If you’ve previously recorded something in a track in Session View, then toggled to Arrangement View, the track will be greyed out. This is because it is still playing that same clip in Session View while you’re looking at Arrangement View.

You can enable this track for Arrangement playback by pressing the grey arrow to the left of the track.

To enable ALL tracks for Arrangement playback, press the orange, “Back To Arrangement” button in the upper right corner of the arrangement panel.

Session View is the default view when opening Ableton Live. It serves as both an “idea board” for musical clips or phrases as well as a way to trigger those same musical clips for live performance. The workflow here is usually top to bottom.

Tab to Toggle to Arrangement View. Arrangement view is the timeline view that all DAW’s have. The musical ideas from session view can be copied or recorded into Arrangement View to linearly write a song from left to right. You can record new ideas into Arrangement View as well.

Ableton Live has many quality stock instruments that come with the program and also supports third party plugin instruments.

To load stock instruments:

Simply click on the Instruments tab in the Live browser (the left vertical panel of categories). Once the Instruments category is selected, you will see all of the available types of instruments. Click on the arrow to the left of an instrument type, for instance “Analog.” Inside “Analog” you will see different presets organized by sound such as “Bass” or “Piano and Keys” Click any .adv preset to load that instrument into a new track.

To load third party plugins:

(assuming you’ve already installed them on your computer), the next thing you need to do is make sure you’ve pointed Live to the folder where you installed your plugins. YOU ONLY HAVE TO DO THIS ONCE.

On Windows, for example you might install your plugins to C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins, but it completely depends on where the specified the location is when you installed the third party plugins. Then go to Options, Preferences, File Folder. Turn On “Use VST Plug-In Custom Folder,” then click the “Browse” button underneath and point to the folder where your plugins are stored.

On a Mac, the process is similar. Go to Live, Preferences, File Folder. On Mac OS, Ableton Live understands 2 different formats of third party plugins; Audio Units (AUs) and VSTs. These formats are very similar and you won’t notice much difference between them. Most plugin developers will have installers that offer both formats. However, Audio Units do not exist on Windows. If you are a Mac user and want to collaborate with Windows users, use VSTs so that your projects are compatible. On a Mac, third party plugins will be installed in a premade system folder “Library\Audio\Plug-Ins.” Audio Units are stored under the subfolder, “Components.” You can turn on both Audio Units and VSTs from the File Folder Preferences. In Live on a Mac, you can also specify a Custom Folder for VSTs in addition to the system folder.

Once your plugins are enabled and pointed, on both Mac and PC you can easily access and load them from the Plug-Ins tab in Live’s Browser. You can click and drag them to a desired track. Remember, there are midi only Plugins that are virtual synthesizers (these go only on midi tracks), and there are audio effect plugins that can either go on an audio track or on a midi track after the synthesizer instrument.

Ableton Live allows you to have up to 12 return tracks; Send/Return Tracks A through L.

Ableton Live has 3 different options to monitor a track; Auto, In, and Off. “Auto” will allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track only if the track is record armed. “In” will always allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track regardless of whether the track is record armed or not. “Off” will mute the audio input from that track. Also note that when monitoring is set to “In”, you will not be able to hear the playback of a recorded clip until you switch monitoring back to Auto.

This monitoring behavior is also the same for midi track input for played notes.

To get to Arrangement View in Ableton, simply press the Tab key on your keyboard. Pressing Tab again will toggle you back to Session View. You can also press one of the two Session/ Arrangement View Selector buttons in the top-right corner of the screen.

Ableton Live Suite versions include a free download of Max for Live. in Live 9 Suite, you can login to your account on Ableton.com and download Max for Live, or purchase it if you have a lesser version than Suite (such as Standard or Intro). Ableton Live 10 Suite automatically has Max for Live included during the original installation of the Ableton software, so no additional download or installation of Max for Live is necessary.

To stop all clips in session view, simply click the stop button located on the Master track.

To stop all clips with a Push 2, hold the Shift button on the Push2 then press the Stop Clip button.

You can also press space bar.

To record midi in Ableton Live, you must first have a midi track that is armed. To arm a midi track, in session view click the arm button, which is located below the track’s solo button. To arm a midi track in arrangement view, click the arm button which is located to the right of the track’s solo button. You’ll also need to make sure that track input for the midi device is your playing on is enabled in Live’s midi preferences.  (Live, Preferences or on PC, Options, Preferences, then click track on the midi input for the desired midi device). You can also play notes from your computer keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track, then play notes. Click the square stop clip button on that track to stop recording. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen (providing that the desired track is armed. Click the global square stop button at the  top center of the screen to stop recording.

To record the midi output of one track to the midi input of a new midi track, simply set the midi input of the new track to the name of the existing midi track, then arm the new midi track. Again, if you’re in session keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track after the existing track is playing. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen.

Warping is the terminology used when referring to stretching audio in Ableton Live.

To unfreeze a track simply right click on the track and click unfreeze.

A Drum Rack is one of Live’s most versatile and popular instruments. The Drum Rack is made up of 128 “slots” that can playback audio samples, plugins and effects in a variety of ways. Drum racks allow you to build a huge library of sounds in a single instrument on a track. Some artists have built entire songs using nothing but drum racks!

Common uses include layering multiple drum sounds, manipulating audio loops, chopping up vocals, and much more.

You can create multiple chains in any of the drum rack’s 128 slots, and go really deep inside what you create with a drum rack. This allows users to take full creative control of playback individual musical ideas, while manipulating how they are performed, whether being a one-shot or audio loop.

A scene is a horizontal row of clips in session view (both midi or audio) that contain sounds. All clips within this horizontal row can be played at once by pressing the corresponding play button of that row on the Master track.

Ableton Live allows you to bus audio out from multiple tracks (say vocals, drums, lead synth, and pads) to a single track that has FX on it (for example reverb). This bussed track is only for FX. You can independently dial in how much volume from each track will be sent to this FX track. Hence the term send and return. You would think that there are 2 stages, but there is really only 1 FX track in this scenario. The FX track then routes its audio to the master (by default, but you can change the routing to a track separate from the master.)

Note, return tracks act in parallel, meaning that even when a track’s set to send 100% to the return track, the original audio is still going to the master, meaning 100% wet is really 50% wet, 50% dry.

There are also Pre/Post buttons for sends. These buttons are located on the master track, above the master fader in session view. Post is the default. When set to Pre, the input of the return track will ignore where the fader is set on the source track that is being sent to the return track. This means that if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, but it still is set to send some amount of its audio to the return track, you will still hear the return track fx. When set to Post, if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, you won’t hear anything on the return track fx.

Warp Markers are the yellow notches above audio clips when warping is enabled.  You can create new warp markers by clicking anywhere above the waveform. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to specific time based intervals. Live will also show grey arrows where potential warp markers could be. This is Live’s suggestion on warp marker placement based on transient peaks.

When you freeze a track, the track will appear greyed out. To freeze a track simply right click on the track and click freeze. Live will make reference audio files in your project’s folder both for session and arrangement view midi and audio clips. Because the track is frozen and is now playing audio files rather than generating a sound real time, your CPU usage is reduced. You can then commit a track by flattening, which just pulls those reference audio files back into your project, replacing any devices that were in the frozen track.

Consolidate will combine 2 or more clips of either audio or midi. To consolidate a clip, highlight 2 or more clips, right click, then click Consolidate  Consolidate is NOT a way to reduce CPU. It is designed to simplify and clean up your project file. When you consolidate 2 or more audio clips, a new audio clip will be created that replaces the old. Likewise a new midi clip is created to combine 2 or more midi clips. Consolidate is ALWAYS PreFX. Meaning the devices on a track will still remain after consolidating.

Digital Duct Tape.

Max for Live is a visual programming environment that allows users to build instruments and effects for use within Ableton Live.

Often times advanced users will create brilliant solutions to common problems such as, BeatSeeker, which allows Ableton’s global tempo to be synced to the average rhythmic audio timing.

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/beatseeker/

The growing community centred around sites such as max4live.com and maxforlive.info are helpful and creative with a wealth of devices available in addition to the ones included within the Ableton Live Packs. Often times, a device or effect will nearly do what you want but not quite…That’s where Max For Live Comes into help.

Max for Live is only available in Ableton Live Suite.

To add a Max For Live device to an Ableton project simply take the downloaded .amxd file from Finder or Windows File Explorer and drag it onto the desired track in Ableton Live.

If you have a folder of Max For Live Devices (such as Users/Username/Desktop/MaxDevices), it might make sense to add that folder to Live’s browser by clicking “Add Folder…” at the bottom of Live’s Browser. That way you can add Max For Live devices to tracks directly from Ableton Live.

The session record button IS NOT the record button next to the stop and the play button. The session record button is near the top center of the screen, next to the “new” button. This button is only available in Session View. When pressed, the session record button will record a new clip in all armed tracks (midi and audio) if an empty scene/row is selected. For midi clips, if you press the session record button and are playing an existing clip, you will OVERDUB new notes to add to existing ones.

