Recording - June 2013 - 20

...where we bring you follow-up articles
with application hints and upgrade news
about gear already reviewed in Recording

&

Ableton Live 9
and Push
Peek under the hood and you’ll find
the best Live yet
By Mike Metlay
with Mark Mosher

We’ve been covering Ableton Live since version 1 (way back in
August 2002) and followed its growth from a simple interactive-loopplayback program to the comprehensive composition and recording
system it is today, our most recent review being version 8 in August
2009. That’s seven versions in seven years, in which we saw the
addition of MIDI, virtual instruments, a huge library of bundled content, many new effects and editing capabilities, a wide variety of
Ableton-friendly control surfaces from companies like Akai
Professional and Novation, and most recently the addition of Cycling
’74’s Max For Live, a set of basic programming tools to build your
own MIDI and audio devices.

After years of waiting and a long and fruitful beta test period, Live 9
is finally here, along with Ableton’s first hardware device, Push. At first
glance, the list of new features in Live 9 is impressive enough, but we’re
going to take a deeper look and see many of the little improvements and
workflow tweaks that have made version 9 by far the best Live ever.
It’s our magazine’s policy not to review beta software, but the official release of Live 9 came in March 2013, barely a month before
we began laying out the issue you’re holding in your hands. To provide a voice of deeper experience in a quicker-than-usual review turnaround, I called in electronic musician, lecturer, and tech blogger
Mark Mosher, who’s been working with Live 9 in beta for several
months and now uses the release version (9.0.2 as of press time)
exclusively. Mark created many of the screenshots you’ll see in this
review and provided a fantastic outline of new features from the perspective of a musician whose creative process has been massively
transformed by Live 9.
So what’s new?
Live 9 comes in three versions: the track-limited and stripped-down
Live 9 Intro with 6 GB of content, Live 9 Standard with some 12 GB of
content, and Live 9 Suite, which comes with 55 GB of available
sounds, software instruments, and a full included install of Max For Live
20

RECORDING June 2013

(see below). Both 32- and 64-bit versions are available, but
read what Ableton has to say on the topic at www.ableton
.com/en/articles/64bit-myths-facts/
Some of Live 9’s standout new features:
~ A brand-new browser and search utility
~ New and improved versions of popular devices and a
new Glue Compressor
~ Session View Clip automation
~ Tighter integration with Max For Live (which is now
included in Live 9 Suite) and a host of ready-made Max
devices, including some very impressive new audio effects
~ User-friendly audio-to-MIDI conversion for melodies, harmonies, and drum tracks
~ Easier access to new content from the Ableton website
But along with those obvious new features, there are
dozens if not hundreds of new features that receive little or
no fanfare, and it’s the sum of those refinements that
makes Live 9 so amazing.
Now, where did I put that—ah, there it is!
One of the most familiar
features of Live is its integrated browser, which lets users
locate clips, samples, plugins, instruments, and more.
But aside from a few tweaks
in recent versions of Live, like
audio preview and a basic
hot-swap system for replacing devices in an existing
Live Project, the browser hasn’t changed much in ten
years, and it showed.
Live 9’s new browser is a
huge step forward, using a
new two-column format and
a vastly improved search
engine. The left column has
two types of basic groupings for your Live data:
Categories, a conventional list of data types you’ll want to
search (like Clips, samples, plug-ins, etc.), and Places, a
user-modifiable list of folders that allow quick access to
your favorite content. Clicking on any left-column item
brings up a right-column folder hierarchy that can be
searched for keywords like “bass” or “Mellotron”.
There are so many improvements here that we could fill
an article just listing them all. In previous versions, all newly
added Live Packs were distributed throughout your existing
library—presets with presets, samples with samples, etc.—
vanishing into the data-soup with no easy way to find them
again. Now Live’s bundled content is organized so you can
find items in Live Packs with a single click. Ableton’s online
Pack Shop is beautifully organized; when you register and
log in, you’re shown which Packs you have already (nearly 40 come with Suite) and you can filter the offerings by
type (Max For Live, Samples, Software Instruments), musical genre, or even free vs. paid—and there’s a lot of free
content for you to enjoy!
Max For Live devices have their own folder, and users of previous versions of Live will have easy access to the old Live 8
Library if desired. Instead of three shortcut buttons to particular
http://www.ableton.com/en/articles/64bit-myths-facts/ http://www.ableton.com/en/articles/64bit-myths-facts/
Recording - June 2013

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