One of the most popular DAWs of all-time, Ableton Live is a powerhouse for production, used by artists such as Skrillex, Deadmau5, Tame Impala, Radiohead, Armin Van Buuren, and loads more. If you want to join some legendary producers and up your own production values, then head over to the Ableton site where you can bag yourself a massive 25% discount on all versions of this intuitive music software.

The sale is only on for a limited time, with the deals set to end on the 29th of April, so move fast if you want to bag your copy for less. It's available on all tiers too, so you can grab Intro, Standard, or the flagship Suite versions with a hefty discount.

We gave the latest version a hefty four and a half stars out of five in our Ableton Live 12 review, with our reviewer stating it was “the best update we've seen in over a decade”. The new browser is really powerful, and the MIDI tools and Scale Awareness features are really powerful creative additions that help it maintain its status as not just a great DAW, but a truly brilliant creative tool for musicians.

It includes brand new instruments in Meld and Roar, which are both really great creative tools, but the headline addition is undoubtedly the Drum Sampler, which is super simple to use and quickie became a go-to sampler for our reviewer. While most previous Ableton updates have been incremental, if you’ve been holding off on updating your copy we can wholeheartedly recommend that this be the one you upgrade to.

Included in the sale are all three major versions of Ableton, so whether you’re just getting started or you're making music professionally there’s a version here for you. Intro is available with 16 tracks and 5GB of sounds, the Standard version gives you unlimited audio and MIDI tracks, with a huge 38GB of sounds and a range of instruments and effects. Finally, the Suite version delivers all of the Standard version features with 71GB of sounds and even more effects and instruments, ideal for those who want to make the most of their productions.

With the release of Live 12, Ableton added a host of fascinating MIDI tools to the DAW that introduce new ways to inspire melodic ideas. These are particularly useful for creating quick basslines, melodies and riffs to use within a track.

In our latest video tutorial, Ableton Certified Trainer Tom Glendinning explores a variety of ways to create and develop monophonic patterns in Live. In the video we’re focusing on basslines, although these techniques can all equally be used for melodic lines by simply changing the octave range and sound being used.

Seed MIDI generator

With the launch of Live 12, Ableton added a selection of MIDI generator tools designed to automatically create patterns from scratch within MIDI clips. Each MIDI tool specialises in a different form of programming. Rhythm mode leans towards drum and percussive programming, while Stacks is designed to generate chord shapes.

When it comes to generating ideas for bass and lead lines, the Seed MIDI tool is particularly useful. This uses a few core settings to control the MIDI notes being generated. The first of these is the pitch parameter, which is used to control the range of notes generated. The second is duration, which controls the range of timing and length of notes. Velocity sets the maximum and minimum velocity levels of the MIDI notes.

Seed also has a voices parameter, which alters the amount of simultaneous notes being generated and adjusts the harmonic complexity of any chords. Since we’re looking to create bass or lead lines, which tend to be monophonic, we set this to just one voice. Finally, the density parameter controls how densely or sparsely spread out the resulting notes are.

With auto mode engaged, Live will instantly create a MIDI pattern and the parameters can be adjusted in real time, allowing us to try a variety of different riff and melody ideas whilst our loop is playing. With auto disengaged, Live won’t generate any notes until we hit the generate button, meaning we can fine tune parameter settings first and then create a pattern when we’re ready.

It’s worth noting that Seed creates MIDI notes based on the key and scale set within the MIDI clip, which by default will be set to the same as the key and scale of the overall project.

Shape MIDI generator

Shape is another MIDI tool added as part of Live 12. Where Seed uses preset parameter settings to control the notes being created, Shape generates notes positioned around a custom curve shape that can be drawn or selected in the bottom left of the MIDI clip.

As with Seed, a selection of parameters allow us to set the range of the pitch, velocity and timing of the notes created. Again, we can work with auto-generate on or off in order to control whether changes are mode to the pattern in real time.

Transforming MIDI with Recombine

Alongside its generative tools, Live 12 also added a range of MIDI transformation tools. Rather than creating MIDI patterns from scratch, these allow us to generatively alter existing MIDI patterns using an assortment of parameters and processors.

Here we’re using the Recombine tool. This takes our existing MIDI notes and shuffles them, in order to create a new pattern from an existing one. Using this shuffle feature, we can rearrange the position of the notes in a pattern whilst keeping its general shape and rhythm intact.

Hardware-style sequencing with MIDI sequencers

For an alternative route to bass and lead creation, we turn to the Sequencers pack, which is included with all versions of Live, but needs to be installed via the Packs menu in the browser.

This pack contains a variety of MIDI sequencers inspired by the workflow of classic hardware. We’re using the SQ Sequencer tool, which takes its inspiration from CV sequencer tools.

This generates notes in real time based on the parameters of its steps. We can enable scale mode in order to match the key of our track and use the octave control to alter the range of notes to suit leads or basslines.

One of the most interesting aspects of the SQ Sequencer is its dice controls, which let us randomise the output of various parameters. We can randomise everything from the pitch of the steps to the rhythmic pattern itself, as well as note length and velocity.

Acid sequences with Sting

Sting is a Max for Live device that isn’t included with Live, but you can download it for free. Sting is an acid line generator, inspired by the sequences of acid house and techno, typically created by Roland’s TB-303 and SH-101.

Sting is an incredibly simple device to use. We simply set it to the correct key – or to automatically follow the key of our project – and then click the smiley face icon to generate a pattern. If we don’t like what’s created, we can hit the face again in order to create another pattern.

Various pattern settings let us control the density, direction, length and accents of the pattern. Once we have something we like, we can hit the clip button and the device will create a MIDI clip based around the current pattern.

Tom Glendinning is a session musician, sound engineer, sound designer, music producer, composer, and VJ. As an Ableton-certified trainer he helps musicians be creative with Ableton Live. Connect with him at: https://elphnt.io/

For many electronic musicians, music theory isn’t something that comes naturally. It’s perfectly possible to know your DAW, sequencer or synth inside and out, but have only a basic grasp of concepts such as chord shapes, scales and harmonic relationships.

If you’re a producer that fits this description, it can sometimes be hard to create chord progressions and melodic parts that reach the same heights as your sound design skills. You may know how to input a series of simple chords into a piano roll, but what happens when you want to try something new or more adventurous? How do you venture beyond your tried and tested combinations of chords?

Ableton Live 12 offers a multitude of tools that can be used to work around gaps in your theory knowledge. In our latest tutorial video, Certified Trainer Tom Glendinning explains a range of methods that Live 12’s packs, devices and generative tools can help users explore fresh chord shapes and combinations.

Expressive Chords

Expressive Chords is a pack that comes free with Live 12 Intro, Standard and Suite. It’s not part of the factory library, so to access it you’ll first need to head to the Packs menu in the browser and download and install it.

The pack works by providing a range of preset chord banks. Each chord in these banks can be triggered using a different note play via a MIDI keyboard or any other note input. Expressive Chords comes with a variety of presets based around styles and genres, with chord banks configured to suit a specific sound.

Below the main chord grid is a range of controls altering how the chords are played back. Tilt can be used to emphasise the higher or lower notes in a chord – creating a brighter or darker sound. Invert will create an inversion of the basic chord shape, moving lower notes to the top of the chord.

Strum spreads out the timing of each note in the chord, creating a guitar-like strumming effect. An articulation editor lets users go deeper into how a strum is played by adjusting the spacing of each individual note.

The ‘expressive’ part of Expressive Chords comes in the fact that it is MPE-ready, allowing users to apply modulation and articulation to individual notes in each chord, via a compatible controller or MIDI clip automation.

One thing worth noting is that the chord progressions created by Expressive Chords don’t track the global key settings in Live.

Creating inversions

If you have a simple progression recorded within a MIDI clip, creating inversions on some of the chords is a quick and easy way to add variation and interest.

An inversion is created when we take a note from a basic chord shape and move it up or down an octave, essentially reordering the notes in the chord without changing the actual notes used. That’s easily done in Live’s MIDI editor by selecting a note, holding shift and pressing up or down on the keyboard.

In the video example, a simple one-bar loop is turned into a more interesting two-bar progression by creating inversions in the second bar.

Generative MIDI chords

Ableton Live’s MIDI effect devices include a variety of tools that not only allow us to randomise the notes of incoming MIDI, but also to control that randomisation. By combining these we can generate and capture randomised chords around a set scale.

In the video, Tom does this by combining Live’s Chord, Random and Scale devices, placed in a chain in that order.

Now, whenever a single note is played, the Chord device turns that into a chord based on the intervals set on the device. By default, those intervals and the resulting chord shape will remain the same. no matter what root note is played.

By placing the Random MIDI device after Chord, we can randomise the notes coming out of that device. There’s a percentage control here that adjusts how likely it is that an incoming note will be randomised. At 100% every single note coming from Chord will be randomised to a new pitch. At less than 100%, some notes will remain from the pre-defined chord, while others will be randomly changed to a new pitch.

Using these two devices alone, the results will sound random and messy, not adhering to any specific scale or pattern. By placing the Scale device at the end of the chain, we can make sure all the incoming MIDI notes are mapped to our chosen scale/key.

Now, by playing single notes, we can randomly generate a chord progression. In the video, Tom captures several bars of randomised chords and then edits together a loop of his favourites.

Tom Glendinning is a session musician, sound engineer, sound designer, music producer, composer, and VJ. As an Ableton-certified trainer he helps musicians be creative with Ableton Live. Connect with him at: https://elphnt.io/

When I reviewed Ableton’s compact hardware sketchpad Move last year, I wrote that ‘for some, Move might prove to be a gamechanger, but others will likely struggle to fit it into their creative workflow’. I must admit that, initially at least, I fell into the latter category.

On the (increasingly rare) occasions I get to play around with Live for non-work purposes, it tends to involve processing simple sounds with Live’s more sound design-focused devices, such as its Hybrid Reverb, the pair of Spectral effects or Roar’s multi-stage distortion/delay. Move, which is more geared towards composing than sound design, doesn’t necessarily fit into that way of working.

I’ve always been impressed by Move’s capabilities when it comes to sketching out rough ideas, and I appreciate how it can be used to quickly rough out the basic elements of a track. It just doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the type of music I like to make.

In recent weeks, however, I’ve picked Move back up, and something has finally clicked. This is, in part, thanks to a run of firmware updates that have added a handful of intriguing new features since Move was first launched. (Updating our original review in light of these was my initial reason for revisiting the hardware).

It’s also a result of embracing an altogether looser and more haphazard way of using the device, which has helped to find a genuinely useful and inspiring way to fit it into my creative workflow. But more on that later…

On the Move

When Ableton Move was revealed in 2024, it excited plenty of Live users but confounded others. On the surface Ableton’s new hardware device looked a lot like a micro version of Push, but those expecting a straightforward compact controller were likely left confused by the various things Move both could and couldn’t do.

Move is simultaneously more capable and more niche than one might expect from first glance. Although it has the look of a simple controller or sequencer, Move’s onboard processor and bespoke OS allow it to act as a self-contained groovebox, stocked with synths, drum kits and sampled instruments, complete with a variety of effects and capable of both sampling and resampling.

For all that it can do, however, there are a number of limitations on what Move is capable of compared to Push 3. Whereas Push, in both controller and standalone modes, aims to offer as full a recreation of the desktop Live experience as possible, Move makes use of just a small selection of Live’s instrument and effect devices and in most cases limits these to using presets and a selection of pre-configured macro controls.

For the most part, these limitations are intentional and kind of the whole point of Move. As an instrument, it’s pitched as a sketchpad more than anything else – a tool designed to create beats and patterns that can be further developed in its companion DAW. It purposely foregoes the bells and whistles required to create finished arrangements or build live performances.

In practice, working around these limitations can be one of the most creative and inspiring aspects of Move’s workflow. The limited track count, for example, encourages the use of the instrument’s resampling functionality. By bouncing synth or bass riffs down to slots in a Drum Rack, it's possible to simultaneously free up tracks for additional melodic layers as well as open up new ways to manipulate your resampled loops via the effects in Move’s Drum Sampler.

Drum Sampler is one of a handful of new or upgraded Live devices that have emerged since Move was first unveiled that have clearly been designed with its workflow in mind. It’s more simplistic than Live’s Simpler and Sampler devices, which makes it ideal for Move’s control surface, but also opens up new creative tools with its multifunctional effect slot, which offers on-the-fly looping, stretching, ring modulation and other interesting ways to process one-shot samples.

Similarly well suited is the updated Auto Filter, which adds new creative modes including comb and vowel filters along with a revamped control layout. Auto Filter’s introduction to Move’s toolkit is very welcome as its multifunctional LFO helps to address the instrument’s slight lack of modulation sources by providing a quick and easy solution for keeping sounds moving.

It bodes well for Move owners that Ableton is showing an ongoing dedication to unifying the workflow between Move, Note, Push and Live. Both Drum Sampler and Auto Filter are Device highlights across all of these platforms, and their inclusion helps Move feel less like a ‘light’ version of the Live toolset, and more like one specifically targeted at the DAW’s most immediate creative tools.

Thanks to a regular flow of firmware updates, Move itself has also been improved in a number of ways since it first hit the market. Move’s latest firmware is version 1.6, with v1.7 in beta, and each ‘point’ upgrade has brought improvements that make the hardware slightly more useful in a day-to-day studio context.

Aside from the introduction of Auto Filter, the majority of these improvements have focused on ways in which Move can sample from or interact with other devices. Move can now, for example, sample audio via its USB-C input, which is great for recording directly from a laptop or mobile device (although you’ll still need an adapter if you’re using a Lightning-equipped iPhone).

Ableton has also significantly upgraded Move’s MIDI options, allowing each of its four tracks to both input and output MIDI simultaneously on a selected channel. Move can also now receive MIDI clock from an external source, as well as output MIDI clock at the same time as receiving MIDI notes.

The other major improvement, introduced this summer, is the ability to slice a sampled loop into up-to 16 sections. This is a manual process, which slices a loop in equal chunks by default and requires the users to manually move slice points to adjust those divisions, as opposed to automatically placing slice points on transients, as in Live itself.

Neither sample slicing or the MIDI upgrades radically overhaul what Move is capable of, and in both cases there are competitors on the market that are more capable. For dedicated sampling, for instance, Move isn’t a patch on Roland’s similarly-priced SP-404.

Similarly, as much as Move’s MIDI capabilities are handy, it still lacks dedicated MIDI ports. This means all MIDI communication needs to come through the USB port, which in some cases will require use of an adapter or hub.

The point, however, is that Move is not a dedicated sampler or a hardware sequencer – it’s an accessory for Ableton Live, one designed to generate ideas and complement the workflow of the DAW. And each of these upgrades makes it a little more useful on that front.

Rediscovering Move

Move’s greatest asset, by far, is the simplicity of transferring sounds and ideas created with the hardware to Live. By using Ableton Cloud or the Move Manager, it takes seconds to wirelessly move Sets from one place to the other.

It’s embracing this aspect of Move that has finally made me see how useful it can be. When I’ve tried to create complete-sounding beats or loops, I tend to end up with things that I’m not particularly inspired by, but as a conduit for simply collecting ‘things’ to transfer to Ableton Live, it’s endlessly useful.

For example, in the process of reviewing new gear, I’m lucky enough to get my hands on an ever revolving line-up of new synths and drum machines. I’ll now regularly use Move to sample short snatches of sound from whatever I have to hand.

I might build a Drum Rack with my favourite one shots from a drum machine, or record synth arps and sequences as loops, perhaps slicing these to a Drum Rack too in order to resequence them later. I have an entire Move Set dedicated to sampled chord stabs from various hardware synths.

Sounds, not music

In the past, when I’ve sat down with Move, I’ve always felt inclined to try to make proper music with it. Not necessarily an attempt at a finished track, but a fully fledged beat complete with bassline and melodic elements, and it's in doing this that it inevitably leads me in a direction that I’m less interested in.

Now, I rarely use Move itself to edit or arrange things – beyond, perhaps, throwing a simple kick drum under a synth riff or creating a quick rhythm from one-shot samples. But capturing those raw sounds and simple motifs quickly creates a rich pool of inspiration that’s readily available the next time I sit down at Live itself.

Essentially, by stopping attempting to make proper music with Move, I’ve come to fully appreciate its potential as a platform for half-formed ideas and barely-there sketches. Move is now, for me at least, a fantastic platform for collecting ‘things’ completely detached from musical context – random chords I like the sound of, simple rhythmic patterns, odd percussive sounds captured via the onboard mic.

While none of Move’s recent updates have exactly altered its ability to be used in this way – it’s been possible to sample and store sounds since day one – each iteration adds a little more flexibility, should you want to, say, sequence a quick riff on an external synth, sample a sound from YouTube via USB-C, slice a synth sequence or reverse one-shot sounds in a drum kit.

Move’s latest update, currently in beta, opens up full access to Live’s Drift synth, which adds more routes to potential inspiration. Now, Move can be used to design synth sounds from scratch on the go. What’s more though, thanks to its lovely expressive pads, it makes the device an effective compact instrument in its own right – a mini synth that it’s possible to play with surprising expressivity.

One year on, Ableton’s commitment to opening up new ways that Move can be used has, for me at least, helped turn the device from a neat curiosity into the genuinely useful accessory it was always pitched as.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s unveiling of Live 12.3, Ableton has released updates for its Note iOS app and Move hardware. While there are a few differences between these two updates, they share one key headline feature – adding full, unabridged access to Live’s stock synth Drift.

This isn’t the first time users of either platform have had access to Drift sounds – patches based on the Drift engine have been available in both Move and Note since each product debuted. As with most of the devices ported across from Live, however, those sounds have previously been offered up as presets that users could shape and modulate via a selection of pre-defined macro controls.

Now, for the first time, Note and Move users have full access to one of Live’s synths complete with every parameter available in the DAW version and the ability to craft patches from an initialised state.

Despite their visual differences, Move and Note share a lot of fundamental similarities. Note, which launched in 2022, brings a stripped-back version of the Live workflow to iOS devices, allowing users to play and sequence MIDI clips as well as sample and sequence audio, plus manipulate sounds with a limited selection of Live’s stock effects.

Move is a standalone hardware device designed as an on-the-go sketchpad companion to Live, although under-the-hood it essentially runs a variation on the Note app.

Both formats control instruments and effects via a bank of eight parameter controls, which are adjusted via the touchscreen in the case of Note and using a bank of eight touch-sensitive rotaries on the Move hardware.

In each case, in order to control Drift, these controls can cycle through multiple banks of parameters for adjusting the synth’s oscillators, filters and modulation tools, along with a top-level bank of macros.

The key difference between the rollout of Drift across the two platforms is that, while it comes to Move as a free firmware update, access to the full version of Drift in Note requires an in-app purchase, although this is fairly reasonably priced at $3.99.

In either case, having access to the full range of Drift parameters is an excellent addition. As Live users will likely already know, Drift is a fantastic-sounding, wonderfully versatile analogue-style synth capable of creating both faux-vintage tones and modern timbres. Particularly when combined with Move’s expressive pads, it can create some highly dynamic and vibrant synth patches.

The Note update is out now, and also adds an assortment of bug fixes and minor workflow refinements (all of which are free, and don’t require the purchase of Drift).

Move’s latest firmware update, v1.7, is available today via public beta. Along with the upgrade to Drift, the update also introduces the ability to adjust the brightness of the Move hardware, and adds a pair of new acoustic drum racks.

The update follows hot on the heels of other recent Move updates. Version 1.5, which arrived earlier this summer, significantly improved the device’s MIDI capabilities and added much-requested sample-slicing capabilities. V1.6, which left the beta stage just yesterday, introduced the ability to reverse samples in Drum Racks.

The Note app is available from Apple’s App Store priced at $/£6.99. Move is available now priced at £419/$499. Find out more about Note on the Ableton site, and join the Move public beta here.

After a few years in which Ableton has worked on a variety of extra-curricular projects – launching Push and Move hardware, updating its Note app – the past 12 months have seen the Berlin brand turning the bulk of its attention back to its flagship DAW. Case in point: Live’s 12.2 update is only a few months old, but Ableton is already launching its next free ‘point’ release, Live 12.3 – which enters public beta today.

Scanning the release notes for 12.3, it quickly becomes clear why Ableton is keen to turn this update around quickly. Its two most significant new features both see Ableton addressing areas where Live was notably a step behind some of its key competitors.

The first big addition is AI-powered stem separation. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s highly likely you’ve encountered similar functionality over the past few years.

While the ability to divide fully mixed tracks into component parts has been around for a while via dedicated tools such as Hit’n’Mix’s RipX, the technology has come on in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years, and is increasingly becoming integrated into mainstream music making software.

Real time stem mixing is now standard in most DJ software, and stem separation is already a feature embedded into production tools including Serato Sample, FL Studio and Logic Pro.

Live’s version is provided by Music AI and it can be accessed in Live’s audio clips, either in Session or Arrangement view, or within the browser. The separation works in the now-standard manner of dividing the audio file into stems labelled drums, vocals, bass and other, which appear as their own individual audio clips that can be treated like any other audio within Live.

In our early tests the quality seems on a par with similar functionality in Live's rivals. It's certainly a welcome addition, although its application is likely to be most useful for those regularly making remixes or DJ edits.

Perhaps more immediately useful for a lot of Live users is Splice integration within the DAW’s browser. Again, this isn’t unique to Live – similar functionality is already part of the workflow for Studio One and Pro Tools – but for the ever-growing amount of producers who regularly use Splice’s library of sounds as part of their production process, the drag-and-drop functionality is likely to be a major time-saver. What’s more, the ‘search with sound’ feature promises to help find sounds within Splice’s online library based on the rhythms and harmonies already present in your project.

But there's more...

As is often the case with these ‘point’ updates, however, some of the most exciting features are those lurking beyond the headlines.

Following the refresh of Auto Filter in Live 12.2, another of the DAW’s workhorse devices gets an overhaul here. This time it’s the turn of Auto Pan, which now becomes Auto Pan-Tremolo. The addition of tremolo functionality is essentially acknowledging the way in which many users were making use of the device anyway – by aligning the phase of Auto Pan’s left and right channels, it was already possible to use it to duck the volume of audio and create tremolo-style effects.

As well as introducing the dedicated tremolo mode, the new Auto Pan-Tremolo adds some really handy new features, including the ability to fade in the attack of the pan/tremolo effect as well as have it respond dynamically to the level of incoming audio.

It’s not quite an upgrade on the level of Auto Filter’s radical overhaul, but it does make one of the DAW’s most useful tools significantly more versatile.

Another significant new feature, somewhat hidden at the bottom of the press release, is the ability to set A and B states for every instrument and effect in Live. This is potentially incredibly useful, as it allows the users to experiment with two radically different sets of settings for any device and flip between them with a click of a button of the keyboard shortcut ‘p’.

There are improvements to the way in which Live bounces audio too. With 12.3 the DAW introduces a new Bounce Group functionality, which lets users bounce an entire group of tracks down to a new audio file with all its processing applied – which will prove handy for any users turning their projects into stems for mixing or live performance.

There are some cool new Packs and Max for Live tools added as part of the update too. In the new Generators Pack, users of Live Standard and Suite get access to a new percussive MIDI tool named Patterns, along with Sting, an acid bassline generator based on the popular Max device of the same name.

The excellent Sequencers Pack – full of great tools for generative creativity – adds the ability to create reproducible arrangements. The recently-added Expressive Chords gets updated too, with tools to make it easier to customise and transpose its bank of chord shapes.

Push it

There’s a lot of great news for Push 3 users in the update too. For one thing, the big headline features – stem separation, Patterns, Sting, group bounce – can all be accessed from Push in both tethered and standalone modes.

Push also gets some excellent upgrades all to itself though. The first of these is the ability to use class compliant audio interfaces with Push 3 in standalone mode. This means it’s now possible to vastly expand the amount of ins and outs available beyond those featured on the hardware itself. This could already be done via the use of the ADAT connection, but hooking up a standard audio interface is undeniably an easier and more convenient option.

The latest firmware update also adds a new XY control mode where Push’s expressive pad grid can be used to control effects Kaos Pad-style as well as apply punch-in effects by pushing an individual pad. There are also upgrades to Push’s sequencing workflow, allowing for touch sensitive control over velocity levels while step sequencing, as well as introducing a new Rhythm Generator layout for sequencing percussive patterns with Drum Racks.

Both Live 12.3 and the accompanying Push update are out in public beta today. Head to the Ableton site to read more and join the beta program.

Between devices like the Saturator, Pedal, Amp and recently-added Roar, Ableton Live has multiple tools that can be used to add distortion. While these might look fairly similar at first glance, these differing distortion tools can be used to create some very different effects, and can do more than simply rough-up sounds.

In our latest video tutorial, Ableton Certified Trainer Tom Glendinning explains a range of ways we can use distortion effects to creatively shape and mix sounds in Live. To hear these in action, he starts with a simple project making use of some drum variations, a sidechained bass part, chord stabs and a slightly wonky lead sound.

Tightening up drums with Saturator

The first element treated with distortion is a Drum Rack. Here Live’s Saturator effect is applied across the entire drum kit, which helps tighten up the drum sound and add a touch of extra weight. Saturator is used in its Analog Clip mode, which means it acts like a classic hardware limiter. As the Drive control is raised, it causes the peaks to distort slightly, which helps to both compress the drums slightly and add colouration.

Adding body to a kick with Pedal

Sticking with the drum parts, distortion is next applied to the kick drum. Here Live’s Pedal effect is used. This is a stompbox emulation that would commonly be used on guitars or synth lines, but it can sound fantastic on kicks too. By enabling the Sub option, we can distort our low-end kick without losing any of the bass frequencies. The Overdrive setting is used here with a medium amount of gain, which adds a nice analogue-style distortion that adds character and presence to the kick.

Distorted dub delays with Roar

Roar is the newest distortion effect in Live. Although it’s primarily used for adding grit and saturation, its routing and modulation options mean that it can be used for a lot more than just straight distortion. Here it’s applied to chord stabs to create a dub techno-style delay. This works by making use of Roar’s built-in feedback loop. By increasing the feedback time and amount, we can create echo-style delays that we can sync to project tempo. Best of all, we can apply distortion to just the feedback effect, which is great for gritty, characterful dub effects. The Shards mode works particularly nicely, creating sharp, crackly delays.

Pumping bass distortion with Road

Another appealing aspect of Roar’s design is the way that it can create rhythmic effects. Here we apply it to a bass part, and use the noise source in Roar’s modulation matrix to apply randomised modulation to the level of distortion being applied. Roar is then placed into Serial mode, to make use of two distortion lines. In the second stage, Roar applies additional distortion to our bass part triggered by a sidechain input from the drums.

Lead character with Erosion

The final distortion tool used in this example project is Live’s underrated Erosion device. This can apply distortion based on Noise, Wide Noise and Sine modes, which can be very characterful. Here we use Live’s LFO device in order to modulate the frequency of Erosion’s Wide Noise distortion, which adds some pleasing movement to the project’s lead sound.

Most people come back from a holiday with a wicker donkey, tan-lines, or a purse of manky coins to show for it. Not Monolake’s Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke. After their trip to China, the German duo amassed dozens of DATs of ambient noises, field-recorded around the streets, woods and tunnels of Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

These audio postcards weren’t just mementos of their travels. They’d provide the essential audio glue that would finally bind together the sonic sketches and analogue live jams they’d been making. Bringing these tracks together as an artist album that would go on to be hailed as a landmark in the evolution of early experimental dub techno.

“It was the most important album in musical history,” says Robert Henke, tongue firmly in-cheek. “I don’t know why anyone afterwards still tried to compose. That chapter was closed.”

The first chapter, however, goes back to when Monolake were asked by their minimal techno peers, Basic Channel, for beats for their fledgling record imprint.

“They wanted music for their new Chain Reaction label,” says Henke. “We played them Cyan and a few more, which all got released. And when it became album time, we augmented them with these field recordings we’d captured during the International Computer Music Conference we were attending in Hong Kong, hence the name.”

Henke and Behles had a hoot adding the field recordings to the body of ambient material they’d already laid down, with tones and textures of a Chinese transit system being a favourite flavour of Henke’s.

“There was this great recording from inside a subway there,” he says. “Then I merged it with some sounds I’d created which we’d finally augment with synthesiser solos from Wieland Samolak, to make this perfect melancholic part of the album.”

The whole LP would be a similar masterclass in mood and movement, with Studio One dub influences meeting early Detroit, pieced together with the cutting-edge sound science of two producers at the top of their game.

"There was no computers back in those days, and this meant we had to write down all the settings and draw automation curves on paper," Henke recalls. "It was not that much different from today, but it took more time. On the good side, this meant we were always happy with the first version of each track."

In the late ‘90s, Henke and Behles founded Ableton alongside Bernd Roggendorf. The pair’s experiences working with hardware sequencers and self-made Max tools while working in Monolake provided much of the impetus for the original version of Ableton’s DAW, Live.

“Working with our own sequencers inspired us a few years later to develop a commercial tool for improvisation,” Henke explains.

​​Henke would go on to man Monolake as a largely solo project around 1999, with Gerhard Behles leaving to run Ableton. After working together on early versions of Live, Henke moved back to solo music and art installation projects, which he continues to this day, alongside various contributions to Ableton.

Torsten ‘T++’ Proefrock would add contributions to the albums Cinemascoope [2002] and Polygon Cities [2005]. And the last full-length Monolake release was Studio [2024] on Henke’s own Monolake/Imbalance Computer Music label.

Hongkong track by track with Robert Henke

Cyan

“Making tracks in the 1990s was always a mix of a musical exploration and a technical one. The core of Cyan is a strange loop from a field recording I made in a forest near Berlin, and in it there’s a mosquito flying by the mic. We transposed it down a bit and it became that odd bassline/theme.

“Other ingredients which are important are the [Roland] Juno-6 with its arpeggiator running out of sync with the rest, played by Gerhard [Behles], and the ring modulator algorithm from the mighty Alesis QuadraVerb, ‘played’ by me.

“Also very important for the typical Monolake sound: the absence of any normal computer drums. We simply had none, only a Roland TR-505 with its completely unusable kit of bad rock drums, and hence the drums on all early Monolake tracks are FM sounds from a Yamaha TG77, excessively using its eight individual outputs. The track is the result of a long recording session that we later cut into its final shape.”

Index

“This is actually a Robert Henke solo track, which I made one Friday evening to get into the mood for going out. I did not expect it to become more or less finished. But, it somehow did, and I made a quick recording of it on my portable DAT recorder, and took it with me to Panasonic – a small but influential bar/club/art space run by friends. It got integrated in the DJ set, whilst I was sitting at the bar. That was fun. I went home and refined it, based on that experience.

“When re-releasing Hongkong on CD in 2008, I thought that it was too different from the other tracks and removed it. But, when listening more recently to the first CD issue, I came to the conclusion that it belongs in there. Judging one’s work is always a challenge. One cannot be objective or distant enough.”

