New Ableton Live 4 book coming this fall.
New Ableton Live 4 book coming this fall.
I have some good news from the NAMM show that I wasn't sure if I could share it until now. Chad Carrier (from M-Audio) is updating Dave Hill Jr.'s book, "Ableton Live 2 Power!". Chad will be adding chapters for version 3 and 4. It should be in fine books stores everywhere in the fall. All the new fuctions and features of Live 4 will be explained. Chad is a very cool guy and I expect this book to be a great update from Dave's original work. His demo of Live 4 at the Namm show was awesome and he seems to know the program inside and out. I am really looking forward to this! If there is anything in Live 3 or 4 that you would like an in-depth explanation on, please post your ideas here.(example: Warp Markers, midi sequencing, follow actions, tips and tricks...bla bla bla) I will email the suggestions to Chad just to make sure he is covering everything that needs to be covered thoroughly. He is definitly open to suggestions.
drush,
I will definitly pass that along. I see that over 70 people have read this thread and only one response? Come on, guys. This is a good chance to add some input about things you would like to see in the book. With all the complaining that goes on here I would fgure more people would have responded to this.
I will definitly pass that along. I see that over 70 people have read this thread and only one response? Come on, guys. This is a good chance to add some input about things you would like to see in the book. With all the complaining that goes on here I would fgure more people would have responded to this.
I found Dave Hill's book "Ableton Live 2 Power" very informative, and very helpful for a novice producer such as myself.
I would definately recommend it to anyone who's starting out with Live.
Like drush said...warp markers should be explained in better detail (compared to the manual) and perhaps some more info on the follow features that Live now contains.
Maybe a few of the tutorials found on the site might be helpfull as well.
sc
www.minimal.ca
I would definately recommend it to anyone who's starting out with Live.
Like drush said...warp markers should be explained in better detail (compared to the manual) and perhaps some more info on the follow features that Live now contains.
Maybe a few of the tutorials found on the site might be helpfull as well.
sc
www.minimal.ca
Ableton 5.01
Laptop / Desktop
Pentium 4 2.5M / AMD Athlon 64 3400+
Win XP Pro SP2 / Win XP Pro SP2
Firewire 410 /Firewire 410
Laptop / Desktop
Pentium 4 2.5M / AMD Athlon 64 3400+
Win XP Pro SP2 / Win XP Pro SP2
Firewire 410 /Firewire 410
I bought that book after having Live 3 for quite some time. I found it helpful. I look forward to getting the updated version. What should it include... everything. All he needs to do is look through the posts since 4.0b1 ! It will take a day or so. This will give him a firm grasp on what we collectively understand and do not understand. Examples and tricks are worth much more than straight explanations. No need to paraphrase the manual ! 
We could offer him a 'sticky' thread... 
We could offer him a 'sticky' thread... Live 607 Mac G5 dual 2.0 Ghz w/ 3.5 gig ram
OS X 10.4.10, Motu 828mk2, c-thru axis, Too many plugins "detective chief superintendent"
OS X 10.4.10, Motu 828mk2, c-thru axis, Too many plugins "detective chief superintendent"
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Guest
Ryst Scream this in Chads ear, this is the main point and the main contention with the book. I bought it , its a great book, and dave hill jr is a great guy.
that said
the book was not and is not a 'POWERBOOK' I've had most of the power series from musik and lipman and this is the only book that was basicly a misrepresentation of it's title. now i'm not saying anything bad about the book behind the title, it was perfect for a 'wizzoo beginning book' but it never should of been sold as a power book, and I've seen dave hill work with live he knows way more than he put in the book. I bought the book I'm happy with my purchase on the level of what the book really is but it's not a power book by any means and what this chad guy needs to do is make it a power book now, do not repeat the same misrepresentation by title.
if he does update the book to an actual power user book covering live 3 and 4 we will have one great read on our hands, if he's just going to pussy
foot around and call it Live power and it's really just and introduction to elcectronic music, and an introduction to live 3 and live 4 then he might as well not write it at all.
once again please scream this in his ear.
that said
the book was not and is not a 'POWERBOOK' I've had most of the power series from musik and lipman and this is the only book that was basicly a misrepresentation of it's title. now i'm not saying anything bad about the book behind the title, it was perfect for a 'wizzoo beginning book' but it never should of been sold as a power book, and I've seen dave hill work with live he knows way more than he put in the book. I bought the book I'm happy with my purchase on the level of what the book really is but it's not a power book by any means and what this chad guy needs to do is make it a power book now, do not repeat the same misrepresentation by title.
if he does update the book to an actual power user book covering live 3 and 4 we will have one great read on our hands, if he's just going to pussy
foot around and call it Live power and it's really just and introduction to elcectronic music, and an introduction to live 3 and live 4 then he might as well not write it at all.
once again please scream this in his ear.
