Ableton Live is used by a huge variety of people: composers of contemporary music, creators of commercial jingles, techno and hip-hop artists, popstars and teenage producers from all over the globe. Among the people who have created chart-topping hits in Live are Armin van Buuren, Diplo, Flying Lotus, Grimes and Skrillex. Live is also used by many niche and experimental artists who create their music for just a handful of fans. What is the reason for the software’s success? Marcin Staniszewski, creator of the Experimental Studio samples, explains:
Ableton Live is not perfect software, but it has revolutionised the world of music production. (…) All the tracks in other programmes were arranged in a linear pattern. In other words, you could compose a piece, but everything had to follow something else. Ableton Live introduced the idea of a ‘matrix’, the so-called Session View, which, to put it very simply, means that every phrase can go with any other phrase. This allows you to sample hundreds of combinations in a very short time. Additionally, all these phrases are automatically synchronized with each other.
Live allows producers from every corner of the Earth to work together. Or, at least from every region of Poland. This is the case with Radek Sirko, a culture studies specialist, a music producer and a publisher, who runs independent workshops in Ableton. For the last couple of months, he has been working with creators representing the new wave of Polish electronic music: ehh hahah, nadziej and paszka.
They're still teenagers, but they are amazing Live veterans. As part of a remix project, we shared entire recording sessions with each other so that we could analyse every part, edit each other’s tracks and add effects. We learned how every one of us works.