Lantau/Macau

“These two tracks are a miracle of higher order. Friends of ours used to have a nice little Meyer Sound PA system, ‘rescued’ from a former East German concert hall. They used it for parties and they were supplying it for a record release party at a club called Friseur der Botschaft, in the summer of 1996. They asked Gerhard and me if we would be interested in doing something there, too. We said yes, and the first Monolake live gig in history happened.

“As usual I did the technical preparations, deciding which equipment to use (Juno-6, TR-505 as a sequencer, QuadraVerb, Lexicon PCM80, Waldorf Microwave, TG77, Ensoniq ASR-10 rack, and a MIDI fader box and a mixer) and made some test sequences with the TR-505, which we used not as a drum computer for the mentioned reasons, but as a very basic sequencer. The rest was improvisation; deleting and setting steps on the drum computer (mainly Gerhard), and playing with effects and mixing (mainly me).

“When we arrived at the venue, the guy from that record label turned out to be a complete dick and didn’t allow us to set up our gear on ‘his’ DJ table. So we instead installed ourselves behind the bar.

“When we started playing, some guy completely high on something started dancing with finger cymbals right in front of us. It took us a bit to get used to that. Tssinggg! Tssssinggg! Tsinnngggg!

“And then, in the middle of the gig, some other dude asked Gerhard for a beer – since he was behind the bar – completely ignoring the fact that he was totally occupied operating the Juno-6! Gerhard stopped doing what he did, went to the fridge, gave the guy the beer and continued, being completely in the zone.

“Everyone in the audience was totally into what we did. And we did record it all on my little DAT recorder. I have no idea how we did what we did there, but it became magic.

“And at some point the idiot from the record label told us to stop. I was never afraid of playing super loud, and we had lots of headroom on the PA. I nodded and continued playing, telling Gerhard that we are going to stop soon. Then I made everything much, much louder and everyone was screaming in joy. That was the last eight bars of Macau. Lantau was the 20 minutes or so before that end. And this is how Monolake Live began.”

Arte

“Arte is a collaborative French, German and Swiss cultural television channel. They became interested in what goes on in Berlin with electronic dance music, and wanted to talk with Gerhard and me ‘in the studio’. Which, of course, was my kitchen-bedroom-kinky-dungeon-livingroom-studio apartment back in the 1990s.

“I thought there needs to be something running when we show the studio, so we started to quickly hack together something, mainly driven by a nice pad from my newly acquired Sequential Circuits Prophet VS synthesiser. When the TV folks left after the interview, we decided to work more on it, since it had such a nice timbre. And then we named it Arte.

“It’s a typical track of that period, as far as the working process is concerned: we jammed with the studio and recorded it all. And then a few days later, we listened to what we did and when there was something nice, we tried to edit it into a piece. The strange changes in sound/atmosphere in our tracks are a byproduct of that working style. And in retrospective, pretty unique.

“Most credit for editing the tracks into shape goes to Gerhard. Most credit for sound-design goes to me. Also important is the fact that we wrote our own sequencer in Max, which allowed us to improvise with patterns in a very free manner, but with a focus on note velocities (and timbre, when controlling synthesisers) and less on melody. Our melodies often were the result of tuning percussions, and that’s it.

“And working with our own sequencers inspired us a few years later to develop a commercial tool for improvisation…”

Occam

“In the winter of 1996 some brave folks associated with the Chain Reaction label went onto their first tour outside Germany to Switzerland. And, as part of that little tour, Gerhard and me played at a small place in Luzern, on the snowy night of December 28th.

“The concert was unremarkable, but some fifteen minutes of it worked out fine. As usual, we recorded it, and when back in Berlin we decided those good parts needed to be turned into a track. Now, not much really happens musically in there. It was a straight groove, and I played with effects and applied lots of filtering on the mixing desk. Gerhard considered the track boring, but I liked it.

“We spent quite some time trying to make it more interesting via editing, and it lost all its beauty on the way. So, we started over again, just making two edits where things went wrong for a few bars. We applied some sort of Occam’s razor principle to it. Hence the title.

“The most essential pieces of equipment during that tour and on that track were my Ensoniq ASR10 rack sampler, my QuadraVerb, and a slightly obscure Speck Electronics filter bank, which I inherited from the Basic Channel guys, and which I used excessively to create those complex filter sweeps.

“Editing a track in Protools back in the days of Hongkong meant doing it with an absurdly expensive audio interface providing only two inputs and outputs [Digidesign Audiomedia II] and equally expensive SCSI hard disks, and the need to calculate fades offline. Hard to believe we got anything done with it.”

Mass Transit Railway

“When compiling the music for Hongkong, I felt that something was missing – it needed one more atmospheric piece. I went through my DAT tapes and found a recording of a live set I played a year or two earlier in a backyard of a squatted house in East Berlin on a Sunday afternoon. I edited it down but somehow something was missing.

“Gerhard came up with the idea to ask our common friend, Wieland Samolak, to play a solo on top. Wieland had this interesting technique of using a Yamaha Breath Controller and the handle of a Yamaha Keytar with no keyboard, and only the pitch bend and mod-wheel to control his Oberheim Xpander. Then we added some nice Quantec QRS reverb and nothing can go wrong!

“We sent Wieland the track, on tape via mail, because this is pre-internet! And he sent us his solo voice back a few days later. We took the liberty to only use a tiny part of his improvisation, and I think he’s still annoyed by that, but we were super happy with it.

“Then there are these field recordings I made in Hong Kong during the 1996 Computer Music Conference. Figuring out which of them worked in conjunction with which track gave the album its unique shape and tone. Once we merged the recording from the subway with the lush chords at the beginning of my Sunday afternoon set, it became clear that this must be the end of the album. And the title is the name of the subway system.”

In 2023, the Field Records label honoured the iconic album with a brand new remastered double 12”, presenting it for the first time as a complete vinyl package.

For all Robert Henke’s latest music and art news, as well as his live dates, head to roberthenke.com

Auto Filter is easily one of our most used devices in Ableton Live. It's long been a workhorse tool ideal for shaping sounds, blending elements in and out of arrangements and manipulating tracks for live performances. As of the recent Live 12.2 update, it's received a massive glow-up with multiple new filter models, LFO options and more.

In the first of a new series of tutorials, Ableton Certified Trainer Tom Glendinning walks us through several ways these new filter functions can be used to add character and movement to a variety of track elements. To demonstrate this, Tom uses a track sketch inspired by classic French house composed of drums, bass, keys and a funky guitar loop.

Comb Filter

The first track element that Auto-Filter is applied to is a keys loop. The new Comb Filter mode is used to create a phasing effect that runs through the chord pattern. This is only really audible when the filter moves through the frequency range, so Auto Filter’s LFO is used to modulate the cutoff. By increasing the Phase Offset option, we get variations in the cutoff position between the left and right channels, adding extra stereo width.

Resampling Filter

A second instance of Auto Filter is also added to the keys track. This time it’s set to Resampling mode. This creates an effect similar to bitcrushing, emulating the low bitrate tone of old school samplers. This is set with a cutoff of 12kHz to create a subtle retro ‘ringing’ tone.

Vowel Filter

Next Auto Filter is applied to the track’s bass part. This time the new Vowel filter mode is used to create a vocal-like tone that makes the bass sound funkier and more retro. Auto Filter’s envelope follower is used here to create cutoff modulation that follows the volume level of the incoming bass signal. The LFO is used for additional movement, and a little Drive is added for a touch of grittiness.

Side-Chained Filter

Another Auto Filter is added to the end of the bass effect chain. This is left in the default low pass mode, but the sidechain functionality is used so that the cutoff frequency responds to the level of a secondary input, in this case the keys. This creates a rhythmic effect where the bassline fades in and out as the chords play.

Notch+LP Filter

The next element is a guitar loop. Here Auto Filter is used with the Notch+LP mode engaged, another new addition with Live 12.2. This filter mode combines a low-pass filter rolling off the top end frequencies with a more surgical notch filter lower down the spectrum. Here a little resonance bump is applied along with some modulation via the envelope follower and LFO, which creates a more funky and vibrant effect. The LFO is placed in Spin mode, which creates an effect where the guitar moves around the stereo field.

DJ Filter

Finally another Auto Filter is added to the master channel. This is used in DJ mode, which applies low- and high-pass filtering depending on the direction in which the cutoff is adjusted. This is perfect for live performance or for creating arrangements, allowing us to filter out frequencies as a track builds towards a drop.

Tom Glendinning is a session musician, sound engineer, sound designer, music producer, composer, and VJ. As an Ableton-certified trainer he helps musicians be creative with Ableton Live. Connect with him at: https://elphnt.io/

Ableton Live first hit the market in 2001. Over the past two decades it has established itself as one of the biggest names in music software and the go-to DAW (digital audio workstation) for countless musicians – particularly within electronic and dance music circles.

Released in March 2024, version 12 was the most substantial update to the DAW in over a decade, bringing changes to the UI and browser, new instrument and effect devices, new generative MIDI tools and a raft of other refinements. In the months that have followed, Ableton has added yet more new features via a pair of significant free ‘point’ updates.

With version 12.2 now out of its public beta period, we’re revisiting and updating our original Live 12 for 2025.

Ableton Live 12 Suite: What is it?

Most DAW updates are sold on the back of flashy new features, but really what a DAW lives or dies on is consistency. Whether used in a professional or hobby capacity, these are foundational platforms for modern music makers. A transition from one version to another needs to be as seamless as possible.

The promise of exciting new features might be what sells a user on paying for the latest updates, but it’s the small, incremental enhancements to an application’s workflow that make them stick around for the long term.

Traditionally, this is something Ableton has been good at. For all of the devices added in the 24 years since it launched, Live’s overall design has remained remarkably consistent. So much so that it would be possible to skip several versions when updating and still encounter few unexpected roadblocks, since most elements will be where you’d expect them: the browser to the left, devices down the bottom, clip launcher and arrangement living in their own individual UI views.

Version 12 is arguably Live’s most significant update in over a decade because it’s the first time that Ableton has risked messing with this familiarity.

UI and browser

This is most evident in the layout of the UI. Previous versions of Live have maintained fairly rigorous constraints on how its workspace can be arranged. While it’s been possible to resize certain elements to an extent, and hide/show others, there have always been hard-and-fast rules about how Live is laid out. The clip launcher and timeline live in separate windows; the Mixer is only available in Session view; clip and device parameters can’t be viewed side-by-side.

Version 12 does away with a lot of these constraints and makes the UI far more flexible. While the divide between the clip-launching Session view and Arrangement timeline remains, it’s now possible to call up the mixer, clip and device panels from anywhere. This means you can use the Mixer alongside the Arrangement view, but also display MIDI or audio clips alongside device interfaces simultaneously, mostly within a single window.

Admittedly, this can feel a little on the cluttered side with everything displayed at once – particularly on a laptop screen – but the flexibility it adds to Live’s workflow is a real benefit. For those used to quickly tabbing between views and using familiar keyboard shortcuts to show/hide elements, the new interaction between these elements may take a little getting used to, but once it becomes familiar, there’s no going back.

Out of curiosity, we returned to Live 11 after using 12, and the old UI immediately felt remarkably restrictive.

The UI element that took us a little longer to get to grips with is Live’s revamped Library browser. This modernises the way users find devices, clips, samples and other content, doing away with the previous system of sub-folders in favour of dynamic tags and filters.

The new system is objectively better – there’s more flexibility, particularly when it comes to saving custom search parameters, and it means there’s less of a divide between content types. A top-level search for ‘bass’, for example, will bring up a long list of device presets, clips, loops and samples, which can be filtered down by content type, source or sound characteristics.

If the resulting combination of search terms and filters is something you’re likely to use again, hitting the ‘+’ symbol next to the results will add it to the library sidebar, creating a shortcut that will be updated as new content is imported or tagged.

Thanks to the Auto-Tagging system added with Live 12.1, the browser now automatically applies tags to user sample content too, which strips away a lot of the prep required to get the most out of the browser.

This is one of several ways the new browser has been fine tuned by Ableton since the initial launch of Live 12, along with custom folder icons, better filtering and a new Quick Tags panel that makes tag admin less fiddly.

A highlight of the new browser tools is the Similarity Search. This can be accessed from the library or within a Drum Rack, and uses neural networks to suggest similar sounds based on a source sample.

While results can be a little hit and miss – it works best with percussion – it can be a hugely inspiring way to mix up the sound palette of an idea, particularly when used in the context of a drum rack kit, where it’s possible to swap out single elements or roll the dice on the full kit.

As I’ve settled into using Live 12, this has quickly become one of my most used features. I’ll regularly start a project using one of a few simple stock drum kits – a core 909 or 808, for example – and then use these tools to swap out the generic sounds for something more characterful.

MIDI tools

UI changes aside, one of Live 12’s most eye-catching additions is its suite of generative MIDI tools. These are an assortment of features within MIDI clips that are divided into two categories: Generators, which will fill an empty clip with MIDI data, and Transformations, which will alter existing MIDI patterns.

Within each of these categories are a variety of tools aimed at different use-cases. Generators, for example, include tools designed to build percussive patterns (Rhythm), melodies (Seed), chords (Stacks) or arpeggiated riffs (Shape). For Suite owners, these are expanded with the ability to use Max MIDI generators within clips too.

Transformations can do things like arpeggiate chords, adjust the quantisation or humanisation of notes, alter the position and timing of MIDI events, or embellish patterns with flams and ghost notes.

These MIDI tools are a fantastic, inspiring addition to the DAW, that practically beg you to lose hours down creative rabbit holes exploring their full potential. That being said, the implementation lacks refinement in places. It can be a little too easy to overwrite or edit previously generated patterns, and some functions don't feel quite as slick as they could.

Creating progressions with the Stacks chord generator, for example, involves manually altering the shape and root note of each chord, and it feels like it’s crying out for a function to auto-generate common progressions.

This is something addressed somewhat by the release of the Expressive Chords pack that comes free to all users with Live 12.2. This Max-based MIDI tool lets users perform chord progressions based on single note presses, making use of a variety of curated chord combinations. It’s also MPE compatible, meaning the results sound somewhat less static than some other auto-chord features can.

Live 12 also introduces a new master scale setting, whereby users can set a scale for the whole project, which is then automatically applied to new clips. This is handy, but it’s also easy to override by setting scales within individual MIDI or audio clips, allowing users to change key/scale mid-project or track, which is useful for live performance.

These scale settings take on added importance as of Live 12, as the DAW adds a ‘scale awareness’ mode to several of its stock devices. This allows for certain pitch-based parameters – such as MIDI effects, synth oscillator tuning, pitch-shift effects – to be locked to the current scale.

Not only does this avoid unwanted harmonic clashes (although it can be turned off, to avoid things sounding too ‘perfect’) it also means that changing from a clip with one assigned key/scale to another will cause all relevant devices to follow suit.

On a similar front, Live 12 also adds the ability to work with micro-tunings and non-Western scales. This is accessed via a tuning pool that functions in a similar manner to the Groove Pool. Engaging a tuning from this pool deactivates the global scale – which makes sense, since the two functions are effectively at odds with one another – and applies the tuning across all project clips. This pool also allows users to edit and import custom tunings.

New devices: Meld, Road and more

There’s a lot going on with this update then, and that’s before we even get to the headline devices. Live 12 adds a new synth, Meld, a new effect, Roar, and an update to the popular Max instrument Granulator.

Meld is a dual-engine synth with a variety of interesting oscillator modes that lean into digital sounds and textures. These range from simple virtual analogue waves through to creatively filtered noise, generators that produce interesting harmonic overtones, and animated rain and water textures. As of Live 12.2, its oscillators can also be used as 4-voice chord generators that allow for modulation to be applied to the chord shapes.

It also boasts filters that can double-up as resonators, distortions and comb filter effects, plus a powerful modulation setup that lets users apply transformations to the LFOs and route elements from one engine to the other.

Both in terms of structure and sound, Meld reminds me a lot of Arturia’s MiniFreak synth, which is no bad thing; both instruments combine complex digital synthesis ideas into a surprisingly approachable and fun package.

Roar is a multi-stage distortion, which allows up-to three stages of distortion to be arranged in a variety of ways. These can run in serial or parallel, be applied individually to different frequency bands, or to the mid and side of a signal. It also has an internal feedback routing, allowing Roar to act like a simple delay, whereby distortion can be applied to the input and feedback loop individually.

Like Meld, copious, flexible modulation capabilities do a lot to bring Roar to life, allowing it to work for broad applications such as refining the character of drum loops, adding resonant glitches to pads and creating lo-fi dub echoes.

The latest version of Granulator – more of a new instrument than a straight update – both refines and simplifies the granular concept, making it more approachable without sacrificing its depth. The biggest enhancements are the addition of MPE and improved capture capabilities that allow users to record directly into the effect.

Last but not least, it’s worth mentioning the work Ableton has put into adding to Live’s accessibility for version 12. This includes screen reader support, along with improved shortcuts, which make it all the easier to access every element of Live without using a mouse. I’m not somebody who requires either of these functions to use Live, so can’t really comment on how effectively they’ve been implemented, but it’s pleasing to see Ableton aim for advances in this area.

One year on: Live 12.1 and 12.2

After a few years that have seen Ableton balancing Live with some significant extra-circular releases – Note, Push 3, Move – the company appears to have settled down a little, putting the focus on updating its existing products rather than releasing new ones.

The year since Live 12’s release has seen some significant additions to the DAW, ones that have not only enhanced Live itself, but created tighter workflow ties between the desktop software itself and its various counterparts.

Probably the most significant addition on this front comes in the form of the new Drum Sampler device, added as part of the 12.1 update in late 2024. This new one-shot sampler is like an even simpler version of Simpler, formatted specifically for use with percussive sounds.

The general layout is more basic than Live’s other samplers, with just an AHD amp envelope available for shaping and minimal tools for sample adjustment, but Drum Sampler also adds a new FX slot into the mix.

This sits just before the device’s filter, and can be used for one of multiple processing functions, including looping, time-stretching, ring modulation, bitcrushing, as well as applying a pitch envelope, attack punch or a sub boost. In all cases, these effects can be adjusted using a simple X/Y pad.

Drum Sampler was launched alongside Move and is evidently designed with the Note and Move workflow in mind. Its simplified layout and X/Y pad are geared towards the limited hardware controls of Move and Note’s touchscreen interface as much as, if not more than, integration within Live. Despite this, it doesn’t feel like a lesser tool when used purely within the confines of the DAW.

While Drum Sampler might prove a little too simplistic for certain sampling applications, users still have access to both Sampler and Simpler in Live’s device list. With its range of effects, what it does provide is a quick and creative tool for shaping and automating percussion. For those that use Live alongside Note or Move, its cross-platform continuity is definitely very appealing.

The same can be said for Live’s revamped Auto Filter, which landed as part of the recent 12.2 release and also comes to Move, Note and Push’s standalone mode. Auto Filter is an absolute workhorse of a device, handy for a huge variety of different applications.

The new Auto Filter brings enhancements to every part of its toolset. Perhaps most significantly, it expands the range of filter types on offer, with additional emphasis on creative filtering.

The existing options – low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, notch, and a Morph filter – are now joined by a comb filter, vowel filter, resampling filter and bi-directional DJ-style filter mode. The Morph filter gains additional slope options, and the notch mode is joined by a notch + LP mode.

There are improvements to the analogue-emulating filter circuits too. Auto Filter now features a clean SVF model, Sallen-Key inspired MS2 and Ladder-style PRD modes, and a new DFM mode that, according to Ableton, “internally feeds back more of its distortion, resulting in a broad range of tones from subtle filter sweeps to warm drive.”

It’s an all-round welcome upgrade, which enhances every element of this thoroughly useful tool. Beyond the filters themselves, the onboard LFO has been massively enhanced too, with additional waveshape, rate and sync options – a highlight being the new Wander mode that creates a casually meandering, subtle form of randomisation. The device also gains a dry/wet control, which is another winning addition.

The other major new device added since Live 12’s launch is Auto Shift, a pitch tracking and correction tool that plugs one of the most significant holes in Live’s tool kit. This largely works as expected, adjusting incoming audio to match a set scale, with options to shift both the pitch and formats of that audio.

In terms of both capabilities and sound quality, it’s on a par with third-party rivals rather than offering a leap forward, but it’s pleasingly easy on the CPU – even in low-latency ‘live’ mode – and works well with Live 12’s new scale awareness functionality.

Verdict: Is it worth the update?

Live 12 has a lot to shout about. Compared to some previous iterations, there is a lot here that feels fresh and like it could have a significant impact on how users interact with the DAW.

The new updates impressed us at launch, but the workflow feels considerably more refined in the wake of two major updates. The new browser, in particular, has taken a few tweaks in order to reach its true potential, but we now couldn’t imagine returning to the old setup.

Having lived with Live 12 for a while, it’s the MIDI tools and Scale Awareness features that have left the biggest impression. Live has long been a creative powerhouse when it comes to things like synthesis, automation and non-linear sequencing, but the new tools unlock a layer of melodic compositional creativity that was perhaps absent from previous versions.

Taking versions 12 to 12.2 together, the new range of devices is exceptionally impressive too. Meld and Roar are both satisfying and refined creative tools, but it’s the appealing simplicity of Drum Sampler that stands out, making it an instant go-to tool.

Over the years, Ableton has become known for releasing updates that are incremental and often subtle, rather than revolutionary, meaning it can be difficult to decide how much it’s worth paying for the latest version. That’s not the case here – if you’re a user who’s been holding off on upgrading, Live 12 is the one you’ve been waiting for.

MusicRadar verdict: Recent free updates have ironed out some of the minor kinks in v12's major overhaul of Live – as well as adding some excellent new devices. Altogether, Live 12 is the best update we've seen in over a decade.

Ableton Live 12 Suite: Hands-on demos

Ableton

Ableton Live 12 Suite: Specifications

• KEY FEATURES: DAW update adding new tools, sound content, UI and workflow changes.
• PRICING: Live Suite: £539, Live Standard: £259, Live Intro: £69. Check site for upgrade offers.
• CONTACT: Ableton

Superbooth 25: Ableton Move arrived last year and was quite a surprising release from the Berlin software brand.

Although, on the surface, it looks like just another pad-based Live controller, Move is actually a self-contained instrument that functions like a cross between Ableton’s flagship Push hardware and its Note iOS app.

In short, Move allows users to play and sequence four tracks’ worth of instruments, based on devices derived from counterparts in Live. These include sampled beats and instruments, making use of Live’s Drum Racks and Drum Sampler, as well as synths powered by the likes of Drift and Operator.

Move also allows users to sample directly into the device, manipulate sounds using a small selection of Live effects, as well as act as a Live controller when hooked up to a computer running that DAW.

Now Ableton has launched a new firmware update for Move, which looks to be its most significant update yet.

When Move launched, one of the most common complaints from potential users was its lack of automatic sample slicing. Although Move allows users to sample using its audio input, onboard mic or internal routing – and lets users manually spread a recording across different pads – at launch it lacked the ability to automatically slice a loop to be triggered across different Drum Rack pads, in the way Live allows.

With the 1.5 update, Move now offers that option to slice a sample into equal regions, with the amount of slices set by the user. Users can then adjust the individual slice points in order to fine tune the process.

Move 1.5 also significantly enhances the device’s MIDI capabilities. Move can now simultaneously send and receive MIDI across its four tracks, which can each be configured with its own MIDI in and out settings. Move can also now receive MIDI clock settings from external devices.

It’s worth noting that Move uses its USB port for MIDI I/O, and doesn’t have conventional MIDI input and output ports.

Live’s newly overhauled Auto-Filter device also comes to Move 1.5, along with a range of presets. The update also adds some refinements to how Move functions when controlling Live, along with a variety of bug fixes.

These new updates join several other enhancements to the Move workflow that have been added since launch. These include the ability to sample using the device’s USB port, as well as improvements to the arpeggitor and quantize modes.

The 1.5 firmware is currently in public beta, head to the Ableton beta program site to find out how to join.

Move itself is available now, priced at £399/€449/$449. For more info visit the main Ableton site. Revisit our original review below.

Launched in late 2022, Ableton Note has always been an app with a lot of potential. Based around a similar workflow to Ableton Live’s clip-launching Session View, Note is designed as a simple platform for sketching musical ideas.

Its minimalist interface and limited selection of instruments and effects are a far cry from being a full DAW for your phone, but with staple Live devices under the hood and a simple app-to-Live workflow, Note arrived looking like it could be the perfect tool for Live users to capture ideas away from the studio.

I got hands-on with an early version of Note before launch, and there was a lot I immediately liked about it. The combination of synths and sampled instruments offers a broad sound selection, which can be expanded by importing your own sounds or sampling directly using your phone or iPad.

Crucially, Ableton offers several simple ways to quickly import ideas into Live, where they can be opened in fully editable form, meaning that those rough melodies or drum patterns you sketched out on the bus can really form the basis of a fully fledged tune.

However, while Note has stayed installed on both my phone and iPad for the past few years, I have to admit to rarely opening the app. For all that Note gets right, it lacked one crucial feature that severely limited its usefulness – MIDI editing – which just happens to be the headline addition of the latest update.

Sequence and edit

Previously, Note was designed entirely around Live’s Capture MIDI workflow, whereby users can play patterns or melodies using the touchscreen or a MIDI controller, and then hit ‘Capture’ in order to retroactively generate a MIDI clip.

By itself, this is a fairly intuitive way to work and Note’s editing toolset makes it easy to quantise and adjust MIDI after capture. The big problem, however, comes when using Bluetooth headphones, which create a fairly hefty amount of latency, effectively making it near impossible to play in time with the click or existing parts.

Given that Apple has removed headphone ports from most of its devices, being unable to work with wireless headphones is a pretty significant hindrance for a tool designed to be used on-the-go.

Moreover, while playing parts in real time is all well and good, it’s not a workflow that suits Live users more used to inputting patterns via a step sequencer or ‘offline’ MIDI editing – ie using a mouse and keyboard.

With the release of version 1.3 earlier this month, Ableton has rectified this. The update, which is free for existing users, introduces offline MIDI input and editing, allowing users to create empty MIDI clips and then tap to input notes, drum patterns or chords.

To Ableton’s credit, although it might have been a long time coming, the editing functionality is really nicely implemented.

Holding a note input brings up a menu allowing it to be moved, transposed, quantised or to alter the velocity. Users can pinch to zoom in on the MIDI grid, or turn their device into portrait orientation in order to use the MIDI editor in full screen mode, which is particularly handy on iPhone.

The update also adds the 16 Pitches feature that Ableton introduced with its Note-adjacent hardware device, Move. This lets Drum Sampler instruments be sequenced melodically, allowing 16-pad drum instruments to sequence multiple melodic parts at once.

If, like me, you tried Note when it first arrived and drifted away from it, or decided it didn’t fit into your workflow, this might be the time to take another look.

In actual fact, MIDI editing is just one of several ways Note has improved significantly since launch. Version 1, for instance, lacked MIDI controller compatibility, whereas the app can now be used with poly aftertouch devices in order to play expressive patches based around Live’s excellent Drift synth.

The Drum Sampler device, launched at the same time as Move and Live 12.1, comes into its own in the context of Note, where the filter cutoff and playback effects can be manipulated by dragging across the touchscreen. Ableton has significantly improved the range of effects in the app too.

There are still things I’d love to see added to Note. It bugs me that the delays are always synced to project tempo, and the workflow lacks the option to set up modulation routing – an extra LFO or two would go a long way.

What's more, now that Follow Actions – which automate clip launcher behaviour – have been added to Push, it would be great to see a basic version of the functionality come to Note too.

In all though, two and a half years after it first launched, Note is looking much more like the must-have companion to Live that Ableton users always wished for.

Note 1.3 is out now on the Apple App Store priced at £8.99/$8.99. Head to the Ableton site for full details.

Ableton Move is a standalone groovebox and Live controller that makes a portable and affordable alternative to Push, the company's MPE-equipped flagship instrument.

Since its launch in late 2024, Move has received a handful of firmware updates that have improved its MIDI sync capabilities and fixed some minor workflow issues, but the latest marks its most significant update yet.

Move's 1.3.0 update allows users to sample using its USB-C port, letting you record audio directly to Move from a smartphone, tablet, computer, or any device acting as a USB host that supports audio over USB.

This opens up an array of possibilities for Move users: Ableton suggests playing a song from your phone and sampling to one of Move's drum pads, or sampling a synth app from A tablet into its Melodic Sampler. Devices with a USB-C port should work without any fuss, but phones or tablets with a Lightning connection will require the use of an adapter, as Lightning to USB-C cables aren't supported. (Here's some more info on that.)

Another welcome improvement bundled with Move's 1.3.0 update is the ability to send out polyphonic aftertouch from its 32 pressure-sensitive pads through the device's MIDI out port when controlling external instruments and gear.

Find the full list of improvements below, or check out the release notes over at Ableton's website.

• You can now solo tracks by pressing and holding the Shift and Mute buttons simultaneously and then pressing a track button.
• Longer entries in the browser, such as sample or preset names, now scroll on the display so that the full name is visible.
• When used as an audio interface, Move now defaults to outputting its internal microphone and line-in. Move's main output can still be selected in Setup; however, doing so will disable Move's speaker when a USB-C cable is connected.
• Move now sends out polyphonic aftertouch when set to MIDI Out, which lets you play expressively when using external MIDI controllers.
• A wider selection of presets is now used when creating a new Set.
• Uploads to Ableton Cloud are now faster.
• Triggered one shot samples and long release note phases now stop when playback stops and when clips are retriggered. Additionally, an “All Sound Off” MIDI message (CC 120) is sent to the MIDI output.

He recently unveiled his bluesy interpretations of the works of Beethoven, and now New Orleans’ own Jon Batiste has given us a suitably jazzy rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner at Super Bowl LIX.

Performing at The Big Easy’s Caesars Superdome, Batiste was happy to embellish the US National Anthem with some soulful piano licks, but we suspect that many electronic music gearheads may have been distracted by the three products sitting in front of Batiste on his Yamaha grand’s lid.

From left to right, fans will have seen a Soundforce SFC-8 controller, Native Instruments Maschine+ and a Novation LaunchControl XL, all in custom casings to match the piano. Strangely, though, it appeared that only the Maschine got used - Batiste looked like he was triggering something from it right at the start of the performance.

Still, it was a nice moment in the spotlight for the SFC-8 in particular. This dedicated Jupiter-8 soft synth MIDI controller from 2022 - designed to work with Arturia’s Jup-8 V and TAL’s J-8 in particular - is very much a niche product, but it’s probably now been seen by in excess of 100 million people.

The Launch Control XL, meanwhile, is an Ableton Live controller, so maybe there was some DAW stuff going on in the background that we didn’t get to see.

Of course, the big musical spot of the Super Bowl was taken by Kendrick Lamar, who performed a 13-minute set that featured an appearance from SZA and saw him perform Not Like Us, his Grammy-winning diss track from 2024.