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Guest
Thanks guys. Your input is great. I will make sure that Chad knows that we want a "power" book to get the most out of Live. Since Live is a creative tool, there is a fine line in showing every trick in the book and showing basics that push you in the right direction to be more creative yourself. Chad is a smart guy so I am confident his book will not only explain things but also show us good examples of the true power Live has to offer that we may have not considered or realized.
loophead,
I think a sticky is a good idea but not necessary. The book is scheduled to be released in the fall so I think the best thing to do is just use this thread and list as many important things that we would like to see, send it to him and hopefully he can cover anything he might not have covered in detail. So, make a list and post it here, loophead! I don't think Chad has a lot of time to check these forums.
loophead,
I think a sticky is a good idea but not necessary. The book is scheduled to be released in the fall so I think the best thing to do is just use this thread and list as many important things that we would like to see, send it to him and hopefully he can cover anything he might not have covered in detail. So, make a list and post it here, loophead! I don't think Chad has a lot of time to check these forums.
I agree with Loophead, and as a long time owner of Live and having bought Dave's book, the real deep details of tips and tricks is what is really needed; Live 4 is so much more now that it's going to be quite a tome if it's going to cover everything that needs to be covered since Dave's book, but I sure would like to read it!!! Wish I could offer some ideas, but I'm looking for those myself. Just don't rehash the manual and show as many tricks and ways that Live 3 and 4 can be used would be a tall order for any book on the deep subject that is Live. 
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futureproof
- Posts: 339
- Joined: Thu Jul 01, 2004 6:21 am
- Location: tOKYO
I agree. Ive read some great tips here on the forum and in Francis Preves new Power Tools for Loop Music production book and I think the manual is fairly thorough, so he should expand on the manual and include a lot of advanced techniques on routing, envelopes, and sound design in general.Anonymous wrote: if he does update the book to an actual power user book covering live 3 and 4 we will have one great read on our hands, if he's just going to pussy
foot around and call it Live power and it's really just and introduction to elcectronic music, and an introduction to live 3 and live 4 then he might as well not write it at all.
once again please scream this in his ear.
Maybe he can also include a section on how to avoid and/or filter out trolls and flames here on the forum
"THE biggest differences between Live 3 & 4 are the things that Live 4 have that are missing in Live 3"
-some dude on KVR.
-some dude on KVR.
This is a reply from Chad Carrier(the author of the new book)
Thank you all for your feedback regarding the upcoming Ableton Live 4 Power! book.
It seems there is a discrepancy between what readers think this book should be and what the book actually is. It seems that many feel that the book should teach them how to make music. That is not the point of this book. This book assumes you know how to make music and that you desire to get a firm grasp of the tools available in Live to make it. I will not be explaining musical scales, harmonizing, how to write beats, or the Circle of Fifths—I’ll be explaining Live. I won’t explain how to edit a vocal part, but I will explain how to edit audio with Live. If that distinction isn’t obvious, read on...
This book, at some level, does need to be a re-hash of the Live Manual. If it wasn’t necessary to re-hash the manual, people wouldn’t still be asking about Warp Markers. Obviously, all of the Live Manuals and tutorials to this date do not get the point across on that subject, so I will need to explain it, and others, further.
Live is a different creature compared to other software. Live is not a program you learn, it is a program you understand. Once you understand how the program works and what it does, you will be able to answer your own questions. It’s like the difference between History and Physics. In History class, you’re required to remember an exhausting amount of information and recall it on command. When was the Magna Carta signed? Don’t know? How can you figure it out? Well, you probably can’t figure it out since it’s just a date that you had to memorize. If you don’t know it, you’ll have to find a reference book of some kind and look it up. Physics, on the other hand, is based on reasoning instead of memorization. As long as you know a few equations and understand how they relate to one another, you can alter and process them to find your answers. While most of the other programs to date are more like History (“I can’t remember if this program can do that...”), Live is like Physics (“I know Live can do these two different things. If I use them together, I can achieve my desired results.”).
