Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
BoddAH
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by BoddAH » Wed Oct 28, 2015 11:14 am

jonbenderr wrote:
BoddAH wrote:
jonbenderr wrote:
Does anyone have a good example of practical uses for this? I could see maybe an X/Y type setup for a Kaoss pad type effect.
Oh I dunno. Launching clips in Ableton Live in Session view maybe ? :roll:

Unless you like the physical feedback from sliding a plastick puck attached to your computer by a plastic cord in order to hover a little white arrow on the screen of your computer over the clip, then clicking a button on the wired plastic puck.
In that case it must kinda of suck having a tablet.

But I figure having a tablet on stage or on your desk at a nice flat angle and directly touching the clips you want to launch (several if you want) seems to be better. 8)

It also looks cooler on stage and a lot less like you're checking your emails.
The thought of launching clips in session view is exactly the kinda thing that freaks me out the most about touchscreen tech. How many times a day do you accidentally slip up and tap the wrong thing on your phone/tablet? At least in that scenario you have the ability to correct it. In a live setting it could be devastating, happy accidents aside.

Add into that any anxiety you might get when first starting a performance. I know some of you are pros and don't get that anymore, but I'm lucky if I can keep my entire hand from shaking back and forth by an inch let alone my fingertip. A button gives me something to physically hold onto and nothing happens until I depress the button.

As stringtapper stated I was speaking more of controllers. (APC40/Push/Launchpad)

Anyway, the loop remixing potential as mentioned by beats me and demonstrated by yur2die4 is really interesting.
The problem you describe has nothing to do with touch-screens.

If you're stressed out or just particularly clumsy you can fuck up and launch wrong clips just as easily using a pad controller or a mouse+KB. Since clips on traditinoal pad controllers are not labeled and sometimes not even color coded you're actually even more likely to fuck up IMHO.

Hell, you could even trip on your own feet, land on your face and get a nosebleed before even getting to your DJ booth.

jonbenderr
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by jonbenderr » Wed Oct 28, 2015 12:21 pm

The problem you describe has nothing to do with touch-screens.
Correct, but it can certainly be exaggerated by it.

Also, no, you can not "just as easily" screw up using a pad controller. It's literally the difference between accidentally physically pushing a button, and accidentally tapping/brushing something.

I'm honestly not trying to disrespect anyone's preference here though.

Anywho, I still just don't see it as being all that practical or better in any scenario besides a few niche things.

Agree to disagree I suppose.

pinkpaint
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by pinkpaint » Wed Oct 28, 2015 6:29 pm

pencilrocket wrote:ableton CEO is steve jobs fanoboy. it wont happen 8)
what makes you say that? the live 9 release presentation similar to apple wwdc? many tech companies do this stuff..

kitekrazy
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by kitekrazy » Thu Oct 29, 2015 3:09 am

jonbenderr wrote:I don't think I could ever use a touch screen for anything other than a phone and I don't understand what the fascination is. Just seems to easy to slip up.

I need physical buttons and things like that.

Does anyone have a good example of practical uses for this? I could see maybe an X/Y type setup for a Kaoss pad type effect.
Same here other than an iPad. I find it odd on Windows laptops have touchscreen just to satisfy Window 8.

kitekrazy
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by kitekrazy » Thu Oct 29, 2015 3:10 am

Pasha wrote:Recently I found this article:

http://blogs.windows.com/devices/2015/1 ... musicians/

But Ableton is not mentioned!
Come on!!!

Ableton Live is the best Musical Software ever!!!

Best
Paolo
Most DAWs are not mentioned.

Angstrom
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by Angstrom » Thu Oct 29, 2015 3:34 am

"The ultimate laptop for musicians" ?
Weird. If they really wanted to aim for that title they ought to have put a quadcore power-guzzling beast at the top of the line. It's very hard to make a statement like that with those low power mobile dualcore CPUs as the top model. As much fun as touchscreens no doubt are we music makers mainly focus on gobbling up CPU cycles with our processor intensive realtime high bandwidth software.

It's a puzzling ommision considering Microsoft's obvious intentent to target the creative computing market.

login
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by login » Thu Oct 29, 2015 4:23 am

Angstrom wrote:"The ultimate laptop for musicians" ?
Weird. If they really wanted to aim for that title they ought to have put a quadcore power-guzzling beast at the top of the line. It's very hard to make a statement like that with those low power mobile dualcore CPUs as the top model. As much fun as touchscreens no doubt are we music makers mainly focus on gobbling up CPU cycles with our processor intensive realtime high bandwidth software.