There was also a pre-game performance from Lady Gaga, who sang her Top Gun: Maverick song Hold My Hand on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street in tribute to the city and those who died in the terror attack that took place there in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

NAMM 2025: Melbourne Instruments has announced ROTO Control, a new controller that utilises the company's groundbreaking motorised fader technology - as found on its Delia and Nina synths - to create a device that aims to revolutionise hardware or software control.

We first got wind of ROTO Control just before the NAMM show, with a teaser video announcing the groundbreaking desktop controller. But now Melbourne Instruments has officially launched the unit and given us all the glorious details about its new unit.

As you can see, ROTO Control is designed to tackle all studio hardware and software, and comes with the same type of motorised faders that appear on Melbourne's Nina and Delia synths. These allow instant recall of settings and user-defined levels of control and tuning.

ROTO Control can be set up to control all sorts of hardware and software parameters, with 16,000 memory locations available for instant recall. At the moment, ROTO Control links up best with Ableton Live, with pretty much instant syncing to control both the DAW's mixer and plugins. We're assuming that future updates or releases will include templates for other DAWs, although there's nothing to stop you customising the unit's controls to your DAW of choice.

The device has three modes to switch between: Mix, Plugin and MIDI with Motion Recorder. Mix syncs the controller with your Live Sets so that the track names and colours appear on ROTO Control's front panel, meaning you are less reliant on your computer screen. As all data is taken from the Ableton Live Set currently loaded in, ROTO Control automatically updates its displays as you change anything within the software.

In Plugin mode, ROTO Control syncs to Live's plugins using a one-time learning setup to recall everything later. You can set it up to control up to 64 plugins per channel with up to 128 controls (64 each for knobs and buttons) per plugin. That's a pretty exceptional number of options, and makes us feel inadequate that we'd never need that level of control in one of our typical projects.

Finally, you get MIDI Control with Motion Recorder. This mode enables you to control any MIDI device - that could be software, hardware, or lighting - and use the Motion Recorder to record automation data via the motorised dials, with up to eight parameters per setup.

ROTO Control is available now for around $419/£389/€419 and there's more information on the controller at the Melbourne Instruments website.

Zachary Waleed Saraf seemingly appeared out of nowhere in 2021 with an exceptional pair of tracks that singled the Washington D.C.-born, Berlin-based producer out as a maker of audacious and unpredictable dance music with a talent for leftfield sound design.

Many aspiring producers dream of having their debut release picked up by Four Tet, Floating Points and Ben UFO, but Waleed actually did. It’s no surprise; he evidently shares Kieran Hebden’s uncanny knack for working unexpected samples into expertly crafted beats. Hanging a deftly sliced Camila Moreno vocal on a gorgeously crunchy, not-quite-techno groove, Se Rompen stole the limelight, but it was the B-side that stopped us in our tracks, its fidgety UKG framed by ethereal vocal chops and careening synths that ricocheted across the stereo field.

As quietly as he arrived, Waleed vanished, and we heard little from the producer for three years, save for a Tourist remix. As it turns out, he was wrestling with the follow-up to his debut, the pressure of his newfound success prompting a troubling period of creative stasis and uncertainty. This year, Waleed made a triumphant return, issuing a lauded joint release with fellow Digitakt enthusiast Villager that was swiftly followed by Magdalena, an EP released on City Slang, home to Caribou and Gold Panda, among others.

Magdalena documents Waleed’s transition from a solitary music-maker, crafting tracks in his bedroom at night after working a day job as a coder, to a fully-fledged artist proudly sharing his work with the world. “Music for me has always been my own personal sanctuary, disconnected from the rest of the world,” he says. “I could create this space, and get lost in it for hours. Magdalena is a journal of me growing up. It’s the story of me embracing the joy of sharing this thing I care so much about.” That joy is audible across the EP’s seven tracks, which build on the blueprints sketched out on his debut to create some of the year’s most inventive electronic music, an emotionally charged confirmation that now Waleed’s back, he’s here to stay.

We caught up with Waleed to find out more about the gear and techniques behind Magdalena, his love of the Elektron Digitakt, and how he overcame overthinking to embrace intuition and rediscover his passion for music-making.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Tell us about how you got into music-making initially.

“When I was a kid, I played guitar. I played some violin, some piano, I was trying a few different things to see which one I liked. I found guitar when I was 10 years old, and I started playing a lot of guitar over the next 10 years. It was really my thing. I got really into the percussive acoustic shit, hitting the guitar and things like that. Maybe when I was 18 or 19, I downloaded Logic and started messing with that, going deep on that, and then I switched to Ableton when I was 21 or 22.”

How long were you making tunes before you landed on a style that felt like your own?

“Maybe when I moved to Spain around six years ago. Before that, I went to college with a bunch of friends and lived in a city nearby. So I was always surrounded by people, maybe too many people. But when I got to Spain, I was alone, and that’s when I really got to develop my style. I had a couple of friends there, but I just had more time, a lot of it. I would just make beats, walk around Madrid and listen back to them. I was pretty depressed when I first moved there, so it led to some really deep, kind of sad, more emo-style sort of music.”

When did you write the tracks that became your first EP, Se Rompen and Sueños?

“I moved to Spain six years ago, then I moved to Berlin a year later. A few months later, Covid hit, and that was pretty crazy. During that period, I realized that spending winter in Berlin would be miserable - Berlin’s a pretty dark place anyway - so I went to Malaga in January 2020. That was where I made Se Rompen.

“I was there for three months, staying at this hostel and working on tunes. I met this girl from London that I fell in love with, and was with up until a year ago. It was a really interesting time when I made that track. I was at this hostel, I felt like I’d escaped Covid, I was falling in love - and that track came out of it.”

What kind of set-up were you working with during that time?

“I just had a laptop with Ableton.”

Is that still what you’re working with today? Have you picked up any gear since then?

“I did pick up some gear, but then I actually got robbed. Me and my homie had a studio in Berlin, we’d been waiting for the studio for eight months. We finally got the keys in June of 2021, moved all of our gear in, and one week later, we got robbed. They took everything except the new monitors.

“Me and my homie, we had just bought these nice, nice new speakers, and we’d listened to them for the first time when we set them up in the new studio. I remember telling him, like, ‘yo, the crazy thing about these speakers is that they’re ours now, we get to use them every day!’ Then we got the call that everything got robbed. They took all our synths, a lot of my homie’s gear, but the one thing they didn’t take was the speakers. If they did, we both might have quit music; I don’t know what we would have done.

“So now I’m rebuilding my studio. I have an Ableton Push, a Digitakt and a Digitone. I love all of those. The Push, I barely use, and I’m trying to figure out a way to fit it into my workflow. But the Digitakt, I really love that thing.”

You must be pretty quick with Ableton, if that was all you were using for so many years?

“I’ve gotten really accustomed to it. I’m really fast with it now. It’s such a great tool for mangling audio, messing with audio. That’s also why I love the Digitakt. With Ableton, you’re doing stuff with audio, you don’t exactly know what you’re gonna get but at least you’re intentional with what you’re doing. But with the Digitakt, sometimes you just happen on crazy results and you have no idea how you got there. You can make crazy sounds with it and then you don’t know where they even came from.”

What do you think it is about the Digitakt that’s behind that unpredictable quality?

“It’s the workflow, and you’re just putting LFOs on things that you typically wouldn’t put LFOs on. The sample start point, for example. Also, being able to change the parameters of all the tracks at once, that’s another big thing. You hold the Track button, and you can change the parameter of all 8 tracks, or 16 tracks on the Digitakt II.

“You’re changing the pitch on all of the drums at once, or changing the start, end and loop times on all of the samples. All these different things that are being affected on all of the tracks at once can just lead to things that are like... you have no idea how you got there, but it sounds good. The proof is always in the pudding; does it slap or does it not slap?”

Do you have Digitakt I or II?

“I had the I for a while, but I have the II now, and it’s just incredible. It’s better in every way. The second version took what the first could do and made it five times as useful in every single way. Number one, now you can have stereo samples, which is great, and now it has 30 gigs of storage. Before you had to be so selective about what you put in the thing, because it only had one gig. But now it has 30 gigs and 16 tracks. I love that thing.”

So you used the Elektron machines quite extensively on the new EP?

“Yeah, I’d say the Digitone was used a bit, but not quite as much. The Digitakt was used on the later tracks. A lot of times I'll use the Digitakt just to create some samples, create some audio, and then I’ll bring that into Ableton, and then mess with things. But I like that with the Digitakt, you can actually play it, whereas I find it tough to do that in a way that I like in Ableton. With the Push, you can trigger sequences in Session View, but sometimes it gets a little bit too stuck into these four-bar sort of situations. With the Digitakt, it feels like you have a bit more control.”

What kind of tools in Ableton are you relying on the most?

“I love the Flanger. Especially the Flanger in the older version of Ableton, I still use that one. I love the way it sounds, and I love that it has the grid so you can really dial in weird sounds pretty quickly. I love that, I love Pedal, I love Operator. I'm a really, really big Operator guy.

“In Sueños, that main synth line is just something I made in Operator. And I really love using Operator. I feel like it's capable of such crazy sounds. It can sound a bit basic, but then you toss a tiny bit of reverb on it, or a chorus, or something like that. Operator can make wild, wild sounds. That's the one that I typically will open up, because I also have Omnisphere and I'll use that, but it feels like it's never-ending; there’s too many sounds and it takes a while to find what you're actually looking for. Operator has a crazy amount of options too, but in a pretty simple workflow.”

Tell me how you designed that lead sound in Sueños. Did you put that together from scratch?

“That’s something I designed from the ground up. That’s another thing: I feel like the best MIDI controller you could ask for is the computer keyboard, the up and down keys. That’s what I love about working on the laptop. That patch was literally me playing with the computer keyboard, changing the Coarse value on Operator with my arrow keys and recording the automation.

“I love recording automation with the keyboard. I’ll lose my eyes, and I’ll be going up and down with those keys. Or the trackpad; I click on something and close my eyes, then I just move it around. I feel like that’s a very human way, a very expressive way of doing things.”

Could you run us through a couple more plug-ins that are really fundamental to your workflow or your sound?

“Vulf Compressor from Goodhertz, that’s one that I really love. That compressor can make some really sick sounds. It’s great for a simple master as well if you want to bounce something out and send it, you just toss that compressor on there and a limiter and it can sound really, really cool.

“I love using audio effect racks. I tend not to use any busses, but instead I just build my busses as Audio Effect Racks. I don’t really like using Dry/Wet, I’d rather use a send, but I build the send in a rack. I have this ‘Waleed Send’ that I bring into almost everything. All that is, it’s just an Audio Effect Rack with a Utility device inside it, with macros mapped to the gain in Utility. So it basically just acts as a send.

“I like doing that because it feels like it’s not just adding a lot to these busses down on the bottom of the screen. It feels way easier to me than adding a bus, going to the mixer and sending stuff out. It feels a little more clean when everything in this track is contained within the track or within a group.”

Do you ever experiment with Max for Live?

“I love Max for Live devices too. I’m actually taking a course on it right now, I want to start building my own devices. I love Ned Rush’s devices, they’re great. If you want to get crazy sounds to resample, just put every single one of his Lucky 16 devices on really any sort of track, and it’s going to make sounds you’ve never heard before. Maybe 99% of them you won’t be able to use, but there’ll be sounds that aren’t from a sample pack, sounds that aren’t easily recognizable.

“Max for Live, that’s why I love Ableton so much. Really anything, just about anything, is possible. I love using Expression Control. It can map each MIDI note that comes in to anything in Ableton. You can use it in a random way, or you can do it based on velocity, aftertouch, any of these things. You can even map it to parameters on other channels.

“Say I have an audio channel that I really like, but I want to change it up a bit and put some effects on there. So I can hit Convert Drums to MIDI, then it’ll give me a MIDI clip based on the drums in the audio. Then I put Expression Control on that MIDI channel and use that to modulate the effects on the original audio track. So with each hit of the drums, it’s changing the values of the effects.”

Could you talk us through your workflow for programming and mixing drums?

“I don’t often use drum samples. A lot of the time I’ll make these samples over time, or maybe at some point it started from a sample that I found somewhere. But typically they’ll go through a lot of processing on my part, and be bounced over and over again. I love drums that have a certain texture, they have this organic sort of sound. They sound like they went through some sort of analogue machine at some point. A lot of that is just messing around, tinkering and then saying yes or no.

“There are a lot of drums that I go through that just aren’t it. But sometimes you land on something. I remember this hi-hat that I probably used too much for a long time, it was on Se Rompen and Sueños. It came from this old break, but it wasn’t actually in the break at all. The break went through all this different processing, Echo and Erosion and all these different effects, and then ended with a gate.

“I would use the keyboard to open and close the gate on the effects to add in grace notes to the hi-hats in the break. It worked perfectly; I could get the grace notes that I always wanted, but found really hard to get right by programming them. I feel like sometimes it’s just about using a lot of different effects and sound design. Then once you have that audio, you can bring it into all different sorts of projects and warp it some more, shift it around to make it work.”

“I love OTT as well. I don’t use a crazy amount, but the right amount goes a long way. I feel like I got that from Mount Kimbie; some of their tracks, if you listen to it, it sounds like they have OTT on 100 on a few of the elements and probably some EQ around it. It can make some really beautiful sounds.”

Would you say Mount Kimbie are an influence?

“I love Mount Kimbie, they were definitely an influence. I love Tirzah, Four Tet, all those guys. Floating Points, I think is just out of this world, he’s a genius. He really makes me want to get into modular. Anything to get yourself out of the way you typically do things.

“That’s what I like about the Digitakt. You can get things out of it that you have no idea how you came up with. You’re not really following this typical workflow that your brain is trying to go through, instead you get out of that typical path, and you end up with something wild. I feel like that’s what modular is like. Like, you’re sitting there with your patch cables, and you have no idea where it’s going to get to, but then suddenly you happen upon this crazy, incredible sound.”

When it comes to mixing down, is that something you do as you go along or a separate stage at the end of your process?

“I do it as I go, for sure. With this EP, I got some friends to help with mixing for some of the tracks. During the time that I was making these tracks, I was struggling with a lot of fear, honestly, after my first tracks came out and they did so well. Music was always this thing that was just for me. It was this thing that I did by myself, it was my own space that I could live in. Then once people were listening, it brought so much fear into the room, and it felt like things needed to be as good as that, and live in the same space, and everything needed to be perfect.

“That fear made it so much harder to mix. I had gotten to the point where I hated these tracks so much, I was like, I can't even listen to it anymore. I need some kind of external help for it. But the good thing was that this EP was really a process of me getting through that pain and figuring out how to make music. Now I feel in a way, way better place, and I'm enjoying making music again.”

It was mentioned in the press release that you can be an “over-tinkerer and an over-thinkerer”. Was that the case on this latest EP?

“It definitely was. Some of that was down to changing my workflow in a way that I probably shouldn’t have. I changed my workflow because I was like, ‘Okay, I need to finish music. I need to finish music. I need to finish music.’ And in doing that, once I had a demo that I had made in an hour that I liked, I would send it to some people, and they'd be like, ‘Okay, you got to finish that one’. So then I would spend 40 hours trying to finish that exact track in almost the exact same form that it had started, which is not what I used to do, and now I've returned to not doing that, because it doesn’t work for me.

“The way that I feel like I make the best stuff is: work quickly and follow how I'm feeling in that moment. So then maybe work on it for another day, if it's not where I want to go, then start something new, but maybe pull in a few different elements, and over months, take all these different elements and turn them into something. But still have it such that you're acting quickly in the moment.”

For a debut release, your first EP did pretty well, being picked up by DJs like Four Tet and Ben UFO. Did you feel a lot of pressure to follow that up with something special?

“There’s a deep happiness inside of you, but there’s also this deep fear that develops with something like that. But it’s good, and it’s forced me to grow up and figure out a way to deal with that fear and move forwards regardless. It’s all been positive with regards to growth. You have to realise that not everything is going to do well and that’s okay.

“In hindsight, I wish that after Se Rompen I could have put out another EP two months later, and another one after that, and just keep it going. But I wasn’t ready. I was too scared to be able to do that, and I really hope now that in the coming years I can. I'd like to be a bit more like artists like Dean Blunt, artists that can say ‘okay, I’m going to put it out, maybe it does well, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you hate it, maybe you love it, I don’t care,’ and just move forward.

“You can spend months on a track and you end up hating it, and you actually might be making it worse. I’ve done that with a lot of tracks. A lot of times I go back to the first demo of a track and I’m like ‘that’s actually the one’. You are your own worst enemy, and the best stuff is always to come. The best stuff comes out when you stay in that flow state and you’re honest with yourself and you move quickly. When you move quickly, good shit happens.”

Magdalena is out now on City Slang.

The debate surrounding the use of loops from sample packs has reached something of a crescendo this year. The news that the main groove from Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso is derived from a few Splice loops caused some people considerable consternation, and Afrojack said that he was “disappointed” to discover that Fred Again’s 2023 track, Ten, is “based off three Splice samples".

Now producer and musician Raphael Saadiq has been having his say, noting that he feels he learned how to make music “the authentic way”.

“People like pushing buttons because it’s faster and easier for them,” he told Music Business Worldwide. “But I can make better music than people pushing buttons, fast.

“People who can’t play an instrument, or can’t come up with a certain line or a melody, depend on loops and take basslines from Ableton or Logic. I will never take a bassline from any digital domain in my life! That will never happen.”

Saadiq goes on to say that he does draw a distinction between using instrumental and drum loops, but even when it comes to beats, he likes to record his own.

“Drum loops I don’t mind, but even 99% of those, I’ll play it faster than I can find it, and I can find the best drummer who can play better than me,” he reckons. “I’d just rather do what the authentic sound is; it breathes more, it has that sensibility. And, if everybody’s doing something, I want to be the one person that doesn’t do it.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Saadiq reflects on his skills as a producer - most recently, he worked on three standout tracks from Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album (16 Carriages, Texas Hold ‘Em and Bodyguard) - and suggests that his approach is pretty hands on.

“I got the opportunity to use the title ‘producer’, but I don’t use it too much,” he says. “I just say I’m a member of the band. If we work together, I just join the band and it takes a lot of pressure off me. I used to work with people that would wear T-shirts that say ‘Producer’, but I’ve never really seen myself like that. I just try to do what I like and hopefully we all like the same thing.”

His attitude, it turns out, is similar to that of Dan Nigro, who said recently that he too sees himself as a band member when he’s working with Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo.

Saadiq also discusses one of his first gigs: playing bass in Sheila E’s band when she supported Prince on his 1986 Parade tour.

Of this relationship with Prince on the tour, Saadiq says: “I got a chance to hang out and talk to him. I watched to see what big management and a huge production looks like. It was like seeing Jimi Hendrix at the height of his career…”

Electronic musicians can be an argumentative bunch, and there are few subjects that inspire more heated debate than the question of which DAW reigns supreme. Different tools suit different styles of working, and it goes without saying that there's no one DAW that's best for everybody. For me, though, it has to be Ableton Live.

I've tried out most of the major DAWs in my role as MusicRadar's Tech Editor, and while there's some seriously stiff competition, nothing has managed to convince me to drop Live as my day-to-day DAW: its intuitive, user-friendly workflow, combined with the sheer breadth of its feature set and the quality of its instruments and effects, have made it an indispensable tool for me and many, many others.

Live 12, the latest major update to the software, not only introduced a new soft synth and a raft of generative MIDI tools, but also marked the debut of Roar, a phenomenal saturation and distortion effect that's swiftly become one of our favourite stock effects in any DAW. Since then, Live 12.1 brought Ableton users a new MIDI-controllable vocal tuner, Auto Shift, and a dedicated Drum Sampler device with built-in effects.

Whether you're considering switching DAWs or just beginning your journey into music production, Ableton Live is 25% off this Cyber Monday at Sweetwater, with discounts of up to $160 across Live Suite, Standard and Intro.

Released in October, Ableton Move is a standalone groovebox and controller designed for fast and intuitive music-making. Equipped an OS that shares many similarities with Ableton's iOS app, Note, Move is a stripped-back and portable alternative to the company's Push controller that's significantly more affordable at $449.

As is the case with pretty much any notable release in the music tech world, Move drew both high praise and pointed criticism from the online community. In our review, we described Push as an "excellent sketchpad and handy Live controller" that was great for roughing out rhythmic and melodic ideas, while noting that it was a device that some might struggle to integrate into their creative workflow.

The device isn't without its limitations, and the one that prompted the most pushback from Ableton's user base is Move's limited track count. Move is equipped with four tracks, each of which can hold a single Drum Rack device (itself containing 16 instances of the Drum Sampler device), a Melodic Sampler device or one of two Ableton synths: Drift and Wavetable.

In a video shared earlier this week, Ableton addressed members of its community that were dissatisfied with Move's track count, and responded clearly to those asking whether it would furnish the device with additional tracks via a firmware update down the line.

Replying to a comment that suggested that four additional tracks would "take Move to another level", Ableton's Head of Product Johannes Russ said: "I want to be straightforward about this one. No, we do not intend to add four more instrument tracks to Move."

Russ goes on to explain that the way Ableton has optimized Move's CPU performance wouldn't allow for the addition of extra tracks. "Move's CPU performance memory is optimized to give you a really stable, snappy and fluid experience so you can stay in the flow," he says. "That was the number one priority when we made Move."

"When we built the first prototypes, we thought about the question of whether four tracks are enough, a lot. But then we made these prototypes and we put it into the hands of artists and colleagues and everyone really clicked with it. It was really fun, they were creating lots of ideas, and we knew we were on to something quite special.

"We decided to go ahead with it, knowing that whatever you start on Move, you can always extend in Live and Push. That's where you finish your music and put all the details in."

Elsewhere in the video, Ableton offers an insight into the making of Move, stating that their initial aim was to create something "accessible and affordable" that would be useful for music-makers of varying experience levels.

With affordability comes compromise, and it was Move's track count that took the hit. As the old saying goes, though, less is often more - in our review, we observed that Move's limited and focused design contributes to an overall workflow that's fast and accessible. Sometimes, four tracks is all you need.

As Ableton Live has matured over the decades, it’s now possible to mix and master projects using only Live’s native effects. Let’s look at how we can create a mastering chain that’ll work across many different projects. 

It’s just an example - there’s no ‘one size fits all’ mastering solution, but it’s a good starting point, and the simple exercise of building this will give your new insights into how mastering works. We use this approach for mastering, and for fixing or adjusting stereo files such as field recordings or live recordings, where it’s not easy to access the separate parts.

• Read more: Who needs a mastering engineer? How to master your music without a professional studio or expensive gear

Go to Arrangement View so we can see the timeline. This is recommend for working with longer stereo files, while Session View is recommended for earlier in the creative process. Drop your chosen stereo file into an audio track in Live. Delete any unwanted audio and MIDI tracks, let’s keep things clear. 

Because this is the only file in this project, we can add any effects directly to this track instead of on the Main track. We like to set the clip colour to white, so there are no visual distractions, we don’t use colour unless there’s a good reason.

• Read more: 10 things you didn't know Ableton Live could do

EQ doesn’t always have to be part of mastering, unless you identify a problem area in the mix. This is an opportunity to stress how important monitoring is, on speakers and headphones. 

It doesn’t have to be the swankiest rig in the world, but you need to be familiar with it, listen to other music on it, and recognise how your work will transfer to other listening setups. We listen to our mixes and masters on as many different setups as possible. When we do make adjustments, it’ll be for very specific areas that we’re sure need some tweaking.

• Read more: Best EQ plugins: Mix, create, repair, and master with these 13 amazing equalizers

If necessary, we can use racks and EQ to split a song’s frequency range. Do this by loading an EQ Three, clicking on it and typing Cmd+G to make a rack, then opening the chain view and duplicating the chain twice, so you end up with three chains, each containing EQ Three. 

On the first instance, turn off mid and high, the second, turn off low and high, the third turn off low and mid. Now you have all the bands of your song intact, but spread over three chains, so you can apply processing separately to each chain, if you so wish.

• Read more: The ultimate guide to modern EQs

It can happen that a stereo mix needs a bit more, uh, stereo. We can achieve this with Live’s Utility device, adding it before compressors or limiters. Activating the Bass Mono switch is very effective for firming up the low end; we typically leave it set at 120 Hz, but see what works with your mix, there’s nothing wrong with adding more mono. 

Above that is the Stereo Width control - usually for this we rarely venture above 125%. There are no absolutes for this, and we certainly take time to experiment with these tools - don’t underestimate their value.

• Read more: How to balance mono compatibility with stereo width

Let’s take a minute to talk about Mid/Side processing - this is where we can cut or boost the centre or sides of the stereo image independently of each other. If you right-click on Utility’s Width rotary control, you can enter Mid/Side Mode, and it will change the blend between centre (turn left), and sides (turn right), in values from 0 (default centre) to 100, at 100 you will only hear the selected channels. 

It’s a very useful, yet easy to use, tool for re-emphasising stereo balance, and we have used it particularly on live recordings and field recordings.

• Read more: How to use mid/side EQ for mastering

If you have a well-balanced mix, sometimes you can simply drop Live’s Multiband Dynamics/Multiband Compression preset straight onto the track. By default, this preset will give things a little boost and make everything sound louder, without affecting the overall balance. 

If you do want to tweak this, an easy start is to adjust the low, mid, and high, levels, if you think one of those needs a little boost or cut. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Beyond that you could reduce the threshold for any of those bands to compress it a little more and make it more punchy. 

• Read more: How to bring a track into balance using multiband processing

Load Limiter after Multiband Dynamics. This lets you manage overall loudness, letting you boost it all, while still capping it off around the ideal -1db mark. If you crank the gain, you’ll definitely hear the limiter working. We prefer when we’re seeing just a little gain reduction in the meter. 

Limiter includes a Maximise control - with this on, Input Gain becomes an Output level control, Ceiling control becomes Threshold, and further adjustments will reduce the overall dynamic range, the difference between quiet and loud parts. This has a pronounced effect, you may need to adjust other parameters as a result.

• Read more: The beginner's guide to limiting

Click on any device in the finished chain, and use Cmd+A to select all the devices. Hit Cmd+G to commit all of these to a new audio effect rack. At this point, if you’re using a hardware controller with some knobs on it, you could assign the rack’s macro controls to your most-wanted parameters. 

Hit the Save Preset button, at the top left of the new rack, and enter a name for your rack. We’d also suggest marking it as a favourite, so you can always grab it from the favourites section at the top left of the Browser. 

This is a ‘mastering’ chain, but you don’t have to wait until the end before using it, especially if you’re working with a single piece of music. Insert it early, and maybe you’ll save yourself from a separate final stage - sometimes the whole chain from composition to mixing to mastering can be handled in one project. 

However, if you’re working with an EP or album, you might be advised to save what we’d strictly call ‘mastering’ until the end, where you can adjust all songs together in a new project, making it easier to compare levels and apply any other processing.

• Read more: We tested 4 of the most popular online e-mastering services and compared them to a real mastering engineer. Here’s what happened

This week saw Ableton launch its newest hardware device, Move. Somewhere between a mini version of Push and a hardware version of the Note app, Move is designed to be the perfect sketchpad for Ableton Live, letting users rough out ideas for beats and melodies, as well as capture samples, apply basic effects and record automation.

Move is designed to be easy and intuitive, which it achieves. But there are still a few less-obvious or secondary functions that are easy to miss but can be key to bringing your ideas to life.

To get up to speed with Move’s workflow, we sat down with Ableton’s product specialist Brian to watch him quickly put a groove together. You can watch his tips in the video above or read about them below. We’ve also added in a few tips of our own based on our time with Move.

READ MORE: Ableton Move review

Nudge hits off the grid to add groove

In his first workflow tip, Ableton’s product specialist Brian demonstrates how nudging a few hits off of the quantise grid can help to add a humanised feel to a drum groove. To demonstrate this he layers up three snare sounds. To create a little space between them, he holds down the relevant step on the sequencer and uses the left and right arrow keys to nudge two of the hits so they sit just before or after the beat.

“I'm nudging the notes to move them over to just give it some space” he explains. Finally, he applies some extra groove by holding down the Shift key and accessing the Groove menu. “It’s just to give it a bit more swing, so now we have a looser beat.”

Save your custom kits

Move’s stock presets are well organised by sound type and relatively easy to navigate, but loading user-uploaded samples can be a little more time consuming. Loading a one-shot sample to a Drum Sampler pad involves navigating out of Move’s list of sound types into the User Samples folder, and then finding your sound among your own sub-folders. Hardly a hardship on its own, but annoying to do 16 times in a row.

If you’re likely to use your own samples regularly, we’d recommend taking some time to create and save custom drum kits in advance. Having ready-to-go kits built around a useful combination of sounds will speed up your creative workflow. Saving these to a kit also allows you to configure things like envelope and filter settings, and appropriate send and insert effects too.

Quick switch presets from the browser

As Brian demonstrates in the video, Move offers an easy way to try out new sounds using existing patterns. To see how a drum groove sounds using different kits, simply use the browser wheel to scroll through Move’s various kit options, previewing them as you go. If you want to return to the original, simply hit the Undo button.

Detune vs transpose

When using sampled instruments in move, the first of the touch rotaries is used to transpose the source sample up and down. As standard, this is done by semitones. If you want to make adjustments by an amount other than a whole semitone, however, hold down Shift and the transpose mode will instead detune the sound by cents.

Spice up beats with Playback Effects

The Drum Sampler Playback Effects are one of Move’s strongest features. In our video Brian demonstrates how the pitch envelope mode can be used to add a characteristic bend to a sound.

Other favourite modes of ours include the Stretch function, which can apply granular warp-like effects, reminiscent of old school sampling. The Loop function is great for stuttering repeats too.

Use Capture for quick automation

Move’s Capture function – based on the same tool in Live – is an easy way to recall your playing and turn jammed-out ideas into clips. As Brian demonstrates for us, it works for parameter automation too. Experiment with tweaking settings using Move’s eight encoders, if you hit upon something you like, hit Capture to record the movement as part of your clip.

Automation can be deleted easily, by holding the Delete button and touching the associated encoder.

Turn drum pads into melodies with 16 Pitches

Although Move might initially look like it puts a hard limit on having no more than four melodic parts in any one project, there are actually several ways to work around this. As Brian demonstrates in his third tip, one of the easiest ways to do this is by creating melodic patterns from one-shot samples loaded into one of the 16 Drum Sampler slots of a drum kit.

To do this, simply hold Shift and press the layout button on Move’s sequencer. Now the 16 pads to the right of the kit will light up and can be used to play the selected sample at different pitches fixed to the project scale. This means that any one kit can house up-to 16 melodic patterns each making use of different one-shot samples.

Resample everything!

Move’s ability to resample its main output can be used to significantly expand its capabilities. If you regularly find yourself butting up against the four-instrument limit, try bouncing down riffs, basslines or drum grooves that would otherwise be taking up a full instrument slot to a single pad in a kit. To access this, press the sampling button and use the browser wheel to change the input mode to Resample, then press a free pad to start recording.