For example:
You have a 2-bar drum loop. There’s a crash cymbal on the first beat of the first bar. You want to trigger the drum part, have it play through the first bar then start looping indefinitely on the second bar so the crash cymbal only plays once.
Lot’s of people will tell you that Live is unable to do this since the start position for a loop can’t exist outside of the loop points. “What kind of sample machine won’t let you start before a loop point?” they ask.
Yet, when you consider all the functionality of Live, you’ll realize that it can be done easily. Split the beat into two Clips, one with the loop markers around the first bar and the other with the markers around the second bar, then place the two Clips right next to each other on the same Track. Turn on the Follow Action for the first Clip so it triggers the second Clip after 1 bar. Problem solved. This is the type of “outside the box” thinking that Live requires from its users.
I will be dropping in practical tips like this throughout the book. In fact, I’ve revised the Audio Effects chapter to include more of these tips. However, there is no trick that I or anyone could teach that would outweigh the power you’d gain by just understanding Live. Ryst mentioned “nano-editing.” This is not something that will be covered by this book. Nano-editing is not a function of Live, it is a function of the user. I will teach the reader all the audio editing tools available in Live plus offer some suggestions to get the brain juices flowing, but it will be up to the user in the end to determine how they will apply them in their music. Some users will use editing to splice a first and second verse together. Other users will zoom in and start making thousands of cuts and modifications to the track. There is nothing different about nano-editing from regular editing—you use the same tools. Live doesn’t treat small edits any differently from large ones. Because of this, nano-editing does not have a place in a “How to Master Live” book such as this. Nano-editing belongs in a “Techniques of the Advanced Electronica Producer” book. Tips on how to remix would be found in a “Release the Remix” book. Warp Markers, on the other hand, do belong in this book because they are a function of Live.
“Examples and tricks are worth much more than straight explanations.”
Above is a quote from one of the posts on this thread. I totally 100% disagree with this statement. Consider the following:
Hey everyone, here’s a cool trick to use next time you’re in France: Walk up to someone and ask “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?” You’ll either get laid or slapped in the face!
After reading the above trick, how much closer are you to understanding the French language? It’s for this reason that teaching with tricks won’t teach anything about the program itself. If I listed a trick named “Making Random Beats With Follow Actions,” the reader might then tell someone that Follow Actions are use for making random beats, which is only part of the story. A thorough explanation of Follow Actions, however, will show that they can also be used for non-random beat construction. They can be used to create chord changes in a song. They can be used for altering the playback order of an audio file as explained above. They can also be used to stop a Clip after a set time. Should I concoct a whole “trick” for every one of these possibilities in order to teach them instead of creating one concise explanation of their workings? While tricks offer instant gratification, they stifle imagination. I could teach someone five tricks and that’s all they’d ever use. It’s much more important and valuable that a person be able to come up with the tricks themselves. That can only be achieved by understanding the program inside and out, which is actually much easier than you might think. The tricks that I know are just the ones I made up myself after playing with the program. Besides, the “tricks” in Live aren’t really tricks at all, they’re just another way to use the program.
My goal for this book is not to create amazing electronic producers or cutting-edge hip-hop remixers. Live is used by a wider range of musicians so a techno-centric focus won’t teach those users anything. My goal is to create amazing Live users, ones that can handle any situation they may encounter. If someone asks you to do something and you can’t remember the “trick” for it, where does that leave you? It’s more important that you can reason your way through the program. Need to do nano-editing? There’s no “Perform Nano-Editing” function in any of Live’s menus (or any program’s menu for that matter) so where would you begin? If you know how to use the zoom tool in Live and how to change the grid settings in the various views, then you already know everything you need to do nano-edits. The “trick” for nano-editing is to just do it. In fact, most of the “how do you” questions are simply answered that way: Do it. How do you record a band? How do you think? Set up some mics, plug them into your sound card, choose the sound card inputs as sources for your Audio Tracks, then arm and record. Is it any different from recording any other audio source? No. However, if your question is actually, “What are the best techniques for recording a live band,” that answer is beyond the scope of this book. There are books already in print that deal with recording rooms, mic choice and placement, EQ and compression, and mixing. You’ll see that those books are almost as thick as the Live 2 Power! book themselves!
