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Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
raapie
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Re: ..

Post by raapie » Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:57 pm

forge wrote:
Hi Marco
can you please elaborate on this? I'm really interested because as a fellow *long time* user of Live I felt Live 7 started to head in a direction I wasn't altogether comfortable with - I too remember Live 3 fondly and have made my feelings known well and truly, so I wont go on any more

there were a lot of additions to Live 7 I really am enjoying, but the overall function and work flow is the side I feel has been sadly neglected and desperately needs attention

Ableton have acknowledged this to their credit - and their strength as a company has always been paying close attention to users, hence why I am interested to hear some more detailed feedback from another long time user like yourself
(I am on MacBook Pro btw now, should update my details)

Thanks for this message. I think we think alike. I loved Live a couple of years back but felt the MIDI implementation changed the workflow. I must say some of the MIDI features of Live are done nicely and you can quickly edit midi stuff but still: I felt Live was a pure audio application. Version 3 on it's highlights and was expecting the timestretch to improve in newer versions and other audio manipulation tools. But I guess not.

Live is a DAW now. And Ableton is even selling orchester soundbanks, like Propellerhead and lots of others.

I would love to see an audio application only. The thing which I like about audio is that it's all combined. It's compact. MIDI doesn't make sound and you can start changing patches all the time. I want to simply record and CAPTURE something. Live + Reason should be a killer team. But Live now feels like just another DAW.

Maybe Melodyne will be interesting or ProTools. I guess their timestretch is better than in Live. But Ableton could have done this as well, but they are focussing on Doing It All. And I never feel this is good. Reason can do a few great things, but it will not do audio in or VST. Propellerhead is focussed and their code is the best. Reason is so stable. So the crash with Live7 really scared me. I am glad Ableton gave me my money back, but at the same time I was thinking: I should be changing my DAW. So maybe I will quit using Live one day. It has been fun for years I must say. And Ableton looks like a great company with nice people. Their support is great. But I want something else... and you too, it seems :-)
Marco Raaphorst

music, sound & story maker

https://melodiefabriek.com

forge
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Re: ..

Post by forge » Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:37 pm

raapie wrote: But I want something else... and you too, it seems :-)
thanks for the Reply

well, I guess my thousands of posts betray my No. 1 fan status, ;-) but really I feel they are actually very close, they just lost me a bit because as you say they seem to have been focused on being everything for everyone

I guess I can understand the business sense in that, but I also feel that it misses the most fundamental thing that attracts people to Live

for me it was always about the workflow - absolute number 1

the things we talk about with Live 3 for me highlight the fact that the session view was always the strongest point and it has been totally ignored for a long time now

the addition of Clip envelopes was a development of session view, but it seems to have been the last

and the abundance of support requests we get on the forums for Arrange view type things suggest often that people are trying to replace LogicBaseTools etc and work in that boring linear way when IMO Ableton should have kept more of an isolationist approach and just expanded on what made them unique: the session view

the arrange view should be secondary, and what you say supports this - the audio only version of Live relied much more on the clip envelopes and it was like one big sampler, but now as you say it;s more of a DAW

thing is, I understand a lot of the decisions and agree largely, but Live 7 has just gone that one step too far for me in ignoring the workflow things that made Live great

but as I said, I know they know this, and Ableton are one of the most user focused developers I've come across - but maybe that is their flaw - trying to appease the users too much (who often just want what they are familiar with instead of what is most innovative) rather than sticking to their original unconventional vision which is what turned heads in the first place

filterstein
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Post by filterstein » Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:52 pm

the things we talk about with Live 3 for me highlight the fact that the session view was always the strongest point and it has been totally ignored for a long time now

I use a lot of hardware, so midi is important for me.
But the reason i bought live was the session view.
That is THE feature that sets it apart form other DAW's.
So yes, they should put more focus into it.