It’s worth noting the Move records the full main output, so you’ll need to mute any elements you don’t want to capture. Move doesn’t, however, record the metronome when resampling, so leave this on if it helps with the timing of the recording. If you engage resampling while the transport isn't running, playback will start as soon as you press the pad to start resampling – which can also be useful for timing.

While this is useful as a workaround on its own, doing so can also be an inspiring creative tool. Try resampling sounds with automation and/or effects baked in, then try triggering the recordings at different pitches to hear how it affects the audio. Make use of the Drum Sampler's fantastic Playback Effects too, to loop, stretch or ring modulate your resampled audio.

Slice up samples with multi-pad recording

Move doesn’t feature sample slicing like you would find on higher-end samplers or within Live itself (ie the ‘slice sample to new MIDI track’ feature). There’s a way to work around this, however, using the multi-pad recording function. This allows the user to manually record incoming audio across multiple pads of a Drum Rack.

To do this, enter Sampling mode and press an available pad to start recording. As soon as you want to create a new ‘slice’, press a different pad, and so on. Each time you press a new pad, you will be creating a sample ‘slice’ into a new Drum Sampler slot.

If you’re finding this hard to time correctly, for example, while trying to slice the transients of a fast drum break, try slowing the incoming audio down and then pitching it back up using Transpose once it’s recorded.

After having teased its arrival earlier this month, Ableton has finally unveiled its latest hardware device. Move is a compact controller and instrument that – like the latest version of Ableton’s flagship controller Push – can operate both tethered to Live and as a standalone device, thanks to an onboard CPU and rechargeable battery. 

Although it shares some obvious characteristics with Push, Move actually has more in common with the company’s iOS sketchpad Note. In its standalone mode, Move runs an onboard OS that closely resembles the workflow of Note. This allows the unit to run up to four tracks, each of which makes use of a version of one of Live’s Instrument Rack or Drum Rack devices.

These Racks make use of a limited selection of Live instruments and effects to produce both melodic and percussive sounds. The Drum Racks can contain 16 instances of the Drum Sampler device, which was recently added to Live 12.1, while the Instrument Racks can each contain a single instance of either Drift, Wavetable or Live’s Melodic Sampler. Each Rack can host two effects, one send and one insert, chosen from a limited selection of Live devices.

READ MORE: Ableton Move review

Patterns can be programmed using Move’s grid of 32 polyphonic pressure-sensitive pads, or via the button step sequencer along the rear of the unit. Both playing and automation can be recorded, overdubbed or recalled using Live’s Capture functionality.

Although, on the whole, the sounds offered by Move are largely preset-based, all sounds can be customised using the parameters controlled by a bank of eight touch-sensitive rotaries along the top of the unit.

Move also features onboard sampling capabilities. Users can sample via a built-in mic, a 3.5mm audio input on the rear of the unit, or by resampling the main output. It’s also possible to import samples via either a wired connection or Move’s onboard WiFi.

On that front, Move offers a number of methods for users to take ideas started in standalone mode for further development in Live. This can be done using the browser-based Move manager – again accessible via either wired or wireless connection – or by using Ableton Cloud, which lets users transfer Move projects to Note or Live.

Along with its standalone capabilities, Move can also function as both a controller for Live whereby its pads, sequencer and rotaries can be used to play and edit Live’s devices, trigger clips and input patterns. Move also functions as a USB interface.

The hardware itself has a fairly minimal range of I/O. The rear panel has 3.5mm jacks for audio input and output, which are joined by two USB ports. The first, a USB-C port, is used for power and connection to a host computer, the second, USB-A, is used for connection to MIDI devices. According to Ableton, Move’s onboard battery life is around 4-hours. It can also sync with other devices via Ableton Link.

Move is available now priced at £399/$449/€449. Find out more at the Ableton site.

Ableton Move: What is it?

Last year Ableton gave its official Live controller Push a significant overhaul and took the unexpected step of adding a CPU-equipped configuration, capable of running a version of Live within the controller itself. Whether used in this way or not, the third gen version of Push is an impressive and well-designed device – but it certainly isn’t cheap. 

Even without a CPU, Push is priced over $/£800, with that figure nearly doubling for the processor-equipped version. When we reviewed it, we concluded that its price point left an obvious gap in the market for a more affordable and less fully-featured controller; a potential ‘Push mini’.

Now Ableton has unveiled Move, which on first glance looks a lot like the little sibling to Push that we predicted. But is that an accurate way to categorise Move?

On the surface Move has several obvious things in common with Push. Like Push, Move is focused around a central grid of pads that are used to play, sequence and trigger instruments. Along its top edge are a bank of eight touch-sensitive rotaries, and a clickable wheel is used as its primary tool for browsing and selecting sounds.

The similarities go beyond what is obviously visible too. Like the top-end Push, Move comes with a rechargeable battery and its own processor, allowing it to operate both as a controller for the desktop version of Live and a completely standalone device.

There are, however, some crucial differences between what Move and Push are designed to do. Whereas Push aims to offer hands-on control over as broad-as-possible a selection of Live’s tools, Move is intentionally limited in what it’s capable of. Unlike Push, which can function as a creative tool, day-to-day DAW controller or live performance tool, Move – at least in its standalone mode, which is very much its main focus – is intended first and foremost as a sketchpad for initial ideas.

In fact, it’s more accurate to compare Move to Ableton’s iOS app Note. In its standalone mode, Move effectively acts as a hardware version of Note, using an OS that is a near identical copy of the app. 

This allows Move to load up to four tracks each based around a simplified version of Live’s Instrument and Drum Racks. The Drum Racks house 16 instances of Live’s newly-added Drum Sampler. The Instrument Racks, meanwhile, can each host a single instance of either Live’s Drift or Wavetable synths, or its Melodic Sampler.

Each Rack can also host two effects, one as an insert and one as a send. These can be selected from a list of Live’s more basic Devices – Reverb, Delay, Chorus-Ensemble, Saturator, Phaser-Flanger, Channel EQ and Dynamics. Move offers basic mixing functionality too, along with a hidden master limiter on the output.

On the whole, these Devices are all focused around presets – Move comes stocked with a generous library that matches the sounds found in Note, including various artist-created patches. All sound can be edited using the touch-sensitive rotaries along the top of the unit though. In most cases these allow for relatively deep, albeit still limited, editing of sounds. Sampled sounds are served slightly better than the synths here, which are largely restricted to macro-level control over core waveform and filter parameters.

The creative workflow will be familiar to anybody that has tried Note. It’s effectively a simplified version of Live’s clip-launching Session View workflow. Live’s Capture functionality – which retroactively recalls recently played notes and parameter changes – plays a major role, but it’s also possible to record and overdub in a more conventional manner. Standard Live tools such as quantise, scale modes, groove, note repeat and an arpeggiator all add extra flexibility.

Ableton Move: Performance and verdict

To preempt a criticism that will likely be levelled at Move, it is, in effect, just a fancy hardware version of an app that’s available for under £/$10. This is true in terms of pure functionality – in fact, Note isn’t bound by the 4-track limit, meaning you can conceivably create far more complex projects on your phone than you can with Move.

Aside from the fact that this characterisation ignores the value in the well-designed Move hardware itself – which we’ll come to shortly – it also misses the fact that, in-use, Move is more than the sum of its parts.

While Note can be fun and is packed with quality sounds, in our experience it suffers from an over-reliance on Capture and a lack of offline sequencing, as well as occasionally fiddly editing controls. Move immediately addresses these weaknesses simply by virtue of being a dedicated hardware instrument. Its polyphonic pressure-sensitive pads, unsurprisingly, also offer a far better playing experience than you would get with a touchscreen.

Ableton has also been smart in including a simple step sequencer along the lower edge of Move’s interface, meaning that patterns can be programmed more like a classic drum machine, as well as by live playing the pads.

A highlight of Move’s workflow is its fast and fun sampling functionality. By simply hitting the sampling button and pressing a pad in the Drum Rack, users can sample via Move’s 3.5mm audio input, through its built-in mic, or by resampling the output. 

This latter feature is particularly handy, as it allows the user to work around that 4-track limit by bouncing patterns or simple melodies down to a single Drum Rack pad. Doing so isn’t simply a way to overcome limitations, but also proves to be one of Move’s most creative tools. It’s here that the new Drum Sampler emerges as the real highlight of the toolset thanks to its playback effects that allow the user to apply ring modulation, granular stretching, looping, pitch envelopes and more.

A similarly handy feature is the 16-pitches mode that lets users play each Drum Sampler pad melodically, effectively allowing users to turn simple one-shot samples into melodies or basslines.

The hardware itself is also impressive. Move is slim and lightweight – far more so than Push – making it feel like a truly go-anywhere device, aided by the inclusion of the onboard battery (Ableton’s promise of 4-hours of life seems broadly accurate in our tests) and a built-in speaker, which isn’t much to write home about quality-wise, but means Move is a properly self-contained device.

On the whole, despite just a small screen, Move’s layout design is intuitive enough that users won’t get lost and reach for the manual – although some of the symbols used to indicate shift functions verge on being a little style-over-clarity.

While browsing sounds is mostly an easy and quick process, without the tagging system of live, adding user-imported samples to kits can be a bit of a hassle. If you're likely to use a lot of your own sounds, it's worth taking some time to prep and save custom Drum Rack devices.

It’s also worth mentioning that, although Ableton seems keen to put the emphasis on Move as a standalone device, its capabilities as a compact controller really add to its appeal. While the functionality in this mode is far more limited than that of Push – there’s little interaction with the browser or audio editing, for example – simply having the playing pads, step sequencer and eight macro controls available in such a convenient device will likely be very appealing to Live users looking for a compact controller setup.

 It makes for a convenient on-the-go interface too, although the limited audio outputs mean it’s not really a substitute for a proper I/O device.

'Continuity' and connectivity

Move performs well when it comes to what Ableton calls ‘continuity’, ie how easy it is to take your creations beyond the device itself. Move is WiFi-equipped but can also connect to a computer via USB-C. It’s compatible with both Ableton Cloud and its own browser-based Move Manager, and between these options users can export projects to both the desktop version of Live and Note on iOS. Ableton also tells us that export to Push standalone is coming in a future update too. As you’d hope, opening projects in Live is seamless, with both clips and devices available for deeper editing and arrangement.

While there’s no way to transfer clips or projects to Move from Live, users can upload their own samples to the device. A coming update – which we’ve tested – will let users create compatible Drum and Instrument Racks in Live and upload them to Move, albeit only making use of the compatible device list.

Verdict

What Move does, it does very well, but it’s also worth considering what it isn’t. As mentioned previously, Move is very much a sketchpad tool, and while a coming update will let users load custom drum and instrument patches created in Live, it’s really a one-directional tool. Move will allow you to develop ideas up to a point, but it’s definitely not an end-to-end device that will let you create a finished track. Given its limited analogue connectivity – just a single output for headphones or main out, USB MIDI but no conventional MIDI I/O – it’s not really suited for live performance either. Although the inclusion of Ableton Link does help here.

It’s also a sketchpad that will suit certain Live users far more than others. Move is great for roughing out rhythmic and melodic ideas, and playing around with simple sampling, but its sound design capabilities are fairly light beyond that. If, for example, you’re a musician who tends to base tracks around complex, self-designed synth patches, or by processing sounds using Live’s more complex and creative effects, you may find the included capabilities a little limiting. Similarly, while the sampling capabilities are great for quickly creating one-shots and simple loops, there’s little in the way of audio editing tools, and no sample slicing. 

It's worth saying too, that while Move's price is reasonable for everything it does, to get your money's worth, users need to buy into the full workflow. If, for example, you're interested in a standalone synth and sample sequencer but not concerned about seamless Live compatibility, Novation's Circuit Tracks offers more bang-for-your-buck. Similarly, both Novation and Akai make better-value compact devices if you're only interested in controlling Live.

None of that is necessarily a criticism – Move is limited and focused by design, creating a workflow that is fast and accessible. Overall that works in the device’s favour, but as a result it will never be able to please all users. For some musicians, Move might prove to be a gamechanger, but others will likely struggle to fit it into their creative workflow. All the same, within its remit, Move is a very well-designed device at an appealingly reasonable price.

MusicRadar verdict: Move is an excellent sketchpad and handy Live controller. Its limitations make for a fast and accessible workflow, but as a result it will suit some users far more than others.

Ableton Move: Hands-on demos

Ableton Move: Specification

KEY FEATURES: 4-track standalone instrument and controller for Ableton Live. Onboard battery, speaker, audio-interface, WiFi. I/O: 3.5mm audio out/headphone, 3.5mm audio in, USB-C (power and host computer), USB-A (MIDI). Polyphonic pressure sensitive pads, 16-step sequencer, 8 touch-sensitive rotaries.

CONTACT: Ableton

The idea of creating racks of effects isn’t something unique to Ableton Live. Logic, Bitwig, Reason and a number of other DAWs all have their own take on the concept, allowing users to create and save chains of effects – and the concepts we’re discussing here are applicable across the board. 

We’re focusing on Live here though for two reasons; firstly, the process of setting up, saving and controlling effect chains in Live is particularly easy, and second, the DAW has been updated with some truly excellent creative effects in recent versions.

Sometimes the best approach to building creative effects chains is simply to experiment – take far out presets from your favourite devices and place them one after another to see how they interact. 

There are certain combinations and go-to tools that we use regularly though. For practical purposes, it’s good practice to end all Rack chains with a Utility allowing you to adjust both the level and width of an effect at the output stage. 

We usually end effect chains with an Auto Filter too, with its cutoff set up as a macro, allowing us to automate or modulate the effect as a track progresses. Often we’ll add these at the input stage of an effect chain too, to alter the gain and frequencies of a signal before it hits the effects, which can make a big difference for effects such as distortion or compression.

Live’s Drum Buss is another device that’s a versatile addition to creative effect chains. Its input stage offers saturation and compression, which are particularly useful for adding thickness to percussive sounds, but its most handy tool is the transient control, which can help add punch to – or soften – sounds

3 creative Live Effect Racks

We’ve created three example Effect Rack devices that you can download with this issue and adapt for your own sound design experiments (requires Live 12 Suite). Each is designed for maximum creativity – we’re not aiming to enhance or mix a specific sound, rather we’ve created chains of effects that will push a sound into unrecognisable territory. Try feeding each percussion, instrument loops, vocals or whatever else comes to mind, and see what oddball results your can create.

1. Phased noise

Our first Rack begins with a vocoder to turn the input sound into white noise, which will then feed into LFO-driven filters, ring mod and phasers for maximum movement.

2. Rhythmic atmosphere

This chain makes use of PitchLoop89’s pitch delay capabilities – here modulated by the LFOs – combined with further Filter Delay in order to turn source sounds in randomised, percussive ‘rain’ effects.

3. Feedback machine

Our final chain uses the Echo delay to create a wall of feedback, which is then pitch shifted for alien-like tones, has a vocoder to add noise texture, and is then modulated using a choppy, randomised filter.

4 under-rated Live effects

1. Amp

Live has multiple sources of distortion, so its amp-sim can get unfairly overlooked. The guitar-style gain here sounds particularly good on kicks and sub-heavy bass.

2. Corpus

This physical modeller can be tricky to grok, but it’s great for adding pitched tonality and body to thin atonal sounds. Feed it MIDI from another track to ‘play’ this pitched effect like an instrument.

3. Erosion

Another source of distortion, Erosion applies audio-rate modulation based on a selectable source. Our favourite is Wide Noise, which uses independent left/right noise sources to distort audio for grit and width.

4. Vocoder

Think vocoder and you generally think ‘robot voice’ but in its default mode Live’s Vocoder uses a noise source as it’s carrier – perfect for adding a touch of white noise texture to any sound.

Born in Munich to a family of engineers, it was only natural that Robert Henke would someday combine his passion for audio-visuals, computer graphics and music production and become a technology toolmaker. 

Whilst studying programming at Technische Universität Berlin, Henke teamed up with Gerhard Behles. The duo founded the minimal techno project Monolake in 1995 and also began using the music programming language Max, which would later go on to provide a prototype for the duo’s own music making software – Ableton Live.

25 years later and Henke continues to shape Ableton whilst working on various audio-visual installation projects and lecturing on sound and the creative use of computers at European universities. 

Now in sole control of Monolake, he has also found time to focus on creating a 10th LP, the aptly titled, Studio. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that Henke is not wholly reliant on Ableton to instigate the creative process, preferring to source sounds from his beloved collection of hardware synthesizers and effects units.

What lay behind your initial interest in developing a piece of custom-built software that people could make music with?

“I was torn between two seemingly separate worlds – the world of engineering, which is my family background, and the artistic mind-set that I noticed very early on that also existed in my head. For a long period I thought that I’d have to decide which side I belonged to until I figured out that this thinking is very flawed because if you’re a good engineer you have to be creative and make beautiful things. As an artist, if you take your work seriously then you think about it and develop routines, so there is a lot of engineering and logical thinking in art.

“The reason I started to develop my own products was partially out of necessity. When I was a kid I had a Juno-6, a tape recorder and a Walkman and built a small mixer so I could do overdubbing, then I realised that I could add more stuff to make it more interesting. I was driven by necessity, but whenever I built something, I also noticed that it opened up new doors and I enjoyed the dialogue between inventing something and figuring out that it comes alive by itself because nothing is ever 100% how you envisioned.”

Does making music follow the same train of thought?

“Absolutely – it’s a mix of knowing exactly what I want to do, getting surprised by the results and having the freedom to say, okay, I want to make a second track but this sound in the background is so interesting let’s focus on that and see where it leads me. Whatever we do with art is the result of collaboration. We all stand on big shoulders, so the music I make is the result of all the music I’ve been listening to, the books I’ve read and the discussions I’ve had. It’s also the result of the people who make all of the beautiful tools that I’m using to give me inspiration.”

One might imagine the title of the latest Monolake LP, Studio, is related to the environment you work in. Would that be too obvious a conclusion to draw?

“A funny detail is that the font on the LP cover has been used in a lot of old studio equipment and is exactly the same as the legendary remote control for the Lexicon reverb that you saw in every studio in the ‘80s, but if you look closely you’ll notice that the text is slightly broken and some segments are missing. I really like this mix of technical perfection and little errors because that is the part where the technology becomes human again.

“Aspiring for perfection is fine – I don’t know how often I edited tracks to add or remove one bar or make the hi-hat sound less loud, but it’s also clear that it will never be perfect and I find that interesting too. This also happens within software and hardware development – you are fighting for something ideal but must always understand that you’ll never reach it. The interesting question then becomes, how far do you push it, and that’s the story of my life.”

Are you always trying to strike a balance between the human side and the technological side?

“I’m obviously deeply connected to my machines and have a personal relationship with all of them, but then at the same time I’m fascinated by nature and I will always find beauty in this combination. In nature you can find an interesting contradiction going on between repetition and change.

“For example, a forest has lots of trees, but what makes it beautiful is that every tree you find in there is slightly different. This concept of repeating things slightly differently lies at the core of granular synthesis and the idea of tiny variations repeating is a motive that goes through all of my music. It’s always been a struggle between perfection, repetition and change.” 

As the co-creator of Ableton Live, we’d assume you’d love software, but we understand that you actually prefer to source sounds from hardware synthesizers?

“First of all, I am from a generation where making electronic music was always connected with the big studio. I was always looking at photos of Trevor Horn and Jean-Michel Jarre’s studios or the Tangerine Dream stage setup with gigantic towers full of equipment and dreamt of having those machines and being able to make music with them. That’s the nostalgic part – the practical part is that all of these machines have been built by human beings with their own aesthetics, which means that you’re always in dialogue with the creator.” 

Why is it important to have an emotional dialogue with the creator of a hardware synth?

“I have a PPG Wave made by Wolfgang Palm, which, in some ways, is a very cryptic and reduced machine and not a very elegant instrument, but what he defined was very new. Every detail radiates his personality and aesthetic judgment, so when I play with the PPG I feel the spirit of Wolfgang in the room and that’s inspiring. I choose all of my machines by a very simple metric – does it make me happy when I play them? These machines became my friends.

“If I want to have some nice metallic percussion I go for the Synclavier or if I’m looking for choir-like strings then the Prophet is probably the way to go. From a very abstract, objective perspective I don’t need any of them and could make music in the computer alone, but sitting in this small room surrounded by machines I really like immediately puts me in a happy mental state.”

Is the fact that they’re somewhat limited compared to their software counterparts another important factor?

“That’s another aspect which I believe is essential. All of these machines are reduced and very limited in their scope, which means that you’re not getting forever lost. If I create a drum groove in the LinnDrum I have a fixed set of sounds and cannot change them. The only thing I can do is choose the bass drum, snare, tom and hi-hat and focus 100% on those. If I do the same thing in Live it’s very simple to adjust the decay of the hi-hat, make the snare louder or find a different bass drum, but that moves the focus away from the rhythm. That’s why these older machines help me to be creative – they say, okay, this is what I can offer you, now choose.”

Are you able to immerse yourself in the music-making process without your understanding as a software designer being obstructive?

“Yes and no. When I’m working on a sound, the analytical brain shuts down and I‘m just trying to figure out if it does something to me on an emotional level, then the analytical brain comes back when I feel I want to make a change. I like the fact that, in most cases, if I know what I want I can create it, but these systems are so complex that when you connect a few oscillators and filters it’s impossible to foresee how that will exactly sound, so I’m always being surprised - and if I wasn’t it would be very boring.

“The big challenge is that, to a large degree, I’m responsible for decisions at Ableton, so when I’m sitting in front of Live and notice something is getting on my nerves I have to have the discipline to either say ‘stop’ and write down what the problem is or just live with it like I would with any other product.”

In terms of the instrumental techno vignettes that we hear on Studio, are you looking to create something that is emotive and relatable or extraneous and mysterious?

“For me, electronic music was always an escape from reality. As a teenager living in the suburbs of Munich, I was lonely. I listened to stuff like the Alan Parsons Project and that took me to a different world. Going to a dark techno club at night also made me feel that way and I like that music can do this, so if people can enjoy my music and have a nice journey for an hour then I’ve reached everything I was looking to achieve.

“Every piece of this album has its own genesis and reason for being there and I spent a lot of time trying to shape the album as one big entity, but it’s not a concept album. It’s more than just a collection of tracks, but I just want people to enjoy what they experience and leave it to them how they try to make sense of it. That’s the beauty of instrumental music.”

We’ve discussed how a lot of the sounds you use are hardware-sourced, but what are you using on the software side for processing?

“Live is definitely important and I wouldn’t know what to do without the software because, quite naturally, it does a lot of the things exactly as I wished it would. If not, I make a big fuss [laughs]. I have this luxury of having designed a tool that is very much aligned with how I want to work, but I’m not using a lot of software synths or plugins because I already have so many sound sources here.

“What I am doing a lot is micro editing in Live, for example, arranging individual drum hits, rendering them to another file and then transposing and applying filtering and effects. I use the options that Live gives me in a very creative but not uncommon fashion.” 

Can you go into more detail regarding your workflow on this LP?

“My typical workflow is that I start with a sound coming from any of the machines here, typically because I’ve listened to something and been inspired by it. For example, I’ll try to rebuild a bass sound from a track that I thought was nice and of course fail, but on the way I’ll discover something that I really like, record it, put some drums on and suddenly something emerges from that.

“But part of the process is to separate the sound creation from the actual music composition and sometimes I’m in the mood to just explore, so I’ll play with a new synthesiser or machine that I haven’t used for a long time, discover a really nice sound and spend half an hour just recording it as an audio signal into Live. Around 90% of these recordings will be thrown away, but the 10% that’s left might offer a beautiful harmonic progression or interesting percussion and I may even rediscover these 5-10 years later and decide to make a track out of them.”

Are you frequently coming out of Ableton and running sounds through outboard effects units?

“Ultimately, I mix in Live with the mouse so there is no external outboard gear involved in that process. I’ve made music that I really like sound-wise that has been done 100% in a Max patch with the most basic filtering and DSP coding that you can imagine and it still sounds great, and I’ve done stuff with expensive outboard equipment that really doesn’t sound any better. It’s more a question of creative impact.

“For example, I recently bought a Solid State Logic bus compressor because I felt I needed a hardware compressor to tame some feedback effects that I’d made. I’m not normally a fan of compressors and didn’t buy it with the idea of needing to compress complex drum patterns, but I actually had a lot of fun doing exactly that. 

“The problem was that I had to rerecord it in Live and ended up replacing most of it using Live’s built-in compressor so that I could save the project. What’s interesting is that I needed the experience of compressing outside of Live to get an idea of how to do it in Live, so the inspiration came from the hardware but I learned my lesson and did it in software.”

Do you still have big ideas regarding how a software DAW such as Ableton can evolve into the future?

“We have tons of ideas regarding things we would like to do, or because our competitors are doing them and the market demands it. Of course, the situation is different nowadays because there’s so much interesting software out there that people have high expectations regarding quality and functionality and it’s become much harder to do something radically new.

“The software is nearly 24 years old now and people have got used to it, so we have to be careful when we change anything not to alienate existing users. In broader terms, it is clear that AI will change a lot of things in the music industry and already has. We are looking at ways to incorporate that into our workflow in a way that’s inspiring, beneficial and interesting. It’s the big development of our times and as important as sampling or the development of laptop computers and will definitely change the way that music is made.”

What aspects of the software industry do you think will be most affected by AI?

“When drum computers came out there was such discussion about drummers losing work and it’s true that a lot of studio session drummers did lose their jobs, but there are still people playing drums and we now understand that a human drummer is one thing and a drum computer is different. The same thing will happen with AI.

“We’ll understand that certain things will be taken over but in 20 or even 50 years people will still like to plug a single oscillator into a filter. The big question is on the professional or marketing side. No human being or orchestra will need to be involved in providing boring background music for a car commercial because all you’ll need to do is type in ‘orchestra score, dramatic, uplifting, 3 minutes 50 seconds, C minor’ and press go.”  

The forthcoming Monolake album, Studio, is released September 6 on Imbalance Computer Music. For more information, visit the official Robert Henke website.

Clean Bandit's Rather Be was a Grammy-winning, world-dominating hit. Released in 2014, the song soared to number one in the UK before becoming the seventh single to go three-times Platinum, later topping the charts in 11 other countries.

If you know the song, you'll undoubtedly know its catchy, staccato hook, which first appears in the intro's strings but is later echoed in a bouncy synth line in the verses. In a recent interview with the Tape Notes podcast, Clean Bandit's Jack Patterson has revealed how the patch used in that synth line - which can also be heard across a number of the group's other hits - was designed. 

Opening up the song's Ableton session for host John Kennedy, Patterson explains that the Rather Be sound was made with Operator, an FM synth plugin that comes with Ableton Live Suite, the DAW's premium tier. "It's just an Ableton preset," he says. "Not even a preset - if you just load Operator [...] you just have to turn two knobs, and you'll get it to sound like that."

Patterson then demonstrates the nuts and bolts of the Operator patch, which is a relatively simple patch based on a sine wave, with some pitch modulation added using the synth's LFO, along with some reverb.

"All it is is a sine wave," he says, "but it's got some modulation - an LFO, which is a control signal that makes it go wobbly on the pitch. But it only goes wobbly towards the end of the note, so the beginning of the note sounds in tune, but it goes all sad towards the end of each note, and a bit mournful."

Patterson identifies this as a signature sound for Clean Bandit: "To me, that's the essence of what a lot of our music is. It's potentially quite joyful music but with an undertone of melancholy. That synth sums that up."

He says that the group tend to lean towards clean and "pure" synth sounds, as opposed to complex timbres. "My grandma always had these electric organs that she'd get from charity shops in her house, and they always had these very basic, minimal, not overly complicated synthesizer sounds," Patterson continues. "They were the first synths that I played with, and that aesthetic really appealed to me."

"Especially if you're trying to mix in classical elements, maintaining that purity in the synth sound design lets those more complex sounds sit on top without it becoming too rich."

Listen to the full episode over at Tape Notes' website.

British electronic artist Kieran Hebden - better known as Four Tet - has gone deep into his music-making process in a two-hour-long interview with the Tape Notes podcast. 

Speaking with Tape Notes' John Kennedy, Hebden discussed the making of Daydream Repeat and Skater, two tracks from his latest album Three. He also gave listeners a fascinating insight into the creative process behind Looking At Your Pager, a club track released under his KH alias in 2022 that's become one of his best-loved songs.

Perhaps the most surprising detail of the conversation is that Hebden produced the majority of the track - which has received over 6 million streams on Spotify to date - in about ten minutes, all while sitting in bed on his laptop. "I don't really use any hardware or any instruments when I'm writing music - it’s always just me and the laptop," he says. "90% of the listening and mixing and everything for the music I make these days is on laptop speakers".

Hebden recalls starting off the track by throwing an acapella from his sample library into Ableton; the vocals are taken from '00s R&B trio 3W's No More (Baby I'ma Do Right). Slowing the sample down from its original 140BPM tempo, he noticed some time-stretching artefacts that he chose to cover up by looping a snippet of the vocal and layering it underneath.

Hebden then added another recording from his sample library, a drum loop produced with the Arturia DrumBrute drum machine, before realizing he had cooked up something special. "This is all happening in the space of three or four minutes... I just knew - I've got something good here, this is really good - but I was like, what's gonna happen here to turn it into something?"

The answer was a "wicked bassline", which came courtesy of Spectrasonics' Omnisphere, which Hebden describes as the "main synth plugin" that he uses for "absolutely everything". Rather than spend hours programming a new patch, though, Hebden opted to scroll through Omnisphere's extensive preset library, before landing on a wobbly dubstep bass preset called Swaggering Around. 

"Very little work went into it - it just came together and sounded good," he says. "It's just one of those wonderful moments where everything just falls into place instantly, without having to do anything."

Elsewhere in the interview, Hebden confirms that he's a big fan of using preset sounds. "I pretty much only use presets on things. I'll get the melody I want, I'll get it up and running... and I'll just cycle through loads of them one after the other until I find one that's quite nice," he says.

"I'll just choose a preset and that'll be it. I'm not doing any sound design type of stuff. I'm not one of those people that's like, 'I'm going to start with a sine wave, and then I'm going to do this, and then do this' - I don't really mess with any fundamental stuff like that, usually because I'm in a rush."

Hebden's minimalist, idea-focused style of music-making extends beyond his choice of sounds to his approach to mixing and effects processing. "I get asked these questions, like: 'what's your plugin chain on this and that'? ... on most of the stuff, there's nothing, there's no plugins on there," he says.

"Ideally, you're doing as little as possible. I pretty much never want to put a compressor on anything. If I have to put a compressor on something, it's to deal with a problem, usually. I want everything to be as dynamic and open and natural as possible [...] I'm still thinking about [Nick Drake's] Pink Moon when I'm mixing one of my club records!"

One of electronic music's most popular artists, Hebden has enjoyed a decades-long career that's seen him earn both critical renown and mainstream popularity. Despite having released his debut album in 1999, Hebden reached household-name status last year after headlining Coachella alongside Fred Again.. and Skrillex. He released his most recent album, Three, in March this year.

