Back from the dead. A musician discovers Ableton.

[ThreeVerse]

I've been programming, recording, and performing music for over 40 years, and most of my bands, while never anything global, did well regionally and locally, and I made a good living from that, and writing music for commercial, television and a movie or two.
My original love was the powerful Notator Logic program, still in my opinion one of the best raw linear sequencing programs ever designed.
However, it ran on the then cutting-edge ATART ST40, which reigned supreme for computer music fanatics, between 1987, and 1997 and required dongles, and SEMPTE attachments, and lots of bells and whistles.

And right around the time half the world was on board, during which the program went through several iterations, some good, some bad, all far from the simplicity of the original, It's inventors, Gerhard Lengeling, and Chris Adam, and the entire C-Lab, (Later EMAGIC) jumped ship (2002) and joined Apple, and created LOGIC for the Mac. The updates and support had already slowed to a snail's pace, and C-Lab Notator and Creator fanatics, were left out in the cold.

One of the reasons a lot of bands had great music and were able to write in the late 80's and 90's was that Notator was affordable. So were Atari computers computers. This changed when Gerhard (and all his code, and previously Notator specific music programming functions) became the property of Apple.

By this time I had already tried pro tools, (Great for recording, lousy for programming), Steinberg, Cubase, and wound up, (unbelievably, looking back) using ACID Pro to write music. I'd still record on Pro tools, but Acid was fairly easy to master. The work flow just was way slower, less intuitive, and I never liked using other people's loops anyway. (I am snob about this and think programmers who create sound patches should get album credits for every project their sounds are used for) So I gradually became less and less interested in writing and programming with what was available.
I had heard about Abelton, but my original experience with it was difficult, and I never checked back to see what had developed.
My Mistake:
Abelton has all the raw programming power of Notator ) Particularly the non destructive overdub recording, where you can build on a loop until you are happy with it).
I have been laughing aloud for the past several days. This program is like Notator on steroids in the session window, and Pro Tools in the arrange window, and is the most intuitive piece of software I have ever used. Does it just know what I want? Stretch audio by just holding the shift button? Yes! Incredible snap-to-grid quantization that seems to know where I want things before I even nudge and drop them?
Amazing. and I know I am way late to this party.
Recently got a songwriting job for some real $$ (Not so common these days) and decided to finally learn Abelton, and it took me three days to program, arrange, and render 4 tunes three of which were accepted by my client.

Thank you Abelton for bringing this technically senior, (kiss my ring, open that door for me son, and give me a 20% seniors discount, please) musician back into the fray in a strong way!

And wouldn't you know it?
ANOTHER Gerhard Created it! What is it with these Gerhards?
Thanks, Gerhard!

If you want to see what programming was like for serious musicians before the Dinosaurs were born, check these links from the misty ancient days of yore. They will take you to another world of 8-bit glory, pumped up hair, and high-treble dance clubs. Cocaine optional. Lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_BYU0U4fYI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWyzs6JMhYQ
https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/produc ... g-software
https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/emag ... logic/7569

[lincolnkid]

Great story. Welcome!

[[jur]]

Welcome on the Ableton lovers' board, señior