What got you tipped to Ableton Live?

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 8:30 pm

• What version did you start with?
• What was it then that made you a user? (New feature, review, friend's recommendation...)
• Why didn't you before then? (Didn't need it, owned Cubase/Fruity Loops/Reason, thought it looked ugly...)
• How many folks did you turn on to Live?

Just curious.

My answers...
Started with V1.
I played with the demo, but I thought it looked funny, so it "couldn't be that good". Read a review that raved about it's warping feature, so I gave it another look. Once I found it could rewire with Reason, I bought it.
I have probably 6 friends that now Own live due to my begging them to try it out.

...

sgx · Post by **sgx** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 8:48 pm

I've been a huge Reason user and started getting the vst urge. I wanted a Rewire host so that I could use Reason and other various vst's together. I had Sonar 3 for a while but found it not great for sequencing my type of electronic music, and horrendous at Rewiring with Reason. Then Cakewalk Project5 v2 was announced and it had some pretty slick features and seemed to be better for sequencing my stuff. It's pretty awesome, but again, crappy with reason again, and audio editing sucks. I picked up ACID Pro 5 which was pretty awesome for audio editing, so I was rewiring all three apps (Reason, P5, ACID) together which got nasty.

I had always been eyeing Live, but stayed away because it is comparatively quite a bit more expensive (I got P5 for $130 and ACID for $175) and doesn't come with any awesome synths.

I finally just bought Live 5 after 6 was announced. So far, good stuff. Arrange view is kind of clunky moving around/zooming compared to ACID and P5, and while it rocks with Reason, it only does so until your project gets big and I start getting like 150ms of delay on Reason midi

Overall though, I'm getting everything I got in P5 (good vsti midi arranging), and ACID (good audio manipulation) together and it is good stuff. Session is fun too (quite a bit more flexible than P5's very similar groove matrix).

djadonis206 · Post by **djadonis206** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 8:48 pm

KIM JONG ILL!

syke

The heads on the MPC-TUTOR forums

I was rocking the 1000 and "niggaz" was using Ableton to timestretch beats before they drop dem shits in day 2000's and 1000's

i was like word

So I used the demo to stretch my beats in DEMO Mode (version 3) and live sample back into the 1000

The more I did that the more I got into Ableton and finally bought it, came up and now look at me

doing the exact same thing except I'm a 3.0 student at the community college with goals - goals mutha fu*ker goals!

and I've put out a couple thangs

how many people have I turned on to Ableton - I don't know, a couple I think

kent_sandvik · Post by **kent_sandvik** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 8:49 pm

* 2.1.
* The workflow.
* Owned many DAWs before that (still do)
* As many as I'm able!

--Kent

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 8:51 pm

I came at it from the Live Pa angle. Was sick of trying to get convert my studio tunes into something I could play live with my SP808 and XL-7. Saw Live 3, realized what it could do, and was hooked.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 8:53 pm

*- 1.5
*- my friend Brian Kage tipped me to it. found out how to warp a whole track and then it was on!
*- i was pretty much dedicated to the MPC at the time, dabbled with Reason but never really thought of the computer as a complete solution for my own work until Live 4.
*- hundreds, at least.

jdrada · Post by **jdrada** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 9:04 pm

Version 2
Came with my M-Audio Audiophile 2496

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 9:13 pm

4.0.

The only software that would let me sequence and control live quadraphonic audio, video, and DMX lighting single-handedly.

djadonis206 · Post by **djadonis206** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 9:33 pm

hambone1 wrote:4.0.

The only software that would let me sequence and control live quadraphonic audio, video, and DMX lighting single-handedly.

DMX lighting - gotta ask - you mean the artist right

I work at DMX

that'd be funny

a

leisuremuffin · Post by **leisuremuffin** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 9:58 pm

-version 2

- Saw DJ Olive play a show that i was also playing, talked to him about it and then got the demo. Bought it a few months later.

- I was doing live PAs with hardware only. Up until that point, there wasn't any software i had seen that could do the stuff i was doing in terms of flexable sequencing. I was using an mpc 2000 to juggle sequences and trigger several outboard synths and a rackmount sampler. At first i was upset about losing midi as an option, but found i could do quite a lot with phrases i sampled from the hardware i used to trigger via midi. It was the flexability of the session view that sold me. And it sure beats carrying all of the shit i used to carry.

- oh man, ableton is like LSD, once you have the experience you want everybody else to have it too. I'm a live evangelist for sure and will talk to anybody i can about how great it is. I also turned on a lot of people to it when i was teaching classes and workshops on it at SAE (worst fucking school in the world) in NYC.

.lm.

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 10:29 pm

djadonis206 wrote:
hambone1 wrote:4.0.

The only software that would let me sequence and control live quadraphonic audio, video, and DMX lighting single-handedly.
DMX lighting - gotta ask - you mean the artist right

I work at DMX

that'd be funny

a

No mate, DMX is the MIDI protocol of lighting equipment. Its the control code that tells intelligent lights to go all twirly

I honestly can't remember how I found out about Live, but it was back in V.3 days. I had built a MIDI-based gigging rig based around an Ensoniq TS-12 workstation synth sequencing an Akai sampler. Trouble is at 44 kilos the TS-12 became WAAAY to heavy once we started flying to gigs. It would have to travel as cargo, not baggage, which is a total PITA.

We started hanging Live 3 off the end of the rig in 2002/3, chasing MIDI clock from the TS-12 for about a year, then when 4 came out with MIDI capabilities we moved our whole setup over to Live on 2 laptops.

I've been a rabid Live evangelist ever since I first got it. Because I know what a complicated process live electronica USED to be. I often bump into musician friends who say "Ah yes, Live, I remember when you first showed me it, you were so stoked about it! It's cool eh!"

glitchrock-buddha · Post by **glitchrock-buddha** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 10:31 pm

-V5, just as it was coming out.

-the demo (recent daw features/midi editing +live performance usability)

-reason/logic

-none. yet. tried, but it's hard long distance.

njh · Post by **njh** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 11:27 pm

i read a review about v1.0 in future music. i thought it seemed cool so i tried it...
i never really liked it until v4 since there was no vsti support..

gnapier · Post by **gnapier** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 11:45 pm

• What version did you start with?
• What was it then that made you a user? (New feature, review, friend's recommendation...)
• Why didn't you before then? (Didn't need it, owned Cubase/Fruity Loops/Reason, thought it looked ugly...)
• How many folks did you turn on to Live?

+Live 1.5 Lite
+Version 4
+I didn't take the time to really give 'er a try. Besides, I was really enthralled by DP 4. Also, the whole vsti support thing wasn't that mature. Then one day I sat down and came up with (for me) a jammin' tune...then I started exploring follow actions as a method of producing "ambient", then....
+ I sing it's praises regularly. Most I know are still captivated by Reason...

bgone · Post by **bgone** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 12:09 am

I started with version 1 the day it came out. I played with it for a while then decided it didn't have quite enough for me. Since I was (and still am) using midi heavily for most of my projects, version 1 was only good for me to play around with for kicks and not "serious" music creation.
Fast forward 5+ years and I decide that it is time for me to update my music software. I start looking into the usual suspects: Cusbase, Reason, Fruityloops. Well, I decide to just see what Live has been up to and needless to say I was blown away by all that had been implemented since version 1. Version 5 looked incredible and not only that, but version 6 was on the way. If that wasnt enough, my upgrade path from my version 1 was a paltry 99 bucks for version 5 and a free upgrade to six. It was a no brainer and I must say I couldn't be happier with my music software.

B--