Listen to the full Tape Notes interview with Four Tet. 

Watch our 2013 In The Studio video with Four Tet below.

Ableton Live 12.1 is in public beta now. It's a chunky update, with plenty of new features and toys to play with. So, where to start? Handily, here’s our choice of the top new features...

• READ MORE>> Ableton Live 12 Suite review: “A generous update stuffed with ideas and real potential”

1. Ableton Live has pitch correction

This is the audio effect Live’s been missing most - for us, anyway - and one more third-party plug-in we don’t need, as Live moves towards fully self-contained status.

Auto Shift monitors and corrects the pitch of an incoming monophonic audio signal, moving notes up or down to conform to a specified factory scale, custom scale, or the project’s global scale.

It’s MIDI controllable, includes MIDI and MPE modulation, and has a Live mode, which responds faster, at the risk of occasional glitching. It also integrates with Live 12.1’s scale awareness for audio clips. Pitch effects being what they are, we can imagine how it’ll be used for Auto Shift for ‘wrong’ results as well as the ‘right’ ones.

We’ve used it with voice and bass guitar recordings, and Live mode was fine also, on an M3 MacBook Pro. What with Auto Shift and Shifter, Live users are sorted for pitch effects. Auto Shift may well be particularly useful for users of Push 3 standalone, who might want to perform live without a computer and want a little bit of pitch control, where third party plugins aren’t available.

Auto Shift is included in all versions of Live - Intro, Standard, and Suite.

2. The new Drum Sampler has X/Y effects

Drum Sampler is a little device that can replace Simpler for most of your drum rack duties - a drum rack can of course contain multiples of Simpler and Sampler, or any instrument, but either way this is the new best way to put one-shots in a rack.

It contains controls for attack/hold/decay, pitch, trigger/gate (where it’ll either stop when the incoming MIDI note stops, or it’ll keep playing to the end of the sample), a filter, modulation, and what most attracted us - built-in effects (just one at a time) with an X/Y pad. This is ideal for mapping to a touch pad or joystick controller, or automation.

It’s very rewarding to use, although we wish it was easier to MIDI map the effect controls - if you change to another effect type, the previous MIDI mappings are lost. Drop in Drum Buss after the rack, and you’re good to go for beats.

If you want slicing, warping, and looping, then you’ll still going to need Simpler, and you can always add your own favourite audio effect devices. Drum Sampler is however, a very handy compact device that bundles a lot into one, much like Drum Buss does.

3. It’s time to revisit Push 3

Arguably, a significant part of of Live 12.1 is about addressing shortcomings with the Push 3 standalone. A simple addition, for example, is the ability to rearrange tracks and scenes directly on the Push hardware. This type of update sounds trivial, but those are the everyday tasks that slow us down if they’re not easy to perform.

On a slightly higher level, it’s now possible to put devices into a new group on Push, and then to assign and manipulate the macros from there as well, right down to adjusting the range of each macro, and using the jog wheel to create and interact with variations inside the racks - we’re very pleased to see that the randomisation feature has made it, as that’s one of our favourite rack features.

Pushing the timing encoder selects global groove amount, and you can then turn this to apply groove to all of your MIDI clips. The groove that’s chosen is determined inside the Groove Pool, and saved in the default set. Be advised that Push 1 is no longer included in updates, so these additions apply to Push 2 and 3 only, or in some cases, to Push 3 exclusively.

4. Live 12.1 has updated mixing tools

Live 12.1 updates the Limiter and Saturator devices, and maybe this is another third-party plug-in redundancy moment.

Limiter has always been much-used (by us, anyway), as we’ve put it to work doing exactly what you’d expect a limiter to do - managing and containing the volume levels of individual tracks, or groups, or full mixes.

Our subjective opinion of the new Limiter is that it sounds better immediately, and can cover a wider range of tones, from clean limiting to a more obviously coloured feel. It now features a Mid/Side option, and new clipping modes - Soft Clip and True Peak. Furthermore, there’s a Maximiser function, which we’re pretty keen on, as it limits the dynamic range of the source, and allows you to boost it, using a simple Input Gain control; it’s a very immediate way to control the overall loudness of a mix.

We’ve never really bonded with Saturator, but we’re reconsidering it, especially when it’s used alongside Limiter - together they form a powerful mastering chain. Having said that, Saturator comes into play on individual elements (Ableton mention 808 kicks specifically), and bass enhancement in general. If tape simulation is your aim, we feel that it’s closer than ever.

5. Live 12.1 has more MIDI tools

Live 12.1 includes MIDI updates relating to editing, MPE, and accessibility. We’re borderline obsessed with the MIDI Find and Select tools in the MIDI Note Editor. Let’s assume you have some MIDI notes already there in a clip; click on the little magnifying glass at the top left, next to the Fold button, and a pop-up list appears, showing different types of MIDI parameters - Pitch, Velocity, Chance, and so on.

Select any one of those and the relevant parameters are displayed - for example, Pitch shows all the notes in a chromatic scale. Make your choices and click the Select button at the end of the parameter row, and the relevant notes are highlighted, and the changes are applied.

There are other new MIDI tools, such as Chop, and Glissando and LFO for MPE, but as an accessibility and general workflow feature, we must mention the new keyboard-based workflow for envelope editing.

Breakpoints can be created or selected with the Enter key, when the insert marker is in an automation lane, then the arrow keys on your keyboard can change the breakpoint’s value and position. A further benefit is that screen readers will give spoken feedback on these edits.

Finally, a reminder - a beta isn’t guaranteed to be 100% finished, or 100% stable; we don’t recommend undertaking any critical tasks on beta software.

Ableton has announced the latest update for the Live DAW, and it's a big one. Now in public beta, Live 12.1 arrives with Auto Shift, a new real-time pitch correction device, Drum Sampler, a one-shot sampler for drums, and much more. 

Auto Shift brings Auto-Tune-style pitch tracking and correction to Live for the first time, allowing users to tune vocals according to a scale of their choice. The device supports MIDI input, so you're able to create polyphonic harmonies by sending chords into Auto Shift, or add vibrato using the onboard LFOs. It's MPE-compatible, too, opening up an array of possibilities for expressive performances.

That's not the only new device in 12.1; Drum Sampler is a convenient one-shot sampler that's designed to be used in Drum Rack. Along with all the typical controls you'd expect in a sampler of this kind, the device is kitted out with a multi-mode filter, sub-oscillator, and an effects section that'll let you time-stretch samples, add punch or dial in frequency and ring modulation. 

Live's Limiter and Saturator devices have both received an overhaul, while the MIDI Editor benefits from an improved workflow that'll let you search for and select notes using various filters. Ableton has also introduced automatic sample tagging to Live, making it easier to find the sounds you're looking for in your library; all samples longer than a minute will be automatically scanned and tagged with relevant categories.

Ableton has a little something for users of its Push controller in the 12.1 update, too. Those that own Push 2 or Push 3 can now map Macros to Push's encoders and even work with Macro Variations, which let you quickly switch between different Macro configurations. Push's browser now supports the filtering and tagging system implemented in Ableton Live 12, and Groove can now be applied across an entire Live Set instantly using the controller's Timing encoder.

Head over to Ableton's website to find out more.

Veteran producer and Planet Mu label boss Mike Paradinas has been exploring the peripheries of electronic music for 35 years via aliases such as µ-Ziq, Jake Slazenger and Kid Spatula. His often visionary releases have mapped almost every corner of the electronic spectrum, while championing genres such as juke, footwork and IDM.

Best known for his µ-Ziq moniker, Paradinas’ latest album, Grush, is based on tracks created in hotel rooms prior to being road tested on stage. A vibrant collection, brimming with reverberating hardcore, jungle and footwork-laden beats, Grush is an effortlessly nostalgic kaleidoscope of melodic bangers illuminated by µ-Ziq’s unmistakeable signature.

Your Planet Mu label has been around for over 25 years now, which is an achievement in itself. How have you navigated the move from physical to online sales?

“It’s actually 30 next year. At the moment, it’s probably the most difficult it’s been for lots of record labels, which is probably more to do with the cost of living crisis. Global interest rates, manufacturing and postage has made everything so expensive that nobody wants to buys stuff at that price. Digital has been taken over by the majors and DSPs seem to be trying to squeeze the independents out somehow. You can sort of understand why they’re doing it, but artists don’t even get paid for the first thousand listens. When I was on a major I used to earn thousands and be able to make a living, but these days artists are earning in the low hundreds per month.”

Presumably, how you find and sign artists has also changed significantly. Is it based on intuition and are there certain markers that an artist needs to hit, generically or otherwise?

“A lot of its based on gut feeling, so you obviously have to have that first. Having said that, these days we do have to look at other things the artists are doing to see if they’re going to be a good fit. We look at analytics and followers, but you can’t always take that seriously. Someone might have 10,000 Spotify followers but no gigs and no other visibility – and maybe they bought those followers. It helps if an artist has engagement with an existing scene and is doing interesting things, but artists who are fans of Planet Mu and send us demos are usually okay.”

When µ-Ziq debuted in 1993 with Tango n’ Vectif it was seen as having a very cutting edge sound. Did you benefit from it being made during a period when technology allowed you to genuinely stand apart from your peers? 

“In those days, we all used the cheapest things we could find and a lot of the gear was borrowed. I remember seeing Ed DMX selling musical instruments at Music & Video Exchange in Notting Hill and seeing 303s on the shelf for £99. 101s were everywhere at the time and everyone was buying them, so if you wanted something to sound a bit different you’d have to get equipment that other people weren’t using and build around that. It was all very minimal, but the sound came from whatever we were using at the time.”

Were you tempted to create something that sounded innovative at the expense of the composition? 

“It was just an exciting time and we were finding new ways of composing. I was genuinely into the compositions I was making and if it sounded horrible it was because I liked things to sound that way and apologise [laughs]. We didn’t think we were doing anything particularly technologically advanced and we weren’t at the cutting-edge – we were buying technology that was 5-10 years old and making something new out of it.”

These days, does it feel more difficult to stand apart from other electronic artists?

“People can see when you’re trying too hard and it’s the music that people want to hear that rises to the top. Today, it’s still to do with compositions and the sounds that people are using – you don’t need to have a lot of equipment, just a bit of imagination and something to say. Obviously, the technology has changed the way people write and compose and the whole landscape of music scenes, but underneath all of that if musicians have something to say that can be recognised then it will come through in the music and you can use cultural tropes to send messages to people. Techno’s been going for 40 years now, so when you’re quoting part of that it has a meaning that people will get within the scene.”

Do you think genre descriptions are less prevalent now and is that a good thing?

“There’s a new genre every week, like drift phonk, baile funk or the new distorted Jersey club sound that’s coming through. What you’re talking about is the fact that everything has been culturally fragmented because of digital technology and that has affected record labels and music scenes. There hasn’t been anything that’s captured the imagination of the country because the country itself is fragmented. When Britpop happened there was only four TV channels and everyone watched Top of the Pops. Now everyone’s playing games or watching YouTube and our attention has become fragmented so the culture isn’t unified like it was. That’s probably why a lot of people haven’t heard of certain genres coming through, but they do exist.”

You’ve never really been a gear hoarder, but at some point you switched to being completely in-the-box. What precipitated that move?

“Around 2005, I split from my missus and was living in a bedsit so I had to sell all of my equipment to get some money. I bought a laptop and just used that and have been in the box ever since. It was a difficult transition, but I don’t know how much of that was to do with my mental health as opposed to how soft synths were back then. Obviously, everything’s improved a lot and you can do whatever you like in the box. The sound’s not the same because the process of using physical equipment is different, but it’s just as good and a lot more convenient because it’s easier to play gigs when you’re just taking a laptop.” 

Did you notice that adjustment change the sound of your music in some way?

“I find that I’m writing exactly the same sort of shit whether it’s on a broken guitar or a laptop. I’m not saying that technology doesn’t lead you down paths because it does and I would like to get back into equipment at some point. I’m totally in the box for most things except for a few controllers, which I use for playing live, but I do have a few synths now, mainly for the kids to play around with. They’re interested, but distracted by gaming and would rather play Fortnite than make music. My daughter does have some music apps on her phone, but she’ll use them when she doesn’t have anyone looking over her shoulder. She hates any input from me – I think I can be a bit annoying!”

When you’re working on tracks on the road, is it literally just the laptop or do you bring a small MIDI keyboard and a few bits of hardware?

“It’s just the laptop. I do have a MIDI keyboard for playing live, but don’t tend to use it in hotels. I just want to get ideas down quickly, so I use the laptop version of a typing keyboard, which does restrict me in terms of the melodies I write at times but by not using a keyboard I’m not writing the same sort of melodies that everyone else is. I usually have a melody in my head, so I’ll just write them in with the mouse.”

Are you still on Logic or have you transitioned to Ableton like so many?

“Royal Astronomy was the last album I wrote on the Atari and then I moved over to Logic around 1999 when I wrote Bilious Paths. I did experiment with Ableton but it did my head in so I’m still using Logic. I know that Ableton has a lot more options now and I haven’t updated Logic for a while, but I don’t want to jinx everything and haven’t really got the time. 

“Between running the label and my kids, I’ve often only got 10 minutes to get a track written and then I’ll go back and hone it down over the following weeks and months. I suppose I’m quite lazy – my soundcard is so old that it doesn’t work with my new computer; it’s just linked to my old computer and speakers. I do think good speakers are important though. I didn’t have good speakers for years, but now I have a pair of Genelec 8030C monitors.”

Tell us how your latest LP, Grush, came together. We understand it’s based on tracks that are in some way connected to live performance?

“I released Magic Pony Ride a couple of years ago and wrote an ambient album, 1977, at the same time which came out last year on Balmat Records, then in the months following I was writing tracks while I was playing live in support of those albums. I always like to write one new track for each gig so I have a reason to play live and a few tracks that excite me. 

“A lot of the tracks that the [new] album is built around, like Hyper Daddy, Imperial Crescent, Windsor Safari Park and Metaphonk are ones that I’d written for those gigs. Belvedere was written in my hotel room because I’d arrived a few hours early, although I didn’t actually play it in the end because it needed a better mix down.” 

So you’ll literally write a track a few hours before playing a gig?

“I used to do that all the time. I once wrote one in the soundcheck when I supported Orbital at the Royal Albert Hall. It was so easy to put something down on the Atari, so I had 30 minutes during the soundcheck, wrote a track and played it that same evening.”

There are three tracks on the LP titled Reticulum – do they act as a thread?

“I had a little whiny synth lead sound saved called ‘reticulum’ that was used on all three tracks, although I changed it a bit so it doesn’t quite sound the same in each one. One’s an ambient track, another is quite a fast jungle track and the other is more techno, but the titles are just ways for me to remember what the tracks are. For example, Manscape is a remix of a track my wife made called Cloudscape.”

Drums drive a lot of the tracks, but did you specifically want to focus on electronic styles from the past like jungle and hardcore?

“I’m less nostalgic now – I’m just creating stuff completely cynically because I don’t know how to make anything else. I’ve tried making all these modern beats that the kids do, but I’m fucking shit at it. People like it and dance to it and there’s a resurgence of jungle now anyway with artists like Coco Bryce and Tim Reaper, so I thought, okay, let’s pretend I’m trendy and going back to it when I’m actually useless at writing amapiano or whatever the new genres are.”

Do you often find yourself listening to other electronic artists and wondering, how did they do that?

“A lot of the time. Yesterday I was listening to an album by AG Cook called Britpop, which has great production and is similar to the sort of stuff I would make if I could, but I can’t because I haven’t got the talent. He runs PC Music, which is probably one of the biggest electronic music labels in the UK.”

How have you found drum programming in the box compared to your previous use of hardware drum machines? 

“Hardware drum machines are easy to use with Logic and I was always good at programming, but when I started using Cubase, or Cubeat, which is like a cheap version of it, I’d do it all in the DAW. Once I got a sampler in 1995 and started cutting up breaks, I found that instead of doing it all by ear, mapping it out and playing it on a keyboard, I’d just plonk a break beat on the screen, chop it up with the scissors and move it around, then reverse and pitch stuff if need be.”

What software libraries or tools do you find stimulating?

“I just use whatever’s in Logic and go through the menus until I hear something. They bought Alchemy, so you can probably hear on my last few albums that I’ve been using that a lot. I like a sound to work with another sound and for everything to sound balanced before I EQ or use a mastering plugin. I bought iZotope’s Ozone plugins for mastering, but for music I use iZotope or Logic exciters to bring things out from a mix and do find that the Logic ones are slightly more subtle.”

You mentioned having at least a few pieces of hardware…

“I’ve got a Nord Wave synth in a box that I really like – on Bilious Paths and subsequent albums I used to MIDI it up to Logic alongside a Nord Lead 2. Otherwise, I was using an Alesis Qmini as a MIDI keyboard but the USB port broke so I’m now using the laptop keyboard as a MIDI keyboard. The Roland System-1 Plug-out is based on the old modular Roland System 100 that The Human League and Aphex Twin used and I’ve had fun playing around on it with the kids, but don’t particularly like the spongy keyboard so haven’t used it in a track.”

You also have a Korg MS-20. Where did you pick that up?

“It’s actually a new one they re-released. It’s still called an MS-20, but the keys are smaller than the original. My friend bought it but needed money for the rent, so I bought it from him. It’s got really nice strong sounds that are good for rave tracks and I prefer those to be the lead sounds in a mix. For that type of track, I’ll quickly find a riff on the MS-20, play it in live and cut the audio up in Logic.” 

We read that you hate the term ‘sound design’?

“The word ‘design’ implies that you’re making something for a use and know what you’re doing, but I like to improvise or just use what’s around me and go off gut feeling. For me, sound design negates the emotional side of making music, so I prefer descriptions like ‘composer’ or ‘musician’.” 

The new µ-Ziq album, Grush, is out now via Planet Mu. 

First rising to prominence with the extraordinary Laserbeam in 2022 (that year’s most played dubstep track according to the 1001 Tracklists database), Ray Volpe has continued to launch increasingly seismic dubstep-flavoured cruise missiles, most notably the extraordinary SEE YOU DROP earlier this year.

Riding high on scooping the Best New Artist at last year’s Electronic Dance Music Awards and the phenomenal success of his ‘Volpetron Ascends’ tour (which included 13 sold-out shows), we grab Ray to have a chinwag about his process, his journey, and where his music might ultimately take him next…

Firstly, let’s talk about SEE YOU DROP, it’s got such a characteristically full-on sound. How did the track first develop in your mind? 

“I started writing the second drop first in London, late February 2023. It was my week off leading into Rampage festival in Belgium, where I knew I had to come out swinging with something special for that set. I made the second drop and opened with it, to an awesome response from the crowd which felt amazing to have that acceptance from them.

“I felt it was more of a second drop in terms of the flow so I immediately worked backwards, trying to figure out how to make something less in your face and more ‘me’, which is more catchy for a first drop. Originally, I had used vocals from Savage’s Swing on top of the first drop but I quickly realised so many of the newer EDM fans have no idea what that song is. That version was definitely meant to be played live but it sort of backfired as no-one would sing along to that one.

“Fast forward to maybe June, and I started sample searching and found the full sample from what you hear today. It’s a full phrase but I chopped it up to give it a little catchy melody that’d be easy to get stuck in your head after a bit. I think the extended fake out really made it catchier too – when you first hear it you don’t really expect it to go that long and the little chopped ‘drop drop drop’ melody just keeps going and going. It worked out really nicely in my opinion.”

How would you typically first approach writing new tracks? Do you start with beats or with melodic/sonic elements?

“This process is always changing for me. Sometimes I start with a drop, sometimes I start with a vocal melody. It really depends on what I’m feeling that day inside of the DAW. I think having a structure is good at times to create things, but I also think having a more chaotic approach where nothing is planned can lead to fun results.

“I learn more that way personally. It’s just easier for me to let things out when it feels natural, more than feeling like I have to make a chord progression to start. It feels more like work that way, ya know?”

How did your music-making career first begin? Who were your influences and what technology did you use in your early days? 

“I started making music in 2010. I was only 12, almost 13 years old. I come from a video editing background. I had been making video content online over various anonymous accounts since I was nine or so. Stop motion content, tech tutorials, graphic design videos, and video game montages. The montages were usually to Call Of Duty clips, and EDM was the primary music for that community. It made me fall in love with the genre and I immediately wanted to explore the creative side of it and how to make it.

“I love knowing how things are made, in any field really. I started in FL Studio but quickly moved to Ableton Live within a year as it was very similar UI-wise to Adobe video editing software which I was already super familiar with. A lot of the montages that got me inspired were soundtracked by names like Skrillex, Crookers, Tha Trickaz, Dubsidia, Big Chocolate, etc. Some throwbacks in that list!”

We first became aware of you with the awesome Laserbeam. How did the success of that track change things for you, and did it affect how you approached writing at all?

“It changed every aspect of my life. It opened a lot of doors that were never open before. I got to finally play so many festivals for the first time, it connected me with so many artists outside of bass music that I never thought I’d ever talk to. It quickly made me realise how terrible I am with stress and time management too – I thought I was stressed out before Laserbeam, but I had it so easy. It made me reevaluate my priorities and start being really picky about every move we made from there.

“Some people say (and it’s already somewhat of a hot take to say) that it’s not hard to get the momentum, but it’s hard to maintain it. I believe it. Every day my team and I just try to see how we can continue down a genuine path while also keeping the buzz alive for the project. I still approach music the same way though, nothing has changed there. I try not to because then I’ll just get in my own head about making Laserbeam 2 or 3 or so on. It’s normal for sure, I had that [tendency to stress] for the first six months or so, then quickly realised I need to shift that mindset if I actually want to do this.”

What is your DAW of choice and why?  

“I use Ableton Live. I’m in 12 Suite right now. I love it. It was natural for me to pick this one, coming from video editing it felt similar enough in how things are placed around the program with the timeline and panels.”

What synths are your particular go-tos for bass?

“I stand by Serum for everything bass-wise, with a little bit of Sonic Charge’s Synplant as well. A lot of people use Vital and some others too but I just like sticking to what I know, I’m a bit stubborn that way. I’ll probably expand eventually – it takes me a while!”

What do you use in terms of plucks and pads and the wider synthesiser palette elements?

“I use synths like VPS Avenger and Spire for pads, plucks, etc. Then for ‘real’ instruments like guitar, drums, etc, I write a lot of metalcore and stuff like that on the side, so I’m super Kontakt Expansions-heavy.”

Do you prefer writing in software or using hardware – and is there a difference between the two?

“I have actually never worked with any hardware before. It might be due to my beginnings – coming from the super low side of a middle-class family (hardware is expensive!). Also, I started so young and was a nerd for computers and software so much. I don’t see myself ever really going in the hardware direction in the future.”

How long do you typically spend in the studio? And what is your approach to mixing?

“I spend as much time or little as needed. I don’t give myself a schedule. I let everything come out naturally. Sometimes I won’t touch Ableton for two months, then I’ll be in there every day for 14 hours a day cranking out four crazy ideas back to back. It really depends on a lot of factors. It’s all about the right moments for me and feeling motivated. I mix as I go, I know where my subs need to be, my kicks, etc, so I just do it all as I produce and I have the master on throughout that process too, so everything is always in a playable state.”

How conscious are you of social media and audience reaction, and does feedback help you to decide what types of track to write and play?

“Social media is incredibly important to me. A lot of artists don’t take it seriously enough, or feel like they shouldn’t rely on it. It’s the wrong way to go about it. If you’re posting an ID to your socials, and everyone is eating it up, you know you have something special on your hands. At the same time, I’ve posted countless clips online where it gets little to no reaction, those are songs I know should sit on the backburner for a bit and either rework or scrap entirely etc.

“It’s an incredible tool to gauge reactions. Make music for yourself, of course, not for social media, but you should use that tool in front of you. It’s a real-time crowd as if you were DJing at a show but 24/7 in your pocket on your phone or at your desk on your laptop.”

Do you enjoy collaborating with other artists, and what are the benefits of that process?

“I love collaborating with friends! I don’t do it enough, mainly due to schedules never aligning properly between the two of us. There’s the obvious benefits, like merging fanbases/demographics and growing as an artist, but there’s also smaller and more impactful personal benefits like making life-long friendships in the industry. Kayzo and I were always friendly with each other but really clicked during our time together on his tour [which Ray opened].” 

Where do you prefer to be? In the studio or on stage?

“I love them equally. I try to make sure the performances are high quality with the music selection, visuals, and my energy on the stage. At the same time, I love creating so much. Making music is what I was born to do. I can’t pick one to be honest!”

Do you think that we’re due a commercial dubstep resurgence? It’s been over a decade since its ‘mainstream moment’… 

“I think so, but not in my area specifically. The underground runs the direction of everything, and we’re in a very UKG world right now over there. Skrillex and Fred Again won a Grammy for Rumble which is super old school and has that UK influence, that’s definitely the next phase of mainstream dubstep.

“In terms of this super accessible and super ‘EDM’-sounding dubstep, only a few of us push this very commercial sound in my opinion, with Crankdat and Eptic being two off the top of my head, and I would definitely love to hear more artists trying to push this specific sound back.”

What advice would you give out to anyone who was wanting to follow in your footsteps?

“Plan everything, but at the same time be ready to pivot. Consistency is the key and you should use social media to your advantage. Adapt or sink. These are all small, simple, but powerful pieces of the puzzle. Also, never give up. I was told my project was dead and came back further than anyone in the industry would have imagined. You can do this.”

What’s next on the agenda for you and your music, Ray?

“We’re currently planning the visual side of my next headline tour project. It’s more than just a standard set, and definitely something that I’m really excited about. I can’t say much more about it outside of the fact that they will include my biggest headline rooms yet. I can’t wait!”

How many music production podcasts do we need in the world? As many as there already were plus one more, according to Ableton, which has just launched its self-explanatorily titled Doing Music series.

The premise isn’t groundbreaking - in each episode host Craig Schuftan will interview an artist “about the hands-on approaches they use to spark ideas in their work” - but that doesn’t mean that Doing Music won’t be worth listening to.

In fact, one of the aims of the podcast is to “challenge the myth that creativity is something that some people have and others don’t”, so if you’re inclined to dismiss yourself as inately unable to come up with musical ideas, prepare to be proved wrong. 

Doing Music isn’t aimed specifically at Ableton users - it’s designed for “anyone with an interest in making music,” or maybe even just an interest in how music is made. The hope is that, after hearing to the series, listeners will build up a toolkit of creative strategies that they can apply to their own music.

This isn't the first time that Ableton has attempted to help people with their music making. You can still download the digital version of its 2015 book, Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers, for free, and it has a couple of free interactive websites - Learning Synths and Learning Music - for you to visit, too.

The first three episodes of Doing Music - featuring YouTuber Cavetown, producer and vocalist Sofia Kourtesis and Equinoxx founder Gavsborg - are available from today, with a new episode set to be released every two weeks. Find out more and subscribe via the Ableton website.

British techno legend Luke Slater is a man of many aliases. He’s probably best known for his work as Planetary Assault Systems, a moniker under which he’s been releasing tough, drum-machine-focused techno since the mid-’90s. While that strain of techno is undoubtedly a cornerstone of Slater’s sound, Planetary Assault Systems is only part of the story of who he is as a producer.

Slater’s prolific body of work touches on ambient electronics, acid, house, psychedelic dance music and crossover electro-pop, working as aliases including The 7th Plain, Clementine and LSD, as well as under his own name.

More recently, he’s been releasing music as L.B. Dub Corp, a project loosely rooted in the sounds of classic house, but one which allows Slater to experiment with elements of jazz, soul, electro and any other influences that happen to grab him in the moment.

Later this month, L.B. Dub Corp returns with new album Saturn to Home, a collection of largely vocal-led tracks with contributions from house legend Robert Owens, Berlin artist Miss Kittin and dub vocalist Paul St. Hilaire, as well as featuring Slater on drums – an instrument he started playing as a child but has never previously worked into his own releases.

We caught up with Slater in his enviable studio to talk about his relationship with his gear, his approach to collaboration and how he finds space to experiment.

The new L.B. Dub Corp album Saturn to Home is the first time you’ve incorporated your own drumming. Tell us about how that came about…

“It’s something I’ve been pondering on for quite a long time, actually. But A, I didn’t have the kit set up and B, there wasn’t much of it left to set up anyway. It’s just never been the right time to start exploring that. It’s not really part of what I’ve been doing for a long time. Even though I’ve always been interested in it. There’s never really been a place for it.

“The L.B. Dub Corp album, it just suited that more. There’s something about real drumming; it doesn’t matter how good you are at programming acoustic drums on a computer, it doesn’t really quite capture the feel. It’s so subtle sometimes and you can get really close with programming, but the human-ness of real drums, as someone who started out playing drums before anything else, that’s really important to me. So when I started thinking about L.B. Dub Corp and what we were going to do for this album, one of the first questions was, ‘should I use real drums on it?’ 

“My experience of recording real drums before this was pretty much zero. The last time I played drums properly I was a kid. For two months, there was this experimental period where it was just me and the kit, and a friend of mine who helped out a bit by moving mics around. We were testing all these different things. We weren’t really following the rules much. We were just trying to tune the drums and put stuff on them to get something that sounded good.

“I think there’s three tracks with live drums on the album and it took two months to actually end up with something that I thought was good enough. I mean, I’m not a professional drummer; I’ve got a feel, but I don’t play the drums every day. I do what I can, but the feel is there. After two months, we had drums that I thought worked. Then I managed to get them into some kind of state where they worked as a dance track. That was the bit I was interested in – whether they could be turned into something that I could play in a club. 

“I learned a lot from the process. In the end, most of the good stuff came from just having one mic, really dampening the drums and then just recording it as dry as possible. With all the processing I put on it afterwards, that seemed to be the answer. We tried a multi-track take of drums, but it just didn’t really come across in the same way. So yeah, a sort of Motown-style one mic job.”

The album is quite vocal-led. How did those collaborations work?

“Traditionally I’ve worked with vocalists before in the studio, but I’m actually now more of a fan of working remotely. I think it depends how you do it, though. I still wanted an engagement with the vocalist. On this album, it really was all about the vocals, though. For example, the track with Robert [Owens] was about me backing up his vocals with L.B. Dub Corp music, rather than taking his vocals and sampling a bit and just putting them around a dance track. I really wanted to get that across to him and give him a free rein to do what he wanted. He completely just went for it, big time. 

“Each track has been different. Saturn to Home with Miss Kittin, that track I have to admit is pretty Bob James influenced. It’s that kind of production that I was trying to get. That track just sat there for months and I couldn’t find any vocals for it. I tried my own vocals on it but that didn’t really work. I happened to be at a gig and Miss Kitten was there and I hadn’t seen her for a while. I said, ‘Look, I’ve got this track. It’s pretty off the wall. It’s not what you expect, but I think it’s meant for you.’ I sent her Saturn to Home and I think she felt really freed by the idea of doing something over a track that isn’t a standard techno track, but is pretty different and quite jazzy, I suppose.

