Ableton Forum

To start off, I love Ableton Live; I wouldn't be here if I didn't. But I have some ideas which I personally think, could make Ableton even more similar to a musical instrument than it already currently is.

The first feature which I would like to propose stems from the fact that I own a Keith McMillen QuNeo controller. For all those unaware, this controller is the most flexible midi controller on the market to date (aside from maybe anything that Livid Instruments make, but even then...) One of its features is (of course) velocity sensitivity. Now, the Clip Launch section of Ableton is already clearly intuitive on its own, however what if each individual clip slot had a subgrid of 127 different clips within itself? Also, what if the clip grid afforded users various different options as to which clip will play? This is similar to how Sampler works where one can load 128 different sounds within that one instance of Sampler, and assign velocity to each sample in order to play different samples as they correlate to a player's velocity. However, this method lacks some of luxuries which are afforded when one Warps a clip instead of simply samples them. The solution? The subgrid. Instead of each clip being a specific sound, they can instead be thought of as parts of the song which can be controlled with variation as the situation demands it. If I'm improvising with live musicians, and want to use samples, simply using static samples is indeed very "computer-y" in its means of playing and sounding, and while some may be actually seeking that, I think that some people may not be. And this idea is just the start of what could become a very fruitful and intuitive feature for live performance and improvisation indeed. Of course, if one would wish to only use one clip per clip slot, than they could do so, so using Live in this classic sense could still work. Along with this, the new Push has velocity sensitive pads, so implementation of this feature would obviously not skate by what has now become the default controller for Ableton Live.

Along with this, comes a more intuitive collaborative feature between 2 or more Live Users. Sending/Receiving midi clock data, while cool, certainly doesn't afford much flexibility for Live's key features. I think it would be awesome to be able to run Live on two or more separate computers, and share one live set; not have the same live set loaded on two or more different computers. I mean literally having two or more computers collaboratively constructing and performing with a single live set, where when one person may add a clip from their computer and it will show up on the other person's instance of Live. This could perhaps make Live the single greatest electronic instrument ever made for collaborative work. And perhaps, this could even lessen some of the workload on one's computer by splitting it to both OR if someone has a vastly more powerful computer than the other, it could all rely on his or mostly rely on his. (maybe; I'm ignorant as to how computers and audio interfaces technically function so this may or may not be possible or even logical to do) As to how the connection would be made, perhaps using usb cables connecting the two computers, or some other cable for that matter OR for an even cooler idea, wireless connection over the internet. Maybe Ableton could even find a manufacturer and design their own type of hub which two or more computers could connect to.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think, Ableton Community!
Joe Dopke

So one thing that I could definitely see happening is Live distributing processing capabilities across multiple computers. Logic has this, they call it Logic Node. I'm not saying that no one professional uses Ableton, but I think that more Professionals could take advantage of Ableton as they often have to load many processor heavy Plugins into their DAW. Ableton obviously was far behind until recently in terms of memory until recently, and that has gotten the respect of many people back, but the fact that you cannot utilize more than 1 computer without an excessive amount of routing and possible latency, is simply not feasible. Personally, I work in a facility where professionals frequently visit. Many utilize any other DAW except Ableton just because of the ability to access multiple processors.
Just a thought.

Definitely should be able to use two computers with one instance of live.

But the thing is, what if Ableton completely stepped up the "just connecting multiple computers" aspect of DAWs like Logic, and made it a really social music making/performing experience? How many times have you been huddled behind a single computer with one person in the "hot-seat" and everyone else making suggestions or having that person move over so they can enact their idea? I know that that has happened to me plenty of times and it is NOT the best way of making music where there are multiple individuals involved, especially multiple individuals who all own their own copy of Ableton. And what's to stop Ableton from using the internet to host collaborative projects? Although the users would need quite powerful computers most likely, this certainly would be an excellent idea for inviting people over and having them record. Imagine, you could have your singer in Los Angeles at a professional, isolated studio, your producer in New York in his studio, and other party members as well! And all the while, it's in real time, feel of the moment. I personally think that would be KILLER.