Or does it?
Despite Live having been around for several years, it’s still somewhat enigmatic. Some musicians had an immediate affinity with the program, while others couldn’t wrap their heads around it. And its chameleonic nature doesn’t help: Some think it’s a DJ program, some a DAW, some a musical instrument, and so on (hint: They’re all correct). So this is a perfect opportunity to give some subjective impressions about the program’s gestalt, and in the process, explain why I think Live is so incredibly cool.
OVERVIEW
What makes Live unique is its split personality. Its Arrangement view resembles a traditional DAW, with linear tracks, lanes for automation (having individual lanes for each automation parameter is new in Live 7), inserts, aux sends, and the like. But what attracts me the most is the Session view, which is a unique way of organizing “clips” (single-shot files, loops, or even entire songs) for playback that feels much more like a musical instrument than a sequencer.
Session view is a matrix, with columns containing clips, and rows containing groups of clips, which together constitute a “scene.” For example, one scene might have three clips in three columns: a drum loop, a bass loop, and a one-shot of some vocal phrase. Another scene might have the same drum loop but a different bass loop and a rhythmic piano riff. When you trigger a scene, all the clips launch simultaneously, based on what quantization option you choose (e.g., you can trigger the clips at measure boundaries).
The ability to assemble clips into different scenes is important because only one clip in a column can play at a given moment. But this is a strength, not a limitation, because you don’t have to trigger a scene to launch clips. You can launch any clip, at any time, and quantize its launch to the beat. So, suppose one column has nothing but drum clips. You can trigger a scene, and keep all the scene clips grooving along but select different drum clips as the mood strikes you. When you pick a new drum clip, the previous one will keep playing until the next measure (if that’s the launch quantization value you selected), at which point it exits gracefully.
What’s more, tempo isn’t an issue because Live’s audio engine will analyze a clip and stretch it to fit as needed. It can also transpose pitch, but as with other programs, the results usually sound less natural than when stretching rhythm. It does this with more than just short clips: One of Live’s near-magical feats is that you can bring in a long song that wasn’t cut to a click, and most of the time, Live will slice and stretch it so that it locks to tempo. No wonder DJs love this program.
That’s just the basics. As a side note, when Live 6 (reviewed Jan. ’07) came out, I met with Ableton’s Gerhard Behles at the Frankfurt Musikmesse trade show. As he described all the new features, I mentioned that I felt kind of silly that I used Live pretty much the same way as I did when it first appeared. He looked at me somewhat quizzically and said, “There’s nothing wrong with that.” True indeed: If you watch 20 different people use Live, they’ll make music in 20 different ways. I’ve seen everything from avant-garde composer George Lewis run Live on two laptops to create sound collages, to DJs “spinning” on it the way others would use Native Instruments Traktor, to Kid Beyond employing it in his human beatbox performances, and I even gigged in Europe with someone who used it solely as a vocal signal processor. Personally, I use it for a solo remix act with live accompaniment — sort of a “performing engineer” thing. There’s no one-sentence description of what Live is.
NEW INSTRUMENTS
The three new soft synths — Electric, Tension, and Analog — were designed in collaboration with Applied Acoustics Systems and recall their Lounge Lizard, String Studio VS-1, and Ultra Analog VA-1, respectively. The Ableton instruments cost less, but don’t work with other hosts.
Analog is your basic two-oscillator architecture with some novel routing options; I’d put it in the “utilitarian” category rather than the “inspired” one, although I do like the sound quality. You get solid basses, ethereal string synth sounds, and more; scratch below the surface to find goodies like hard sync and filter saturation. If you already have a good virtual analog synth, though, you’ll find no “must-have” factor here.
Electric is another matter. If you don’t yet have a virtual electric piano, look no further. Because it uses modeling rather than sampling, there’s much more versatility concerning how you can vary the ton of parameters compared to a sampled electric piano.
