Evaluating Ableton - Should I upgrade?

brentandashley · Post by **brentandashley** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 11:41 pm

Hi! I'm very much a newbie to electronic recording...any input would be most appreciated. I'm currently using Reason to program beats and synths and whatnot and now want to mix the Reason stuff with live instruments (bass, guitar, vocals, drums). I purchased the Line 6 UX2 Toneport (cheap!) to try out and it seems like it might do the trick. It came with Ableton 5 Lite and I like it so far, but am wondering if I should pursue the upgrade or check out other software. Does anyone have any experience with using Ableton with live instruments & Reason? Any advice/experiences would be very helpful - Thanks!

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 11:54 pm

I use Live for electronic beats and stuff but it's also great for live instruments. With guitat I jam over my own chord progressions for practice, drop in an mp3 of a tune I want to learn and pick out loops to jam over, or slow down a guitar solo. I've also used it with a bass guitar and vocals, not to mention external synths, turntables, mpc...

DJ Adonis makes his beats with Reason and Live, a lot of users really like that combination.

A lot of people used to use other software, some use Live along with Cubase (whatever that is), or Foo Tools, Sonar, DP, etc.

Live is pretty amazing, check out the stuff in the tips and tricks sticky for general info, it's kind of the FAQ for the forum.

nathannn · Post by **nathannn** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 2:55 am

i use live with drums guitar synths and vocals.. i with guitar i do notice the recording sounding different than it sounds when im playing. the best way to describe this is by saying the guitar sounds less chunky after being recorded into live... btw i am recording with warp mode off.

brentandashley · Post by **brentandashley** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 3:59 pm

Thanks! Very helpful. Is anyone recording live drums with Live?

Sales Dude McBoob · Post by **Sales Dude McBoob** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 5:19 pm

brentandashley wrote:Thanks! Very helpful. Is anyone recording live drums with Live?

I've recorded drum kits with Live. Sounded great... well... it sounded about as good as my room can sound... and my mic placement skills... and... you know. In the same room I have a 1/2" 8 track reel to reel and a Pro Tools rig. I've recorded drums on all of them and Live was every bit as good. Well... I like the tape machine best, but tape is $$$ and the dumping back into the computer process is a pain.

I've also used Live on stage with a drummer and a guitarist. On a 1.5 Powerbook with 512 RAM no less. Live kicked ass. I'd trigger backing tracks, I had the headphones from my interface running back to the drummer so she could keep in time with the tracks I was playing through Live, and I'd trigger other samples and play synths through Live, all at the same time.

For what you want to do, this is the program to have.