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Post by forge » Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:18 pm

filterstein wrote:the things we talk about with Live 3 for me highlight the fact that the session view was always the strongest point and it has been totally ignored for a long time now

I use a lot of hardware, so midi is important for me.
But the reason i bought live was the session view.
That is THE feature that sets it apart form other DAW's.
So yes, they should put more focus into it.
of course - I am by no means trying to suggest MIDI shouldn't be in there, more trying to understand what it was about Live 3 that seems to stand out - I've actually heard quite a few people make similar comments about Live 3

andydes
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Post by andydes » Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:11 pm

forge wrote:
raapie wrote: But I want something else... and you too, it seems :-)
thanks for the Reply

well, I guess my thousands of posts betray my No. 1 fan status, ;-) but really I feel they are actually very close, they just lost me a bit because as you say they seem to have been focused on being everything for everyone

I guess I can understand the business sense in that, but I also feel that it misses the most fundamental thing that attracts people to Live

for me it was always about the workflow - absolute number 1

the things we talk about with Live 3 for me highlight the fact that the session view was always the strongest point and it has been totally ignored for a long time now

the addition of Clip envelopes was a development of session view, but it seems to have been the last

and the abundance of support requests we get on the forums for Arrange view type things suggest often that people are trying to replace LogicBaseTools etc and work in that boring linear way when IMO Ableton should have kept more of an isolationist approach and just expanded on what made them unique: the session view

the arrange view should be secondary, and what you say supports this - the audio only version of Live relied much more on the clip envelopes and it was like one big sampler, but now as you say it;s more of a DAW

thing is, I understand a lot of the decisions and agree largely, but Live 7 has just gone that one step too far for me in ignoring the workflow things that made Live great

but as I said, I know they know this, and Ableton are one of the most user focused developers I've come across - but maybe that is their flaw - trying to appease the users too much (who often just want what they are familiar with instead of what is most innovative) rather than sticking to their original unconventional vision which is what turned heads in the first place
Couple of points.

1. Is there actually anything that’s harder to do in 7 than it was in 3? You say Live 3 relied more on clip envelopes, but all that functionality is still exactly the same as it was in 3 (at least I assume it is, I joined at 4) So it’s you way of working that’s changed, possibly due to having more options open to you.

2. So session view has been neglected. I can’t argue with that. However, not because they’ve put so much work into the arrangement view. In fact the only added feature I can think of that is specific to either working environment is multiple lane automation. Pretty much all the other major improvements (midi, racks, freeze, complex warp, midi mapping/support, effects, side chaining, time sig change, external instruments, etc, etc) are independent of the two pages.

forge
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Post by forge » Wed Jun 04, 2008 3:34 pm

andydes wrote:
Couple of points.

1. Is there actually anything that’s harder to do in 7 than it was in 3? You say Live 3 relied more on clip envelopes, but all that functionality is still exactly the same as it was in 3 (at least I assume it is, I joined at 4) So it’s you way of working that’s changed, possibly due to having more options open to you.

2. So session view has been neglected. I can’t argue with that. However, not because they’ve put so much work into the arrangement view. In fact the only added feature I can think of that is specific to either working environment is multiple lane automation. Pretty much all the other major improvements (midi, racks, freeze, complex warp, midi mapping/support, effects, side chaining, time sig change, external instruments, etc, etc) are independent of the two pages.
Live 7 and Live 3 can't be compared at all - they are completely different - the comment was more on the general feel that Live 3 had - but it;s an abstract comment really, I'm not by a long way saying that I think it should go back to the way it was, it's just that there was a kind of buzz about it that has been buried under a lot of DAW since then

If you joined at Live 4 it might be hard to understand as you kind of had to follow the process - even Live 4 was a lot different just because you no longer had to work in the way that was necessary - which was like a big sampler - at that point Live almost felt like VSTi or something - like a really powerful sampler - as soon as it got MIDI it started the long transition into DAW

Again I'm not saying I don't want that, in most part I'm happy that I can use just Live

I think the point is more that the GUI hasn't grown to fit all the changes since Live 3 so it feels terribly cramped at times, Live 6 added racks which provided enormous flexibility, but the lack of evolution in the GUI has meant that cramped feeling has been really exacerbated in Live 7 because the drum racks, inline rack mixer and multi-lane automation have created a situation where it's easy to get completely lost in a maze

if we get proper group tracks then I'm sure I'll just be content to not use any of that stuff, but currently in order to group drums together and hide them on one track then you have to.