Warping is the way Live will stretch audio to a specific grid. The best analogy is this…You have a ruler, a rubber band, and some thumb tacks. The ruler is a timed based grid of evenly spaced intervals. The rubberband is the audio clip. It can be stretched or shrunk down to a specific space between intervals. The thumb tacks are Warp Markers. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to those specific intervals.

Ableton Live will work with any midi controller, however here are 10 really good ones that we love.

Ableton Push 2
Novation Launchpad Pro
Akai APC40 MKII
Akai Professional Advance 49
Arturia Keylab 49
Akai MPK Mini MKII 25
Native Instruments Machine MK3
DJTechTools Midi Fighter 3D
DJTechTools Midi Fighter Twister
Novation LaunchControl XL

Yes, it is convenient to DJ from CDJ’s using RecordBox, or DJ with Traktor or Serato, but Ableton Live offers way more versatility in the Live realm in a way that no other program can.

You can take your live performance to a whole new level. Instead of just playing your Deck A and transitioning back to your Deck B all night…Ableton Live can do that and more. What if you wanted to play instruments along with your backing tracks, and have a platform that can support third party plugins on your backing tracks as well as your live inputs? Ableton can do it all.

Everyone is a DJ nowadays, Ableton will help you stand out for the right reasons.

If you’ve previously recorded something in a track in Session View, then toggled to Arrangement View, the track will be greyed out. This is because it is still playing that same clip in Session View while you’re looking at Arrangement View.

You can enable this track for Arrangement playback by pressing the grey arrow to the left of the track.

To enable ALL tracks for Arrangement playback, press the orange, “Back To Arrangement” button in the upper right corner of the arrangement panel.

Session View is the default view when opening Ableton Live. It serves as both an “idea board” for musical clips or phrases as well as a way to trigger those same musical clips for live performance. The workflow here is usually top to bottom.

Tab to Toggle to Arrangement View. Arrangement view is the timeline view that all DAW’s have. The musical ideas from session view can be copied or recorded into Arrangement View to linearly write a song from left to right. You can record new ideas into Arrangement View as well.

Ableton Live has many quality stock instruments that come with the program and also supports third party plugin instruments.

To load stock instruments:

Simply click on the Instruments tab in the Live browser (the left vertical panel of categories). Once the Instruments category is selected, you will see all of the available types of instruments. Click on the arrow to the left of an instrument type, for instance “Analog.” Inside “Analog” you will see different presets organized by sound such as “Bass” or “Piano and Keys” Click any .adv preset to load that instrument into a new track.

To load third party plugins:

(assuming you’ve already installed them on your computer), the next thing you need to do is make sure you’ve pointed Live to the folder where you installed your plugins. YOU ONLY HAVE TO DO THIS ONCE.

On Windows, for example you might install your plugins to C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins, but it completely depends on where the specified the location is when you installed the third party plugins. Then go to Options, Preferences, File Folder. Turn On “Use VST Plug-In Custom Folder,” then click the “Browse” button underneath and point to the folder where your plugins are stored.

On a Mac, the process is similar. Go to Live, Preferences, File Folder. On Mac OS, Ableton Live understands 2 different formats of third party plugins; Audio Units (AUs) and VSTs. These formats are very similar and you won’t notice much difference between them. Most plugin developers will have installers that offer both formats. However, Audio Units do not exist on Windows. If you are a Mac user and want to collaborate with Windows users, use VSTs so that your projects are compatible. On a Mac, third party plugins will be installed in a premade system folder “Library\Audio\Plug-Ins.” Audio Units are stored under the subfolder, “Components.” You can turn on both Audio Units and VSTs from the File Folder Preferences. In Live on a Mac, you can also specify a Custom Folder for VSTs in addition to the system folder.

Once your plugins are enabled and pointed, on both Mac and PC you can easily access and load them from the Plug-Ins tab in Live’s Browser. You can click and drag them to a desired track. Remember, there are midi only Plugins that are virtual synthesizers (these go only on midi tracks), and there are audio effect plugins that can either go on an audio track or on a midi track after the synthesizer instrument.

Ableton Live allows you to have up to 12 return tracks; Send/Return Tracks A through L.

Ableton Live has 3 different options to monitor a track; Auto, In, and Off. “Auto” will allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track only if the track is record armed. “In” will always allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track regardless of whether the track is record armed or not. “Off” will mute the audio input from that track. Also note that when monitoring is set to “In”, you will not be able to hear the playback of a recorded clip until you switch monitoring back to Auto.

This monitoring behavior is also the same for midi track input for played notes.

To get to Arrangement View in Ableton, simply press the Tab key on your keyboard. Pressing Tab again will toggle you back to Session View. You can also press one of the two Session/ Arrangement View Selector buttons in the top-right corner of the screen.

Ableton Live Suite versions include a free download of Max for Live. in Live 9 Suite, you can login to your account on Ableton.com and download Max for Live, or purchase it if you have a lesser version than Suite (such as Standard or Intro). Ableton Live 10 Suite automatically has Max for Live included during the original installation of the Ableton software, so no additional download or installation of Max for Live is necessary.

To stop all clips in session view, simply click the stop button located on the Master track.

To stop all clips with a Push 2, hold the Shift button on the Push2 then press the Stop Clip button.

You can also press space bar.

To record midi in Ableton Live, you must first have a midi track that is armed. To arm a midi track, in session view click the arm button, which is located below the track’s solo button. To arm a midi track in arrangement view, click the arm button which is located to the right of the track’s solo button. You’ll also need to make sure that track input for the midi device is your playing on is enabled in Live’s midi preferences.  (Live, Preferences or on PC, Options, Preferences, then click track on the midi input for the desired midi device). You can also play notes from your computer keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track, then play notes. Click the square stop clip button on that track to stop recording. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen (providing that the desired track is armed. Click the global square stop button at the  top center of the screen to stop recording.

To record the midi output of one track to the midi input of a new midi track, simply set the midi input of the new track to the name of the existing midi track, then arm the new midi track. Again, if you’re in session keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track after the existing track is playing. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen.

Warping is the terminology used when referring to stretching audio in Ableton Live.

To unfreeze a track simply right click on the track and click unfreeze.

A Drum Rack is one of Live’s most versatile and popular instruments. The Drum Rack is made up of 128 “slots” that can playback audio samples, plugins and effects in a variety of ways. Drum racks allow you to build a huge library of sounds in a single instrument on a track. Some artists have built entire songs using nothing but drum racks!

Common uses include layering multiple drum sounds, manipulating audio loops, chopping up vocals, and much more.

You can create multiple chains in any of the drum rack’s 128 slots, and go really deep inside what you create with a drum rack. This allows users to take full creative control of playback individual musical ideas, while manipulating how they are performed, whether being a one-shot or audio loop.

A scene is a horizontal row of clips in session view (both midi or audio) that contain sounds. All clips within this horizontal row can be played at once by pressing the corresponding play button of that row on the Master track.

Ableton Live allows you to bus audio out from multiple tracks (say vocals, drums, lead synth, and pads) to a single track that has FX on it (for example reverb). This bussed track is only for FX. You can independently dial in how much volume from each track will be sent to this FX track. Hence the term send and return. You would think that there are 2 stages, but there is really only 1 FX track in this scenario. The FX track then routes its audio to the master (by default, but you can change the routing to a track separate from the master.)

Note, return tracks act in parallel, meaning that even when a track’s set to send 100% to the return track, the original audio is still going to the master, meaning 100% wet is really 50% wet, 50% dry.

There are also Pre/Post buttons for sends. These buttons are located on the master track, above the master fader in session view. Post is the default. When set to Pre, the input of the return track will ignore where the fader is set on the source track that is being sent to the return track. This means that if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, but it still is set to send some amount of its audio to the return track, you will still hear the return track fx. When set to Post, if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, you won’t hear anything on the return track fx.

Warp Markers are the yellow notches above audio clips when warping is enabled.  You can create new warp markers by clicking anywhere above the waveform. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to specific time based intervals. Live will also show grey arrows where potential warp markers could be. This is Live’s suggestion on warp marker placement based on transient peaks.

When you freeze a track, the track will appear greyed out. To freeze a track simply right click on the track and click freeze. Live will make reference audio files in your project’s folder both for session and arrangement view midi and audio clips. Because the track is frozen and is now playing audio files rather than generating a sound real time, your CPU usage is reduced. You can then commit a track by flattening, which just pulls those reference audio files back into your project, replacing any devices that were in the frozen track.

Consolidate will combine 2 or more clips of either audio or midi. To consolidate a clip, highlight 2 or more clips, right click, then click Consolidate  Consolidate is NOT a way to reduce CPU. It is designed to simplify and clean up your project file. When you consolidate 2 or more audio clips, a new audio clip will be created that replaces the old. Likewise a new midi clip is created to combine 2 or more midi clips. Consolidate is ALWAYS PreFX. Meaning the devices on a track will still remain after consolidating.

Digital Duct Tape.

Max for Live is a visual programming environment that allows users to build instruments and effects for use within Ableton Live.

