Live is fast, fluid and flexible software for music creation and performance. It comes with effects, instruments, sounds and all kinds of creative features—everything you need to make any kind of music.

Create in a traditional linear arrangement, or improvise without the constraints of a timeline in Live’s Session View. Move freely between musical elements and play with ideas, without stopping the music and without breaking your flow.

An ideal DAW for creative artists

From the beginning, Ableton Live has been as much a creative tool as a DAW. That largely has to do with the way Live lets you construct tracks and play with audio in real time. There are two main parts to Live: the Session View, and the Arrangement View. The Arrangement View is more or less a standard linear DAW, with time on the X axis and tracks on the Y axis.

Where Live differs from other DAWs is its Session View, which puts individual tracks on the X axis and scenes on the Y axis. Each scene contains a slot on each channel for a clip. Clips are usually short pieces of audio or MIDI a few measures long or shorter, which loop to create grooves. Launched individually, these loops let you experiment with your arrangements, trying out various combinations of grooves and riffs.

Since everything from modern electronic music to classic rock and blues is heavily based on repeating sections, Live’s Session View makes it an ideal creative tool for all kinds of songwriters. In fact, the songwriting tools don’t stop there. In addition to launching individual clips, you can launch entire scenes, complete with automatic advancement to subsequent scenes, scene repeat instructions, and other logic options.

Using scenes makes it easy to arrange entire songs in parts (verse, chorus, etc). And when you record your progression to the linear Arrangement View, you add the possibility to record lead lines and other performances that fall outside the rest of the song structure. What’s more, all of the loop-/riff-based arrangement options are still available on the timeline, so you can continue to edit and build on your song, even after you record it to the session view.

All of the standard DAW functions you need

In addition to the standard linear Session View, Ableton Live comes loaded with every standard DAW function you need. Nondestructive multitrack recording at up to 32-bit/192kHz is the beginning. You get powerful mixing and signal-flow tools such as bussing and return tracks. VST and AU plug-in formats fit right into your workflow, right alongside the wonderful tools bundled with Live. Live’s MIDI sequencing capabilities are second to none, and easy access to automation curves, MIDI learn, and more make this DAW a total powerhouse.

 

Live comes in three editions: Intro, Standard and Suite.

They share common features, but Standard and Suite have additional features, instruments, effects, and Packs.