Saturday, January 07, 2006

Ableton Live



I recently installed a demo of Ableton Live on my laptop. It’s a fantastic piece of audio production software. I’ve still only had a couple of sessions with it and, because it’s a demo, I can’t save, but so far I’m really into it.

I used to dabble with writing music back at college and university and have a small number of semi-respectable (though now dated) mp3s to show for it. I’m also pretty damn good at mixing on a set of Technics, but music seems to have fallen to the wayside for me. I can’t put my finger on exactly why this is but it’s partly because it lost that excitement factor that comes with a new discovery. I remember first realising that I could edit samples and load them into the memory on my PC’s soundcard. I sat up all night with headphones on painstakingly putting a track together with Cubase. It was really satisfying.

That was back in 1995. Since 2000 I’ve not done any new tunes. I’ve helped friends produce tracks and mixes and I still have the technical know-how but haven’t been able to motivate myself. The annoying thing is I have ideas for tracks all the time but don’t have the set-up to just sit down and make them happen. Hopefully Ableton will be the spark I’ve been waiting for. If all goes well with the demo over the next couple of weeks I’ll have to buy myself a copy.

3 comments:

sigh9 said...

God I LOVE ableton, it fucking rocks. 'Course once you start using it we won't see any blogging for about a year. This program is one of the most amazing I've ever used (I'm actually shaking with excitement). Bummer about the demo because thay've disabled saving on it.

Have you seen the Computer Music special mag on it? (released in December) -some good stuff and should be available in the bigger bookshops.

Unknown said...

Cheers. Not bought that mag for years – I’ll look out for it.

And yes, the more I figure out about it, the more it does appear to, as you say, fucking rock.

Anonymous said...

A little pricey, but worth it.