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LIve has changed a lot since version 1 (right), but its core design features remain the same.

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Introduced less than a decade ago, Ableton Live has quickly established itself as a big hitter thanks to its unique approach. In this article, we'll be looking at the short but eventful history of Live, and we'll also investigate what makes it so different to other DAWs. Live's unique selling points make it a seriously attractive package for electronic music producers, so we'll check out just what makes it stand out from the crowd.

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From the very beginning, Live threw out the rulebook on how music software should work. Initially launched as a relatively simple loop arrangement tool, Live quickly expanded to become a complete DAW, MIDI sequencer and VST host. Other DAWs, such as Logic and Cubase, began as MIDI sequencing packages then added digital audio and mixing features to become all-in-one music recording and production packages. Pro Tools came at things from the opposite direction, focusing on multi-track recording first and foremost then building a MIDI and mixing environment around it. Live is a much younger product, designed from the ground up without any legacy features or restrictions to limit it or force it down a particular route.

Live arrived on the scene in 2001, the first product from Berlin-based software developer Ableton. Developed by Bernt Roggendorf and Gerhard Behles - then a member of Techno act Monolake - Live was intended as a performance tool just as much as it was a studio one.

Despite Live's excellent audio capabilities, the clever user interface and workflow were some of the most striking features of the program when it launched. Crucially, Live uses two main views to manage the production, composition and performance features: Session View offers mixer functions and a grid-based representation of all the clips (audio loops and samples) in your Live Set, while Arrange View uses a more traditional horizontal timeline, allowing arrangements to be pieced together from clips.

The approach was an immediate hit, winning over producers of all electronic genres. Newcomers to Live might be surprised to look back at version one and see just how far the software's come in the course of ten years. Live 1 offered absolutely no MIDI sequencing features, focusing solely on audio with the emphasis on loops and manipulation of samples. The live performance bias and the focus on electronic music meant that the workflow was significantly more hands-on and intuitive for dance producers than a traditional DAW.

Triggering loops, playing samples and creating arrangements was made easy thanks to exceptional implementation of real-time audio timestretching features, but whether you could really have called Live a DAW at the time is debatable. The program was capable of hosting VST plug-ins for effects, but the lack of MIDI sequencing meant that VST instruments were not supported. Even so, as a sample arrangement tool or DJing package, Live was highly capable.

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