I’m not trying to get everyone down here by saying that I won’t put certain things in the book. This thing will be LOADED with invaluable information. I just want everyone to maintain perspective and not expect things from the book that it shouldn’t provide to begin with. Trust me on this, and I speak from experience: Once you understand Live, you will be able to mold it to anything you want. Like Yoda says, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” Don’t expect to do things as you’ve always done in other programs when you’re working in Live. Live is different. The more you know about standard audio programs, the more you’ll have to relearn when using Live. Don’t be afraid, it’s worth it. I used to be a staunch supporter of Cubase and Nuendo for years and have used ProTools, Logic, Sonar, Reason, Digital Performer, and more, but all of those programs have now been removed from my computers. Live is the answer and it is just as capable as any other program around. It just takes a different approach.
Hang tight, y’all. The answers are coming.
-Chad Carrier
Thank you all for your feedback regarding the upcoming Ableton Live 4 Power! book.
It seems there is a discrepancy between what readers think this book should be and what the book actually is. It seems that many feel that the book should teach them how to make music. That is not the point of this book. This book assumes you know how to make music and that you desire to get a firm grasp of the tools available in Live to make it. I will not be explaining musical scales, harmonizing, how to write beats, or the Circle of Fifths—I’ll be explaining Live. I won’t explain how to edit a vocal part, but I will explain how to edit audio with Live. If that distinction isn’t obvious, read on...
This book, at some level, does need to be a re-hash of the Live Manual. If it wasn’t necessary to re-hash the manual, people wouldn’t still be asking about Warp Markers. Obviously, all of the Live Manuals and tutorials to this date do not get the point across on that subject, so I will need to explain it, and others, further.
Live is a different creature compared to other software. Live is not a program you learn, it is a program you understand. Once you understand how the program works and what it does, you will be able to answer your own questions. It’s like the difference between History and Physics. In History class, you’re required to remember an exhausting amount of information and recall it on command. When was the Magna Carta signed? Don’t know? How can you figure it out? Well, you probably can’t figure it out since it’s just a date that you had to memorize. If you don’t know it, you’ll have to find a reference book of some kind and look it up. Physics, on the other hand, is based on reasoning instead of memorization. As long as you know a few equations and understand how they relate to one another, you can alter and process them to find your answers. While most of the other programs to date are more like History (“I can’t remember if this program can do that...”), Live is like Physics (“I know Live can do these two different things. If I use them together, I can achieve my desired results.”).
For example:
You have a 2-bar drum loop. There’s a crash cymbal on the first beat of the first bar. You want to trigger the drum part, have it play through the first bar then start looping indefinitely on the second bar so the crash cymbal only plays once.
Lot’s of people will tell you that Live is unable to do this since the start position for a loop can’t exist outside of the loop points. “What kind of sample machine won’t let you start before a loop point?” they ask.
Yet, when you consider all the functionality of Live, you’ll realize that it can be done easily. Split the beat into two Clips, one with the loop markers around the first bar and the other with the markers around the second bar, then place the two Clips right next to each other on the same Track. Turn on the Follow Action for the first Clip so it triggers the second Clip after 1 bar. Problem solved. This is the type of “outside the box” thinking that Live requires from its users.
I will be dropping in practical tips like this throughout the book. In fact, I’ve revised the Audio Effects chapter to include more of these tips. However, there is no trick that I or anyone could teach that would outweigh the power you’d gain by just understanding Live. Ryst mentioned “nano-editing.” This is not something that will be covered by this book. Nano-editing is not a function of Live, it is a function of the user. I will teach the reader all the audio editing tools available in Live plus offer some suggestions to get the brain juices flowing, but it will be up to the user in the end to determine how they will apply them in their music. Some users will use editing to splice a first and second verse together. Other users will zoom in and start making thousands of cuts and modifications to the track. There is nothing different about nano-editing from regular editing—you use the same tools. Live doesn’t treat small edits any differently from large ones. Because of this, nano-editing does not have a place in a “How to Master Live” book such as this. Nano-editing belongs in a “Techniques of the Advanced Electronica Producer” book. Tips on how to remix would be found in a “Release the Remix” book. Warp Markers, on the other hand, do belong in this book because they are a function of Live.