Often times advanced users will create brilliant solutions to common problems such as, BeatSeeker, which allows Ableton’s global tempo to be synced to the average rhythmic audio timing.

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/beatseeker/

The growing community centred around sites such as max4live.com and maxforlive.info are helpful and creative with a wealth of devices available in addition to the ones included within the Ableton Live Packs. Often times, a device or effect will nearly do what you want but not quite…That’s where Max For Live Comes into help.

Max for Live is only available in Ableton Live Suite.

To add a Max For Live device to an Ableton project simply take the downloaded .amxd file from Finder or Windows File Explorer and drag it onto the desired track in Ableton Live.

If you have a folder of Max For Live Devices (such as Users/Username/Desktop/MaxDevices), it might make sense to add that folder to Live’s browser by clicking “Add Folder…” at the bottom of Live’s Browser. That way you can add Max For Live devices to tracks directly from Ableton Live.

The session record button IS NOT the record button next to the stop and the play button. The session record button is near the top center of the screen, next to the “new” button. This button is only available in Session View. When pressed, the session record button will record a new clip in all armed tracks (midi and audio) if an empty scene/row is selected. For midi clips, if you press the session record button and are playing an existing clip, you will OVERDUB new notes to add to existing ones.

Warping is the way Live will stretch audio to a specific grid. The best analogy is this…You have a ruler, a rubber band, and some thumb tacks. The ruler is a timed based grid of evenly spaced intervals. The rubberband is the audio clip. It can be stretched or shrunk down to a specific space between intervals. The thumb tacks are Warp Markers. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to those specific intervals.

Ableton Live will work with any midi controller, however here are 10 really good ones that we love.

Ableton Push 2
Novation Launchpad Pro
Akai APC40 MKII
Akai Professional Advance 49
Arturia Keylab 49
Akai MPK Mini MKII 25
Native Instruments Machine MK3
DJTechTools Midi Fighter 3D
DJTechTools Midi Fighter Twister
Novation LaunchControl XL

Yes, it is convenient to DJ from CDJ’s using RecordBox, or DJ with Traktor or Serato, but Ableton Live offers way more versatility in the Live realm in a way that no other program can.

You can take your live performance to a whole new level. Instead of just playing your Deck A and transitioning back to your Deck B all night…Ableton Live can do that and more. What if you wanted to play instruments along with your backing tracks, and have a platform that can support third party plugins on your backing tracks as well as your live inputs? Ableton can do it all.

Everyone is a DJ nowadays, Ableton will help you stand out for the right reasons.

If you’ve previously recorded something in a track in Session View, then toggled to Arrangement View, the track will be greyed out. This is because it is still playing that same clip in Session View while you’re looking at Arrangement View.

You can enable this track for Arrangement playback by pressing the grey arrow to the left of the track.

To enable ALL tracks for Arrangement playback, press the orange, “Back To Arrangement” button in the upper right corner of the arrangement panel.

Session View is the default view when opening Ableton Live. It serves as both an “idea board” for musical clips or phrases as well as a way to trigger those same musical clips for live performance. The workflow here is usually top to bottom.

Tab to Toggle to Arrangement View. Arrangement view is the timeline view that all DAW’s have. The musical ideas from session view can be copied or recorded into Arrangement View to linearly write a song from left to right. You can record new ideas into Arrangement View as well.

Ableton Live has many quality stock instruments that come with the program and also supports third party plugin instruments.

To load stock instruments:

Simply click on the Instruments tab in the Live browser (the left vertical panel of categories). Once the Instruments category is selected, you will see all of the available types of instruments. Click on the arrow to the left of an instrument type, for instance “Analog.” Inside “Analog” you will see different presets organized by sound such as “Bass” or “Piano and Keys” Click any .adv preset to load that instrument into a new track.

To load third party plugins:

(assuming you’ve already installed them on your computer), the next thing you need to do is make sure you’ve pointed Live to the folder where you installed your plugins. YOU ONLY HAVE TO DO THIS ONCE.

On Windows, for example you might install your plugins to C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins, but it completely depends on where the specified the location is when you installed the third party plugins. Then go to Options, Preferences, File Folder. Turn On “Use VST Plug-In Custom Folder,” then click the “Browse” button underneath and point to the folder where your plugins are stored.

On a Mac, the process is similar. Go to Live, Preferences, File Folder. On Mac OS, Ableton Live understands 2 different formats of third party plugins; Audio Units (AUs) and VSTs. These formats are very similar and you won’t notice much difference between them. Most plugin developers will have installers that offer both formats. However, Audio Units do not exist on Windows. If you are a Mac user and want to collaborate with Windows users, use VSTs so that your projects are compatible. On a Mac, third party plugins will be installed in a premade system folder “Library\Audio\Plug-Ins.” Audio Units are stored under the subfolder, “Components.” You can turn on both Audio Units and VSTs from the File Folder Preferences. In Live on a Mac, you can also specify a Custom Folder for VSTs in addition to the system folder.

Once your plugins are enabled and pointed, on both Mac and PC you can easily access and load them from the Plug-Ins tab in Live’s Browser. You can click and drag them to a desired track. Remember, there are midi only Plugins that are virtual synthesizers (these go only on midi tracks), and there are audio effect plugins that can either go on an audio track or on a midi track after the synthesizer instrument.

Ableton Live allows you to have up to 12 return tracks; Send/Return Tracks A through L.

Ableton Live has 3 different options to monitor a track; Auto, In, and Off. “Auto” will allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track only if the track is record armed. “In” will always allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track regardless of whether the track is record armed or not. “Off” will mute the audio input from that track. Also note that when monitoring is set to “In”, you will not be able to hear the playback of a recorded clip until you switch monitoring back to Auto.

This monitoring behavior is also the same for midi track input for played notes.

To get to Arrangement View in Ableton, simply press the Tab key on your keyboard. Pressing Tab again will toggle you back to Session View. You can also press one of the two Session/ Arrangement View Selector buttons in the top-right corner of the screen.

Ableton Live Suite versions include a free download of Max for Live. in Live 9 Suite, you can login to your account on Ableton.com and download Max for Live, or purchase it if you have a lesser version than Suite (such as Standard or Intro). Ableton Live 10 Suite automatically has Max for Live included during the original installation of the Ableton software, so no additional download or installation of Max for Live is necessary.

To stop all clips in session view, simply click the stop button located on the Master track.

To stop all clips with a Push 2, hold the Shift button on the Push2 then press the Stop Clip button.

You can also press space bar.

To record midi in Ableton Live, you must first have a midi track that is armed. To arm a midi track, in session view click the arm button, which is located below the track’s solo button. To arm a midi track in arrangement view, click the arm button which is located to the right of the track’s solo button. You’ll also need to make sure that track input for the midi device is your playing on is enabled in Live’s midi preferences.  (Live, Preferences or on PC, Options, Preferences, then click track on the midi input for the desired midi device). You can also play notes from your computer keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track, then play notes. Click the square stop clip button on that track to stop recording. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen (providing that the desired track is armed. Click the global square stop button at the  top center of the screen to stop recording.

To record the midi output of one track to the midi input of a new midi track, simply set the midi input of the new track to the name of the existing midi track, then arm the new midi track. Again, if you’re in session keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track after the existing track is playing. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen.

Warping is the terminology used when referring to stretching audio in Ableton Live.

To unfreeze a track simply right click on the track and click unfreeze.

A Drum Rack is one of Live’s most versatile and popular instruments. The Drum Rack is made up of 128 “slots” that can playback audio samples, plugins and effects in a variety of ways. Drum racks allow you to build a huge library of sounds in a single instrument on a track. Some artists have built entire songs using nothing but drum racks!

Common uses include layering multiple drum sounds, manipulating audio loops, chopping up vocals, and much more.

You can create multiple chains in any of the drum rack’s 128 slots, and go really deep inside what you create with a drum rack. This allows users to take full creative control of playback individual musical ideas, while manipulating how they are performed, whether being a one-shot or audio loop.

A scene is a horizontal row of clips in session view (both midi or audio) that contain sounds. All clips within this horizontal row can be played at once by pressing the corresponding play button of that row on the Master track.

Ableton Live allows you to bus audio out from multiple tracks (say vocals, drums, lead synth, and pads) to a single track that has FX on it (for example reverb). This bussed track is only for FX. You can independently dial in how much volume from each track will be sent to this FX track. Hence the term send and return. You would think that there are 2 stages, but there is really only 1 FX track in this scenario. The FX track then routes its audio to the master (by default, but you can change the routing to a track separate from the master.)

Note, return tracks act in parallel, meaning that even when a track’s set to send 100% to the return track, the original audio is still going to the master, meaning 100% wet is really 50% wet, 50% dry.

There are also Pre/Post buttons for sends. These buttons are located on the master track, above the master fader in session view. Post is the default. When set to Pre, the input of the return track will ignore where the fader is set on the source track that is being sent to the return track. This means that if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, but it still is set to send some amount of its audio to the return track, you will still hear the return track fx. When set to Post, if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, you won’t hear anything on the return track fx.

