Version Notes

Ableton LIVE 11.3.10 (win/mac version)

Ableton LIVE 11.3.4 (win/mac version)

Ableton LIVE 11.2.6 (win/mac version)

Ableton LIVE 11.1.6 (win/mac version)

Ableton Live 11.0.10 (win/mac version)

Ableton Live 11.0 (win/mac version)

Ableton Live 10.1.25 (win/mac version)

Contains some sound sources

Ableton Releases Live 11.3.10: Automatic Warp Feature Saves You the Hassle of Manual Warp

Live version 11.3.10 has officially launched. In addition to fixing several Live and Push 3 bugs, this new version also adds an Auto-Warp feature, eliminating the tedious process of manually adjusting the warp settings due to inaccurate warp settings.

Warp is arguably one of Live's most important features. While Ableton's algorithms are considered excellent, it's inevitable that warp detection may fail to accurately detect the song's tempo, passage, or beat. This requires manual adjustment by moving the warp markers. If you frequently work with long loops, process vocals, or DJ with Live, manual warping is an unavoidable and time-consuming process.

The new Auto-Warp algorithm addresses all of these issues. Downbeats are now more accurately placed, tempo changes in music are more accurately mapped (no need to manually add warp markers), and long, fixed-tempo tracks (like many music tracks with drum machines) are now recognized, reducing a lot of manual labor.

Additionally, if you have material with a fixed tempo, the new Auto-Warp will recognize this (most likely) and use a single Warp marker and the fixed tempo in its mapping.

Live version 11.2 is now officially available.

This time, the support for AUv3 has been added, the reverb effect has been improved, and many functions have been optimized.

The most important update of Live 11.2 is the addition of support for the AUv3 plug-in format, so Mac users using the M1 chip can use some plug-ins developed for iOS devices and use some synthesizers and effects unique to iOS in Live.

The reverb has also been improved. It has a new UI, CPU optimizations, fine-tuning options for Diffusion and Density (formerly Density and Quality), and most importantly, a Smooth option when changing the Size—this means you can use the reverb's Size parameter for live performances and control the resulting sonic artifacts. Additionally, the reverb has a new switchable filter (single-pole lowpass or lowpass).

Other updates:

• Tuner supports allophonic spellings.
• Channel EQ, Saturator CPU performance optimization.
• Redux adds Hi-Quality option.
• Map/Unmap Mapping tags now work properly in Marco.
• Plugin errors are displayed in the status bar.
• Metal rendering is enabled by default on macOS for better UI performance.
• MIDI capture function optimized.
• Control surface support improvements include Novation Launchkey MK3 quantization settings and PreSonus ATOM SQ improvements.

1. Session interface

The Session interface was Ableton's first killer feature, and in my opinion, it's still its best feature—and the most revolutionary.

It's hard to describe what the Session interface can do, because it can do so many things. But I'll start with the big idea: it opens up a ton of new possibilities for deploying computers as musical instruments, both in performance and improvisation contexts.

Don't confuse the Session interface with a spreadsheet, although both appear as a collection of individual cells organized into a rectangular grid. These cells in the Session interface act as containers for different musical ideas, which can take the form of MIDI or audio and are organized into vertical tracks (as opposed to the more common horizontal tracks in most other hosts).

You can think of the Session surface as a more flexible place to record, store, and organize all of your individual musical building blocks (cells)—you can record them on the fly when they're empty; once you prepare them, they can play spontaneously. Crucially, the start of playback can be quantized to musical time values, as they're tied to the master tempo and time signature. Furthermore, the Session surface makes it easy to dynamically switch between different MIDI instruments and audio processing chains—invaluable in live performances.

It's worth noting that elements of the Session interface have made their way into other hosts, including Bitwig, Logic Pro, and Digital Performer. Even Reaper has a similar third-party plug-in called Playtime. But Ableton is clearly the original father of this technology, offering so many exciting performance and improvisation techniques, and they've been ahead of the curve in this area for over a decade.

2. Finally, it became a mature host

This entry isn't about a single feature, but rather the result of over 20 years of steady development of Ableton.

When I first started using Live 7 in 2009, I often needed to use other hosting software because they included features that Live didn't have.

