[LAU] What Live is about (was: Re: ableton live in vmware)

[Robbert Latumahina]

Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> The minimalistic graphics optimized for clearness were a revelation.
> Dialogs are avoided, it's all in one window.
> 
> AFAIK it allows tempo changes and immediately stretches/shrinks all
> audio to fit. Sony Acid might have been earlier with that.
> You can also add markers on clips and then move these markers and the
> material between markers will be stretched/shrunken to accommodate. The
> version I tried would do so "only" linearly :)
> 
> I think the central new concept was having a matrix view, where you have
> columns for tracks/instruments and rows for "Scenes".
> Have a look at:
> http://digisound.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/3-big-rocker.jpg
> All those rectangles with play symbols are patterns.
> If you look down the "Master" column, it should become clear what scenes
> are about. Note that you can trigger any of the patterns any time.
> There's a sync feature that can make sure patterns will be started on
> the beat/next-measure.

I've been working like that with my own sequencer (just midi though) 
since 1995. I designed that because of the shortcomings of cubase for 
playing in a live fashion. When I play live I load patterns and songs as 
I go during the liveset while staying in sync.

http://www.sensoryoverload.nl/images/HYBRID2K.png

Like AL it was designed with no popups or menus, everything you need to 
see is already there on the screen. This makes it easy when you are on 
stage when you probably already have a hard time focusing to what's on 
the screen.

Ableton started out without midi if I recall correctly and when I saw a 
demo of v1.0 I really did not like it as it could only do samples and 
effects.

The only real innovation (IMHO) they did is the interaction between the 
session view and the arrangement view. And of course the integration of 
all this stuff.



Robbert