ABLETON LIVE - related tutorials and Q&A thread

[Chompstomp]

Just a rant if you will

Im so use to mixmeister, but limited by it I decided to give ableton a go.

After 2 nights now of watching tutorials, including Rick Lees. Ive learned to warp a track but thats about where it stops.

I cant figure how to cut/loop or even get 2 tracks on there to beatmatch yet. Every tutorial seems to be different versions or have just something missing.

Either way, It seems like overkill for a mashup? Id like to stick with my cut/loops but with saving and not limited to 8 tracks like mixmeister. Heres hoping I can get past this learning curve.


Cheers

[RockstarBruski]

are you on the 30 day trial? just curious if you bought it before trying it, I know it's the same version as the paid version.

I'll install it tomorrow sometime and I'm sure join you in the land of the lost Maybe we should fly to Germany and get a private tutorial from Rick! Or maybe he'll give us a live lesson via skype

[RockstarBruski]

Here's Ableton's response to my question regarding when version 9 is being released:

-----Original Message-----
From: Ableton Customer Care [mailto:contact@ableton.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 7:18 AM
To: RockstarBruski@RockstarBruski.com
Subject: I'm considering purchasing Ableton Live version 8

Hello Bruce,
Thanks for your mail. Although I can't inform you of our plans for Live 9, I can safely say that you've got quite some time left to enjoy Live 8. And if we did happen to release Live 9 in the next few months, feel free to get back in touch! We hope you enjoy using Live. Should you have any further questions, just let us know.
Best, Ray

[Chompstomp]

Picked up the trail version. Youll notice right away the difference between the 2 programs. I think out of the gate, mixmeister is definitely easier to pick up and run with. In the long run though I can see ableton giving more possibilities especially with the midi and drumrack.

Im still on the fence though. Im really interested in a Akai MPC-1000 for portability and mashups/beatmaking with the Akai MPC 5000 being the dream peice.

Still though you never know until you get hands on. Already ive gone back to mixmeister to make a track.

[DylanVasey]

Ableton is tough to pick up, and I would advise what you've already done - use two DAW's whilst you get use to it. I still use two now - using Ableton only for live DJ'ing.

Anything Akai related will work with most DAW's, but it will work straight out the box with Ableton since they work so closely together.

[RockstarBruski]

I downloaded and installed the live demo and now feel your pain You are very right that this is much BIGGER than Mixmeister. It has tons of capability but it is missing that grab it and drag it interface feel that Mixmeister has. I can see why people use this for live DJing with external equipment I would guess it works quite nicely. I've gone through a few tutorials that are installed in the Ableton live trial and will play around with it more but yeah it's a HUGE learning curve that's for sure! Here's to leaning something new and hopefully fun in the long run

[Chompstomp]

I downloaded and installed the live demo and now feel your pain You are very right that this is much BIGGER than Mixmeister. It has tons of capability but it is missing that grab it and drag it interface feel that Mixmeister has. I can see why people use this for live DJing with external equipment I would guess it works quite nicely. I've gone through a few tutorials that are installed in the Ableton live trial and will play around with it more but yeah it's a HUGE learning curve that's for sure! Here's to leaning something new and hopefully fun in the long run

Still at square 1 here. I think im going to force myself into deleting mixmeister to get out of the comfort zone.

[RockstarBruski]

hmmm, yeah I feel like I've barely scratch the surface too. I hear you on forcing yourself to use just Ableton but I plan on still using Mixmeister for compiling party and fitness mixes b/c if I knew both MM and Ableton Live equaly so far from what I've seen MM is way more straight forward b/c it doesn't have 95% of the capability that AB Live has. If there isn't any messing around much with the tracks and I'm just compiling them into a mix and maybe changing the bpm and throwing a few overlays here and there in a mix the MM is super quick and will save me hours of work.

On the other hand if I want to tweak a track / mashup beyond the simple stuff the AB is super great. I spent about 20 hours into it so far and it's getting more familiar as it goes but still I'm going to guess I only will ever use 50% max of the capabilities of AB live which is fine with me as there's always room to grow. With my Young MC vs Little Richard mashup draft I had no choice but to use AB Live as MM just can't handle warping correctly to that degree. Plus I love that I can insert as many audio tracks as I want and drag them into any order and they keep their place in the timeline.

One thing is after watching and following Rick's tutorial on warping, setting the warp to "Pro Complex "and "HQ" makes a huge difference in the quality of sound when warping (aka stretching /shrinking a tracks timing to be in time.) Another thing I really like is most of what I've tried works and with MM sometimes it just has a computer glitch in that tracks won't play, or it will crash sometimes. AB live seems to be far stabler than MM from what I've seen so far.

Bottom line is I'll continue to use both depending on the job at hand.

[Rick Lee]

If I knew a good software where I can record my desktop and the onboard sound simoustanely, I would do a new tut wich would clear all your questions. I've tried camstudio 2.0 and it doesn't work (even after watching a dozen of tuts... HA!)

[RockstarBruski]

If I knew a good software where I can record my desktop and the onboard sound simoustanely, I would do a new tut wich would clear all your questions. I've tried camstudio 2.0 and it doesn't work (even after watching a dozen of tuts... HA!)

Yeah I need to figure out a good sound/audio screen recording software as well. Boris and others I think have given recommendations awhile back but I can't remember what they said dang it!