The Session interface is an incredibly powerful creative environment, and for a long time, I've needed many of the features found in other hosts that Ableton Live lacks. In fact, for the past decade, if I didn't need MIDI, I would have abandoned Live entirely and used Reaper as my host, as I find Reaper's audio tracker and editor to be much more flexible and intuitive.

However, Live is constantly changing:

• Live 8 introduced Max for Live and Push (more on that below).
• Prior to Live 9, there was no automation in the Session interface — only the Arrangement interface supported automation.
• In Live 10, users get a number of editing improvements, including the ability to edit multiple MIDI clips simultaneously.
• A dedicated Take Lane track has been a long-requested feature, and it's finally been added in Live 11. Also included is MIDI MPE support, a host of improvements to Clips, and a bunch of generative tools that work at the Clip level (see below).
• Throughout all of these version upgrades, Ableton has continued to add new content to the built-in collection of devices (see below) and has continued to improve existing devices.

3. Built-in instruments and effects

I'm a big fan of using third-party plug-ins, but if all plug-ins disappeared tomorrow, would relying solely on Ableton Live's built-in tools limit our creativity? Perhaps, but not significantly.

Live Suite offers all the usual suspects: a great parametric EQ, several powerful compressors and limiters, a decent selection of distortion/saturation options, lots of flexible reverbs and delays, competent guitar and bass amp simulations, chorus, flanger, phaser, and auto-panning, to name a few. Live's library covers the gamut of everyday production tools, even offering some seriously advanced toolsets. You'll find plenty of options here.

But it's not just the effects that really make Live shine; it's the extensive collection of instruments. It currently offers nine built-in synthesizers (with more available through Max for Live, see below), covering a wide range of synthesis types—often encompassing multiple genres with a single instrument: Operator is a full-fledged synthesizer offering FM, virtual analog, and additive techniques, while the newer Wavetable is more than capable of competing with a host of well-known third-party wavetable synth plug-ins. The collection of physically modeled synths offers flexibility and appeal for sound designers and musicians, but the included sample and drum instruments are less impressive.

Over the past decade, Ableton has added a host of excellent effects, including the SSL-inspired Glue Compressor, the innovative and very useful Drum Buss, a delay/reverb called Echo (similar to the Roland Space Echo), a looper, a variety of colorful modulatable filters, an extensive collection of modulators, a great Vocoder, and more.

Live also offers an extensive sample library covering a wide range of sounds, including a variety of acoustic and electric pianos, numerous acoustic and electric drum kits and auxiliary percussion instruments, electric guitars and basses, orchestral instruments, woodwinds, brass, mallet percussion, and world instruments.

Last but not least, Live has a range of MIDI effects that provide a powerful tool for MIDI musicians. I think they are the most underrated and inspiring tools in the entire suite.

This is a rich and impressive library of high-quality tools and sounds. With this series of production tools, users can immediately enter the world of music creation.

4. Push

If you're tired of looking at a computer screen while creating music, you might want to check out the hardware instrument called Push, now in its second generation. It's no exaggeration to describe Push as a physical interface for Ableton Live. Only a few features require users to return to their mouse, keyboard, and computer screen, and those are generally unnecessary. You can create entire productions and even perform them on Push. Everything you need to perform, record, and mix with Ableton is just a few buttons away.

Before diving into Push, the key thing to understand is its keyboard structure: it physically presents itself as an 8×8 grid of buttons, supporting velocity sensitivity and MPE, as well as aftertouch for MIDI note input (note that the 8×8 grid also has a variety of other features). This keyboard is dynamic, allowing you to load different scales into the keyboard. If you prefer, you can simply delete "wrong" notes. However, if you've practiced on a traditional piano keyboard (or a MIDI guitar or wind controller) for years, this alternative human-machine interface, while extremely flexible and powerful, may not be as appealing—just like with traditional instruments, there's a learning curve to consider.

But Push is an exciting and innovative instrument worthy of consideration by instrumentalists young and old. Push with Ableton Live isn't like a traditional instrument like a piano or violin (much of the instrumental technology is conceptual and technical, not physical), but it's still worthy of serious investigation—just like instruments with a long and rich playing tradition.