Multi lane automation I'll probably only ever use if they add a way of working on a whole device at a time, but currently I'm not really interested in adding only one at a time or adding EVERYTHING at a time - almost all times I've wanted to use it have been to look at a whole device

andydes
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Post by andydes » Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:21 pm

forge wrote:[If you joined at Live 4 it might be hard to understand as you kind of had to follow the process - even Live 4 was a lot different just because you no longer had to work in the way that was necessary - which was like a big sampler - at that point Live almost felt like VSTi or something - like a really powerful sampler - as soon as it got MIDI it started the long transition into DAW
That's what I mean. Nothing's that was in 3 or 4 has been buried in a maze of submenus or anything. You can do everything you did bfore just as easily. But you're not forced into working with audio, so you're methods have changed, perhaps in a way that you find less creative or inspiring. I'm not sure I'd blame that on Ableton.

I guess you mean things like writing a part on a VSTi, recording to audio, bringing into ableton and messing it up with evelopes. Whereas now, there's a tendancy to just a midi part and tweak the synth parameters instead. Even though rendering to audio and messing about with envelopes is much easier now you can do it all in one program.

You're right, session could use a bit of an overhaul, and I'd like to see more flexible ways of launching clips, using controllers, better links between the two views, etc. But I don't agree that it has going down some kind of DAW path that makes it any less of a Live instrument, except in the way that people view it.

forge
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Post by forge » Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:44 pm

andydes wrote:
forge wrote:[If you joined at Live 4 it might be hard to understand as you kind of had to follow the process - even Live 4 was a lot different just because you no longer had to work in the way that was necessary - which was like a big sampler - at that point Live almost felt like VSTi or something - like a really powerful sampler - as soon as it got MIDI it started the long transition into DAW
That's what I mean. Nothing's that was in 3 or 4 has been buried in a maze of submenus or anything. You can do everything you did bfore just as easily. But you're not forced into working with audio, so you're methods have changed, perhaps in a way that you find less creative or inspiring. I'm not sure I'd blame that on Ableton.

I guess you mean things like writing a part on a VSTi, recording to audio, bringing into ableton and messing it up with evelopes. Whereas now, there's a tendancy to just a midi part and tweak the synth parameters instead. Even though rendering to audio and messing about with envelopes is much easier now you can do it all in one program.

You're right, session could use a bit of an overhaul, and I'd like to see more flexible ways of launching clips, using controllers, better links between the two views, etc. But I don't agree that it has going down some kind of DAW path that makes it any less of a Live instrument, except in the way that people view it.
I'm not sure you got my meaning really - yes you are right that a lot of it is probably down to being forced to work a certain way in Live 3, but I wasn't suggesting that anything has since been buried in DAW features (although there wasn't even a right click in Live 3 - try right clicking on some of the larger racks now!!)

for me it seemed to go in the wrong direction - the simplicity is what I miss

for example, (and I have said this a lot of times now, so apologies to others who've already heard my whinging) to me it would have been far simpler to just add group tracks first and let us make our own drum racks - personally I like using a track for each drum sound, I just wanted a way to hide them and bunch them together to save space - to simplify things

the way they did it instead goes the complete opposite way and complicates things way more. I actually find drum racks really quite difficult and cumbersome to use - they definitely dont speed things up for me, they slow me down massively - they are confusing, complicated, hard to focus on visually, chains in the inline rack mixer contain no clips, no track delay and they have a new set of sends to returns that are hidden out of the way and end up tripping me over and making me swear

I mean in fairness, it is handy to be able to control all the drum sounds from one MIDI in on one track, and also mapping to macros is good, but losing the clips, track delay and having to deal with a completely different set of sends to confuse matters ruin it

Ironically, one of my favourite things is slice to new MIDI track, it's just once you get going on working with the new rack things get complicated very quickly

that is rant 1.