Tension is another winner, and again uses modeling for a variety of string-like sounds, including basses, guitars, and various ethnic sounds. They’re an interesting combination of real and surreal; the guitars don’t sound exactly like guitars, but to use a visual analogy, they’re like airbrushed guitars with the color saturation bumped up.
Drum Machines is great if you’re into vintage drum machines. The samples are extremely good; while you don’t have the same breadth of sounds as Big Fish Audio’s superb Drums Overkill, you only pay about a third as much. I like it a lot.
The Essential Instrument Collection (EIC) sounds are produced in conjunction with Sonivox, and what’s there adds a lot to Live’s arsenal of sounds. For a really serious instrument, consider spending extra for Muse (reviewed Mar. ’07), Sonivox’s flagship “soft workstation,” or a similar program.
Finally, I’d classify Session Drums as good, but not great. For a little more you can buy, say, Toontrack EZ Drummer, which is more flexible and works with other hosts. On the other hand, Session Drums takes advantage of Live’s Drum Rack feature, so it fits Live like a glove, which makes editing the sounds extremely simple. We’re talking very tight integration.
You may prefer the à la carte approach to adding instruments, but the price for Suite with Live 7, all the above instruments, plus Operator and Sampler (introduced in previous versions), adds about $500 to the Live 7 download price. From a bundle standpoint, that’s a significant amount of instrument power.
IMPROVISATION
Another key Live element is that it encourages improvisation on many levels. In fact, I feel that using Live without a knob/button-laden hardware controller is like driving a Porsche with the parking brake on.
As one example, once you’ve loaded a loop, you can easily move the loop brackets to “frame” a different section of the loop (e.g., the middle two bars of a four-bar loop). Live does this without stuttering, and keeps track of where you “should” be in the full loop so that if you extend the loop all the way back, playback occurs in the right place.
You can easily draw and alter envelopes in real time, and MIDI is handled in a particularly “Live-ly” way: It’s more pattern-based and is optimized more for live performance than DAW-style offline tweaking. This isn’t to say you can’t convert a MIDI pattern into a linear track in the Arrangement page; but that’s something you can with lots of programs. Live’s take on MIDI improvisation is unique. Even its bundled effects beg to be tweaked and altered.
IN USE
Just as Live 7 came out, I was scheduled to do three “laptop jockey” performances at Winter NAMM. I chose to do a live remix (with overdubbed guitar) of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive.”
I ripped the CD using Adobe Audition (to be reviewed next month), then brought the file into Live’s Session View so I could derive various loops. Live did its analysis, and marked off the measures — not easy to do, considering how much of the piece is pretty free-form.
I moved the loop braces around, finding candidate loops like the classic guitar riff at the beginning, and the ambient, keyboard-soaked sections toward the middle. When I found a passage I liked, I simply invoked “Crop Sample,” and voilà, instant loop. I grabbed about 16 “candidate loops” (including one long one, so I could move the loop braces in real time) before deciding to add some loops of my own from my AdrenaLinn Guitars sample CD.
I needed some dance-oriented drums, so I called up Simpler and loaded the “Electron Rock” patch. It was close to the sound I wanted; a little tweaking in Simpler did the job. Creating the MIDI pattern to drive Simpler was, well, simple — just draw and erase notes until you’re happy (see Figure 1).
As Live now supports REX files, I brought in a few loops from my Turbulent Filth Monsters sample CD. Live 7 adds amazing slicing abilities, by the way; you can take audio and slice it into little bits, triggered by MIDI. You can also drag these slices into Simpler (or Sampler, of course) for an instant glitchy drum kit. Although I didn’t need to use the slice feature for this particular performance, I mention it because in my opinion, it’s a strong reason to upgrade to Live 7. A strong point of Live in general is the ease of adding effects, so I tossed Redux (a lo-fi decimator) and a Filter Delay in Simpler’s signal path.
Next, I experimented with different clips combinations to create different scenes, then brought in hardware control. Live lets you control parameters from your QWERTY keyboard or a MIDI controller: I tied the keyboard to difference scenes, then used the faders on a Peavey PC-1600X to control the levels for 16 audio channels, and its buttons to solo the channels for doing breakbeats.