“The initial thing that each vocalist had to work with was just a kind of basis, but when they’d done their vocals I changed quite a lot around it. It wasn’t like I was giving them this finished track and just saying I need a few samples on it. I actually changed stuff to fit around their vocals afterwards, so that it made sense with their vocals, rather than just laying them on top. 

“There’s a lot of vocal samples in the tracks too, though. There’s a lot of street samples and a lot of samples that I’ve taken on travels. With Arnold from Eindhoven on Only the Good Times, I was lucky to capture him, because that’s such a good message. There’s also bits of street drumming that I come across. I’m always getting my phone up if there’s any kind of sound on the street and it’s got rhythm in it.

“L.B. Dub Corp is a vessel where I can try things I don’t normally do, while keeping it relative to the soul of house music. The origins of L.B. Dub are totally influenced by the origins of house. The album is part homage to that, at the same time as trying to move things forward

Do you have certain bits of gear that you associate with different projects and aliases? Is your 909 always a go‑to for Planetary Assault Systems, for example?

“No, I think that comes more into effect with live shows. With Planetary live there’s always a 909. Whatever the processing or however it appears it is 909-led. But in the studio, that’s not always the case. There’s been Planetary Assault Systems records where the drum machine has just been a little plugin, or something done on the Elektron. It’s not always 909s for PAS and 808s for L.B. Dub Corp, or anything like that. It’s pretty flexi, really. When it comes to live shows though, Planetary is definitely built around the 909.”

What do you think is the secret to making electronic music work live?

“The thing I’ve always found about live shows is that, quite rightly, I don’t think people should care too much about what you’re actually doing on your machines. There are some people that are intensely interested in what you’re doing, and that’s fine as well. But when there’s a crowd, it’s more important to me to try and get across something instantaneously, on the fly, of the moment, when I think of it. That kind of on the spot action is always the aim for me.

“The way I’ve done that is by simplifying what I need to do as much as possible. Overcomplicating things doesn’t really work for me – it can work for some people, I don’t think that is a general philosophy of having a successful live show. For me, I don’t like to veer too much to the machines and not always totally with the crowd. There’s a kind of midway point with technology when it comes to live shows. That’s a comfortable point for me. I don’t want to get too bogged down in stuff. I want to be present.

“The only thing I’ve ever thought was the best tip for live shows is always to have some kind of backup in case all the machines fail. I’ve been to a few gigs where there’s been someone on before me doing a live show and, you know, it all goes down. It might go down for like 20 seconds, but it seems like two hours. Having a backup is a really secure way to approach it.”

We’ve noticed you’ve several different DAWs running in your studio. What are you using each for?

“I was using Logic, originally, back when there was only Logic or Cubase at the time. Logic was the first DAW I used with audio. Then Ableton came along and pretty much took over the whole creative process of what I do, because it was so quick at looping and stacking up things very, very quickly.

“Then Bitwig was introduced and I think that’s great, too. It’s Live-esque, but some of the interesting routings you can do with synths and some of the things they’re building into it are more extensive than Live and quite interesting. I’ve found it really interesting for experimenting with sound. 

“I’ve ended up with a three-DAW situation. Sometimes they’re all literally synced up – so Logic could be synced to Ableton, and I might have Bitwig synced up as well. And there might be another machine synced up to all that… You might think that that’s quite confusing, but it works quite simply because Logic, at this point, really gets used as a kind of stem recorder. A lot of tracks end up in Logic to be mixed. For a live show, I only ever use Ableton, just because it’s really reliable.”

L.B Dub Corp's Saturn to Home is out now on Dekmantel.

Ableton Live 12’s new Generative and Transformation MIDI Tools (available in Standard and Suite editions) are a great way to add musical parts that we might not come up with on our own. 

They apply to MIDI notes only, and are divided into two distinct categories – generative (where entirely new notes are created) and transformative (where existing MIDI notes inside a clip are rearranged in various ways).

These aren’t fully ‘generative’ in the sense of creating continuously evolving patterns, but they are very good for creating musical parts to use in compositions, and, if you really want something non-repeating for a song, you could try applying them to very long MIDI clips. As we see the growing use of AI, we have to ask ‘is this cheating?’, and the answer is ‘no more than using any other feature of a DAW is cheating’.

They’re tools that we manipulate to get what we want; they’re not in control of us, and we really enjoy using them. Follow our walkthrough as we create a beat and a bass part using these tools. We recommend working at slower BPMs while you get familiar with the process, things can sound chaotic quite quickly.

Of course in reality you can combine programmed and generated parts, but let’s commit fully. Open Live 12, and load a drum kit, we’re using the Gen Purpose Kit. Double-click in the top empty clip slot in the same track, making a one-bar MIDI clip.

Below that you can specify note range, note lengths, and velocities, number of voices, and density (amount of notes). If the Generate button is yellow, your changes happen instantly. If not, they’ll change once clicked.

If you don’t like the result, re-apply Generate, in order to spawn new notes, or move the controls and watch the notes update. Tip for generated beats: move the clip start marker around to make the beat start where it sounds good to you.

Try the Meld Vertical Bass preset. We’ll generate again. This time when you select Seed, adjust the Pitch, Duration, and Velocity controls as well. From the Transformation Tools tab at the left of Generative Tools, select Recombine, and click the Shuffle button.

Every DAW has certain features that its users love more than others, and even when we switch over to another DAW, we often wish we could bring them along for the ride. (Personally, I'm a recent Ableton convert that still misses the sound of many of Logic's excellent stock plugins.)

One of the most well-liked features of FL Studio is its step sequencer, a relatively simple but versatile tool for pattern creation with an intuitive interface that's quick and easy to use. 

If you've departed the land of Fruity Loops for pastures new but find yourself missing its sequencer, you're in luck, as developer YRAKI has designed an M4L emulation for Ableton Live that recreates FL's sequencer with the addition of new features and capabilities.

Juicy Loops, now in its second iteration, recreates the UI of the FL sequencer and gives you six tracks with up to 32 steps. Each track's length can be varied to produce polyrhythmic patterns, and the direction of play for each track can be reversed. Each step's velocity can now be adjusted individually, while velocity deviations can be tweaked with a percentage dial.

You're also able to route out velocity data as modulation to control parameters elsewhere in Ableton Live, and modulation can now be set to sample and hold mode. What's more, patterns in Juicy Loops can now be directly exported as MIDI clips and dropped into Ableton's Arrange window.

As it's a Max for Live device, you'll need Ableton Live Suite to run Juicy Loops, if you haven't purchased the M4L add-on. Juicy Loops is priced at $20.

Find out more over at YRAKI's Gumroad page.

Choosing the right drum sounds for a track is vital, as they greatly influence the music’s energy. They complement other elements like melody and harmony, enhancing coherence and ensuring the rhythm section supports the song’s emotion effectively. Well-chosen drum sounds also elevate production quality, making the track more engaging.

Crafting Drum Racks with diverse sample variations enables quick experimentation with and customisation of sounds in Ableton Live 12. This fosters exploration of different textures, tones and rhythms.

Now, it’s simpler than ever to swiftly and seamlessly generate drum racks with various sample variations in Ableton Live 12, by using the sound similarity search function within the Drum Rack and saving these sample variations to the User Library.

We’ll start off by loading in an existing Drum Rack preset and sequencing a drum pattern. Then, we’ll proceed to swap samples in the Drum Rack. Along the way, we’ll save a couple of these sample variations, effectively creating new Drum Racks, and store them in the User Library.

Load a Drum Rack and generate a drum pattern

Begin by either loading a preset drum rack from the Library or crafting a new one. Then, construct a drum pattern in a MIDI clip for playback. Once completed, activate the “Show/Hide Similar Sample Swap Buttons” option in the Device Title Bar.

Swap all pads to similar samples

You can now use the “Swap All Pads to Next/Previous Sample” buttons, enabling seamless swapping of all samples within the Drum Rack. Try various sample combos while maintaining the drum pattern sequenced into a MIDI clip, all with a simple button click.

Refine the drum rack by swapping samples

You can selectively swap samples using the “Lock Pad for Similar Sample Swapping” options on each pad. This ensures certain samples are unchanged in future swaps. Or use the “Swap to Next/Previous Similar Sample” buttons to switch samples on individual pads, without affecting others.

Store diverse sample variations for future use

While you’re in the swing of swapping samples in the Drum Rack, save selected variations to the User Library by selecting the “Save Preset” button in the Device Title Bar. This preserves custom Drum Rack configurations for future use.

It’s not unusual for soft synths to be furnished with new preset packs - everyone loves new sounds, after all - but Expressive E’s new Phase Plant Expressive Suite is rather more than that. Yes, it contains presets - some 400 of them, in fact - but these are MPE patches that, with the right controller, can give Kilohearts’ Phase Plant plugin whole new levels of expression and nuance.

As you may be aware, MPE (or MIDI Polyphonic Expression, to use its full title) is a cutting-edge technology that enables you to go beyond simple velocity- and aftertouch-sensitivity and add real time control in multiple dimensions. By moving your fingers, you can adjust not only volume, but also pitch and other parameters on a per-note basis. You can even use MPE’s capabilities to trigger and modulate the likes of LFOs, filters and effects - the creative possibilities are pretty much limitless.

Expressive E is an MPE expert, having been working on musical expressiveness since 2013. The latest manifestation of the company’s accumulated knowledge is the Osmose, the company’s standalone MPE synth and controller, which has the advantage of looking like and having the familiar feel of a standard keyboard, so you’ll feel comfortable playing it right away.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the Osmose is the perfect partner for the Phase Plant Expressive Suite, enabling you to harness its articulations and textures to the fullest extent. Whether you’re playing emulations of acoustic instruments, cutting-edge electronic ones (by way of FM, wavetable, and analogue synthesis) or cinematic soundscapes, the levels of control and expression are stunning. 

That said, owners of Ableton’s MPE-compatible Push 3 also have a lot to gain, as this gives you a great way of unlocking the Phase Plant Expressive Suite’s potential, too. Owners of other MPE controllers should also take a keen interest.

Above all, the Expressive Suite is here to help you to get better, more musical results, and to give Phase Plant owners a whole new world of creative opportunities. An intro sale means that they can currently get it as a sound expansion pack for $39/€39, or as four separate preset packs for $15/€15 per pack; a bundle containing both Phase Plant and the Suite is currently on offer at $99/€99. These prices only apply until 15 April, though, so don’t delay.

You can find out more and buy the Phase Plant Expressive Suite on the Expressive E website.

A popular sound in techno today is a hybrid of modern production techniques and the rave sound of the ’90s. In this fusion, faster tempos, detuned synths, melodies and acid basslines are combined with modern techno sounds. 

A multitude of music production techniques were born in the rave scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s,  the emphasis for producers from this era was firmly on inventiveness and experimentation. 

Plugins and software synths can allow us to creatively recreate sounds that bear resemblance to sounds from the rave era. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to create rave-style techno, including building an atmospheric synth and trance synth using Ableton’s Operator. 

To lay the foundations for your track, program in a kick drum with a strong transient, and sub bass. Use closed and open high hats and a clap from a  909 drum kit (NI’s Battery, or D16’s Drumazon are good choices). Rolling basslines come next, and then it’s time to start thinking synths…

Building an atmospheric rave-style techno track 

Open Ableton Live and an instance of Operator. In Osc 1, choose Sub 1 and set Osc position to 21% and Fold to 20%. On Osc 2, choose Harmonic Series and set it to 71%. In the Filter section, set the Low Pass Filter’s Resonance to 0 and Frequency to 20Hz. Drag the Frequency knob to the Matrix to assign it to the Amp with a value of 52. 

In the Mod Sources, set the Amp to 1.09ms, Decay to 683ms, Sustain to -19dB and Release to 467ms. Add in a simple melodic pattern, ideally one that repeats three times with a variation in the fourth bar. Add an aggressive distortion (We’re using Universal Audio’s Raw) with the filter around 11 o’clock, distortion low and volume high. 

Next, we further dirty the sound with one of our favourite saturators, FabFilter’s Saturn 2. Setting the crossover point to 300Hz, and bring Band 1 to around -3dB. We set the Band 2 level to +8dB, and the Band 1 Drive to 65%. Set Band 1 Level to -2.73dB. Using an EQ, roll off the low end below 150dB and cut all above 5kHz.

Add Ableton’s Chorus-Ensemble to give the sound movement. Set the Rate to 0.26Hz, Feedback to 47% and Dry/Wet to 50%. Add Ableton’s Echo with a Dotted ⅛ Echo, Feedback at 50%, and Bandpass Filter focused between 600 and 1.5kHz with a small amount of Resonance. Turn on Ping Pong Delay and set the Dry/Wet to 25%.

Add Ableton’s stock Multiband Dynamics to process the three frequency bands by applying compression. Set the Output of the High Band to 1dB, Output of the Mid to 1.1dB and Low to -5.4dB. Set the Amount to 100%. Add Ableton’s Reverb and set the Predelay to 17.4ms and Decay to 3.62s. Set the Dry/Wet to 32%.

Lastly, add or Ableton’s Auto Filter (or a filter like FabFilter’s Simplon). Cut off the low frequencies below 150Hz, and cut high frequencies above 20kHz. Highlight each of the plugins and right click to save them in a Group. Save the chain in the User Library in Ableton by clicking the disk in the upper right hand, give it a unique name.

 Trance synth

Create a MIDI track and add Operator. In Osc 1 and Osc 2, choose Basics Shapes and set the Osc position to 67%, then Detune to -20. In the Filter section, select the Bandpass filter and set Resonance to 21%, Frequency to 1.54kHz and Drive to 9.75. Click on the Frequency and drag it to the Matrix on Env 2 with a value of 9.4. 

In the Mod Sources, set the Attack to 0, Decay to 129ms, Sustain to -inf dB and Release to 24.8ms. Create a catchy one-bar melody. Add aggression by adding Overdrive, focused around 3.33kHz. Set the Drive to 47%, and Dry/Wet to 17%. Add OTT, and adjust the output of each band to taste. Set the amount to 100%. 

Add an EQ and cut the low end below 270Hz, boost the mids around 500Hz and roll off the top end above 10.9kHz. Add movement to sound by adding an echo and selecting a 1/16th note. Set the Feedback to 50%, Dry/Wet to 22% and turn on Ping Pong. Use a bandpass filter to focus the echo around the midrange. 

Create a parallel reverb chain that allows you to mix the processed signal with the dry signal. Add a reverb, highlight it and select Group. Turn on the Hi Cut and roll off frequencies above 800Hz. Set the Predelay to 22ms, Decay to 2.5s and Dry/Wet to 100%. Right click inside the Group to select ‘Create Chain’ to create a dry chain.

Add Ableton’s Compressor to the parallel reverb chain, and sidechain the audio from the Trance Synth, and select Pre FX. Set the ratio to 4.34, attack to 0.01ms, and fast Release around 60ms. Set the threshold to -40dB, and set the Dry/Wet at 100%. This compressor gives the synth a tighter sound, with less reverb tail. 

Add a second compressor after the parallel reverb chain and sidechain the compressor to the kick in your track. Set the Ratio to around 4:1, the Attack to 0.01 ms and Release to 13.6 ms. Set the threshold to taste, around -10dB and the Dry/Wet at 100%. You could also use a dedicated plugin like Cableguys Kickstart 2 for this. 

Pro tip: synth stabs

A synth stab adds character to a rave style techno track, and brings a modern edge to the production. A VST library like Native Instruments’ Reaktor or Spitfire LABS is a great place to look. For our example, we selected Reaktor’s Lazerbass, but scroll through what’s on offer and find an instrument you like to make it your own. 

To get started with shaping your ‘stab’, create a MIDI pattern and place your sound where there’s some space. In order to start processing, add an EQ and roll off the low frequencies below 100Hz. 

Add some saturation to the stab (we used FabFilter’s Saturn 2 but your DAW may have options). Try setting the drive at a low value, turning up any crunch or overdrive and setting dry/wet to 100%. Add a 1/16 note delay (try something like Soundtoys EchoBoy for this), and set the mix to a low value. For thickness, use a Neve preamp-style effect like Kush Audio’s Omega N. Shape the result using a vocoder, or even just a band-pass filter. 

Lastly, add space using a reverb. Choose a preset with a predelay of about 15ms, a large room size, and set dry/wet to a low value. 

Mid/side EQ is a mixing technique that can be put to practical or creative use, and Live has what we need to apply it, via the EQ Eight and Utility audio effect devices (if using Live Intro which doesn’t include EQ Eight, keep reading, we’ve got you covered).

EQ, or equalisation, is the science and art of cutting and boosting selected frequencies to improve the sound of individual tracks or an entire mix. Mid/side EQ is when we break down the elements of a stereo track signal and EQ them differently – the mid being the sounds common to both left and right stereo tracks, and the sides being the sounds that appear differently on the left and right sides of the stereo spectrum.

Another benefit is that when we split mid and sides like this, we can take the opportunity to adjust the levels of these elements, and even apply different audio effects to them. It’s something we’ve used to clean up stereo field recordings, and also enhance stereo files without affecting the centre, when mastering other people’s music and the stereo files are all we have.

Open Ableton Live and import or create a stereo source; it could be a stereo mix of a song, or even a MIDI part made with one of Live’s factory instruments, anything that you want to experiment with. It could even be one of those fat bass synth sounds that sounds great alone, but swamps the other tracks in a mix. We want some stereo to interact with.

Load the default EQ Eight preset from the Audio Effects section in Live’s Browser, and locate the Mode button towards the right side of the interface. There are three options here: Stereo (the default, where left and right channels in a stereo signal are jointly affected by EQ changes), L/R (which separates the left and right channels in a stereo signal), and the third option, M/S.

The Edit button below that will now show alternately S or M as you click it, and at the same time, the central display with the default four filters (up to eight should you need them) will update according to the current mode. Now you can apply different EQ values to each. Use the EQ Eight’s triangular toggle button to expand the view for more detail.

As mentioned in our intro, the EQ Eight effect is not included in Live Intro. But we can get round this thanks to audio effect racks. Instead of EQ Eight, load Utility. Right-click/control-click on Utility’s Width control, and choose Mid/Side Mode. Set the control all the way to the left, so it says 100M. Now you’ll only hear the common middle part of the stereo signal.

Right-click/control-click on the Utility effect that you’ve loaded, and choose Group, creating an audio effect rack containing Utility. Click the small Chain List button at the left of the rack, and you’ll see the Utility chain. Click the chain, and type cmd-d to duplicate. In that new chain, change the Utility M/S setting so it says 100S. Your stereo source should sound normal.

This technique works with any version of Live. Now we’re free to use the rack mixer to adjust levels of the mid/side signals. We can also insert a Channel EQ on each chain, and set them differently. Imagination is the only limit, because of course we’re also free to drop any audio effects we want onto the individual chains; compress the mids, add reverb to the sides, and so on.

Having teased it earlier this year, former Teenage Engineering and Ableton staffers Svante Stadler and Rikard Jönsson - now operating as a new company called Forever 89 - have released their first product, a sample-modelling drum machine known as Visco.

This is designed for “fluid and fast transformations of any drum sound,” and can model any sample you feed it. As such, it promises to “free you from the usual limitations of working with recorded audio.”

Whichever method you use to design your drum sounds - sampling or synthesis - there are pros and cons, but Visco is designed to give you the benefits of both. We’re promised the speed that comes with using existing audio, plus an easy workflow that simplifies the synthesising process.

This is thanks to the blob, a malleable 2D representation of your sound that appears in the middle of Visco’s interface. This can be grabbed, pushed and pulled using a variety of tools, giving you a tactile, intuitive way of making realtime tweaks.

Thanks to the blob, you can bend and stretch samples across frequency and time, merge the qualities of two samples and fine-tune your sounds to fit your mix. Every sound can use a mixture of two samples, and as well as blending them, you can also create sounds that start with one sample and end with the other.

Visco isn’t just a drum sound designer, though - it also enables you to sequence its eight voices, and has its own beat generator to provide instant inspiration. There’s a mixer and effects section, plus a set of performance-friendly macro controls that are designed for live use. Don’t worry if you don’t want to use your own samples, either, as a preset and sound library is included, too.

Forever 89 describes Visco as “a novel, capable, and playful way to engage with creative sound design and performance to make your music sound more like you.”

Visco is available now for the introductory price of $99 (regular price €139) and runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU formats. Find out more on the Forever 89 website.

Avid's Pro Tools DAW has received its first update of the year. Now available to download, Pro Tools 2024.3 arrives with a range of new MIDI tools and now offers support for third-party MIDI effect plugins.

Pro Tools 2024.3 introduces the concept of MIDI Chains, a new way of routing and processing MIDI data within the DAW. As mentioned, this allows you to make use of third-party MIDI effect plugins, but also to quickly and easily create custom MIDI routings between various tracks and instruments.

Avid has implemented three new MIDI plugins in Pro Tools: Note Stack, Pitch Control and Velocity Control. Note Stack is a note generator that lets you stack up to nine notes on top of each incoming note and tweak the probability of the note generation.

Pitch Control and Velocity Control applies transformation to both pitch and velocity of incoming notes and can also be used to apply randomized processing to your melodies, chords and beats to create evolving patterns and textures.

In addition to these three plugins, Pro Tools has partnered with several plugin developers to offer bundled MIDI effects plugins to those on its Artist, Studio and Ultimate plans: these include Modalics' EON-Arp, a creative arpeggiator plugin, Audiomodern's Riffer 3, a sophisticated MIDI sequencer and automatic pattern generator, and Pitch Innovations' Groove Shaper, a rhythm generator.

The latest iteration of Pro Tools also adds support for live re-rendering in Dolby Atmos for the bundled Dolby Atmos Renderer, a tool for rendering and previewing Atmos mixes from within the DAW.

Avid's clip-based app Pro Tools Sketch has also been updated with improve drag-and-drop functionality between Sketch and Pro Tools. 

Last week, Ableton released Live 12, a new version of its flagship DAW that also features an expanded array of tools for MIDI generation and transformation.

Find out more on Avid's website.

Ableton Live 12, a significant update that brings new instruments, effects and workflow improvements to the hugely popular software, is officially here. 

Check out the MusicRadar Ableton Live 12 Suite review if you haven't already, or read on for an overview of what's new below.

Alternatively, if you're ready to get your hands dirty and want some help getting to grips with the software, check out our guides to Meld, Roar and Granulator III, or watch our video on the five things you need to know to get the most out of Live 12.

23 years in the making...

Yes, Ableton Live first appeared over two decades ago, and over those years the software has not really changed radically in terms of form or function. So 12 is not, of course, a complete redesign as Ableton doesn’t really do big design changes. The company knows its core users are pretty happy with the overall formula staying put. 

That foundational clip-oriented idea has been with us since 2001 when Gerhard Behles, Robert Henke and Bernd Roggendorf took version 1 of the software to the NAMM show. While there, Hans Zimmer was so impressed by the software’s real-time audio time-stretching features that he helped spread the word – and the rest is history. 

Live’s initial flurry of updates meant that version 4 landed by 2004. This was where Simpler was introduced. It kept getting updated every year until version 7 came out in 2007. Here we met the Drum Rack, many now-core effects and Sampler. Other big additions included audio to MIDI support in v9 and v10 bringing us the Wavetable synth. Updates then began to slow and 2021’s version 11 was the last biggie, and introduced the Hybrid Reverb and Spectral Resonator and Spectral Time among a slew of other additions.

And we get to a dozen

And so to version 12...

Live is a true cross-platform Mac and PC DAW. This feature was written using a Mac, but all notes apply to both, and if you’re on PC simply substitute the Command key with the Control key when using shortcuts!

If you are an existing Ableton Live user, we think you’re really going to be thrilled with the updates and additions to the DAW. And if you are a non-user, a couple of these additions might well be the ones to tempt you to join the club. 

What's new in Live 12?

The updates to Live 12 are broadly spread across new devices, workflow updates and a refresh of the UI. Yes, we did say it wasn’t a redesign, but Ableton have certainly given the main UI a clean up. So let’s get into everything Live 12. 

New devices

We’ll start with the most exciting additions – those instruments and effects. The big synth addition is Meld. This is a great-sounding ‘macro oscillator’ synth with bi-timbrality meaning that it can play two different sounds and layer them together. It’s an MPE instrument so you can get even more expressive with it, and its sounds are  genuinely very varied, from FM organs to more evolving pads and noisier elements. 

This is quite an experimental synth and almost demands that you create your own sounds with its many dual oscillator combinations, accessible from two pop-up menus. WIth oscillator names in the 25 or so on offer being things like ‘Bitgrunge’ and ‘Noiseloop’, you can guess that Meld is capable of quite abrasive, digital sounds as well as more natural ambient washes. It’s also got very extensive modulation and routing, too, so its sounds can be very dynamic and evolving. It’s a great addition, we think, and should be the first port of call for experimentation. 

Next is an update to an Ableton Live classic: Robert Henke’s Granulator II. Granulator III updates one of the best ever Max for Live devices, a grain sampler where you add any audio file and it smashes it into grains, letting you do some amazing stuff along the way. You can choose to have your audio split into more grains, loop a certain section, add an LFO to make it jump around; all sorts of craziness. 

Granulator III has a new UI with all of your favourite options and a new expressive control that lets you add vibrato, bend notes and generally get a little more dynamic. You can also now record audio directly into Granulator III in real time plus there’s MPE support.

Granulator has always been one of Live’s best sound design tools as you’ll soon come up with something usable or just plain weird. It’s also one of those Live devices where you may not know what you are doing, but pretty much every control has a dramatic effect and this third update is certainly one of Live 12’s highlights.

Roar is another hefty addition to the Live fold, a saturation effect that is capable of subtle colour or bizzare glitchy effects. It features several non-linear saturation curves and three saturation stages. Because you can run these in series, parallel or even as mid/side or multiband styles, you can get some truly eclectic effects. You can use Roar to beef up sounds or utterly destroy them - it really is that flexible. 

The best part is the modulation matrix and feedback routing that lets you add motion throughout and you can easily end up with the kinds of effects that just carry on doing their thing long after you think you’re done! 

Roar is one of the best additions and along with Meld gives the DAW a couple of weapons for harder styles of music if that is your thing. 

MIDI additions

There are certainly lots of MIDI upgrades. First up, the new MIDI Tools are set to be revolutionary for composition. There are both Transformation tools and Generative tools all aiming to take even the most basic of MIDI data on new, unexpected journeys. 

The Transformation tools include nine advanced arpeggiation, and articulation tools that let you create different MIDI notes and progressions. Arpeggiate, for example, allows you play the parts of a chord as separate notes; Connect fills gaps between note sections with relevant notes and chords with similar density and pitch; while Ornament adds extra notes such as flams. There are many more so you can stretch and compress notes, add legato patterns, strum, you name it, these MIDI Tools aim to have you covered.

And we haven’t even discussed the generative ones yet. As you might expect, these are more for creating ideas from scratch rather than adjusting what you already have, so Rhythm generates rhythmic patterns; Shape generates melodies based on constraints that you set; Stacks is a chord generator; and finally, Seed is a more random note generator. 

These are great additions just to add a flash of inspiration and help move you along in a project if you are stuck. And more importantly, they are all easy to implement and use. Other MIDI additions include CC Control which is a new utility that allows you to set up easier MIDI communication with external hardware. 

Meanwhile in Clip view, the old Notes view has been renamed Pitch & Time so you can, for example, select pitch options to keep notes in a set scale when editing, flip them and more; or time options to make big note length changes and add a more human/random feel to notes. Finally, there are other key and scale additions that allow you to sync effects with a scale so any MIDI effects that work with pitch can be set to a scale. 

Workflow improvements

Live 12 is now better for visually-impaired users as it now works with braille displays and screen reader software on Mac and Windows. Interestingly, Ableton have also pointed out that by implementing these accessibility features “we needed to improve keyboard navigation in Live, something that has benefit for all users.” 

This is probably related to the new Navigate drop-down menu, then, which makes it easier to access most of Live’s major features by way of the keyboard. Essentially it allows you to move to different areas of the UI and use the Tab key to move around these parts (you have to switch the mode on or else Live will do its typical switch between Arrangement and Session views as standard). 

Lots of new shortcuts have also been added to move around in these different areas so, for example, Tab moves to the next control and Shift Tab to the previous, while Cmd/Option Tab and Cmd/Option Shift Tab move to the next control on the same row. There are further short cuts and controls; you can now solo tracks even when you have the computer MIDI keyboard enabled, for example – all useful ways to navigate if you are more keyboard inclined.

One addition that many will welcome is the ability to see the Session view mixer in Arrangement view, which makes that window in Live look a lot more like a traditional DAW. 

Live’s browser has some big additions for v12, with filters added to make searching for sounds easier. You can choose by preset type, sounds by type, or character. This certainly makes homing in on what you need a far slicker experience. You can search by filter or tag, using the search bar or by looking for specific tags. All the instruments, effects, and presets in Live’s Core Library has also been pre-tagged with ’sensible labels’ to make them easier to find, but you can easily create new tags should you wish.

Also useful is a browser history which makes finding previous searches that much easier.  Any browser views can be saved as tags or searches. There’s also a new Sound Similarity Search where you start with a sound you like and ask Live to find similar sounds. This is more useful than you might initially think, especially if you are like us, and always seem to be turning to the same sounds all the time! 

Additional features

As you’ve probably gathered by now, this is one of the most substantial updates to Live in a long-while, and we’ve not yet covered the whole thing. When it comes to the extras, some of the final bigger headlines come with additions to Ableton’s Packs. 

There’s a new Performance Pack which comes with a set of devices for a more custom experience when playing Live live, so you can perform live looping arrangements and have a Performance Control floating window that acts like a controller in its own right and can be fully customised.

The Packs also now include Lost and Found for more ‘unexpected instruments’ like Foley instruments and varied percussion. Plus there’s also a new Beats Tool Pack with 120 Drum Racks, more than 180 loops and effects. Finally, Live Standard gains eight existing Suite Packs, four instruments and an effect, which seems pretty generous.

There’s even more implementations that we haven’t yet covered in detail, but what we’ve surveyed here represents the biggest updates. We think you’ll agree that version 12 is a solid update to Ableton Live.

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year.

Best of 2023: “I’ve done just a tiny percentage of what he’s been through, but I’ve not got a Tim Burton friend who’s asked me to score 50 movies for him yet.” Apashe – real name John De Buck –  is sharing with us his love of legendary cinematic maestro Danny Elfman; both an inspiration to the Belgium-born Canadian genre-blending musician, and his idea of a dream collaborator. 

“He’s kind of like me. I feel like he’s also done that switch from being in a band and making mostly pop-rock music and then Tim Burton hit him up to score music for movies. Now he’s writing pieces for classical music. That really sparked my interest. That’s both what I want to do and kind of what’s happened to me already. I wish to be like him, one day.” 

