Ableton is EASY

Ableton Live is EASY

Seriously, it’s really, really easy. You wouldn’t think so,  from the way Ableton presents it.  So complicated; and the manuals suck.

Yes, every detail of the program is described in the manuals, and yes, the manuals are easy to understand.  Every feature in the program is documented and indexed, and most program features have thorough descriptions in their tooltips.

The concept they completely blew over is the need to create a workflow: a set of producer’s tools that, combined, allow you to take the creative ideas in your head and turn them into a fine-tuned masterpiece.  You can know how every feature of the program works down to the underlying algorithms, but if you want to just sit down and make a face-smashing electro house hit, where exactly do you start?  If I want to play an amazing DJ set, sequenced completely on-the-fly with as little room for error as possible, how do I set it up? How do I prepare the songs? What effects do I use?

Ableton’s lessons and manual answer none of these questions.  I’ve been using Ableton since September, and I’ve created a workflow from scratch, which I am still improving.

I’ll try to document as best I can the ways I use Ableton (I call it Ableton even though the product name is Live, a trend I intend to continue), and present them in the easiest way possible.  Demo coming soon.