Rant 2 is the Automation has been in an absolutely dire state now since...well probably Live 1 actually, and instead of fixing the automation they gave us the ability to make 50 million lanes of it in the arrange view without any easy way of quickly choosing what is shown

I would rather have session automation and more control over how it's recorded

I'm not 'blaming' Ableton so much as I feel quite stumped that they went that way and took those decisions - but I really don't want to stick the boot in any more as I've ranted a lot about this, I understand these can be difficult decisions to take and I understand why many of them were taken, I just dont agree with them

It's clear one of the main motivating factors for the drum racks was to make it easier to provide content, but it is completely at the expense of usability

but to leave it on a positive - if there were a few improvements visually, like resizable chain view in racks, and coloured tracks/chains that would make a big difference

but I dont know how to solve the MIDI clip per track thing - personally I think a better approach might be to have plug-ins on a group track - so for example, a Macro plug-in on a group track, as well as some kind of routing plug-in like external instrument that can be placed on the group track and control everything at once

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Re: ..

Post by forge » Wed Jun 04, 2008 5:06 pm

raapie wrote:... they are focussing on Doing It All. And I never feel this is good.
+1

landrvr1
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Re: ..

Post by landrvr1 » Sun Jun 08, 2008 4:39 am

forge wrote:
raapie wrote:... they are focussing on Doing It All. And I never feel this is good.
+1

forge, always enjoy reading your insight into this. As someone who's only used Live 7, it's fascinating to get a sense of history. Your comments about workflow are interesting. To me, successful workflow is incredibly dependent upon a great layout/design. I was shocked to see how little the overall design of the Session view has changed.

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but it would sure make a whole lot of sense to split the Session View and Arrangement View into two different products. Two separate development teams cranking away to produce the best of each; making sure that each version can flawlessly communicate with the other if need be.

That takes development money that Ableton probably doesn't have, but it's certainly panned out for many other software companies.

I'll give an example. I use Adobe Premiere and After Effects quite a bit. When Premiere was launched it was a wicked cool vid editor with some nice built-in effects. It wasn't long before Adobe started started adding more effects until suddenly things were in danger of getting too cumbersome. Adobe did the smart thing and very early on created a new product called After Effects. This left the Premier team to concentrate on simply making the program a better editor. After Effects has since gone on to be a powerhouse product in it's own right. The beauty thing is that both programs 'talk' to each other rather nicely. There were Premiere fans who were dead set against this idea at the start, but were proven wrong.

Dunno how things at Ableton are really structured. Would two separate products work? Would there be a benefit?

Poster
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Re: ..

Post by Poster » Sun Jun 08, 2008 11:10 am

landrvr1 wrote:I'm sure this has been brought up before, but it would sure make a whole lot of sense to split the Session View and Arrangement View into two different products. Two separate development teams cranking away to produce the best of each; making sure that each version can flawlessly communicate with the other if need be.
that would be a very bad idea i.m.o.
Arrange without Session would lead to DAW #1248932 on the market..
what Ableton has to do is make sure Arrange and Session really complement each other..
currently they don't do that.. I would even say they ARE almost 2 different 'products'..

There should be a bridge between the two, communicating back and forward, making it ONE product..
so that linear arranging would become non-linear in a linear fashion....
i.m.o. that should be the assignment for the coming release(s).. Not splitting features into different products..

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Re: ..

Post by forge » Sun Jun 08, 2008 12:21 pm

Poster wrote:
landrvr1 wrote:I'm sure this has been brought up before, but it would sure make a whole lot of sense to split the Session View and Arrangement View into two different products. Two separate development teams cranking away to produce the best of each; making sure that each version can flawlessly communicate with the other if need be.
that would be a very bad idea i.m.o.
Arrange without Session would lead to DAW #1248932 on the market..
what Ableton has to do is make sure Arrange and Session really complement each other..
currently they don't do that.. I would even say they ARE almost 2 different 'products'..

There should be a bridge between the two, communicating back and forward, making it ONE product..
so that linear arranging would become non-linear in a linear fashion....
i.m.o. that should be the assignment for the coming release(s).. Not splitting features into different products..
+1

landrvr1
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Re: ..