The remix was really starting to take shape. I opened up a channel for live guitar input so I could process my guitar playing with Live’s effects. What I really need to emphasize is how much fun this process can be — working with loops, changing stretching characteristics, throwing loops against each other to see what works — there’s nothing quite like it.
CONCLUSIONS
Live 7 incorporates several new features other than those mentioned above: It can export videos for which you’ve done soundtracks, let you nudge tempo when free-syncing to other performers, sidechain the Compressor, Gate, and Auto Filter effects, and employ new, high-res modes for the Operator instrument and Dynamic Tube and Saturator effects. The EQ Eight equalizer has been revamped, there’s a spectrum analyzer to check out incoming signals, an improved Compressor effect, and easier integration of external hardware effects — an input/output combination on your audio interface can be made to show up in Live’s plug-in menu. Another new feature, SmartPriming, “unloads” samples that aren’t in use from RAM, which lets you use large sample libraries without maxing out your computer.
That’s all welcome, but Live is about its core concept. The Claim Check (see below) isn’t kidding; Live truly does “compete with everything and nothing, all at once,” because it can do a lot of what more conventional DAWs can do, but also has unique features that nothing else can touch. I could go on, but you probably get the point: I love this program. While I don’t use it as a DAW, it’s given me a unique, fun way to do live performance, and its DAW features come in very handy when editing. Even though Live 7 still isn’t a full replacement for a more linear DAW, the Keyboard editorial team unanimously agrees it deserves a Key Buy award. Why? There’s still no other software that lets you weave diverse audio and MIDI sources into compositions, remixes, and realtime performances with this degree of immediacy, fluidity, and addictiveness. Check out the demo, and you may fall under Live’s spell as well. It’s brilliant.
GORY DETAILS
FILE FORMATS IMPORTED
WAV, AIFF, REX, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg FLAC, FLAC, Standard MIDI (SMF).
FILE FORMATS EXPORTED
WAV, AIFF, SMF, plus all video formats exportable by QuickTime.
AUDIO RESOLUTION
Up to 32-bit, 192kHz; 64-bit internal calculations at all mix points; includes POW-R dithering.
LIVE PRICING AND FEATURES
Ableton’s product line and pricing structure is as complex as Live itself is straightforward. The basic Live 7 program costs $599 boxed, and includes the Essential Instrument Collection 2. As a download, it’s $499, but doesn’t include EIC2. The flagship Ableton Suite lists for $999 boxed or $799 as a download, and bundles Live 7 with the instruments Sampler, Operator, Tension, Electric, Analog, and Drum Machines; the boxed version adds EIC2 and Session Drums. Upgrade from Live 6, $159 boxed/$119 download. Upgrade from Live 1-5, $219/$179. Instruments (download only): Sampler, $199; Operator/Electric/Tension/Analog, $159 each; Drum Machines, $79. Session Drums or EIC 2 (boxed only), $179 each. Interestingly, Live 7 bucks the trend to bundle free instruments in order to enhance the value of an upgrade. All versions here, however, include the Simpler sample player, and Impulse, a drum sample player.
CLAIM CHECK
Ableton’s David Cross says, “For Live version 7, we focused on three major areas of development. Our first priority was to rebuild and enhance the core audio and MIDI engines, with 64-bit summing and improved MIDI timing. Our second priority was to integrate our most-requested features, namely time signature changes, video export, multiple automation lanes, side-chaining and tempo nudge. Third, we developed a new workflow for beat production called the Drum Rack. We think we’ve hit on something pretty cool here, using our Rack paradigm to help people construct complicated drum grooves in a simple interface.
“Our broad focus forces us to tread carefully in product development. We endeavor to implement features that simultaneously address the needs of multiple musicians from varied skill levels and disciplines. And thanks to ReWire support (both as host and client), we like to think that we compete with everything and nothing, all at once.”