5. Max for Live

Max, along with MSP and Jitter, is a visual programming environment created by Cycling 74 that provides a (relatively) simple way to develop interactive MIDI, audio, and video software. It's a long-standing favorite among music lovers, but back in 2010, Cycling 74 and Ableton collaborated on Max for Live, making both Max and Live incredibly powerful in the process. In 2017, Ableton acquired Cycling 74, and now Max and Live are more closely integrated than ever before, so the future looks bright.

What can you do with Max for Live? The possibilities are endless, but ultimately, Max for Live enables Live users to create original software instruments in the form of MIDI effects, audio effects, instruments, modulators, and video generation and processing devices. These instruments can then be instantly deployed in Ableton Live for audio/video production. For the technically inclined, the possibilities are profound and exciting. But what about those who simply want to make music and don't care about production software? Max for Live still has much to offer these users. Max for Live's enhanced Ableton Live production environment provides another way to collect and deploy software instruments and effects. Max for Live tools can be used with Ableton's built-in instruments as well as third-party plug-ins. Ableton's website currently offers over 50 expansion packs that use Max for Live technology, but many more instruments can be found on many different websites, all of which can be instantly downloaded and used in Live. Numerous individuals and companies are creating high-quality instruments in Max for Live that can enhance your music production experience.

6. Link

In the days before Link, if you wanted to sync one or more devices to Live's tempo, there was only one way to do it: MIDI sync. This meant the devices you were using in Live had to provide MIDI outputs to send tempo data, and each device being synced had to have MIDI inputs available to receive tempo data. Typically, this MIDI I/O interface was linked to each other via standard MIDI cables, making setting up and connecting everything a time-consuming and frustrating task—especially when you had a large number of devices to sync.

The quality of MIDI synchronization was also a concern—you'd hear drift from time to time, especially when first starting up. Follower devices took a while to lock onto the lead tempo. While there are network MIDI drivers that offer wireless MIDI over Wi-Fi, they suffer from significant latency issues.

Link solves all of these problems: it provides incredibly tight synchronization between devices, even when operating at varying speeds—all over a standard Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet network. Best of all, Link couldn't be easier to use—just turn it on, and it automatically finds other Link-enabled devices on your network and syncs them. It can even be configured to automatically initiate transfers to other devices from a single location.

Link makes it incredibly easy to sync other devices to your system. It's also a major advancement in collaborative workflows when using modern digital instruments—hardware instruments, desktop applications, and mobile apps are starting to incorporate Link support. This means collaborators can simply connect to your local network, turn on Link, and instantly sync their device's tempo to yours. It's that simple.

7. Racks

Ableton's Racks feature makes it easy to build custom and recallable signal chains using Ableton's built-in instruments, third-party plug-ins, and Max for Live tools. They come in three different types:

• MIDI Effects Rack: Used to build MIDI effects chains—tools that receive MIDI at their inputs, process (change) that MIDI data in some way, and then send the changed MIDI to their outputs.
• Audio Effects Rack: Used to build audio effects chains—a device that receives audio at its input, processes (changes) that audio in some way, and then sends the changed audio to its output.
• Instrument Rack: Used to build signal chains that may contain up to three devices. MIDI effects can be placed first in the signal chain, followed by instruments. Instruments are devices that receive MIDI at their inputs and output audio. After the instruments, you can place any number of audio effects in the signal chain in any order you desire.

Here's where it gets really interesting: you can use both parallel and serial signal chains in your productions. Beyond that, the Parallel Rack opens up all sorts of powerful layering possibilities. Once your rack is built, simply save it to your User Library for instant recall the next time you need it.

The Rack includes a Macro Control feature that allows you to select and assign key control parameters from your signal chain to a centralized library of knobs, which can then be (often automatically) assigned to knobs on your MIDI controller. When you switch tracks in Live, the Macro knobs for the currently selected track will automatically be reassigned to the knobs on your MIDI controller—especially powerful during live performances.

8. Generative Tools

Generative composition techniques are an exciting and relatively new development in music production. Essentially, generative composition leaves some elements of composition to chance, but the composer specifies exactly what is left to chance and the range of possibilities the computer can choose from. This is a great way to "loosen the screws," allowing for endless variations in our music. I've personally created some of my own work using generative tools in Ableton Live, and I've found it to be a great way to create music that still manages to surprise, even after months of post-production.