Warp Markers are the yellow notches above audio clips when warping is enabled.  You can create new warp markers by clicking anywhere above the waveform. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to specific time based intervals. Live will also show grey arrows where potential warp markers could be. This is Live’s suggestion on warp marker placement based on transient peaks.

When you freeze a track, the track will appear greyed out. To freeze a track simply right click on the track and click freeze. Live will make reference audio files in your project’s folder both for session and arrangement view midi and audio clips. Because the track is frozen and is now playing audio files rather than generating a sound real time, your CPU usage is reduced. You can then commit a track by flattening, which just pulls those reference audio files back into your project, replacing any devices that were in the frozen track.

Consolidate will combine 2 or more clips of either audio or midi. To consolidate a clip, highlight 2 or more clips, right click, then click Consolidate  Consolidate is NOT a way to reduce CPU. It is designed to simplify and clean up your project file. When you consolidate 2 or more audio clips, a new audio clip will be created that replaces the old. Likewise a new midi clip is created to combine 2 or more midi clips. Consolidate is ALWAYS PreFX. Meaning the devices on a track will still remain after consolidating.

Digital Duct Tape.

Max for Live is a visual programming environment that allows users to build instruments and effects for use within Ableton Live.

Often times advanced users will create brilliant solutions to common problems such as, BeatSeeker, which allows Ableton’s global tempo to be synced to the average rhythmic audio timing.

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/beatseeker/

The growing community centred around sites such as max4live.com and maxforlive.info are helpful and creative with a wealth of devices available in addition to the ones included within the Ableton Live Packs. Often times, a device or effect will nearly do what you want but not quite…That’s where Max For Live Comes into help.

Max for Live is only available in Ableton Live Suite.

To add a Max For Live device to an Ableton project simply take the downloaded .amxd file from Finder or Windows File Explorer and drag it onto the desired track in Ableton Live.

If you have a folder of Max For Live Devices (such as Users/Username/Desktop/MaxDevices), it might make sense to add that folder to Live’s browser by clicking “Add Folder…” at the bottom of Live’s Browser. That way you can add Max For Live devices to tracks directly from Ableton Live.

The session record button IS NOT the record button next to the stop and the play button. The session record button is near the top center of the screen, next to the “new” button. This button is only available in Session View. When pressed, the session record button will record a new clip in all armed tracks (midi and audio) if an empty scene/row is selected. For midi clips, if you press the session record button and are playing an existing clip, you will OVERDUB new notes to add to existing ones.

Warping is the way Live will stretch audio to a specific grid. The best analogy is this…You have a ruler, a rubber band, and some thumb tacks. The ruler is a timed based grid of evenly spaced intervals. The rubberband is the audio clip. It can be stretched or shrunk down to a specific space between intervals. The thumb tacks are Warp Markers. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to those specific intervals.

Ableton Live will work with any midi controller, however here are 10 really good ones that we love.

Ableton Push 2
Novation Launchpad Pro
Akai APC40 MKII
Akai Professional Advance 49
Arturia Keylab 49
Akai MPK Mini MKII 25
Native Instruments Machine MK3
DJTechTools Midi Fighter 3D
DJTechTools Midi Fighter Twister
Novation LaunchControl XL

Yes, it is convenient to DJ from CDJ’s using RecordBox, or DJ with Traktor or Serato, but Ableton Live offers way more versatility in the Live realm in a way that no other program can.

You can take your live performance to a whole new level. Instead of just playing your Deck A and transitioning back to your Deck B all night…Ableton Live can do that and more. What if you wanted to play instruments along with your backing tracks, and have a platform that can support third party plugins on your backing tracks as well as your live inputs? Ableton can do it all.

Everyone is a DJ nowadays, Ableton will help you stand out for the right reasons.

If you’ve previously recorded something in a track in Session View, then toggled to Arrangement View, the track will be greyed out. This is because it is still playing that same clip in Session View while you’re looking at Arrangement View.

You can enable this track for Arrangement playback by pressing the grey arrow to the left of the track.

To enable ALL tracks for Arrangement playback, press the orange, “Back To Arrangement” button in the upper right corner of the arrangement panel.

Session View is the default view when opening Ableton Live. It serves as both an “idea board” for musical clips or phrases as well as a way to trigger those same musical clips for live performance. The workflow here is usually top to bottom.

Tab to Toggle to Arrangement View. Arrangement view is the timeline view that all DAW’s have. The musical ideas from session view can be copied or recorded into Arrangement View to linearly write a song from left to right. You can record new ideas into Arrangement View as well.

Ableton Live has many quality stock instruments that come with the program and also supports third party plugin instruments.

To load stock instruments:

Simply click on the Instruments tab in the Live browser (the left vertical panel of categories). Once the Instruments category is selected, you will see all of the available types of instruments. Click on the arrow to the left of an instrument type, for instance “Analog.” Inside “Analog” you will see different presets organized by sound such as “Bass” or “Piano and Keys” Click any .adv preset to load that instrument into a new track.

To load third party plugins:

(assuming you’ve already installed them on your computer), the next thing you need to do is make sure you’ve pointed Live to the folder where you installed your plugins. YOU ONLY HAVE TO DO THIS ONCE.

On Windows, for example you might install your plugins to C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins, but it completely depends on where the specified the location is when you installed the third party plugins. Then go to Options, Preferences, File Folder. Turn On “Use VST Plug-In Custom Folder,” then click the “Browse” button underneath and point to the folder where your plugins are stored.

On a Mac, the process is similar. Go to Live, Preferences, File Folder. On Mac OS, Ableton Live understands 2 different formats of third party plugins; Audio Units (AUs) and VSTs. These formats are very similar and you won’t notice much difference between them. Most plugin developers will have installers that offer both formats. However, Audio Units do not exist on Windows. If you are a Mac user and want to collaborate with Windows users, use VSTs so that your projects are compatible. On a Mac, third party plugins will be installed in a premade system folder “Library\Audio\Plug-Ins.” Audio Units are stored under the subfolder, “Components.” You can turn on both Audio Units and VSTs from the File Folder Preferences. In Live on a Mac, you can also specify a Custom Folder for VSTs in addition to the system folder.

Once your plugins are enabled and pointed, on both Mac and PC you can easily access and load them from the Plug-Ins tab in Live’s Browser. You can click and drag them to a desired track. Remember, there are midi only Plugins that are virtual synthesizers (these go only on midi tracks), and there are audio effect plugins that can either go on an audio track or on a midi track after the synthesizer instrument.

Ableton Live allows you to have up to 12 return tracks; Send/Return Tracks A through L.

Ableton Live has 3 different options to monitor a track; Auto, In, and Off. “Auto” will allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track only if the track is record armed. “In” will always allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track regardless of whether the track is record armed or not. “Off” will mute the audio input from that track. Also note that when monitoring is set to “In”, you will not be able to hear the playback of a recorded clip until you switch monitoring back to Auto.

This monitoring behavior is also the same for midi track input for played notes.

To get to Arrangement View in Ableton, simply press the Tab key on your keyboard. Pressing Tab again will toggle you back to Session View. You can also press one of the two Session/ Arrangement View Selector buttons in the top-right corner of the screen.

Ableton Live Suite versions include a free download of Max for Live. in Live 9 Suite, you can login to your account on Ableton.com and download Max for Live, or purchase it if you have a lesser version than Suite (such as Standard or Intro). Ableton Live 10 Suite automatically has Max for Live included during the original installation of the Ableton software, so no additional download or installation of Max for Live is necessary.

To stop all clips in session view, simply click the stop button located on the Master track.

To stop all clips with a Push 2, hold the Shift button on the Push2 then press the Stop Clip button.

You can also press space bar.

To record midi in Ableton Live, you must first have a midi track that is armed. To arm a midi track, in session view click the arm button, which is located below the track’s solo button. To arm a midi track in arrangement view, click the arm button which is located to the right of the track’s solo button. You’ll also need to make sure that track input for the midi device is your playing on is enabled in Live’s midi preferences.  (Live, Preferences or on PC, Options, Preferences, then click track on the midi input for the desired midi device). You can also play notes from your computer keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track, then play notes. Click the square stop clip button on that track to stop recording. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen (providing that the desired track is armed. Click the global square stop button at the  top center of the screen to stop recording.

To record the midi output of one track to the midi input of a new midi track, simply set the midi input of the new track to the name of the existing midi track, then arm the new midi track. Again, if you’re in session keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track after the existing track is playing. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen.

Warping is the terminology used when referring to stretching audio in Ableton Live.

To unfreeze a track simply right click on the track and click unfreeze.

A Drum Rack is one of Live’s most versatile and popular instruments. The Drum Rack is made up of 128 “slots” that can playback audio samples, plugins and effects in a variety of ways. Drum racks allow you to build a huge library of sounds in a single instrument on a track. Some artists have built entire songs using nothing but drum racks!

Common uses include layering multiple drum sounds, manipulating audio loops, chopping up vocals, and much more.

