Ableton Live 10

[Angstrom]

The biggest major industry standard Live is hurting on right now is support for some of the latest vst options.
I guess, along with that maybe multi-aftertouch.

It's not that Live needs it, but Live is very modular and seems to be able to work with any device you throw at it, whether it be vsts, audio interfaces, or controllers, and handles these things in a way that is unique to Live.

It'll work with midi controllers no problem, but it'll hurt their software if there are some newer vst options/features that you have to open up a different daw to use.

Of course, if they open that door, they'll have to rehaul their midi and clip editing to handle multiple layers.

I assume that with Ableton's focus on Push which produces a lot of aftertouch data they must have been thinking about poly-aftertouch solutions for about 3 years.

Also, Roger Linn is popping round for coffee on Saturday and he's gonna be all like " so lemme just plug my Linnstrument in " and Gerhard's gonna be all like " nuh-uh" and Roger be like " uh, yeah dude" and Gerhard's like " uh, no Bro" and Roger will be all like " lemme get my Bitwig out " and Gerhard be all like " oh" .

[Angstrom]

I can completely understand your point, but I think that it's always possible to deliver a broad feature set coherently as long as your UI is good enough.

That's easy to write but incredibly hard to achieve, of course.

Ableton Live has been famous from the inception for its simple interface. From version one it was the epitome of WYSIWYG, but as Ableton got to somewhere around V4 they started having to add things into context menus. This is where they needed to adopt a new UI paradigm.

The basic idea is "if the interface is uncluttered then the program is easier to use" is very true, but not at all costs. Once a product becomes more complex the interface needs to reveal itself contextually. Ableton Live does this in many areas marvelously intuitively: You drag in an EQ8 and your channel now has EQ on, and now you can see the controls for Equalising. It's so simple that you can almost miss how that decision keeps the interface clean when the feature isn't needed, but when you need EQ - there's the controls. Simple, elegant.

Unfortunately as new features were added they overriding ethos was "hide the controls/ keep the GUI free of clutter" rather than the more expeditious "only show the controls when they are needed"

There was an obvious choice when introducing smart-snapping to reduce any controls for the user. This is where simplicity becomes a detriment.
It's like tidying your workroom by throwing everything into a big chest and locking it and then giving that key to one trusted individual. At some point you will need to access that chest.

Tidiness needs to be as a product of elegant design, not simply hiding stuff.

It is possible to have something like SmartSnap and also to provide an interface to what is being done to the notes. It's possible that this doesn't need to be a brutal modal dialog box. It's possible to design a UI which reveals itself and is discoverable, learnable. Difficult, but possible.

That's what I hope they do in L10, because they completely missed that idea in L9.

[igneous]

I came to Live because it was expanding possibilities for live performance mediated with digital technology, and because of the DIY ethos of the Max.

Now all I'd like to see some more radical innovation on the front of live performance, which I consider far too stale and disembodied, with the Push showing potential (embodying session view and instruments in a single interface) but ultimately it's just big blocky button-pushing knob-twiddler that sits on a table.

Can't please everyone !

[-art-]

I'd love to see an expanded device view, or the ability to have it have a draggable window, or full screen.