It's a puzzling ommision considering Microsoft's obvious intentent to target the creative computing market.
My thoughts too.

yur2die4
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by yur2die4 » Thu Oct 29, 2015 5:23 am

Why aren't they making the claim to be the ultimate gaming machine? :P

Probably because they know it'd piss off a lot of gamers who take specs seriously.

Yet, they see musicians as suckers :roll:

drez
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by drez » Thu Oct 29, 2015 5:49 am

I'm typing this response on my new Surface Book. Granted, I'm using it for work stuff and am learning more that the integration points for it as a tablet are strong for business applications, but I'm not convinced (yet) that Win 10 is great tablet O/S. Its definitely usable and the Surface Pen is just wonderful for taking notes in OneNote, and PDF notations. Drawing/painting in apps like Freshpaint is amazing! But Win 10 is still clunky and the location of navigational elements is not intuitive and the native multitouch capabilities are lacking. The "Touch Me" app in the Windows Store has been a life saver, but its a little to sensitive. I'm learning, but it definitely isn't as easy as my iPad.

All of that said, I really don't see Bitwig or Ableton being used with the current UI's on a touchscreen OS designed for Laptops. I'd MUCH rather use Ableton's UI with my mouse then with my fingers or a pen because its not designed to be used with a touch device. Bitwig may have a tablet mode and they are doing some interesting things with their first cut at it, but the modules are much to difficult to tweak with a pen or finger. They are much too small to be done quickly, it actually looks like it would slow my workflow down tremendously.

What I find to be way more effective is using Ableton with my iPad and Touchable as the "touch" interface into Ableton for clip triggering, mixing, and native device or VST tweaking. It works flawlessly and quickly. The interface doesn't have to look like Live at. If it did, it would have all the same shortcomings I have already described. Touchable is built with touch in mind, therefore it works perfectly along side my Push, which satisfies my need for tactile feel... playing an actual instrument. Push has been so rewarding to use because I can switch instantly between drums and keyboard parts. I can do just enough tactile things with the knobs on the Push, but do the heavy lifting with Touchable.

The combination of these technologies makes me look forward to the iPad Pro as a replacement for my current iPad because of the screen size increase and the force enhancements I'm sure the Touchable folks will implement into the product. This will revolutionize the "glass controller" market and allow for even more control for things that Touchable already does well.

So, do I think the Surface Book will be an awesome touch experience for Live? No, because Live isn't built for it. But I don't really care, because that's not how I use Live anyway. I use Live as it is for what it is intended to be run on... a laptop, and I use the other tools as they are designed as well.

If you only have a hammer, it doesn't mean everything else is a nail.
http://www.soundcloud.com/dreznicek
MacBook M1 Pro Max, 64Gig RAM, 4TB internal SSD, Live 11, Push1/2/3, Reason, VST O'Plenty

Pasha
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by Pasha » Thu Oct 29, 2015 6:52 am

drez wrote:I'm typing this response on my new Surface Book. Granted, I'm using it for work stuff and am learning more that the integration points for it as a tablet are strong for business applications, but I'm not convinced (yet) that Win 10 is great tablet O/S. Its definitely usable and the Surface Pen is just wonderful for taking notes in OneNote, and PDF notations. Drawing/painting in apps like Freshpaint is amazing! But Win 10 is still clunky and the location of navigational elements is not intuitive and the native multitouch capabilities are lacking. The "Touch Me" app in the Windows Store has been a life saver, but its a little to sensitive. I'm learning, but it definitely isn't as easy as my iPad.

All of that said, I really don't see Bitwig or Ableton being used with the current UI's on a touchscreen OS designed for Laptops. I'd MUCH rather use Ableton's UI with my mouse then with my fingers or a pen because its not designed to be used with a touch device. Bitwig may have a tablet mode and they are doing some interesting things with their first cut at it, but the modules are much to difficult to tweak with a pen or finger. They are much too small to be done quickly, it actually looks like it would slow my workflow down tremendously.

What I find to be way more effective is using Ableton with my iPad and Touchable as the "touch" interface into Ableton for clip triggering, mixing, and native device or VST tweaking. It works flawlessly and quickly. The interface doesn't have to look like Live at. If it did, it would have all the same shortcomings I have already described. Touchable is built with touch in mind, therefore it works perfectly along side my Push, which satisfies my need for tactile feel... playing an actual instrument. Push has been so rewarding to use because I can switch instantly between drums and keyboard parts. I can do just enough tactile things with the knobs on the Push, but do the heavy lifting with Touchable.

