Ableton Forum

I'd also love that kind of freedom of expression, but the problem is this is 2015, not 2035. Maybe some day we can use the conscious energy of our brains to generate and shape infinite sounds at will. But for now you have to prepare your work before you perform with anyone, be it audio files in a drum rack, with synths, and pretty much anything else.

If it were the best tool for instrument players why on earth didn't they let Live have comping?...

Live audio recording/looping and resampling in session view allows me to interact with live acoustic musicians in real time, without any preparation of material. All I need is a launchpad and a fader board. It's easy to forget that Live's most basic function is to sample incoming audio and make beat synced loops

I'd also love that kind of freedom of expression, but the problem is this is 2015, not 2035. Maybe some day we can use the conscious energy of our brains to generate and shape infinite sounds at will. But for now you have to prepare your work before you perform with anyone, be it audio files in a drum rack, with synths, and pretty much anything else.

Digital instrument builders have been working making more expressive and responsive tools since the 80's. There's tons of examples out there. But they generally fizzle out pretty quickly because of lack of support from major players (Roland, Akai, Yamaha), and because of the demands of supporting excellent software as well.

Ableton has been in prime position for some time to make an innovative and expressive connection between software and hardware. But, now in 2015 with their latest controller, it's more canned samples and button tapping. I still think the Push is pretty cool, but here's a huge loss of potential.

Live audio recording/looping and resampling in session view allows me to interact with live acoustic musicians in real time

And yet one can't perform with live samples. They can't be dropped in Sampler or a Drum Rack on the fly, and one can't expressively play them in any way. They can just be, what, looped? Pitch shifted? Limitations can inspire creativity, but at a certain point it just holds up the future of electro-acoustic music. I think it's being held up right now.

They can sort of be timestretched as well. Sort of because these features aren't exposed to the api.. which is totally lame. Filtering and comb filtering and spectral freezing all helps though.

igneous wrote: Digital instrument builders have been working making more expressive and responsive tools since the 80's. There's tons of examples out there. But they generally fizzle out pretty quickly because of lack of support from major players (Roland, Akai, Yamaha), and because of the demands of supporting excellent software as well.

Oh okay, what have you checked out? I'm only familiar with mainstream hardware and software.