You can create multiple chains in any of the drum rack’s 128 slots, and go really deep inside what you create with a drum rack. This allows users to take full creative control of playback individual musical ideas, while manipulating how they are performed, whether being a one-shot or audio loop.

A scene is a horizontal row of clips in session view (both midi or audio) that contain sounds. All clips within this horizontal row can be played at once by pressing the corresponding play button of that row on the Master track.

Ableton Live allows you to bus audio out from multiple tracks (say vocals, drums, lead synth, and pads) to a single track that has FX on it (for example reverb). This bussed track is only for FX. You can independently dial in how much volume from each track will be sent to this FX track. Hence the term send and return. You would think that there are 2 stages, but there is really only 1 FX track in this scenario. The FX track then routes its audio to the master (by default, but you can change the routing to a track separate from the master.)

Note, return tracks act in parallel, meaning that even when a track’s set to send 100% to the return track, the original audio is still going to the master, meaning 100% wet is really 50% wet, 50% dry.

There are also Pre/Post buttons for sends. These buttons are located on the master track, above the master fader in session view. Post is the default. When set to Pre, the input of the return track will ignore where the fader is set on the source track that is being sent to the return track. This means that if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, but it still is set to send some amount of its audio to the return track, you will still hear the return track fx. When set to Post, if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, you won’t hear anything on the return track fx.

Warp Markers are the yellow notches above audio clips when warping is enabled.  You can create new warp markers by clicking anywhere above the waveform. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to specific time based intervals. Live will also show grey arrows where potential warp markers could be. This is Live’s suggestion on warp marker placement based on transient peaks.

When you freeze a track, the track will appear greyed out. To freeze a track simply right click on the track and click freeze. Live will make reference audio files in your project’s folder both for session and arrangement view midi and audio clips. Because the track is frozen and is now playing audio files rather than generating a sound real time, your CPU usage is reduced. You can then commit a track by flattening, which just pulls those reference audio files back into your project, replacing any devices that were in the frozen track.

Consolidate will combine 2 or more clips of either audio or midi. To consolidate a clip, highlight 2 or more clips, right click, then click Consolidate  Consolidate is NOT a way to reduce CPU. It is designed to simplify and clean up your project file. When you consolidate 2 or more audio clips, a new audio clip will be created that replaces the old. Likewise a new midi clip is created to combine 2 or more midi clips. Consolidate is ALWAYS PreFX. Meaning the devices on a track will still remain after consolidating.

Digital Duct Tape.

Max for Live is a visual programming environment that allows users to build instruments and effects for use within Ableton Live.

Often times advanced users will create brilliant solutions to common problems such as, BeatSeeker, which allows Ableton’s global tempo to be synced to the average rhythmic audio timing.

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/beatseeker/

The growing community centred around sites such as max4live.com and maxforlive.info are helpful and creative with a wealth of devices available in addition to the ones included within the Ableton Live Packs. Often times, a device or effect will nearly do what you want but not quite…That’s where Max For Live Comes into help.

Max for Live is only available in Ableton Live Suite.

To add a Max For Live device to an Ableton project simply take the downloaded .amxd file from Finder or Windows File Explorer and drag it onto the desired track in Ableton Live.

If you have a folder of Max For Live Devices (such as Users/Username/Desktop/MaxDevices), it might make sense to add that folder to Live’s browser by clicking “Add Folder…” at the bottom of Live’s Browser. That way you can add Max For Live devices to tracks directly from Ableton Live.

The session record button IS NOT the record button next to the stop and the play button. The session record button is near the top center of the screen, next to the “new” button. This button is only available in Session View. When pressed, the session record button will record a new clip in all armed tracks (midi and audio) if an empty scene/row is selected. For midi clips, if you press the session record button and are playing an existing clip, you will OVERDUB new notes to add to existing ones.

Warping is the way Live will stretch audio to a specific grid. The best analogy is this…You have a ruler, a rubber band, and some thumb tacks. The ruler is a timed based grid of evenly spaced intervals. The rubberband is the audio clip. It can be stretched or shrunk down to a specific space between intervals. The thumb tacks are Warp Markers. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to those specific intervals.

Ableton Live will work with any midi controller, however here are 10 really good ones that we love.

Ableton Push 2
Novation Launchpad Pro
Akai APC40 MKII
Akai Professional Advance 49
Arturia Keylab 49
Akai MPK Mini MKII 25
Native Instruments Machine MK3
DJTechTools Midi Fighter 3D
DJTechTools Midi Fighter Twister
Novation LaunchControl XL

Yes, it is convenient to DJ from CDJ’s using RecordBox, or DJ with Traktor or Serato, but Ableton Live offers way more versatility in the Live realm in a way that no other program can.

You can take your live performance to a whole new level. Instead of just playing your Deck A and transitioning back to your Deck B all night…Ableton Live can do that and more. What if you wanted to play instruments along with your backing tracks, and have a platform that can support third party plugins on your backing tracks as well as your live inputs? Ableton can do it all.

Everyone is a DJ nowadays, Ableton will help you stand out for the right reasons.

If you’ve previously recorded something in a track in Session View, then toggled to Arrangement View, the track will be greyed out. This is because it is still playing that same clip in Session View while you’re looking at Arrangement View.

You can enable this track for Arrangement playback by pressing the grey arrow to the left of the track.

To enable ALL tracks for Arrangement playback, press the orange, “Back To Arrangement” button in the upper right corner of the arrangement panel.

Session View is the default view when opening Ableton Live. It serves as both an “idea board” for musical clips or phrases as well as a way to trigger those same musical clips for live performance. The workflow here is usually top to bottom.

Tab to Toggle to Arrangement View. Arrangement view is the timeline view that all DAW’s have. The musical ideas from session view can be copied or recorded into Arrangement View to linearly write a song from left to right. You can record new ideas into Arrangement View as well.

Ableton Live has many quality stock instruments that come with the program and also supports third party plugin instruments.

To load stock instruments:

Simply click on the Instruments tab in the Live browser (the left vertical panel of categories). Once the Instruments category is selected, you will see all of the available types of instruments. Click on the arrow to the left of an instrument type, for instance “Analog.” Inside “Analog” you will see different presets organized by sound such as “Bass” or “Piano and Keys” Click any .adv preset to load that instrument into a new track.

To load third party plugins:

(assuming you’ve already installed them on your computer), the next thing you need to do is make sure you’ve pointed Live to the folder where you installed your plugins. YOU ONLY HAVE TO DO THIS ONCE.

On Windows, for example you might install your plugins to C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins, but it completely depends on where the specified the location is when you installed the third party plugins. Then go to Options, Preferences, File Folder. Turn On “Use VST Plug-In Custom Folder,” then click the “Browse” button underneath and point to the folder where your plugins are stored.

On a Mac, the process is similar. Go to Live, Preferences, File Folder. On Mac OS, Ableton Live understands 2 different formats of third party plugins; Audio Units (AUs) and VSTs. These formats are very similar and you won’t notice much difference between them. Most plugin developers will have installers that offer both formats. However, Audio Units do not exist on Windows. If you are a Mac user and want to collaborate with Windows users, use VSTs so that your projects are compatible. On a Mac, third party plugins will be installed in a premade system folder “Library\Audio\Plug-Ins.” Audio Units are stored under the subfolder, “Components.” You can turn on both Audio Units and VSTs from the File Folder Preferences. In Live on a Mac, you can also specify a Custom Folder for VSTs in addition to the system folder.

Once your plugins are enabled and pointed, on both Mac and PC you can easily access and load them from the Plug-Ins tab in Live’s Browser. You can click and drag them to a desired track. Remember, there are midi only Plugins that are virtual synthesizers (these go only on midi tracks), and there are audio effect plugins that can either go on an audio track or on a midi track after the synthesizer instrument.

Ableton Live allows you to have up to 12 return tracks; Send/Return Tracks A through L.

Ableton Live has 3 different options to monitor a track; Auto, In, and Off. “Auto” will allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track only if the track is record armed. “In” will always allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track regardless of whether the track is record armed or not. “Off” will mute the audio input from that track. Also note that when monitoring is set to “In”, you will not be able to hear the playback of a recorded clip until you switch monitoring back to Auto.

This monitoring behavior is also the same for midi track input for played notes.

To get to Arrangement View in Ableton, simply press the Tab key on your keyboard. Pressing Tab again will toggle you back to Session View. You can also press one of the two Session/ Arrangement View Selector buttons in the top-right corner of the screen.

Ableton Live Suite versions include a free download of Max for Live. in Live 9 Suite, you can login to your account on Ableton.com and download Max for Live, or purchase it if you have a lesser version than Suite (such as Standard or Intro). Ableton Live 10 Suite automatically has Max for Live included during the original installation of the Ableton software, so no additional download or installation of Max for Live is necessary.

To stop all clips in session view, simply click the stop button located on the Master track.

To stop all clips with a Push 2, hold the Shift button on the Push2 then press the Stop Clip button.

You can also press space bar.