The combination of these technologies makes me look forward to the iPad Pro as a replacement for my current iPad because of the screen size increase and the force enhancements I'm sure the Touchable folks will implement into the product. This will revolutionize the "glass controller" market and allow for even more control for things that Touchable already does well.

So, do I think the Surface Book will be an awesome touch experience for Live? No, because Live isn't built for it. But I don't really care, because that's not how I use Live anyway. I use Live as it is for what it is intended to be run on... a laptop, and I use the other tools as they are designed as well.

If you only have a hammer, it doesn't mean everything else is a nail.
I like your post. Balanced.
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Live 12 Suite,Zebra ,Valhalla Plugins, MIDI Guitar (2+3),Guitar, Bass, VG99, GP10, JV1010 and some controllers
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Pasha
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by Pasha » Thu Oct 29, 2015 7:02 am

Thanks for all excellent contributions! :D
I'm an Ableton fanboy... I want Ableton everywhere :-)
Mac Studio M1
Live 12 Suite,Zebra ,Valhalla Plugins, MIDI Guitar (2+3),Guitar, Bass, VG99, GP10, JV1010 and some controllers
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beats me
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by beats me » Thu Oct 29, 2015 1:40 pm

drez wrote: The combination of these technologies makes me look forward to the iPad Pro as a replacement for my current iPad because of the screen size increase and the force enhancements I'm sure the Touchable folks will implement into the product. This will revolutionize the "glass controller" market and allow for even more control for things that Touchable already does well.

The iPad Pro doesn’t have force touch and that is a deal breaker for me. Off the top of my head force touch would allow you to press on a relatively small knob or fader and a much larger version would pop up on the screen for more precision adjustment and less likelihood of fucking it up and maybe some other associated parameters would appear in the popup box as well. There are other situations where you want the broader (normal) overall view and wouldn’t want these popups happening every time you touch something. Waiting for the iPad Pro 2 I guess.

drez
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by drez » Thu Oct 29, 2015 4:51 pm

beats me wrote: The iPad Pro doesn’t have force touch and that is a deal breaker for me. Off the top of my head force touch would allow you to press on a relatively small knob or fader and a much larger version would pop up on the screen for more precision adjustment and less likelihood of fucking it up and maybe some other associated parameters would appear in the popup box as well. There are other situations where you want the broader (normal) overall view and wouldn’t want these popups happening every time you touch something. Waiting for the iPad Pro 2 I guess.
Thanks beats me, I stand corrected...and disappointed. I will most likely wait until next years model then. I still stand by my current workflow regarding touch intefaces. I'm certainly happy with the Touchable/Push combo as is.
http://www.soundcloud.com/dreznicek
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by yur2die4 » Thu Oct 29, 2015 7:02 pm

Yeah but you shouldn't 'need' an iPad to control Live the way touchable does, if you have a touchscreen.

You should not need that extension.

And an iPad pro does not host Live or open up 'additional features', it is just a larger screen, so it's essentially another iPad. No game changer.

I'm hoping that Touchable takes advantage of Split View. Actually, I'm hoping that a lot of apps do. But that's just an improvement of something that is already there. iOS is still iOS. And live still has its restrictions for what is accessible through midi/Python.

beats me
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Re: Surface Book and Ableton... ACT ABLETON MARKETING!

Post by beats me » Thu Oct 29, 2015 7:34 pm

drez wrote:
beats me wrote: The iPad Pro doesn’t have force touch and that is a deal breaker for me. Off the top of my head force touch would allow you to press on a relatively small knob or fader and a much larger version would pop up on the screen for more precision adjustment and less likelihood of fucking it up and maybe some other associated parameters would appear in the popup box as well. There are other situations where you want the broader (normal) overall view and wouldn’t want these popups happening every time you touch something. Waiting for the iPad Pro 2 I guess.
Thanks beats me, I stand corrected...and disappointed. I will most likely wait until next years model then. I still stand by my current workflow regarding touch intefaces. I'm certainly happy with the Touchable/Push combo as is.

No problem. And great review BTW.

I think a lot of “touch screen for everything!” fanatics can a be like religious/political fanatics, won’t let contrary facts get in the way of what they want to believe.

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