Ableton Live 9 announced!
Finally it appears the the wait is over. It is official, and let’s just say that things look pretty intriguing. It appears that the people spoke & Ableton listened by giving us a wealth of much needed feature and what appears to be fantastic new tools!
Some of the new features announced include:
Clip automation in the Session window – This was a no brainer. Ableton needed to add this feature. There was really no reason to have excluded it for so long. This is a welcome addition for sure.
Automation curves – A huge request by the Ableton community & it’s been delivered. Although I never personally felt all that limited before, I will definitely be putting this to use with my new projects.
Completely updated browser – This was something I didn’t ask for as a feature, but I certainly have had my gripes with it in the past. It appears that it’s going to be much faster & more intuitive.
Updated Sound Library – To be honest, I never really used Ableton’s library much but seeing that Daniel Miller, Soniccouture, Flatpack and Puremagnetik are involved in many new sounds, I look forward to reconsidering.
New Glue compressor – This looks like something I’m going to be using quite a bit. Seems that Ableton is really focusing on warmth & analog feel with this.
Completely reworked EQ, Compressor & Gate – It appears the sound quality of the effects in Ableton 9 has been taken to the next level & not a moment too soon. It’ll be nice not having to go outside the built in plugins & trusting that they will sound really solid.
EQ with spectrum analysis built in – This was one of my biggest requests. Once I saw this feature in Logic, it just seemed so, well.. logical. I can’t wait to put it to use.
Audio to midi – This is probably the feature I am most excited about. Since I started out making music on guitar, it’ll be great to bring that back into the picture & converting to other instruments. Also the beatboxing to drum track looks amazing. Apparently it recognizes kick, snare & hihat sounds & converts your beatboxing to proper drums. The fact that it can understand both chords & monophonic melodies is going to be a producer’s dream.
New midi features – Although some of the new midi features seem subtle, I am extremely pleased with how to will quicken my workflow & open new opportunities for creative improvisation.
Max for Live is now included with Ableton Live suite – This is a nice gesture & only stands to make the Ableton brand more powerful by getting more of the community putting it to use. I personally haven’t used Max for Live, not because it didn’t seem cool, but because I felt getting lost in it would slow me down from finishing songs. Now that it is included, it’s going to be nearly impossible not to poke around.
Ableton Push – A new controller for songwriting. wow, this just looks like everything I’ve wanted in a controller. Easy step recording, live recording, preset browsing & more. I think I need this & plan to get on it when it is made available.
Here’s some videos:
Reworked and much improved browser
Ableton Push
I’m really curios what you all think of this upgrade. Leave a comment below & let’s get into this!
*Update*
Some of you, like me may have seen the upgrade pricing & noticed that it appears to be cheaper for someone who doesn’t currently have Live suite to upgrade to Live 9 suite than people who already own Ableton Live suite 8.
At first, reading this put me off (even though I still would have forked over the dough), but I just found a post from one of the Ableton guys in the forums.
Here is what he had to say:
“We’ve noticed some confusion about upgrade pricing for Live 9, and wanted to clarify things here.
To begin with, pricing in the Ableton web shop adapts according to products that a customer already owns – including versions of Live, Instruments, and Max for Live. As such, people who own different combinations will see different upgrade prices. Nevertheless, we see the confusion amongst customers, and will try to make our pricing as transparent as possible to everyone, as soon as possible.
Existing Suite 8 owners will be offered an exclusive introductory discount on upgrades to Live 9 Suite, to be made available upon release. This introductory discount is not yet shown on the website, as Live 9 Suite is not yet available. We apologize for any confusion or frustration from our oversight in not making this discount clear on ableton.com, and ask for your patience as we iron out the kinks in our new site.”
This should make us all feel a little better. Now we just need a release date!
Update# 2
Here is a newly release Ableton preview Event
I’ll post more as I hear it!
Cheers,
Jason
With that said, if you are benefiting from these posts, you will absolutely love my 2 bestselling books:
The Mental Game of Music Production
The Process for Electronic Music Producers
You can also Check out the: Ableton Courses & Instruments
If you are looking for personal guidance with your music production or Ableton, you can set up a free chat with me to go over exactly what your best next steps are to create the best music of your life. If it seems like a good fit, we can move forward from there. https://musicsoftwaretraining.com/private-coaching
Happy music making!
Jason