We’re speaking to Apashe during the mixing process of his new album Antagonist, the follow-up to 2020’s Renaissance – wherein the style-mashing polymath enlisted the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra to take his emotive and intense electronic tracks and expand their sound into the realms of the hyper-cinematic. Antagonist continues the journey, adding the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra and a children’s choir into the mix. 

“It’s definitely easier because I know what I’m doing a little better,” explains John. “For Renaissance it was almost like jumping into the unknown. I didn’t know what was possible and what was really complicated to write. What can you ask of an orchestra and where’s the room between the two spaces? All the small little details I didn’t quite know. So now it’s more complicated because I know there’s more room. Now the question is how do I make that work.”

Turning up

John’s route into music came while studying electroacoustics at Concordia University. From there, his career developed into a stint at Apollo Studios in Montreal, where he worked as a co-producer on the sound design for numerous video games. In 2014 he embarked on his own artist career. With his recent settling into an electronic-meets-classical hybrid style, we wonder where his interest in this fusion began? 

“It was a journey because originally – as a teenager – I was just sampling classical music because I loved it. It all kind of started from that point in time. I just love taking really old recordings and trying to make something new out of them. I’ve always been a fan of sampling culture, and then after a while you kind of realise that everything has been sampled, everything has been eaten up and chewed a million times. It’s hard to make something original. Then it was around the same time that I went to university to study music and it was there that I learned about orchestration.” 

“[At university] I got into film music and then music for advertising. I was learning all these different things, and trying to play with different instruments. I loved all of that and it was nice when, for example, [when freelance trailer-scoring] a client wanted an orchestra, you could use something like a Kontakt instrument and then play around with it.”

Though John began using orchestral sample libraries, such as those designed by Spitfire and Orchestral Tools, he began to be irked by a perceived lack of realism. “At the end of the day, some of them work and some don’t. I love those libraries but it came to a point where I wasn’t getting a certain tone from samples that I like. I wondered if I needed to print it on vinyl then record it and destroy it? I didn’t really know how to get the tone I liked.”

It was at this point that John began to look for smaller ensembles that he could record, before sampling (and muddying to taste) later. “For Renaissance we did the first symphonic orchestra with the Prague Philharmonic. I had a lot of fun composing and having that back and forth with the arranger.” 

But recording the orchestra wasn’t always enough; John wanted to get his hands dirty with the finished stems. “Getting the stems and destroying the recordings was fun. Sampling yourself means you can directly do what you want or what you need. This new album Antagonist is my second try at composing for an orchestra and then sampling it.” 

Revenge of the orchestra

John points out that, in terms of similarities, electronic music and classic forms really have very little in common; “Electronic music is a lot more repetitive and is often more really created for dance purposes. It’s loud and compressed. Classical music can’t really be as repetitive or loud, and you can’t compress those classical instruments really because they’d just sound really bad. They’re almost the polar opposite in a lot of ways.”

Listening to some of the new record’s (in production at time of writing), tracks such as the epic Gasoline (which features Delhi-based hip-hop artist Raga), the incendiary Revenge of the Orchestra, the intense, choir-dominated Rise at Nightfall and the bouncing Hasselhoff, we’re blown away at the scale and complexity of the arrangements. We wonder if John sections these arrangements to make space for the more classical moments?

“I don’t necessarily put the arrangements into ‘sections’, but I like to keep the old sampling ethos of trial and error. I’ll really feel that section that I composed for the orchestra then I’ll decide what I do with it. How can I chop it? How can I effect it and re-use it? So, sometimes it works, sometimes it’s difficult. I wouldn’t say it’s easy all the time but it’s definitely an infinite source of inspiration. For me it’s pretty easy. If it went through the filter of being recorded already, that’s because I like it and if I can’t chop it up or sample it too much then I’ll keep it as is.” 

We ask more about a few of the tracks we’ve highlighted. Firstly, we’re staggered to learn that the massive, hellish choir in Rise at Nightfall is software-based. “The choir there is fake at the moment. When the symphonic orchestra is real it gives you leeway to sprinkle some software on there, it sounds really real though. That one is pretty straightforward. It was just a recording of the orchestra with that on top, there hasn’t been any sampling on top of that one yet. 

“We’re recording with a choir in two weeks, but not for this track; I actually kind of like how the software choir sounds in this there as it is. I find software choirs work well when it’s sustained notes, and it’s kind of ‘big’.  As soon as you want tricky details, words and vocalisations then it’s a lot more difficult, but for that kind of use, it’s actually quite good.”  

With all of these classically-disciplined musicians to command, we correctly assume that John reads and writes sheet music. “I read music enough to ping-pong with my collaborators. I work in Sibelius,” John explains. “I did two years of orchestration study at university, so I do read music and I used to work in Finale [at university] so I can use multiple programs for notation. 

“Now I work with an orchestrator, Frederic Begin, who I get to write straight partitions (sheet music per-instrument). When you write for 65 instruments, it becomes a whole different job. I don’t even know any composer who does their partitions themselves. It’s a job in itself.” 

John describes in detail his demoing process, and shares that most of his demos have placeholder string sounds via Kontakt and Orchestral Tools’ libraries. “Basically I send Frederic all MIDI stuff and then we bounce back the Sibelius files. I mostly re-touch articulations because the rest is always kind of good. He really copies my demos and the difficult part is that I want the recordings to sound like anything but my demos. They’re made in the box so I try to go as far as I can from there. But that’s his reference point. He always has the best suggestions to bring life to my compositions.”

Boxed in

John tells us that though most of the sessions for Antagonist were recorded into Pro Tools, he likes to mix using Ableton Live. “I prefer mixing while I compose, I do that easily in Ableton Live. It’s too much of a pain to stem things out and put it back in. I only really like Pro Tools for recording elements. It’s been a few years but my Pro Tools shortcut skills are getting slow now.”

Apashe is something of an Ableton aficionado, but he’s recognising similar momentum over at Bitwig. “I feel like more people are drifting towards Live, and Bitwig is also attracting new people. Ableton started in a similar place to where Bitwig is now. Ableton became a reason to give up on your old DAW and switch, and Bitwig is starting to get that same traction.” 

Within his Live-based setup is a pickle-tray of familiar mix plugins: “I’m all the way in the box. The only thing I use that’s not in the box is when I’m going to record some synths. It’s all toys for me that I play with. It’s either fully instruments or in-the-box. I’m starting to use more Live plugins, otherwise I’m digging into the Melda Production bundle, I use iZotope. Because I’m old-school I still use Waves a lot for things like vocals. 

“For mixing, aside from the Melda, I’ve been using Oeksound Spiff and Soothe a lot for creative stuff. Soothe I’ve been using to remove all the resonance from stuff, it’s more creative mixing type stuff. Otherwise I still used a lot of UAD plugins. One I surprisingly like is ’bx_subsynth’; it just creates a nice sub underneath. In my mixing folder it’s just all the Waves stuff. The rest is mainly Ableton stuff, or effects.”

On the effects front, iZotope’s Trash 2 has been one of John’s regular go-tos for years, but he hungers for an upgrade; “I feel like it’s time for them to bring out Trash 3 at this point,” John laughs. “Also, I must mention CLA from Waves, then a bunch of racks from Ableton. I really like RC 24 and 48 – two reverbs from Native Instruments. I used to use a lot of Native Instruments’ stuff but I kind of stopped. 

“I use Melodyne a lot for my stems, but that’s less of an effect and is more of a tool. Then two of my favourites that really helped with giving some tracks the ‘sample’ tone was Ocean Way Studios from UAD. It emulates a beautiful room, it makes for a superb sampling tone. Otherwise the EMT 140 which is another plate reverb.”

Bring the beef

As mentioned, Brainworx’ bx_subsynth is a regular feature of Apashe’s low-end processing chains, although for most of his tracks, the low-end is generated from hardware synths. “I used to like plugins like [Waves] Renaissance Bass,” John explains, “but that was just taking the sample and pitching it down to create that low end. Bx_subsynth creates a synth out of it that follows it. 

“It’s mostly just for when something’s thin: I will do that and then put some harmonics on it and then still remove the low end. It’s just to kind of beef it up. It’s a tool to create content that’s not there originally in a sample. I find it really useful. At the end of the day, when you do that, you end up kind of cutting it out quite a bit, just because there will be another proper synth somewhere in the song and I don’t want it to clash.” 

Every second counts

A standout track, Hasselhoff, features a guest appearance from Estonian rapper Tommy Cash. We ask how this pairing came together? “So I was on tour in Tallinn, Estonia,” explains John, “and he DM’d me asking if I wanted to hit the studio. That was the starting point. We’d already said that we’d work on something together but nothing concrete came out of it until I was in his city and I didn’t know he was living there. He showed me a bunch of songs that he was working on, that was one of them. I basically took it from there and did the version for the album. 

“There is still a whole part that I want to re-record. I want to record a trombone solo in there too. His demo was very hip-hop, it had like 808 and chords. It was kind of like a bit of a loop, but it was really moody. I chose that one because I felt the potential of it.”

John explains that the songs for this second symphonic epic came together fairly briskly: “It does double the work when you have to record it with a symphonic orchestra, you need to do the song and then you need to make a demo for the orchestra and then partitions for all of the parts, then put it all back in the original demo. It’s longer than just mixing a standard track by yourself. 

“I think the fastest was probably the track Lost in Mumbai, then Hasselhoff came together pretty quick. The one that is taking a while now is Human. That track was originally a pitch for the Fast and Furious trailer and then I had to make modifications for them. 

“Then for like nine months they gave no update, so I thought they weren’t going to use it; so I made a new version of it for me, and then they came back and said they were going to use it. Then, they wanted a few changes to suit their needs. I found an in-between version of what they wanted and my new version. Now, I’m changing just a bunch of things because we’re doing a video on it, and I want it to kind of fit.”

On the trailer-scoring front (something of which John has years of experience) we wonder what approaches demonstrably work when handling new briefs? “I guess just be fast! That’s the only real skill you need. So many people are competent musicians and could do it – but the real difference is just being able to adjust and turn things around quickly. Being called two days prior to a deadline and being asked to make something is commonplace. That was the case for Human [the Fast and Furious track]. I had 48 hours, including writing with a rapper and everything, so it was all really really quick.”

Keeping connected

We ask Apashe whether, while focusing on big projects like this, he has time to just be spontaneously creative and think about other tracks outside the world of the record: “I’m constantly working on other stuff, I feel like it helps to just step back from tracks. When you’re stuck in there you can get lost. It’s hard to make conscious choices about whether or not you like it. There are so many possibilities with every song, so many avenues you can take it down. 

“For me, I need to kind of step out of it then come back later. I really like to sleep on songs. Often when you work on it a lot you don’t really feel it anymore. That’s not necessarily because it’s bad. If you reopen it two weeks later when you’ve kind of forgotten about it and you still feel it, then you know it’s worth finishing.”

When it comes to mixing, it’s important for John to listen closely, but that can lead to its own problems: “I love mixing but I sometimes hate the process because you’re so disconnected from the song. You’re just obsessed with tiny details, and how every sound fits.”  

With the album imminent and a 29-date US tour looming on the horizon, Apashe’s name is in the ascendancy. We wonder what advice he’d give to anyone looking to get a foothold today? “It just depends on why you want to start. Do you want to start a career or just make music because you like making music? It’s often two different things that I see across all the people that I meet. You will have people who want to do it as a job and want to be up on stage. 

“Then you have people who make music because they’ve always made music and that’s what they like. Then it just happened that they can make a living out of it, so they work to make that happen. I’d always encourage people to make music regardless of their career ambitions. It’s becoming easier and easier. If you want to listen to yourself. It’s never been as easy as it is now, and it’s only going to get easier."

Apashe's Antagonist will be released to coincide with a 29-date US tour this Autumn.

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year.

Best of 2023: That DAW you've been using since you first started out in music production might well feel like a comfortable old pair of gloves, but there are plenty of newer software applications out there that could well blow it out of the water. Here we look at five such options that might make you rethink your entire way of making music.

If you're anything like we used to be, you'll hate change, not want to learn something new, and will never consider switching your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) because, well why the heck should you? It does what you need it to, right? What it always has done. 

The problem is that right outside your studio window, there's been a quiet – actually, not so quiet – revolution in DAW development. It's not just the traditional big guns doing good things any more. Yes Apple, Avid, Steinberg, Image-Line, Ableton and the other big developers continue to make great software, but there are some new kids in DAW town, and they're taking over the saloon as we speak.

So here, without further ado, are five DAWs you might consider opening right now, and they're so good that you might consider closing your current DAW for good.

Ardour

Ardour (Mac, Windows and Linux) is an open source DAW that handles all the main functions you expect from a sequencer – recording, mixing, editing and export – and is aimed at sound designers, composers, film score creators and, ok, all music producers.

You can download the demo version (which, incidentally, didn't work on our Silicon Mac) or subscribe for as little as a dollar a month to get total access. Seems like a good deal.

You get unlimited audio and MIDI tracks, simultaneously recording of as many of the former as your hardware allows, and can also add as many effects per track as you like. If it's starting to sound like Ardour is throwing too much your way, too soon, we've not even started yet. 

There's full automation, custom bus creation, video/soundtrack editing, tempo maps for more complex timings, lots of custom export options, and a similar flexibility when it comes to Ardour's 'anything to anywhere' routing, which is right up there with Bitwig's flexibility aspirations.

The latest version 7 has had lot of extras added, like Enter Queue for Live style clip and scene launching, which can also be triggered from the main timeline. There's also a new Clip sidebar (for organising audio, loops and other clips), added mixer scenes, a new plugin manager, MIDI stem exporting and a complete overhaul of Ardour's timing setup to iron out previous bugs.

Ardour looks welcoming, comes with a ton of features and is probably the DAW that, when you immerse yourself in it, will pay you back many times over.

Ardour is available as a demo, or pay $1, $4, $10, or $50 per month for a constantly updated version, or $45 for the current v 7.5 version to the next point update.

PROS
Welcoming interface
Lots of cutomisable options
Newer Live-style clip launching
Stacks of features
Easy automation

CONS
You'll need to spend some time with it

More information from Ardour.

Cockos Reaper

Reaper is one of those DAWs that people rave about because it's cheap and does everything you need it to, but still manages avoid too much limelight, giving it a certain 'if you know, you know' appeal.

Other aspects point to it being developed without too much profit in mind. There aren't endless updates with countless features added every time, so there's little 'feature bloat', and it's also a slight and lithe DAW compared to some.

There's also a handy 60-day evaluation period so you can really dig deep for free for a couple of months to get to know it. The upgrade scheme is not as good as FL Studio's 'free updates for life' offer – but then what is? But you do get free updates all through to the next point version (so join at the current 6.82, it will be free until v7.99.).

Reaper can be initially confusing – and rather blank, when you load it – but creating tracks (unlimited should you wish) is easy. Virtual instrument tracks need to be done manually and don't quite open in as slick a way as you might be used to, but as with everything in Reaper, all you need is present and correct, and probably a lot more besides.

And that's probably the main takeaway from Reaper. It's all there, it's slick, it may not look fancy – although there are several customising options – but it gets the job done with relative ease once you get your head around it, and not for much outlay.

A small business license for Reaper is $60 and if you make more than $20k a year from your music you pay $225, which seems very fair. Reaper is available in both PC, Mac and Linux.

PROS
Simple interface
Great value for money
60-day trial period
Not too much processing power
Takes up minimal space

CONS
Not a lot of extras
Not intuitive… at first

More information from Reaper.

Bitwig Studio

We've long been fans of Bitwig Studio (Mac, PC) here at MusicRadar but the software has also been in the shadow of other DAWs, particularly the fellow Berlin-based Ableton Live, from which it took some cues on its first release.

Version 5 of the software is a world away from that though, and its most dramatic update in years. It looks to have finally given the DAW enough legs of its own, so much so that it is turning into more of a creative instrument in itself as well as a fully featured DAW.

All of the 'basic' DAW stuff is there – and a lot more on top. You can use it as a fully functional DAW for song creation, taking scratchpad ideas right through to professional masters. Do this in the traditional Arrange Timeline of via clip launching.  

Then there's The Grid, a virtual modular environment for the creation of instruments and much more – an area which Studio has made its own and one rarely found elsewhere in DAW land.

But it's Bitwig's in-depth modulation features – especially from v5 onwards – that add so many more layers of creativity. Its MSEG (Multi-Stage Envelope Generator) system allows modulation of just about anything, by anything; it's not just confined to plugins but the entire arrangement.

Bitwig is no longer the beginner DAW it once was, but a supercharged creative monster. Some concepts might take a mind shift but are worth exploring for going on tangents you will not have considered.

You can get Bitwig Studio on three levels: Essentials (€99), Producer (€199) or the full Studio (€399).

PROS
Looks great
Endless creativity
Decent price
Lots of great instruments and effects

CONS
The modulation side required a slightly different way of thinking

More from Bitwig.

Korg Gadget

If you want something a little different – and probably the best 'second DAW' you can buy – then Korg Gadget (Mac, iOS or run is as a Mac/PC plugin), is one of the most user-friendly and inspirational tools out there.

It's been around for a while and first made its mark as one of the earlier, fully-featured iOS DAWs but has since transferred its exceptional workflow to the Mac platform, and is now also available as a Mac and PC plugin. 

Gadget is not about complex signal paths, meticulous audio effects and sound design, but straight up song creation, idea generation and realisation.

You get gadgets a plenty – some 40 synthesisers, keyboards, drum machines, and samplers, with more optional ones available to buy – and you simply create tracks, mix them together, and then produce patterns and complete songs.

There's no messing about with much finery although you do get 14 insert effects and two master effects for some extra sheen. Export your efforts to audio or as Ableton parts for extra tweaking and you realise that this is the first DAW you open, the one you use best on an iPad (its touch experience is still brilliant) and as an ideas generator.

Get idea, make track, move on.

Gadget is free for the Mac LE version, $199 as the Mac/PC plugin, $299 for the Mac DAW and $40 for the iOS app.

PROS
Some fantastic instruments
So easy to use
Great touch operation on iPad
Fast results

CONS
Not so many features

More from Korg.

Acoustica Mixcraft

Finally, Acoustica Mixcraft 10 is a Windows-only DAW which has been also been doing the rounds for a while, but has developed into a one of the best music apps out there in terms of features v price.

Mixcraft has always offered a welcoming music production environment with a claimed ‘great ease of use combined with raw power’, and it’s hard to argue with this. It’s a traditional DAW in the sense that tracks go top to bottom and arrangement flows left to right, but the slickness level here is better than that on most others.

You also get great third party plugins included, like versions of Cherry Audio’s Voltage Modular and Celemony Melodyne. 

There’s a well featured mixer where you expect it to be and the UI is very welcoming indeed and easy to interact with, so the workflow is almost second to none on this platform.

Mixcraft runs slickly on a PC, and offers this smooth music-making experience with enough extras – including a large and well-implemented sound library – to help you make pretty much any genre of music you could wish for.

Best of all it costs just $79 for the entry-level Mixcraft 10 Recording Studio and just $149 for the full-fat Mixcraft 10 Pro Studio. Best bargain DAW?

PROS
Loads of features
Impressive plugin effects library
Loads of instruments
Slick interface

CONS
Some instruments look quite old

More information from Acoustica.

Launching in May this year, the third iteration of Ableton's Push controller series arrived in two variations. In addition to the new and improved version of the pad-based MIDI controller, which requires a USB connection to Ableton Live to operate, Ableton announced a standalone device that can be used completely independently of the computer. 

At the time of release, Ableton also announced that owners of the regular Push 3 would eventually be able to transform their tethered version into a standalone instrument through the use of an Upgrade Kit, sold separately, containing an Intel 11th Gen Core i3-1115G4 processor with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD hard drive, a lithium iron phosphate battery and a heatsink, alongside all the requisite tools for the DIY upgrade process.

The idea is that you can save money (around $1000) by purchasing the non-standalone version of Push 3, which retails for $999/£879, but if you decide later that you'd like to take advantage of the standalone edition's capabilities, you won't have to drop another $1,999/£1,669 on a new standalone Push. Instead, you can purchase an Upgrade Kit for $1,049/£849 and install the required parts yourself. All things considered, a more sensible - and sustainable - option.

Push 3's Upgrade Kit was released earlier this month. Naturally, we were curious to find out whether, as Ableton says, the upgrade can be completed by anyone without prior electronics experience in under 30 minutes. Ableton were kind enough to supply us with a non-standalone Push 3 and an Upgrade Kit, so we put its claims to the test and attempted the upgrade process ourselves with no preparation.

How did we fare? Pretty well, it turns out. After unboxing the Upgrade Kit and following Ableton's helpful guide, we successfully upgraded our Push 3 in the time it took us to share some insights on what we love - and don't love - about its new controller. All in all, the upgrade process was quick, painless and took us less than 20 minutes. Don't take our word for it, though - watch the video above to see it in action.

Find out more about Push 3 and the Upgrade Kit on Ableton's website.

When Ableton launched the Push 3, earlier this year, it announced two versions of it. Not only was there the next-gen edition of the pad-based MIDI controller that many Live users have come to know and love, but also, tantalisingly, a completely standalone device that can be used away from the computer.

But there was also a third option, as Ableton confirmed at the time that an upgrade kit would eventually be released that enabled you to turn your ‘standard’ Push 3 into a standalone one. Now that kit has arrived, and the good news is that it looks incredibly easy to install.

Ableton has put together a step-by-step guide to upgrading your Push 3 on its website, and it seems pretty foolproof. The kit contains an Intel 11th Gen Core i3-1115G4 processor with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD hard drive, a lithium iron phosphate battery and a heatsink. All required screws come supplied, as does a screwdriver, a backplate lifter and a protective mat.

Ableton reckons that you should be able to complete the whole upgrade in no more than 30 minutes, and is confident that no prior electronics experience is required. It’s worth noting that only the components that come in the kit should be installed in your Push 3 - if you plug in in parts that have come from elsewhere, you’ll void your warranty.

What’s more, none of the components are currently available individually - only the complete Upgrade Kit. However, Ableton does say that it may sell some parts - such as batteries and more powerful processors - on their own in the future.

If you’re at all nervous about upgrading your Push 3, rest assured that, as long as you follow the installation instructions correctly, you won’t invalidate either the three-year warranty that came with your controller or the three-year warranty that comes with the upgrade kit.

The caveat is that “Ableton’s warranty doesn’t cover any damage resulting from improper testing, operation, maintenance, installation, or any alteration or modification outside the steps detailed in the Upgrade Kit instructions.”

Of course, it’s possible that some people will ignore all this and attempt to make their own ‘jacked’ version of the Push 3 Standalone, but the clear message is that it’s on them if things go wrong.

The Push 3 Upgrade Kit costs $1,049/£849. This is on top of the $999/£879 that the standard Push 3 controller costs, so by our calculations that brings up a total of £2,048/£1,728. This is $49/£59 more than the cost of a Push 3 Standalone ($1,999/£1,669), so if you’re sure you want to be able to use your device away from a computer, that’s still a slightly better buy.

It’s not a huge price difference, though, so if you’re not convinced that you really want/need standalone operation, buying the controller first and then having a think won’t incur too much additional cost if you do eventually decide to upgrade.

Find out more and take a look at the Upgrade Kit installation guide on the Ableton website.

While the headlines of Live 12 might well be about the Meld synth and its new generative music capabilities, one of our favourite additions is the Roar saturation effect. Roar has such a flexible and routable setup that it might well become the highlight of this major update and a firm effect favourite for years to come. Here's why it could well be Live 12's biggest not-so-secret weapon...

Roar is another great addition to Live's mighty lineage, a saturation effect that is capable of gentle colouring, maybe, but should really be unleashed to fulfil its full potential as an out-and-out sonic bender, a tool that is capable of truly out-there, mind-melding, powerful effects that can make – or indeed break – a production.

The heart of the effect is three stages of saturation but its soul lies in the way that these are combined, with several routings possible, and some truly eclectic and varied results, even with the same core ingredients. As with Meld, it comes into its own with modulation and as with Meld, you get an expandable window to see it in full.

However, that's where the similarities end, because this is no instrument but a mighty effect - and what drama it can bring to existing sounds. And there's plenty at play here, which we will dive into with some extensive tutorials, quick tips and more in this ultimate guide to Roar.

The basics

Roar is a saturation effect that is capable of subtle colour or bizarre glitchy effects. It features several non-linear saturation curves to deliver character, three saturation stages to deliver power and several ways to combine them to deliver huge versatility. Because you can run these stages in series, parallel or even as mid/side or multiband styles, you can get some truly outstanding effects.

You can use Roar to beef up weedy sounds, tracks or even entire mixes. Or you can use it to absolutely shatter them!

Like Meld, which we looked at in this extended tutorial, it features an amazing modulation matrix. Only this time, it's easier on the eye and and even easier to use.

Combined with the feedback routing, the modulation matrix can deliver predictable and (very) unpredictable results. We like that in our effects, because unpredictable usually means inspiring and that is certainly the case here.

At the very left of Roar, the first Drive control can push the input level of the signal, adding some distortion from the off if you want to go in hard – you don't need to, believe us. Tone, as on Meld, adds higher frequencies while pulling back the lower ones as you dial right, and pushes the lows and pulls back on the highs as you dial left, with a kind of crossover frequency set beneath it. It's not an EQ knob per se, as the results can be more dramatic in either high or low areas and it has a similar feel to a dramatic filter.

As with Meld, one beautiful aspect of this plugin is its expandability. Click on the arrow far left and you get to see everything bigger, above the plugin. And this time it's a lot more graphical, with a detailed overview of each of Roar's saturation stages and its modulation sources.

And it's these three stages which we turn to now. We should say 'up to three stages of saturation' really because it is dependent on how you route the stages together. There's a tiny drop-down menu under Routing and this really is the crux of Roar, five options to route these saturation stages together.

Single obviously just means a single stage of saturation; Serial means two, one processing after the other, with the second able to feedback on itself; Parallel means both stages running side-by-side together; Multiband gives the full three stages in parallel, each split into low, mid and high frequency bands; Mid Side means the middle part of your signal is processed by one saturation stage, the sides by another; and finally Feedback looks to be parallel processing with feedback running back into the bottom stage.

Here's the Mid Side setup in full flow with two saturation stages.

Next up you choose the Shaper shape – from around a dozen – in each saturation block in your setup. These waveforms can be pretty standard, more gentle Soft Sines or distorted Tube Preamp shapes, more gritty Diode Clipper and Bit Crusher, or full-on and aggressive Tri Fold and Shards. Lots to play with here and we will do just that below.

Level adjusts the impact and gain of each of your choices while Bias effects how the sound clips or dies out. This is harder to describe as it varies so much with each but it can result in incredible clipping effects that ties in well with the modulators. Finally Filter is just that, allowing you to sweep the effect across the frequency range.

We're covering the main modulation stage in the middle of the plugin below, as that is a particular highlight that needs some depth, so that leaves the feedback stage on the right. This has its own useful compressor that comes in handy when things get out of control (which they do). 

The Feedback dial is very cool as you can choose to set a feedback time or by note pitch or timing and set it in sync. It's also easy to overdo this as we'll see!

Three quick tips when using Roar

1. The IT crowd

It's very easy to accidentally get more than one instance of Roar working or set your feedback levels too high so that when you press stop in Live Roar decides to carry on. So do be cautious about how many you have linked together and get ready with the off button if you have too many. And if that feedback keeps going? Do what every IT expert does: turn it off and on again.

2. Start with one

If you are new to Roar, kick things off with the single routing option and give yourself a single saturation block to play with. With this set up, get to know the different Shapers, play with the Bias and find out what these core components do before chaining too many more together.

3. Use the expansion

Using Roar really made us yearn for a bigger computer screen as its expanded version is a dream to use and modulate with – as we'll discover below. When in full flow it is a dream to use, so if you can, keep it expanded as you use it; it will draw you in and you will get more from it.

Get some modulation to Roar

First of all lets get some notes running through Roar and for this we might as well turn to the excellent Meld (above) and, while we're at it, use Ableton Live's new note generation tools to create them! We load the Bassic bass sound for Meld and use the Rhythm generation tool for a bass line.

Next, add a Roar to Meld and select the suitable BassCrunch preset. This does exactly what it says on the tin and will be a great way to demo Roar's superb modulation setup.

Open Roar's Modulation Matrix if you haven't already. You'll see that it only has four sources going from top left to right (LFO 1 and 2 plus Envelope and Noise). However, these can be applied to pretty much every Roar control.

Now we want to expand Roar to its maximum window size so you can see everything that is going on. With this particular preset, two of its engines are running in series. We're going to use LFO 1 to modulate, so set its speed value to a relatively low 1 as shown in red.

We'll get LFO 1 to modulate the Drive parameter so you can hear it clearly in action. Mouse the Drive rotary up and it will appear as a destination in the Mod Matrix. Now click and drag up in the newly-created Drive cell under LFO 1 to 30 and you will hear Roar pulse with each LFO cycle, and the screen top left gives you a cool visual representation of this pulsing too!

Now do the same with the Tone control. It appears in the Matrix, so nudge that value up and both it and Drive are now modulated by LFO1 and it sounds particularly filthy. Roar is starting to do its thing.

Envelope modulation

In the Mod Matrix, reset both the Drive and Tone amounts to zero by double-clicking each. Now push the Envelope modulation up to 100 so we can explore that. You can hear the Drive rise and fall with the Envelope. 

Raising the Attack smooths out the effect while raising the Release prolongs it. Keeping the Threshold low and Gain high (above 10dB) and you accentuate the effect. Again, it's very dirty.

But if you think Roar is roaring, wait until you assign the Noise as the source and Drive as destination and select the S&H wave. Now you have extreme Drive changes as Roar reaches its maximum carnage level.

We've pushed it a little too far now so will reset all of the Mod Matrix parameters back to zero with one click of the X as shown. Brilliantly, standard undo and redo work with all changes you make so you can go back to those extreme settings whenever you like. 

Multiband processing

That's the modulation done for now, but do experiment with assigning those sources to the many destinations on offer. There's just time to now look at Roar's Multiband processing which gives all three saturation stages running in parallel. This gives our combination of bass and Bassic preset a massively distorted, but still usable sound.

It also gives us the opportunity to work within each frequency band that the three stages are focussing on. You can easily switch each stage in and out by clicking the Low, Mid and High boxes. We've switched Low and Mid off here so can just hear the High.

If, as with us, the High band is not contributing much, you can easily change its saturation curve, Bias and Frequency so that it becomes more audible. The Bias, Amount and Frequency dials are all modulatable too, if you want to go wild. The Mid band is doing the most work so changing its curve really affects the results.

Finally experiment with Feedback. Adjusting the Frequency affects the tone of the fed back signal which you can easily hear (and indeed modulate). The width too, really thickens the effect and can be modulated as shown.

That's our deep-dive tour of Roar completed. As you can see there's a lot to love here, and we'll be exploring it further and letting it loose on a lot of our sounds and tracks in the coming weeks, so expect more roars from us soon.  