Post by landrvr1 » Sun Jun 08, 2008 2:42 pm

Poster wrote:
landrvr1 wrote:I'm sure this has been brought up before, but it would sure make a whole lot of sense to split the Session View and Arrangement View into two different products. Two separate development teams cranking away to produce the best of each; making sure that each version can flawlessly communicate with the other if need be.
that would be a very bad idea i.m.o.
Arrange without Session would lead to DAW #1248932 on the market..
what Ableton has to do is make sure Arrange and Session really complement each other..
currently they don't do that.. I would even say they ARE almost 2 different 'products'..

There should be a bridge between the two, communicating back and forward, making it ONE product..
so that linear arranging would become non-linear in a linear fashion....
i.m.o. that should be the assignment for the coming release(s).. Not splitting features into different products..

Yeah, you're probably right. It was just a thought. However, based on forge and other's comments, Arrange is already DAW #1248932 on the market, heh, and not exactly stellar at that.

I'm sure that there's a lot of folks out there that use Session view, but never touch Arrangement. But the number of folks that use Arrangement, but rarely or never use Session, is probably zero; which tells you something right there. I was pleasantly surprised that Live had the Arrangement view, but it feels more like an afterthought. Graphically, and from a workflow standpoint, the Arrangement view needs some serious work. If it's there, then develop it and make it killer. Otherwise you're just taking up space. They should do for Arrangement what they did for Session; something new and never-before-seen.

Funny you should mentioned a 'bridge'; as Adobe created a piece of software called 'Bridge' which acts as a middle man between it's various products. Sort of like a Super Asset Manager, really. It's genius.

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Post by dcease » Sun Jun 08, 2008 9:45 pm

sorry to go off topic, but i don't like 7.0.7 .

forge
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Re: ..

Post by forge » Tue Jun 10, 2008 6:31 am

landrvr1 wrote:
Poster wrote: that would be a very bad idea i.m.o...
Yeah, you're probably right. It was just a thought. However, based on forge and other's comments, Arrange is already DAW #1248932 on the market, heh, and not exactly stellar at that.

I'm sure that there's a lot of folks out there that use Session view, but never touch Arrangement. But the number of folks that use Arrangement, but rarely or never use Session, is probably zero; which tells you something right there. I was pleasantly surprised that Live had the Arrangement view, but it feels more like an afterthought. Graphically, and from a workflow standpoint, the Arrangement view needs some serious work. If it's there, then develop it and make it killer. Otherwise you're just taking up space. They should do for Arrangement what they did for Session; something new and never-before-seen.

Funny you should mentioned a 'bridge'; as Adobe created a piece of software called 'Bridge' which acts as a middle man between it's various products. Sort of like a Super Asset Manager, really. It's genius.
Well, personally I think if they made a few changes to the session view and to the workflow then they wouldn't need to do much to arrange because you could make much better use of session

for example, if the methods of recording clips sequence and automation was a lot better with more control then you wouldn't be forced to go into arrange so early on - because the way it works, as soon as you want to use automation then you have to go into arrange

I mean, for me the arranger should have just been a linear way of viewing the session view - so in other words, almost the opposite of what you said about 2 products, because to me it already feels like 2 products because once you start in arrange it's quite difficult to go back to session

say you have a jam going on in session and you want to go back to the arrange view for a bit then you hit the BTA button, but if you then want to start jamming from session again, you have to figure out which clips are playing - if you have hundreds then that is not easy

the Live I would like to see would have

1. session automation
2. 2 record buttons for automation and clips/sequence - or read/write/touch
3. BTA buttons for every track, hideable like the crossfade and track delay
4. alias clips so the same clips are playing in both views

they have been top of my list for probably 4-5 years now
the next ones are more recent because they have become a much bigger problem since Live 6 and especially 7

5. saveable screensets
6.dual monitor support for session and arrange
7. proper group tracks
8. resizable chain list view
9. coloured tracks
10. double click mapped knobs to go to their automation, and double click automation lanes to go back to the knob (both ways - like 'show automation')

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