Here's a quick overview of some of the generative tools available in the Live 11 Suite edition, though they're developing more all the time—particularly in Max for Live (see above). Note that if you prefer not to pay, there are several powerful generative Max for Live devices available on Ableton's website, such as Patter and MidiVolve.

• Built-in MIDI effects: Arpeggiator, Random, Shaper MIDI and Velocity tools all offer randomization capabilities. When chained together in a rack, these tools offer even more powerful generative techniques.
• Built-in LFO tool: Before the introduction of Max for Live's LFO, only a few audio effects had built-in LFO functionality, offering random waveforms as modulation sources, but these LFO sources were often extremely limited in terms of possible modulation destinations. Now, with the built-in LFO tool, nearly any parameter in Live can become a modulation target for a random waveform. Simply click the "Map" button, then click the other parameter in Live you want to control, and instant randomization is as simple as that.
• Creative Extensions: This expansion pack includes 9 tools, 3 of which offer generative functionality. The Melodic Steps device is a MIDI sequencer that randomizes pitch, note length, velocity, and note rests with the click of a few buttons.
• Inspired by Nature: A unique and impressive collection of tools that simulates natural forces from physics and biology and acts on audio and MIDI.

About Ableton

Ableton provides music software for musicians to create and perform. Live – blends traditional music studio techniques with a timeline-free workflow; Push – hardware instruments for composition and live performance; and Link – wirelessly connect multiple devices for synchronized performance.

Ableton was founded in 1999 by a group of musicians eager to innovate. The first version of Live was released in 2001.

Ableton is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, with branches in Los Angeles and Tokyo, and employs approximately 430 people worldwide.

New Features in Max for Live

Max for Live has received a major upgrade in Live 11. Key updates include:

• MIDI Channel Routing – It is now possible to route MIDI input and output to Max for Live audio effects and instruments.
• API Updates – A redesigned API now supports MPE, enabling Max for Live to connect with even more Live 11 features, including note probability, velocity randomization, release velocity, as well as sample slicing in Simpler, clip and sample warp markers, and more.
• Live Performance Improvements – The Max for Live user interface has been completely revamped for smoother operation.
• Improvements for device engineers – A new live.scope object adds an oscilloscope to the object library, which not only makes it easier for developers to identify the operating system of a device, but also expands more possibilities.
• MIDI Polyphonic Expression Support: MPE can add pitch bend, portamento, and pressure to each note, bringing more expressive sound. To use this feature, you need a MIDI controller that supports MPE.
• 4 new effects: Chorus-Ensemble, Phaser-Flanger, Limiter and Saturator.
• The updated Live Core Library now supports Live 11 Lite, including drum kits, racks, grooves, loops, and MIDI clips.
• Scenes and Tempo Follow: You can now add up to 16 Scenes for more arrangements and experimentation. With Tempo Follow, Live can listen in real time to the audio signal coming from another musician or other equipment (such as a drum machine) and adjust its tempo accordingly.

Live 11 adds Comping

Comping separates each recording attempt into a separate subtrack (Take track). You can then treat each recording attempt as a separate Clip, and then edit the audio on each subtrack according to Live's normal audio editing logic, including frame selection, copy/paste, and all the functions of the Clip editor window, including transposition, reverse, and time stretching.

Of course, Comping can be used not only to organize recorded materials, but also to creatively combine audio materials. In the right-click menu of a track, you can find the option to create a blank "Take track".

Thanks to this feature, we can place different audio materials in a blank sub-track and then piece together a complex audio track. This feature is also very suitable for arranging and editing vocals.

Live 11's comping feature lets you select the best takes from multiple recordings of audio or MIDI content and stitch them together. This also allows for a novel approach to sound design – combining random, disparate sound sources into a collage. Link multiple tracks together to edit them simultaneously.

in conclusion

While Ableton Live's success in the DAW market has been proven by its imitation and copycat success, Live has also evolved over the past 20 years, transcending the realm of live performance tools. Today, Live offers a compelling and powerful space for all stages of music production—composing, improvising, arranging, mixing, and mastering. Today, Live is a powerful host software that transcends its name.