Please note that we used the beta of Live 12 for this feature and the finished version of Live 12 may look slightly different.

• Read more: Ableton announces Live 12: major update brings a new synth, MIDI tools and interface tweaks to the feature-packed DAW

It’s not uncommon to spot similarities across multiple DAWs. The digital audio workstation market is much like any other area of technology, from smartphones to games consoles: when one product debuts a particularly innovative or eye-catching feature, you can bet that same idea will be adopted by its competitors in some form or other before long. 

Ableton Live’s distinctive clip launching, for example, has inspired similar nonlinear workspaces in Logic, GarageBand and Pro Tools. Live itself has, over the years, come to adopt some of the more ‘traditional’ DAW tools like audio comping that were refined by the likes of Cubase, Pro Tools and Logic.

Even against this backdrop of shared ideas though, Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio are two DAWs with a similarity that runs deeper than the usual back-and-forth of innovations. This is rooted in the two products’ shared history – both Ableton and Bitwig are headquartered in Berlin, and the latter company was founded by ex-employees of the former.

Before it launched in 2014, Bitwig was variously seen as either a potential Live killer or flagrant ripoff, depending on who you asked. In reality, neither of these statements was entirely true, but there were undeniable similarities between the fledgling Bitwig and its more established forebearer. For one thing, both DAWs make use of a hybrid arrangement workflow using both clip launchers and a more traditional timeline, all of which live in UIs with a broadly similar layout. There are similarities to certain devices too: Live's EQ 8 and Bitwig’s EQ5, for example, are nearly identical-looking.

In the decade since Bitwig v1 launched, both DAWs have developed considerably, and not entirely in parallel, meaning that – while similarities remain – each has a distinct personality and unique features that will suit some users more than others. 

One thing to note is that we’re discussing the full-fat versions of each DAW here, named Ableton Suite and Bitwig Studio respectively. Both have cheaper iterations available with feature sets that are limited or stripped-back in some way. If you’re considering one of these, be sure to check the version comparison charts on either DAW’s website to be sure that any features you’re particularly interested in are included. 

User interface

There are a lot of similarities between the UIs of Bitwig and Live. Both DAWs have two sequencing areas, a clip launcher (aka the Session View in Ableton Live) and a more traditional linear arrangement timeline. Similarly, both DAWs use the space towards the bottom of the screen for editing MIDI and audio clips as well as adjusting device parameters. These core similarities are something of a benefit for any users planning on making a switch or using both DAWs in tandem, as it provides a base level of familiarity. Longtime Live users are unlikely to feel entirely lost when opening Bitwig for the first time, and vice versa.

Both DAWs also have browsers that primarily live as hideable sidebars to the UI; Live’s down the left, Bitwig’s to the right. In both cases adding sounds and devices from these sidebars is a simple case of drag-and-drop. 

As of their latest updates (Live 12 and Bitwig 5), both DAWs have overhauled the browser to make use of customisable tags in order to speed up the navigation process. For our money, the application of this is slightly better in Bitwig. Bitwig’s browser can appear as a pop-up as well as a sidebar, accessed via a ‘+’ icon in any device or sound slot. These pop-up browsers are contextual, meaning they will open to the most relevant folder (eg. an effect slot will automatically open to the list of effect devices). This is customisable though, meaning you could, for example, set the browser to always open to your favourite folder of drum samples when accessed via Bitwig’s drum machine device.

Overall, Bitwig’s UI is a little more open and customisable than Live’s. You can, for example, use the clip launcher and arrangement timeline side-by-side in Bitwig, which isn’t possible in Live. Additionally, while Bitwig shows device chains in its lower panel like Live does, these can also be displayed and rearranged from the mixer, as is common with more traditional DAWs.

Bitwig also has a second hideable sidebar, to the left of the display, called the inspector panel. This is used to display a lot of audio and MIDI clip information that can often feel a bit crammed into the parameter menus of Live’s individual clips. However, the additional windows can leave Bitwig’s UI feeling a little cluttered at times, particularly when working across multiple views on a single monitor.

Finally, it’s also possible to use Bitwig on a touchscreen or tablet (although notably not an iPad). When doing so, the DAW makes use of predefined gestures to help control various functions.

Verdict: Bitwig's UI is slightly more flexible than Live's, although to be fair it's very much based on a format pioneered by Ableton.

Devices

Bitwig and Live share a number of notably similar-looking devices. Bitwig’s EQ5 and Live’s EQ8, Bitwig’s Sampler and Live Sampler/Simpler, Live’s Drum Racks and Bitwig’s Drum Machine, all feel a lot like variations on the same theme. Broadly speaking, the two DAWs have a fairly well-matched pool of basic instrument, effect and utility devices, and neither one feels like it’s limited compared to the other.

The major differences lie in Bitwig’s modular approach. Bitwig Studio’s flagship devices are its trio of Grid tools – Poly Grid, FX Grid and Note Grid – which are virtual modular devices designed to create instrument, effect and MIDI devices respectively (although all three are functionally similar and there’s a lot of crossover between what can be done with each). The Grid is excellent, and a real jewel in Bitwig’s crown. Design-wise, it sits somewhere between visual programming environments like Reaktor or Max and the faux-Eurorack of VCV Rack. Its look is clean and digital, and makes use of some nice custom UI touches, although most of the underlying concepts and devices will be familiar to synthesists. 

Not merely limited to the dedicated devices, Bitwig’s modular Grid approach also appears in some of the DAW’s flagship instruments, notably Polymer, which is essentially a hard-wired synth built from Bitwig’s Grid module.

Your view on Bitwig’s synth and effect offerings will largely hinge on how willing you are to buy into this modular approach. For those interested in getting under-the-hood, The Grid is a brilliant sandbox tool, but – while it does come with some interesting and unique presets – it has far less to offer those who prefer to stick to pre-made synths or easy-to-access presets.

Setting the modular elements aside, Live arguably has more characterful and distinctive individual devices. While Bitwig has a range of powerful, capable delays, for example, there’s nothing quite as characterful and analogue-feeling as Ableton’s Echo. You could make a similar case for Live 12’s new and intriguingly unique synth, Meld.

What’s more, Ableton has a significant counter to Bitwig’s Grid capabilities in its inclusion of Max for Live. M4L incorporates the longstanding visual programming tool Max into the DAW’s workflow. Max isn’t directly comparable to the Grid – it’s more like a plugin coding system and less like a hardware modular synth, and is less approachable as a result – but it plays a similar role in broadening the DAW’s capabilities beyond its stock of pre-made devices. What’s more, Max gives the user access to a wealth of user-made devices, both free and paid, that can be found online. Although there are some great user-made Grid patches out there, the user-base can’t compete with Max right now.

Verdict: Live wins here on the strength of its varied, characterful synth and effects, but in terms of a single standout device, Bitwig's Grid is a highlight.

Workflow

Given the core design elements that they share, the overall workflow of Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio is unsurprisingly fairly similar. Both DAWs allow the user to work in both a nonlinear way using the clip launcher and in a more traditional manner using the arrangement timeline. In both cases it’s possible to use these simultaneously – launching clips over the top of a timeline arrangement – although this is easier to do in Bitwig since both elements can be controlled side-by-side in the same window.

Bitwig also has less of a rigid divide between audio and MIDI tracks, and allows for elements of both to exist on the same track. This allows for a Bounce in Place function, whereby clips or loops of MIDI can be rendered to audio without deactivating the MIDI instrument available on the same track.

Bitwig’s biggest workflow enhancement, and arguably the DAW’s best feature, is its unified modulation system. This allows for a vast number of modulation generators to be added to any device in the DAW, whether that be a stock Bitwig tool, third-party plugin or an external MIDI/CV routing device. These modulators come in a wide variety of styles, including traditional LFOs and envelope shapers, maths and logic-based tools, randomisers, expression processors and more besides.

As of version 5, Bitwig has also added a range of Multi-Stage Envelope Generators (or MSEGs for short). These are highly customisable LFO/env shapers that can be applied as modulation sources at various points within the DAW, including its modulator slots, within the Grid devices and even as custom oscillators in some synths.

Bitwig Studio arranges tracks and devices using a nesting system, meaning that, depending on where a modulator is added, it can potentially be used to control several different devices at once, modulate other modulators, or even take control of project settings such as global BPM or swing.

Live, meanwhile, has always been lauded for its famously quick and intuitive workflow, and this remains a core highlight of the DAW’s design. While some elements of Bitwig go deeper, such as the modulation and its system of audio clip containers – which we’ll come to shortly – it does lose some of the ease-of-use and fluidity of Live as a result.

There are also a few notable workflow features present in Live that aren’t available in Bitwig Studio, including the handy retroactive Capture MIDI tool, Live’s audio-to-MIDI conversion, and Live’s ability to follow the tempo of incoming audio.

Verdict: Live's fast and fluid workflow is pretty-much unbeatable. But modulation in Bitwig is a revelation...

Working with audio

Both Live and Bitwig are very capable when it comes to recording and editing audio. Both DAWs have added comping capabilities in recent years, making it far easier to work with multi-take sessions. The comping workflow is fairly similar in the two DAWs, although we’d argue it’s slightly better implemented in Bitwig Studio, which makes it particularly easy to mix and match elements of a looped take.

The key difference when it comes to editing audio clips in the two DAWs – which can be done from both the clip launcher and arrangement timeline – lies in Bitwig’s use of audio containers. This allows the user to slice and rearrange audio within a clip, letting actions such as copy and paste, duplication and reversing be done within a self-contained audio loop.

Since its early days, one of Live’s most distinctive features has always been its ability to automatically time-stretch audio using Warp Markers. This has always made it an appealing choice for electronic musicians and live performers, as loops or full tracks can be dragged into the DAW and automatically be synced to the project tempo and start on the correct beat. While Bitwig does have comparable capabilities, Live still does this far better and in a slicker way.

Ultimately, there are arguments to be made that Bitwig’s audio tools go a little deeper, but the simple warping in Live is still incredibly easy to use. For those working with loops, Live’s quick warping system is still unrivalled.

Verdict: In our eyes, Live's simple and slick audio workflow is the winner here.

Working with MIDI

Both Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio have some impressive creative tools for working with MIDI. Both DAWs are MPE capable, and allow users to edit multiple levels of expression within MIDI clips. Both also offer randomisation and humanisation tools that can be applied to individual MIDI notes.

The two applications each offer a slate of unique and different MIDI processors. In Bitwig, these include numerous Note FX processors which can do things like delay, scatter, bounce and ricochet notes, as well apply transformations to pitch and velocity. Live 12 has a similarly broad array of MIDI effects, which are further enhanced by Live Suite’s included Max tools, such as the excellent Rotating Rhythm Generator, Dr Chaos and Probability Arp.

As of Live 12, Ableton also offers a range of interesting and useful generative tools for creating chords, patterns and rhythms within clips themselves. While these tools are unique to Live, Bitwig can be equally excellent for ‘generative’ composition thanks to the tools offered by its modular Note Grid.

One key differential that remains between the two is Live’s use of a Groove Pool, which allows users to sync clips to preset rhythms, as well as extract the groove from imported clips. Bitwig makes use of a more conventional global shuffle setting.

Verdict: It's a tie. Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio are fairly evenly matched here. Although the tools offered by each are somewhat different and unique, both DAWs score very well on the MIDI front.

External control

When it comes to plug-and-play MIDI controllers, Ableton Live is probably the best served DAW on the market. Ableton’s official controller, Push, is one of the best controllers going, thanks to its excellent MPE-capable playing surface, flexible connectivity and well-designed control setup. As of version 3 it can even be configured to run Live in standalone mode, without need to connect to a computer.

Push aside, Live users can also make use of a wide variety of impressive third-party controllers, most of which come in at a more affordable price than Push. Live-specific controllers include Novation’s expansive Launch range and Akai’s recently updated APCs. Any generic MIDI controller worth its salt is likely to come with a plug-and-play mapping for Live too.

Bitwig doesn’t currently have an ‘official’ controller like Push, and there are no third-party controllers marketed as being specifically for use with Bitwig Studio. However, thanks to the use of controller scripts, it’s possible to use most modern MIDI controllers with Bitwig Studio in some useful manner or other. Bitwig has officially created scripts for an extensive range of devices (including the Live-centric Akai and Novation devices mentioned above). Community created scripts go even further, offering creative and customisable setups to serve a wealth of setups (even including Ableton Push).

Verdict: Push is one of our favourite controllers on the market, and right now Bitwig has nothing that matches that user experience.

Stability

Bitwig Studio is worthy of special mention when it comes to stability, as it’s one of the best performers on the market. This is largely thanks to the DAW’s system of plugin hosting and crash protection, which effectively keeps plugins ‘walled-off’ from the main DAW, meaning that any crashed plugin can simply be reset without troubling the rest of the application.

Verdict: The way Bitwig Studio handles plugin crashes makes it a clear winner.

System compatibility 

Both DAWs are available on both Mac and PC, but Bitwig is also available on Linux (technically speaking, the version of Live that runs in Push 3 is running on a Linux OS, but there’s currently no commercially available Linux version of Live.)

Live can host VST2, VST3, AUv2 and AUv3 plugins. Bitwig can host VST2/VST3 plugins as well as plugins in the company’s own CLAP format, which is relatively new and currently not particularly widely adopted.

Bitwig has also recently developed a new Project format alongside Studio One creator Presonus, called DAWproject. The aim of this is to allow projects created in one DAW to be opened in another. It’s early days for this and only time will tell how widely it’s adopted beyond Bitwig and Studio One. DAWproject aside, Bitwig already makes use of its similarity to Live by allowing users to open Live projects in Bitwig Studio, and does a fair job of replicating saved device chains.

Verdict: The lack of AU support puts Bitwig Studio at a disadvantage right now. Wider adoption of CLAP and DAWproject could change the game though.

Value for money

The full version of Bitwig Studio comes in at €399/$399 whereas Live Suite is €599/$749 (although both brands run regular sales throughout the year, which are worth watching out for). Aside from the DAWs themselves, each comes with a generous package of varied sound content, which we’d say are broadly on par in terms of quality. Live Suite has 30 Packs to download while Bitwig Studio comes with 43.

Bitwig also offers an upgrade plan system with each purchased licence. This entitles the users to all upgrades released in a 12 month period from the date they bought the DAW, including both intermediate ‘point’ upgrades (which often add significant new features) and full new versions. Added to this is access to Bitwig’s Circle scheme, which offers freebies for users from brands such as Kilohearts, Minimal Audio and Splice.

Verdict: All things considered, you get more for your money overall with Bitwig Studio, but this isn’t surprising given its underdog status.

Conclusion

While Bitwig Studio and Live are similar-looking DAWs, once you dig below the surface, the two applications do have distinct personalities. The best way to summarise the difference would be to say that Live puts more emphasis on working fast and intuitively, whereas Bitwig sacrifices some of that in favour of unrivalled depth and flexibility. 

Broadly speaking, if you want an application offering fluid creativity with a wealth of up-front tools, plus the choice of plug-and-play MIDI controllers, Live is the one to go for. On the other hand, if you’re a musician who likes to create their own custom instruments or effects, fine-tune bespoke MIDI mappings and tailor your software to exactly match your own workflow needs, Bitwig has a lot to offer. This is an incredibly broad-strokes distinction though, and there are arguments to be made for and against both applications on all fronts.

Of the two, Bitwig is the obvious underdog, and Live’s popularity works both in its favour and against it. On the positive side, the massive user base of Ableton Live means a wide availability of tutorials, user-groups, third-party add-on and Max devices. Bitwig’s smaller (although dedicated) user community simply can’t match the scale of content. On the downside, the popularity of Live is definitely priced-in to an extent, meaning that Bitwig offers more sweeteners and a more tempting price.

To end on a predictably inconclusive note, it’s near impossible to crown a true winner between these two powerful and highly-capable applications. We regularly switch between the two for different projects – something that is thankfully easy to do by virtue of their similarities – and there are many reasons to recommend each. If you commit the time to truly learn the ins-and-outs of either DAW, you’re unlikely to find yourself coming up creatively unsatisfied at the end of it.

Ableton has just announced Live 12, and users can sign up to be part of the public beta now via the Ableton website

Live 12 brings some exciting new features including a great new synth called Meld, Roar – a multistage distortion effect – and an update to the popular Max For Live device Granulator.

While a lot about Live 12 will be familiar to existing users, there are a few significant workflow tweaks that could mean big changes, even for regular users. Here are five important things you need to know to get the most of Live 12.

1. The new browser requires some prep work

Upon opening Live 12, one of the most obvious changes is the redesigned browser. Gone are the old folders within each category – which broke, for example, Audio Effects down into Delays, Dynamics, EQ, etc – now replaced by a system of filters that aims to help you find sounds or devices by type or characteristics. 

As well as searching by name, each browser window now has a Filters section at the top, which lets users refine the list based on things such as sound type, format and characteristics. Clicking the Edit tab next to these filters enables you to assign tags to anything in the browser, either using the pre-existing list and categories, or ones you create yourself.

It’s worth making use of these tags. While the new browser works nicely for Live’s stock content and official Packs from Ableton, it has little to help you navigate your own library of sounds and third-party plugins – at least not without a little prep work first. The first thing we’d recommend doing is adding ‘type’ tags to your plugins – eg ‘synth’, ‘delay’ ‘EQ’ etc – to help you quickly find groups of similar tools.

After this, it’s worth turning to your most commonly used sample packs and assigning any tags you think could be relevant, such as sound type – eg ‘loop’, ‘one shot’, ‘drum’, ‘bass’, ‘lead’ – as well as potentially tagging sound by characteristics such as musical key or general tone descriptions. While doing so requires a fair commitment of admin time, it will really help you get the most out of Live’s new browser.

With sounds tagged up, it’s also possible to save browser filter combinations to the library sidebar to create automatically updating groups of sounds, devices or plugins. For example, under the All tab, filter sounds by ‘Loop’ and ‘Drum Pattern’, then hit the ‘+’ icon above the list of results to create a new sidebar shortcut. This will list anything tagged with these two characteristics, whether it’s part of Live’s stock library, a Pack or your own folders (assuming you’ve added tags). The list will automatically update as new sounds are tagged with these characteristics.

One final sound-finding feature worth investigating early on is Live’s new Similar Sample tool. This can be accessed in the browser or directly via some instruments such as Drum Rack. It lets users browse through a list of ‘similar’ samples that Live generates based on the qualities of the audio files, and isn’t bound entirely by tags. It works particularly well with drum sounds, enabling users to quickly swap out single elements or entire kits to see how it affects that beat.

2. In Live 12 you can access the mixer from anywhere

One small but significant change to Live’s workflow for v12 is that the mixer can now be accessed in either of Live’s views – Session and Arrangement. The keyboard shortcut to show/hide the mixer (CMD + Option + M on Mac, or CTRL + Alt + M on Windows) enables you to pull up the mixer as needed, wherever you’re currently working. 

3. Scales are far more important now

You could already make use of predefined scales in Live 11, but they’ve become far more flexible and important in Live 12. There are now two places in the DAW where a scale can be defined. The first is the global scale setting, found in the transport bar next to BPM. This defines the overall scale for a project, and will dictate the scale automatically assigned to any new MIDI clips.

Scales can also be set for individual clips in their respective menus, however, making it possible to change the playback scale within a single track or composition.

These scales are now considerably more important to Live’s workflow, too. As with previous versions, setting a scale for a MIDI clip can help when programming notes on the piano roll or playing an instrument using a MIDI controller. However, Live 12 also adds a ‘scale awareness’ function to a number of its devices. What this does is lock the harmonic output of various tools to generate only notes or overtones that fit the scale of the MIDI clip in use. Tools that feature this function include not only the MIDI effects, such as the arpeggiator, but also instrument devices such as the new synth, Meld, where some oscillator and filter modes can be set to be ‘scale aware’.

Some functions in Live, such as oscillator tuning and the new generative MIDI tools, will operate in ‘scale degrees’ rather than semitones once a scale has been assigned. This means that the tuning of notes will move up and down by intervals in a scale rather than one note at a time.

This all means that, by assigning different scales to different MIDI clips, it’s possible to make scale or key changes within a performance or project, and have any relevant MIDI effects or other scale aware devices change to match the new clip. You can also use a MIDI Clip’s ‘fit to scale’ function to quickly try existing Clips or Patterns in new scales or keys.

4. You can now generate ideas directly within MIDI clips

Live’s MIDI clips have been massively enhanced with a set of new creative tools that can generate and transform patterns. These fall under two new tabs found within the MIDI clips themselves. The first of these offers a suite of generative tools that can create MIDI patterns in completely empty clips. 

Broadly speaking, these each have intended uses, but can be manipulated to perform multiple functions. Rhythm is a pattern-focused generator ideally suited to creating drum sequences. Seed is a randomised pattern generator best for melodic lines. Shape is a monophonic generator which will create riffs based around a user-defined shape, and is a great tool for lead and basslines. Stacks is a chord generator that will fill a MIDI clip with a variable set of chord shapes.

The second tab focuses on transformation tools, which will elaborate on or alter your existing MIDI. These cover a variety of creative functions that will shift the arrangement, pitch, timing and expression of MIDI notes. It’s worth noting that, by selecting individual notes in a MIDI clip, it’s possible to transform only selected parts, rather than the entire clip.

Suite owners will also find that some Max For Live tools – notably the Euclidean rhythm generator and Velocity Shaper – can now be accessed directly inside MIDI clips.

The Pitch and Time Utilities menu has had some enhancements, too, our favourite being the new ‘Add Interval’ function, which can be used to generate harmonies and chords from existing MIDI notes.

5. Live 12 now has a tuning pool… which shouldn’t be confused with Scales

Live 12 has added a lot of enhancements that open up its accessibility and broaden what can be done with the DAW. One notable change is the ability to work with non-western and non-traditional tunings – something that has been notably absent compared with some other applications. These are accessed via a tuning pool, which looks and acts like the existing Groove Pool. Here, users can drag and drop a variety of non-traditional tunings onto a project which will affect all clips and devices. It’s also possible to edit and import tunings yourself.

What’s important to note is that tunings and scales are not the same thing. Scales in Live are based on the twelve notes in equal temperament, the most common tuning in Western music. While applying a scale can lock out some of those notes, you’re still working within the same twelve pitched notes.

Applying a tuning will change the frequency and relationship between notes themselves, meaning you’re no longer working with those same twelve pitches. Applying a tuning will also lock off the scale function, which helps to avoid confusion.

If you are as excited by the latest Ableton Live 12 update as we are, then you will have doubtless heard about its synth star, Meld. This fantastic, characterful instrument is capable of a wide range of tones and some amazing evolving textures, and is a huge highlight of Ableton's latest release.

Meld is a bi-timbral macro oscillator synth that has a character all of its own, not to mention the ability to sound like many other synths. In fact it is one of the most flexible and wide-ranging synths that we have come across. It can be explored and played on any level you wish, and could become yet another bona fide Ableton classic.

This in-depth guide looks at all aspects of the synth so you can get to know this new member of the Ableton family and discover why it's one of the best reasons to upgrade to version 12 or even, dare we say, buy into the whole Ableton Live lifestyle if you are not already a user.

The basics

At the core of Meld is a bi-timbral synth, where you can select different engines, Oscillator A and B, in two slots as your core ingredients. These macro oscillators can be very different beasts, so much so that loading one in can change the parameter types of the right-hand macro controls associated with each oscillator.

In some instances, just a single engine acts and feels like a full synth plugin – some of the engines are almost like full VA or FM synths, for example. And when you blend the two together to explore that full bi-timbral power, you begin to understand just how powerful this plugin is.

Each of the oscillators, A and B, has its own amplitude envelope, modulation envelope, and a couple of LFOs, all located to the right of the macro controls. To the right of these you get a wide range of filters per oscillator, then a panel to mix the two. Finally on the right you get a few controls to set up global parameters, add some drive or alter volume.

If that all sounds very straightforward, that's because it is! That's the beauty of Meld. You can simply use the synth on this level, in a very basic way, just mixing and matching those oscillators to get a wide range of sounds. Then using the extensive filters, you can quickly introduce some movement into the sound by selecting a filter option like Plate Resonator or Phaser from the 17 types available, which introduces some neat distortion and flanging effects when you shift the main frequency dial.

Where Meld excels, though, is with its modulation capabilities. You can start off simply by using the two envelopes and LFOs as modulation sources and then clicking the third option, the Matrix, which shows them as the sources along the top (left to right) with destinations running down the left, from top to bottom. 

You simply map the source to destination by clicking and dragging a cell where they join. Here we've connected the modulation envelope and LFO1 to the filter frequency and they are modulating that by 33 and 3.1 respectively.

In this way you can set up fast modulation connections, but it gets much more interesting when you start going deeper, which we will in our tutorials below. 

Meld also has one or two tricks up its sleeve, including a secondary set of effects on LFO 1, that can also be seen as a source, and an option to expand the plugin (by hitting the triangle indicated with the red square in the screenshot below) so you can see the modulation Matrix in its full glory with both expanded sources and destinations.

In the tutorials below we'll cover more on Meld's modulation and how you can transform some of its already dramatic presets into even more complex and evolving textures.

Three quick tips to get started

1. Start basic or bi-sic

If you are using Meld for the first time, simply explore it's bi-timbral engine using the drop-down (actually pop-up) menus to change oscillator shapes and waveforms. Experiment with these combinations to get a feel of what they offer and also their macro controls which will change depending on which one you load up. You can do a lot of sonic tweaking even on this level.

2. One at a time

We'd also recommend just using one oscillator, A or B, at a time with Meld to start with. You'll hear exactly what is going on without the second oscillator distracting you, so can be more focussed and start to learn what each element does when you start to explore the Matrix area and modulation possibilities.

3. LFO1 FX are great - use them!

We thought this might be a gimmick at first but, as we see below, the effect slots for LFO1 really do provide another layer of character – several actually – that take the modulation up a few notches. This is really worth experimenting with once you get into Meld modulation, which we're just about to do.

Mad Meld modulation

As we said, the modulation is Meld's biggest strength and as we explore that here, it's worth keeping the plugin in its expanded form. You now get some 23 targets including oscillator and filter macros that might change in their purpose according to the preset selected. 

The expanded modulators include both envelopes, the two LFOs (including the rather great LFO1 FX) and Spread which is a +/- value related to the Spread parameter on Meld and often can be used to increase or attenuating the modulation level.

Also check out the expanded MIDI set of modulation parameters including the MPE Slide and Press options which will give you control by way of aftertouch and up and down sliding on an MPE compatible controller. 

The three modulator sections we have discussed so far – envelopes, LFOs and MIDI/MPE – can be selected for each oscillator, with blue indicating Oscillator A and orange for Oscillator B. You can switch between these using the very top left icons as shown.

Finally as sources go, you can also cross modulate in Meld with the envelopes and LFOs of each oscillator available as sources within the other's. The far right column shows Oscillator B's cross modulation (orange) available in Oscillator A's blue mod matrix.

Now we'll go into some deep modulation. Select a preset like Cracked Piano where you can hear defined notes – nothing too outrageous. In order to hear the changes you make even clearer, switch off Oscillator A so we are only hearing Oscillator B. Click on the A icon to switch off Osc A and its box becomes transparent as shown.

Now for something to modulate and, yes, we'll go for the obvious Filter Frequency as it is the easiest to hear in action when modulated. When you manually turn that knob (in our red square), note how it is highlighted in the Matrix in white as your target.

Click and drag up in the slot that links LFO1 to the Filter frequency and you'll hear the frequency rise and fall with the LFO as you play Meld.

LFO effects

Now let's turn our attention to that well-endowed LFO section. Adjusting the rate of LFO1 up and down obviously changes the rate of our filter frequency rising and falling. Keep this at 1Hz as it's very clear to hear. Then experiment with the Shape and Fold controls which give the pulsing more dramatic character.

Reset (or undo) back to the simple sine wave pulsing so we can now hear how the LFO1 FX work. These apply up to two effects onto the shape of LFO1. The easiest way to hear it in action it to select a dramatic effect like Ind.S&H and maybe a slope effect in the second slot. Slow your original LFO down to make any changes completely audible.

In this case you'll hear a juddering sound, and the impact increases as it cycles. Some of the effects are not as predictable as this, and you sometimes have to make sure to have one effect slot set to 'None' as one can cancel out the drama of the other. 

However, these effects are a great addition to Meld and remember that LFO1 FX gets its own source modulation slot so you can use any combination of these effects to modulate anything else. 

Here we're using just LFO1 FX to modulate the filter and it results in a wild, shimmering buzz.

Advanced modulation

You can use these modulation principles to link any of the main sources with all of the destinations at whatever level you wish, so there's already a lot of modulation flexibility here. 

The MIDI and MPE section is particularly useful to assign modulations for live performances, or to record automated tracks – say pitch or velocity changes over time.

The other interesting section in Meld is the Cross Modulation area which lets you apply modulation sources from one oscillator to another – effectively, you are modulating your modulators!

Here we have set up Oscillator B's LFO 2 – a more standard modulator compared to the FX-laden LFO1 – to modulate both of its Filter macros, which in this case are its Q and Lo-fi crunchy effect. Again we've kept the rate at 1Hz to clearly hear the effect.

Now turn to Oscillator A's LFO and select the Pulsate waveshape.

Next, return to Oscillator B and select Oscillator A's LFO1 in the Cross Modulation section and you will hear it (best at an extreme setting) modulating the already modulated filter macros. OK it doesn't sound great – like a broken record – but it does demonstrate the kind of power cross modulation offers (and to be careful how you use it!).

And finally… more effects

Some of Meld's less headline-grabbing features are its effects. It's not exactly laden with them, but they do each get their own controls and are great for ladling on even more sonic interest. 

The Filter effects are variable and found as either Macro 1 or 2 in the mod matrix. They vary depending on which of the 17 filter options you have selected, so the Vowel filter, for example, has a Morph effect to take you between vowel 'a-e-i-o-u' type shapes. Others have crunchy, lo-fi effects, drive or dedicated bitcrusher effects.

The Mix area is for standard mixing and panning between the two oscillators but also features a Tone control that is an EQ on steroids, more of a filter to filter your filter! The Drive slider on the output adds more distortion and grunt and works particularly well if you have some low-end body in your sound.

Finally, just a quick note on the Settings tab near the LFOs. This allows you to set standard note glissando and legato glides and oscillator key tracking, but also includes the new Scale Awareness options for both filter and oscillator. This is part of the key and scale upgrades for Live 12 that allows you to lock associated effects and instruments in the same scale to keep pitches in check. 

We're sure you'll agree that Meld is a fascinating addition to the Live family of instruments. It's brash, confident and loud when you want it to be, but can be more nuanced and subtle too. It demands experimentation and hopefully this guide gives you an idea of how to do just that. We look forward to getting our hands on the full version of Live 12 on its release next year. 

Please note that we used the beta of Live 12 for this feature and the finished version of Live 12 may look slightly different.

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