the session view and further manipulating their arrangement and effects. This view is fairly similar to a traditional software sequencer interface.

Clips may either be an audio sample or MIDI (triggering one of Live's built in instruments, third party VSTs instruments or external hardware). Live comes by default with two instruments – Impulse and Simpler.

Built-In
* Impulse is a more or less traditional drum sequencing instrument which allows for defining a kit of up to eight drum sounds. There are a number of options available for preprocessing these samples such as basic equalization, attack, decay, pitch shift, etc. Once the kit is defined these samples are arranged into groups of measures using a piano-roll interface.

* Simpler is a relatively easy to use sampling instrument. It is based on working with a single sample, applying preprocessing and then arranging it in a piano roll interface. In this case, rather than the notes representing different samples as in Impulse, the samples are pitch shifted to the selected note.

Add-On's
There are a number of additional instruments which may be purchased separately or as part of the Ableton Suite.

* Sampler is an enhanced sampler.
* Operator is an FM synthesizer.
* Electric is an electric piano instrument.
* Tension is a string physical modelling synthesiser.
* Analog simulates an analog synthesizer.
* Drum Machines is a collection of emulators for classic drum machines.
* Session Drums is a collection of sampled drum and percussion instruments.
* Essential Instruments Collection is a large collection of acoustic and electric instrument samples.
* Orchestral Instrument Collection is a collection of four different orchestral libraries, which can be purchased individually or as a bundle. They are as follows: Orchestral Strings, Orchestral Brass, Orchestral Woodwinds and Orchestral Percussion. The Orchestral Instrument Collection is not included in Live Suite.

Effects
Most of the effects are fairly familiar effects in the digital signal processing world which have been adapted to fit Live's interface. They are however fairly obviously tailored for the target audience of Live – electronic musicians and DJs – rather than, say, post processing a guitar rig.

The audio effects shipped with Live (version 6) are:
* Auto Filter
* Auto Pan
* Beat Repeat
* Chorus
* Compressor I
* Compressor II
* Dynamic Tube
* EQ Eight
* EQ Three
* Erosion
* Filter Delay
* Flanger
* Gate
* Grain Delay
* Phaser
* Ping Pong Delay
* Saturator
* Simple Delay
* Redux
* Resonators
* Reverb
* Utility

Live 7 Features
-Multitrack recording up to 32-bit/192kHz
-Complete nondestructive editing with unlimited undo
-Powerful and creative MIDI sequencing of software and hardware instruments
-Real-time time-stretching and warping of AIFF, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and MP3 files, for improvisation and instant remixing
-A comprehensive selection of built-in audio effects, including a host of creative delays, filters, distortions, studio compressors and EQs
-Built-in software instruments: Simpler for creative sample-based synthesis, Impulse for sampled drums
-Instrument-, Drum-, Effect Racks for creating and managing complex performance setups, drum kits and multi-effects
-VST and AU effects and instruments support; automatic plug-in delay compensation
-REX file support and native sliced audio file creation
-Video import and export for scoring to picture or warping picture to music
-Real-time control of parameters with any MIDI controller—just MIDI-map it or choose from a list of popular supported controllers for instant mapping
-Full ReWire support
-Single-screen user interface for simple, creativity-focused operation
-Multicore and multiprocessor support
-Loops and construction kits: Unnatural Selection by Puremagnetik
-Printed reference manual in English, Spanish, French, German or Japanese (boxed version only)
-Extensive built-in step-by-step tutorials
-Localized software menus, tutorials, and PDF reference manuals available in English, Spanish, French, German and Japanese


Links:
-Ableton's Download-section
-Ableton Manuals/more info for specific version
-Ableton's Youtube channel (mumzoo credited)