To record midi in Ableton Live, you must first have a midi track that is armed. To arm a midi track, in session view click the arm button, which is located below the track’s solo button. To arm a midi track in arrangement view, click the arm button which is located to the right of the track’s solo button. You’ll also need to make sure that track input for the midi device is your playing on is enabled in Live’s midi preferences.  (Live, Preferences or on PC, Options, Preferences, then click track on the midi input for the desired midi device). You can also play notes from your computer keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track, then play notes. Click the square stop clip button on that track to stop recording. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen (providing that the desired track is armed. Click the global square stop button at the  top center of the screen to stop recording.

To record the midi output of one track to the midi input of a new midi track, simply set the midi input of the new track to the name of the existing midi track, then arm the new midi track. Again, if you’re in session keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track after the existing track is playing. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen.

Warping is the terminology used when referring to stretching audio in Ableton Live.

To unfreeze a track simply right click on the track and click unfreeze.

A Drum Rack is one of Live’s most versatile and popular instruments. The Drum Rack is made up of 128 “slots” that can playback audio samples, plugins and effects in a variety of ways. Drum racks allow you to build a huge library of sounds in a single instrument on a track. Some artists have built entire songs using nothing but drum racks!

Common uses include layering multiple drum sounds, manipulating audio loops, chopping up vocals, and much more.

You can create multiple chains in any of the drum rack’s 128 slots, and go really deep inside what you create with a drum rack. This allows users to take full creative control of playback individual musical ideas, while manipulating how they are performed, whether being a one-shot or audio loop.

A scene is a horizontal row of clips in session view (both midi or audio) that contain sounds. All clips within this horizontal row can be played at once by pressing the corresponding play button of that row on the Master track.

Ableton Live allows you to bus audio out from multiple tracks (say vocals, drums, lead synth, and pads) to a single track that has FX on it (for example reverb). This bussed track is only for FX. You can independently dial in how much volume from each track will be sent to this FX track. Hence the term send and return. You would think that there are 2 stages, but there is really only 1 FX track in this scenario. The FX track then routes its audio to the master (by default, but you can change the routing to a track separate from the master.)

Note, return tracks act in parallel, meaning that even when a track’s set to send 100% to the return track, the original audio is still going to the master, meaning 100% wet is really 50% wet, 50% dry.

There are also Pre/Post buttons for sends. These buttons are located on the master track, above the master fader in session view. Post is the default. When set to Pre, the input of the return track will ignore where the fader is set on the source track that is being sent to the return track. This means that if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, but it still is set to send some amount of its audio to the return track, you will still hear the return track fx. When set to Post, if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, you won’t hear anything on the return track fx.

Warp Markers are the yellow notches above audio clips when warping is enabled.  You can create new warp markers by clicking anywhere above the waveform. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to specific time based intervals. Live will also show grey arrows where potential warp markers could be. This is Live’s suggestion on warp marker placement based on transient peaks.

When you freeze a track, the track will appear greyed out. To freeze a track simply right click on the track and click freeze. Live will make reference audio files in your project’s folder both for session and arrangement view midi and audio clips. Because the track is frozen and is now playing audio files rather than generating a sound real time, your CPU usage is reduced. You can then commit a track by flattening, which just pulls those reference audio files back into your project, replacing any devices that were in the frozen track.

Consolidate will combine 2 or more clips of either audio or midi. To consolidate a clip, highlight 2 or more clips, right click, then click Consolidate  Consolidate is NOT a way to reduce CPU. It is designed to simplify and clean up your project file. When you consolidate 2 or more audio clips, a new audio clip will be created that replaces the old. Likewise a new midi clip is created to combine 2 or more midi clips. Consolidate is ALWAYS PreFX. Meaning the devices on a track will still remain after consolidating.

Digital Duct Tape.

Max for Live is a visual programming environment that allows users to build instruments and effects for use within Ableton Live.

Often times advanced users will create brilliant solutions to common problems such as, BeatSeeker, which allows Ableton’s global tempo to be synced to the average rhythmic audio timing.

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/beatseeker/

The growing community centred around sites such as max4live.com and maxforlive.info are helpful and creative with a wealth of devices available in addition to the ones included within the Ableton Live Packs. Often times, a device or effect will nearly do what you want but not quite…That’s where Max For Live Comes into help.

Max for Live is only available in Ableton Live Suite.

To add a Max For Live device to an Ableton project simply take the downloaded .amxd file from Finder or Windows File Explorer and drag it onto the desired track in Ableton Live.

If you have a folder of Max For Live Devices (such as Users/Username/Desktop/MaxDevices), it might make sense to add that folder to Live’s browser by clicking “Add Folder…” at the bottom of Live’s Browser. That way you can add Max For Live devices to tracks directly from Ableton Live.

The session record button IS NOT the record button next to the stop and the play button. The session record button is near the top center of the screen, next to the “new” button. This button is only available in Session View. When pressed, the session record button will record a new clip in all armed tracks (midi and audio) if an empty scene/row is selected. For midi clips, if you press the session record button and are playing an existing clip, you will OVERDUB new notes to add to existing ones.

Warping is the way Live will stretch audio to a specific grid. The best analogy is this…You have a ruler, a rubber band, and some thumb tacks. The ruler is a timed based grid of evenly spaced intervals. The rubberband is the audio clip. It can be stretched or shrunk down to a specific space between intervals. The thumb tacks are Warp Markers. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to those specific intervals.

Ableton Live will work with any midi controller, however here are 10 really good ones that we love.

Ableton Push 2
Novation Launchpad Pro
Akai APC40 MKII
Akai Professional Advance 49
Arturia Keylab 49
Akai MPK Mini MKII 25
Native Instruments Machine MK3
DJTechTools Midi Fighter 3D
DJTechTools Midi Fighter Twister
Novation LaunchControl XL

Yes, it is convenient to DJ from CDJ’s using RecordBox, or DJ with Traktor or Serato, but Ableton Live offers way more versatility in the Live realm in a way that no other program can.

You can take your live performance to a whole new level. Instead of just playing your Deck A and transitioning back to your Deck B all night…Ableton Live can do that and more. What if you wanted to play instruments along with your backing tracks, and have a platform that can support third party plugins on your backing tracks as well as your live inputs? Ableton can do it all.

Everyone is a DJ nowadays, Ableton will help you stand out for the right reasons.

If you’ve previously recorded something in a track in Session View, then toggled to Arrangement View, the track will be greyed out. This is because it is still playing that same clip in Session View while you’re looking at Arrangement View.

You can enable this track for Arrangement playback by pressing the grey arrow to the left of the track.

To enable ALL tracks for Arrangement playback, press the orange, “Back To Arrangement” button in the upper right corner of the arrangement panel.

Session View is the default view when opening Ableton Live. It serves as both an “idea board” for musical clips or phrases as well as a way to trigger those same musical clips for live performance. The workflow here is usually top to bottom.

Tab to Toggle to Arrangement View. Arrangement view is the timeline view that all DAW’s have. The musical ideas from session view can be copied or recorded into Arrangement View to linearly write a song from left to right. You can record new ideas into Arrangement View as well.

Ableton Live has many quality stock instruments that come with the program and also supports third party plugin instruments.

To load stock instruments:

Simply click on the Instruments tab in the Live browser (the left vertical panel of categories). Once the Instruments category is selected, you will see all of the available types of instruments. Click on the arrow to the left of an instrument type, for instance “Analog.” Inside “Analog” you will see different presets organized by sound such as “Bass” or “Piano and Keys” Click any .adv preset to load that instrument into a new track.

To load third party plugins:

(assuming you’ve already installed them on your computer), the next thing you need to do is make sure you’ve pointed Live to the folder where you installed your plugins. YOU ONLY HAVE TO DO THIS ONCE.

On Windows, for example you might install your plugins to C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins, but it completely depends on where the specified the location is when you installed the third party plugins. Then go to Options, Preferences, File Folder. Turn On “Use VST Plug-In Custom Folder,” then click the “Browse” button underneath and point to the folder where your plugins are stored.

On a Mac, the process is similar. Go to Live, Preferences, File Folder. On Mac OS, Ableton Live understands 2 different formats of third party plugins; Audio Units (AUs) and VSTs. These formats are very similar and you won’t notice much difference between them. Most plugin developers will have installers that offer both formats. However, Audio Units do not exist on Windows. If you are a Mac user and want to collaborate with Windows users, use VSTs so that your projects are compatible. On a Mac, third party plugins will be installed in a premade system folder “Library\Audio\Plug-Ins.” Audio Units are stored under the subfolder, “Components.” You can turn on both Audio Units and VSTs from the File Folder Preferences. In Live on a Mac, you can also specify a Custom Folder for VSTs in addition to the system folder.

Once your plugins are enabled and pointed, on both Mac and PC you can easily access and load them from the Plug-Ins tab in Live’s Browser. You can click and drag them to a desired track. Remember, there are midi only Plugins that are virtual synthesizers (these go only on midi tracks), and there are audio effect plugins that can either go on an audio track or on a midi track after the synthesizer instrument.

Ableton Live allows you to have up to 12 return tracks; Send/Return Tracks A through L.

