Ok, Montreal, I just read through this entire thread and though there are a lot of people being provoked by your provokative stance on DJing, I saw few comments on what I thought was the core of your post.
montrealbreaks wrote:
1. The dumbing down of Live 5 into an automatic beat detecting grid based DJ tool is tragic, but necessary for the survival of the corporate entity that is Ableton.
I dunno, perhaps it´s nesicary, I don´t think so, but how did you get to "dumbing down", I don´t think adding something can "dumb it down", if this went at the cost of wave files and clever routing and looped automation then yeah, I´d agree. As it stands it´s a conventient feature that may save some time sometimes (but that still needs to be manually supervised for errors) and that doesn´t bother me when I don´t need it.
2. This dumbing down of Live as stated in point 1 will saturate the digital music performance labour market with every pinhead with an mp3 collection.
Very similar remarks were made in the days of the first synthesisers by the musician unions. Actually the soundtrack to "Forbidden Planet" (the first all electronic soundtrack) wasn´t allowed to be called "music" at all because it didn´t involve musicians. Drum computers were asumed to put drummers out of the market.
A few decades later people are still merrily playing away on guitars and pianos and drums.
I would predict that if everybody is playing mp3 then there will be a a greater demand for tracks to be turned into mp3´s too.
3. This saturation of the market will also erode Live's reputation as a tool for creative performers and composers.
Because everybody will be using it? Much like punk ruined the market for classical guitar music?
Promoters and punters will soon look on Live sets disdainfully as nothing requiring talent at all - and in many cases they will be right.
This is already going on and it´s already true, often. Many people using laptops and grooveboxes have no tallent at all. I don´t see how this affects Live as a tool for individuals. Frankly, many people playing keyboards or guitars have no tallent either. Fortunately for us (tallented elite) all of those come with headphone outputs.
5. The arguement that "it's just about the music who cares how it's made" is infuriating.
If it affected me that badly then I´d keep it out of my rants. My own rants are filled only with stuff that I like. This is why I like my own rants. Why do you even talk with people that say such things? Now it sounds like a cross between a strawman and something you use to work yourself into a frenzy.
'nuff said. I say the above now just to put it on the record and not have to speak of it again. I also promise not to post on Mac/PC debates or Sasha threads ever again.
I don´t think you said ´nuff (I liked Stan Lee too). What I am missing is how your additude towards DJ-ing affects how you as a person relate to Live as a program. If you feel that Live5 is dumbed down by the auto-beatmatching stuff then I certainly wouldn´t buy it if I were you. I´d stick to the more intelligent Live4. You can do most of what beat repeater does with a decent delay, you can write arpegios by hand and you can place all of your own warp markers. Realy good effect chains will probably stick in your memory anyway.... But it´s still very nice to have them around, I think. I´ll pay for them.
Some stuff got added that caters to a market that´s not you. You may not even like that market. I see no real problem here at all, unless you drag in some large audio file you don´t need to be confronted with this and the very worst that can happen is the auto-detection getting it wrong and you having to do it manually like you always had. I don´t think anything worse then that will happen, if autobeatmatching would ruin the world then Traktor would have done that already.
Chill out.
you can come work here anytime.
