Keyboard Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 58) AUDITION ABLETON LIVE 7 without a knob/button-laden hardware controller is like driving a Porsche with the parking brake on. As one example, once you’ve loaded a loop, you can easily move the loop brackets to “frame” a different section of the loop (e.g., the middle two bars of a fourbar loop). Live does this without stuttering, and keeps track of where you “should” be in the full loop so that if you extend the loop all the way back, playback occurs in the right place. You can easily draw and alter envelopes in real time, and MIDI is handled in a particularly “Live-ly” way: It’s more pattern-based and is optimized more for live performance than DAW-style offline tweaking. This isn’t to say you can’t convert a MIDI pattern into a linear track in the Arrangement page; but that’s something you can with lots of programs. Live’s take on MIDI improvisation is unique. Even its bundled effects beg to be tweaked and altered. IN USE Just as Live 7 came out, I was scheduled to do three “laptop jockey” performances at Winter NAMM. I chose to do a live remix (with overdubbed guitar) of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive.” I ripped the CD using Adobe Audition (to be reviewed next month), then brought the file into Live’s Session View so I could derive various loops. Live did its analysis, and marked off the measures — not easy to do, considering how much of the piece is pretty free-form. I moved the loop braces around, finding candidate loops like the classic guitar riff at the beginning, and the ambient, keyboard-soaked sections toward the middle. When I found a passage I liked, I simply invoked “Crop Sample,” and voilà, instant loop. I grabbed about 16 “candidate loops” (including one long one, so I could move the loop braces in real time) before deciding to add some loops of my own from my AdrenaLinn Guitars sample CD. I needed some dance-oriented drums, so I called up Simpler and loaded the “Electron Rock” patch. It was close to the sound I wanted; a little tweaking in Simpler did the job. Creating the MIDI pattern to drive Simpler was, well, simple — just draw and erase notes until you’re happy (see Figure 1 on page 57). As Live now supports REX files, I brought in a few loops from my Turbulent Filth Monsters sample CD. Live 7 adds amazing slicing abilities, by the way; you can take audio and slice it into little bits, triggered by MIDI. You GORY DETAILS FILE FORMATS IMPORTED WAV, AIFF, REX, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg FLAC, FLAC, Standard MIDI (SMF). FILE FORMATS EXPORTED WAV, AIFF, SMF, plus all video formats exportable by QuickTime. AUDIO RESOLUTION Up to 32-bit, 192kHz; 64-bit internal calculations at all mix points; includes POW-R dithering. LIVE PRICING AND FEATURES Ableton’s product line and pricing structure is as complex as Live itself is straightforward. The basic Live 7 program costs $599 boxed, and includes the Essential Instrument Collection 2. As a download, it’s $499, but doesn’t include EIC2. The flagship Ableton Suite lists for $999 boxed or $799 as a download, and bundles Live 7 with the instruments Sampler, Operator, Tension, Electric, Analog, and Drum Machines; the boxed version adds EIC2 and Session Drums. Upgrade from Live 6, $159 boxed/$119 download. Upgrade from Live 1-5, $219/$179. Instruments (download only): Sampler, $199; Operator/Electric/Tension/Analog, $159 each; Drum Machines, $79. Session Drums or EIC 2 (boxed only), $179 each. Interestingly, Live 7 bucks the trend to bundle free instruments in order to enhance the value of an upgrade. All versions here, however, include the Simpler sample player, and Impulse, a drum sample player. 58 keyboard 03-2008 http://www.sae.edu http://www.sae.edu
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