Ableton Live has 3 different options to monitor a track; Auto, In, and Off. “Auto” will allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track only if the track is record armed. “In” will always allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track regardless of whether the track is record armed or not. “Off” will mute the audio input from that track. Also note that when monitoring is set to “In”, you will not be able to hear the playback of a recorded clip until you switch monitoring back to Auto.

This monitoring behavior is also the same for midi track input for played notes.

To get to Arrangement View in Ableton, simply press the Tab key on your keyboard. Pressing Tab again will toggle you back to Session View. You can also press one of the two Session/ Arrangement View Selector buttons in the top-right corner of the screen.

Ableton Live Suite versions include a free download of Max for Live. in Live 9 Suite, you can login to your account on Ableton.com and download Max for Live, or purchase it if you have a lesser version than Suite (such as Standard or Intro). Ableton Live 10 Suite automatically has Max for Live included during the original installation of the Ableton software, so no additional download or installation of Max for Live is necessary.

To stop all clips in session view, simply click the stop button located on the Master track.

To stop all clips with a Push 2, hold the Shift button on the Push2 then press the Stop Clip button.

You can also press space bar.

To record midi in Ableton Live, you must first have a midi track that is armed. To arm a midi track, in session view click the arm button, which is located below the track’s solo button. To arm a midi track in arrangement view, click the arm button which is located to the right of the track’s solo button. You’ll also need to make sure that track input for the midi device is your playing on is enabled in Live’s midi preferences.  (Live, Preferences or on PC, Options, Preferences, then click track on the midi input for the desired midi device). You can also play notes from your computer keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track, then play notes. Click the square stop clip button on that track to stop recording. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen (providing that the desired track is armed. Click the global square stop button at the  top center of the screen to stop recording.

To record the midi output of one track to the midi input of a new midi track, simply set the midi input of the new track to the name of the existing midi track, then arm the new midi track. Again, if you’re in session keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track after the existing track is playing. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen.

Warping is the terminology used when referring to stretching audio in Ableton Live.

To unfreeze a track simply right click on the track and click unfreeze.

A Drum Rack is one of Live’s most versatile and popular instruments. The Drum Rack is made up of 128 “slots” that can playback audio samples, plugins and effects in a variety of ways. Drum racks allow you to build a huge library of sounds in a single instrument on a track. Some artists have built entire songs using nothing but drum racks!

Common uses include layering multiple drum sounds, manipulating audio loops, chopping up vocals, and much more.

You can create multiple chains in any of the drum rack’s 128 slots, and go really deep inside what you create with a drum rack. This allows users to take full creative control of playback individual musical ideas, while manipulating how they are performed, whether being a one-shot or audio loop.

A scene is a horizontal row of clips in session view (both midi or audio) that contain sounds. All clips within this horizontal row can be played at once by pressing the corresponding play button of that row on the Master track.

Ableton Live allows you to bus audio out from multiple tracks (say vocals, drums, lead synth, and pads) to a single track that has FX on it (for example reverb). This bussed track is only for FX. You can independently dial in how much volume from each track will be sent to this FX track. Hence the term send and return. You would think that there are 2 stages, but there is really only 1 FX track in this scenario. The FX track then routes its audio to the master (by default, but you can change the routing to a track separate from the master.)

Note, return tracks act in parallel, meaning that even when a track’s set to send 100% to the return track, the original audio is still going to the master, meaning 100% wet is really 50% wet, 50% dry.

There are also Pre/Post buttons for sends. These buttons are located on the master track, above the master fader in session view. Post is the default. When set to Pre, the input of the return track will ignore where the fader is set on the source track that is being sent to the return track. This means that if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, but it still is set to send some amount of its audio to the return track, you will still hear the return track fx. When set to Post, if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, you won’t hear anything on the return track fx.

Warp Markers are the yellow notches above audio clips when warping is enabled.  You can create new warp markers by clicking anywhere above the waveform. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to specific time based intervals. Live will also show grey arrows where potential warp markers could be. This is Live’s suggestion on warp marker placement based on transient peaks.

When you freeze a track, the track will appear greyed out. To freeze a track simply right click on the track and click freeze. Live will make reference audio files in your project’s folder both for session and arrangement view midi and audio clips. Because the track is frozen and is now playing audio files rather than generating a sound real time, your CPU usage is reduced. You can then commit a track by flattening, which just pulls those reference audio files back into your project, replacing any devices that were in the frozen track.

Consolidate will combine 2 or more clips of either audio or midi. To consolidate a clip, highlight 2 or more clips, right click, then click Consolidate  Consolidate is NOT a way to reduce CPU. It is designed to simplify and clean up your project file. When you consolidate 2 or more audio clips, a new audio clip will be created that replaces the old. Likewise a new midi clip is created to combine 2 or more midi clips. Consolidate is ALWAYS PreFX. Meaning the devices on a track will still remain after consolidating.

Digital Duct Tape.

Max for Live is a visual programming environment that allows users to build instruments and effects for use within Ableton Live.

Often times advanced users will create brilliant solutions to common problems such as, BeatSeeker, which allows Ableton’s global tempo to be synced to the average rhythmic audio timing.

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/beatseeker/

The growing community centred around sites such as max4live.com and maxforlive.info are helpful and creative with a wealth of devices available in addition to the ones included within the Ableton Live Packs. Often times, a device or effect will nearly do what you want but not quite…That’s where Max For Live Comes into help.

Max for Live is only available in Ableton Live Suite.

To add a Max For Live device to an Ableton project simply take the downloaded .amxd file from Finder or Windows File Explorer and drag it onto the desired track in Ableton Live.

If you have a folder of Max For Live Devices (such as Users/Username/Desktop/MaxDevices), it might make sense to add that folder to Live’s browser by clicking “Add Folder…” at the bottom of Live’s Browser. That way you can add Max For Live devices to tracks directly from Ableton Live.

The session record button IS NOT the record button next to the stop and the play button. The session record button is near the top center of the screen, next to the “new” button. This button is only available in Session View. When pressed, the session record button will record a new clip in all armed tracks (midi and audio) if an empty scene/row is selected. For midi clips, if you press the session record button and are playing an existing clip, you will OVERDUB new notes to add to existing ones.

Warping is the way Live will stretch audio to a specific grid. The best analogy is this…You have a ruler, a rubber band, and some thumb tacks. The ruler is a timed based grid of evenly spaced intervals. The rubberband is the audio clip. It can be stretched or shrunk down to a specific space between intervals. The thumb tacks are Warp Markers. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to those specific intervals.

Ableton Live will work with any midi controller, however here are 10 really good ones that we love.

Ableton Push 2
Novation Launchpad Pro
Akai APC40 MKII
Akai Professional Advance 49
Arturia Keylab 49
Akai MPK Mini MKII 25
Native Instruments Machine MK3
DJTechTools Midi Fighter 3D
DJTechTools Midi Fighter Twister
Novation LaunchControl XL

Yes, it is convenient to DJ from CDJ’s using RecordBox, or DJ with Traktor or Serato, but Ableton Live offers way more versatility in the Live realm in a way that no other program can.

You can take your live performance to a whole new level. Instead of just playing your Deck A and transitioning back to your Deck B all night…Ableton Live can do that and more. What if you wanted to play instruments along with your backing tracks, and have a platform that can support third party plugins on your backing tracks as well as your live inputs? Ableton can do it all.

Everyone is a DJ nowadays, Ableton will help you stand out for the right reasons.

If you’ve previously recorded something in a track in Session View, then toggled to Arrangement View, the track will be greyed out. This is because it is still playing that same clip in Session View while you’re looking at Arrangement View.

You can enable this track for Arrangement playback by pressing the grey arrow to the left of the track.

To enable ALL tracks for Arrangement playback, press the orange, “Back To Arrangement” button in the upper right corner of the arrangement panel.

Session View is the default view when opening Ableton Live. It serves as both an “idea board” for musical clips or phrases as well as a way to trigger those same musical clips for live performance. The workflow here is usually top to bottom.

Tab to Toggle to Arrangement View. Arrangement view is the timeline view that all DAW’s have. The musical ideas from session view can be copied or recorded into Arrangement View to linearly write a song from left to right. You can record new ideas into Arrangement View as well.

Ableton Live has many quality stock instruments that come with the program and also supports third party plugin instruments.

To load stock instruments:

Simply click on the Instruments tab in the Live browser (the left vertical panel of categories). Once the Instruments category is selected, you will see all of the available types of instruments. Click on the arrow to the left of an instrument type, for instance “Analog.” Inside “Analog” you will see different presets organized by sound such as “Bass” or “Piano and Keys” Click any .adv preset to load that instrument into a new track.

To load third party plugins:

(assuming you’ve already installed them on your computer), the next thing you need to do is make sure you’ve pointed Live to the folder where you installed your plugins. YOU ONLY HAVE TO DO THIS ONCE.

On Windows, for example you might install your plugins to C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins, but it completely depends on where the specified the location is when you installed the third party plugins. Then go to Options, Preferences, File Folder. Turn On “Use VST Plug-In Custom Folder,” then click the “Browse” button underneath and point to the folder where your plugins are stored.