“Examples and tricks are worth much more than straight explanations.”
Above is a quote from one of the posts on this thread. I totally 100% disagree with this statement. Consider the following:
Hey everyone, here’s a cool trick to use next time you’re in France: Walk up to someone and ask “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?” You’ll either get laid or slapped in the face!
After reading the above trick, how much closer are you to understanding the French language? It’s for this reason that teaching with tricks won’t teach anything about the program itself. If I listed a trick named “Making Random Beats With Follow Actions,” the reader might then tell someone that Follow Actions are use for making random beats, which is only part of the story. A thorough explanation of Follow Actions, however, will show that they can also be used for non-random beat construction. They can be used to create chord changes in a song. They can be used for altering the playback order of an audio file as explained above. They can also be used to stop a Clip after a set time. Should I concoct a whole “trick” for every one of these possibilities in order to teach them instead of creating one concise explanation of their workings? While tricks offer instant gratification, they stifle imagination. I could teach someone five tricks and that’s all they’d ever use. It’s much more important and valuable that a person be able to come up with the tricks themselves. That can only be achieved by understanding the program inside and out, which is actually much easier than you might think. The tricks that I know are just the ones I made up myself after playing with the program. Besides, the “tricks” in Live aren’t really tricks at all, they’re just another way to use the program.
My goal for this book is not to create amazing electronic producers or cutting-edge hip-hop remixers. Live is used by a wider range of musicians so a techno-centric focus won’t teach those users anything. My goal is to create amazing Live users, ones that can handle any situation they may encounter. If someone asks you to do something and you can’t remember the “trick” for it, where does that leave you? It’s more important that you can reason your way through the program. Need to do nano-editing? There’s no “Perform Nano-Editing” function in any of Live’s menus (or any program’s menu for that matter) so where would you begin? If you know how to use the zoom tool in Live and how to change the grid settings in the various views, then you already know everything you need to do nano-edits. The “trick” for nano-editing is to just do it. In fact, most of the “how do you” questions are simply answered that way: Do it. How do you record a band? How do you think? Set up some mics, plug them into your sound card, choose the sound card inputs as sources for your Audio Tracks, then arm and record. Is it any different from recording any other audio source? No. However, if your question is actually, “What are the best techniques for recording a live band,” that answer is beyond the scope of this book. There are books already in print that deal with recording rooms, mic choice and placement, EQ and compression, and mixing. You’ll see that those books are almost as thick as the Live 2 Power! book themselves!
I’m not trying to get everyone down here by saying that I won’t put certain things in the book. This thing will be LOADED with invaluable information. I just want everyone to maintain perspective and not expect things from the book that it shouldn’t provide to begin with. Trust me on this, and I speak from experience: Once you understand Live, you will be able to mold it to anything you want. Like Yoda says, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” Don’t expect to do things as you’ve always done in other programs when you’re working in Live. Live is different. The more you know about standard audio programs, the more you’ll have to relearn when using Live. Don’t be afraid, it’s worth it. I used to be a staunch supporter of Cubase and Nuendo for years and have used ProTools, Logic, Sonar, Reason, Digital Performer, and more, but all of those programs have now been removed from my computers. Live is the answer and it is just as capable as any other program around. It just takes a different approach.
Hang tight, y’all. The answers are coming.
-Chad Carrier
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::mic-minimal::
- Posts: 658
- Joined: Tue Mar 04, 2003 8:32 am
- Location: behind you
beautiful Ryst, Please pass on a thanks for that response, what he said is just what i'm sure alot of us needed it's clear exactly where he stands and I couldn't agree with his take on the whole thing any more than I already do. I know now that I will be getting that book for sure, i got dave hills book and that was a very good effort, this chad guy though sounds like hes bringing home the bacon. this will be a great read for those starting out and for those further along in the app from the looks of it, this is what i thought the first live powerbook was going to be like and i'm glad that its finally getting here.
for the love of Live