On a Mac, the process is similar. Go to Live, Preferences, File Folder. On Mac OS, Ableton Live understands 2 different formats of third party plugins; Audio Units (AUs) and VSTs. These formats are very similar and you won’t notice much difference between them. Most plugin developers will have installers that offer both formats. However, Audio Units do not exist on Windows. If you are a Mac user and want to collaborate with Windows users, use VSTs so that your projects are compatible. On a Mac, third party plugins will be installed in a premade system folder “Library\Audio\Plug-Ins.” Audio Units are stored under the subfolder, “Components.” You can turn on both Audio Units and VSTs from the File Folder Preferences. In Live on a Mac, you can also specify a Custom Folder for VSTs in addition to the system folder.

Once your plugins are enabled and pointed, on both Mac and PC you can easily access and load them from the Plug-Ins tab in Live’s Browser. You can click and drag them to a desired track. Remember, there are midi only Plugins that are virtual synthesizers (these go only on midi tracks), and there are audio effect plugins that can either go on an audio track or on a midi track after the synthesizer instrument.

Ableton Live allows you to have up to 12 return tracks; Send/Return Tracks A through L.

Ableton Live has 3 different options to monitor a track; Auto, In, and Off. “Auto” will allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track only if the track is record armed. “In” will always allow you to hear the audio input (post fx) of a track regardless of whether the track is record armed or not. “Off” will mute the audio input from that track. Also note that when monitoring is set to “In”, you will not be able to hear the playback of a recorded clip until you switch monitoring back to Auto.

This monitoring behavior is also the same for midi track input for played notes.

To get to Arrangement View in Ableton, simply press the Tab key on your keyboard. Pressing Tab again will toggle you back to Session View. You can also press one of the two Session/ Arrangement View Selector buttons in the top-right corner of the screen.

Ableton Live Suite versions include a free download of Max for Live. in Live 9 Suite, you can login to your account on Ableton.com and download Max for Live, or purchase it if you have a lesser version than Suite (such as Standard or Intro). Ableton Live 10 Suite automatically has Max for Live included during the original installation of the Ableton software, so no additional download or installation of Max for Live is necessary.

To stop all clips in session view, simply click the stop button located on the Master track.

To stop all clips with a Push 2, hold the Shift button on the Push2 then press the Stop Clip button.

You can also press space bar.

To record midi in Ableton Live, you must first have a midi track that is armed. To arm a midi track, in session view click the arm button, which is located below the track’s solo button. To arm a midi track in arrangement view, click the arm button which is located to the right of the track’s solo button. You’ll also need to make sure that track input for the midi device is your playing on is enabled in Live’s midi preferences.  (Live, Preferences or on PC, Options, Preferences, then click track on the midi input for the desired midi device). You can also play notes from your computer keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track, then play notes. Click the square stop clip button on that track to stop recording. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen (providing that the desired track is armed. Click the global square stop button at the  top center of the screen to stop recording.

To record the midi output of one track to the midi input of a new midi track, simply set the midi input of the new track to the name of the existing midi track, then arm the new midi track. Again, if you’re in session keyboard by clicking the piano keyboard button which is in the upper right corner of the screen, to the right of the Key button.

Once the track is armed and your midi device input is enabled, you should be ready to record played notes. In session view click any of the circle record buttons on the available clip slots on the track after the existing track is playing. In arrangement view, click the global record button at the top center of the screen.

Warping is the terminology used when referring to stretching audio in Ableton Live.

To unfreeze a track simply right click on the track and click unfreeze.

A Drum Rack is one of Live’s most versatile and popular instruments. The Drum Rack is made up of 128 “slots” that can playback audio samples, plugins and effects in a variety of ways. Drum racks allow you to build a huge library of sounds in a single instrument on a track. Some artists have built entire songs using nothing but drum racks!

Common uses include layering multiple drum sounds, manipulating audio loops, chopping up vocals, and much more.

You can create multiple chains in any of the drum rack’s 128 slots, and go really deep inside what you create with a drum rack. This allows users to take full creative control of playback individual musical ideas, while manipulating how they are performed, whether being a one-shot or audio loop.

A scene is a horizontal row of clips in session view (both midi or audio) that contain sounds. All clips within this horizontal row can be played at once by pressing the corresponding play button of that row on the Master track.

Ableton Live allows you to bus audio out from multiple tracks (say vocals, drums, lead synth, and pads) to a single track that has FX on it (for example reverb). This bussed track is only for FX. You can independently dial in how much volume from each track will be sent to this FX track. Hence the term send and return. You would think that there are 2 stages, but there is really only 1 FX track in this scenario. The FX track then routes its audio to the master (by default, but you can change the routing to a track separate from the master.)

Note, return tracks act in parallel, meaning that even when a track’s set to send 100% to the return track, the original audio is still going to the master, meaning 100% wet is really 50% wet, 50% dry.

There are also Pre/Post buttons for sends. These buttons are located on the master track, above the master fader in session view. Post is the default. When set to Pre, the input of the return track will ignore where the fader is set on the source track that is being sent to the return track. This means that if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, but it still is set to send some amount of its audio to the return track, you will still hear the return track fx. When set to Post, if the source track’s fader is pulled all the way down, you won’t hear anything on the return track fx.

Warp Markers are the yellow notches above audio clips when warping is enabled.  You can create new warp markers by clicking anywhere above the waveform. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to specific time based intervals. Live will also show grey arrows where potential warp markers could be. This is Live’s suggestion on warp marker placement based on transient peaks.

When you freeze a track, the track will appear greyed out. To freeze a track simply right click on the track and click freeze. Live will make reference audio files in your project’s folder both for session and arrangement view midi and audio clips. Because the track is frozen and is now playing audio files rather than generating a sound real time, your CPU usage is reduced. You can then commit a track by flattening, which just pulls those reference audio files back into your project, replacing any devices that were in the frozen track.

Consolidate will combine 2 or more clips of either audio or midi. To consolidate a clip, highlight 2 or more clips, right click, then click Consolidate  Consolidate is NOT a way to reduce CPU. It is designed to simplify and clean up your project file. When you consolidate 2 or more audio clips, a new audio clip will be created that replaces the old. Likewise a new midi clip is created to combine 2 or more midi clips. Consolidate is ALWAYS PreFX. Meaning the devices on a track will still remain after consolidating.

Digital Duct Tape.

Max for Live is a visual programming environment that allows users to build instruments and effects for use within Ableton Live.

Often times advanced users will create brilliant solutions to common problems such as, BeatSeeker, which allows Ableton’s global tempo to be synced to the average rhythmic audio timing.

https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/beatseeker/

The growing community centred around sites such as max4live.com and maxforlive.info are helpful and creative with a wealth of devices available in addition to the ones included within the Ableton Live Packs. Often times, a device or effect will nearly do what you want but not quite…That’s where Max For Live Comes into help.

Max for Live is only available in Ableton Live Suite.

To add a Max For Live device to an Ableton project simply take the downloaded .amxd file from Finder or Windows File Explorer and drag it onto the desired track in Ableton Live.

If you have a folder of Max For Live Devices (such as Users/Username/Desktop/MaxDevices), it might make sense to add that folder to Live’s browser by clicking “Add Folder…” at the bottom of Live’s Browser. That way you can add Max For Live devices to tracks directly from Ableton Live.

The session record button IS NOT the record button next to the stop and the play button. The session record button is near the top center of the screen, next to the “new” button. This button is only available in Session View. When pressed, the session record button will record a new clip in all armed tracks (midi and audio) if an empty scene/row is selected. For midi clips, if you press the session record button and are playing an existing clip, you will OVERDUB new notes to add to existing ones.

Warping is the way Live will stretch audio to a specific grid. The best analogy is this…You have a ruler, a rubber band, and some thumb tacks. The ruler is a timed based grid of evenly spaced intervals. The rubberband is the audio clip. It can be stretched or shrunk down to a specific space between intervals. The thumb tacks are Warp Markers. These serve as a way to snap or pin the audio to those specific intervals.

Ableton Live will work with any midi controller, however here are 10 really good ones that we love.

Ableton Push 2
Novation Launchpad Pro
Akai APC40 MKII
Akai Professional Advance 49
Arturia Keylab 49
Akai MPK Mini MKII 25
Native Instruments Machine MK3
DJTechTools Midi Fighter 3D
DJTechTools Midi Fighter Twister
Novation LaunchControl XL

Yes, it is convenient to DJ from CDJ’s using RecordBox, or DJ with Traktor or Serato, but Ableton Live offers way more versatility in the Live realm in a way that no other program can.

You can take your live performance to a whole new level. Instead of just playing your Deck A and transitioning back to your Deck B all night…Ableton Live can do that and more. What if you wanted to play instruments along with your backing tracks, and have a platform that can support third party plugins on your backing tracks as well as your live inputs? Ableton can do it all.

Everyone is a DJ nowadays, Ableton will help you stand out for the right reasons.