Happy Birthday Ableton!

Almighty Ableton is celebrating its 10th birthday! And we get the presents!!!

The Berlin based company's revolutionary flagship product "LIVE" quickly advanced from a smart concept to the industry standard in electronic music production, becoming one of today's most popular digital audio workstations. It's very hard to imagine electronic music today without this fine piece of software. But also rockbands like Garbage can't go without it anymore in their production process. Many big name artists have tried it for production, (re)mixing or live performance purposes. Most of them stick with it.

To celebrate this anniversary, Ableton has assembled a bunch of goodies for their users:

Free Live packs!
- 10 artists, including Apparat and Múm, provided LIVE packs to one or more of their songs for you to download and screw around with. Tweak and remix as much as you like (but remember dem copyright laws, so don't try to sell that shit!)

Sweeeet discounts
- up to 20% off Suite 8 and Live 8

Free upgrades
- for Live Lite and LE users

NEW PRODUCTS!!!
- Live Intro - not all of the functions, but for way less $$$

- Max for Live - interesting tool kit for creating instruments, effects or extensions; sounds very cool indeed. If you're already a licensed Live 8 user, you can join the Beta testing here. Set to hit stores Nov 23rd.

Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk on Ableton Live:

"I use Live anywhere, anyhow. I use it on my laptop as a notepad for remembering and experimenting with musical ideas, and as a personal-computer game—because I have more fun with it than most video games...Live is one of the most transparent and creative softwares I have ever used. The whole process is easy, simple and fun, yet with accessible sophistication and professional results."

Ableton & Novation Team Up

The new Novation Launchpad - the Ableton Live controller. This thing looks BANANAS. Check out Ableton's or Novation's site for more details.

ABLETON - SUMMER OF SAMPLER

Ableton has news for producers and it's very simple: buy Ableton Live 8 between July 1 and August 31 2009 and get Sampler, worth 99 EUR/129 USD, for free.

A little about Sampler:

Sampler is Ableton's advanced sampling instrument. Apart from having a perfectly descriptive name, it's extremely versatile, combining traditional sampling features with advanced sound design functions. Sampler can handle any kind of multi-gigabyte instrument library you care to name. But the fun really starts when you go in deep and start sound-shaping—Sampler gives you control over every detail of your sound. Be prepared to create vibrant and complex sounds from even the most basic audio source material.

If you don't get it yet, check out this vid from the Ableton website:



Here's a great local (Boston area) site/store you can get it from/pick it up from:

MUSIC STUDIO DIRECT

What's your favorite DAW?

Just watched a half-hour clip of Dubstep's A-lister Benga, going through his process of making a beat.

He uses FL Studio (formerly known as Fruity Loops) and Logic to produce his tracks, two of today's most commonly used DAW's. But while Logic is found in most professional production studios (frequently substituted according to preference by Pro Tools and Cubase), FL Studio is often bashed by producers as a "beginner's software" that produces a complementary sound. These people are usually surprised to hear successful artists of all genres (like Boy 8-Bit, Beastie Boys, Timbaland or Benga) working with it and creating crisp results. Yes, it is a simple program and anyone who uses its on-board samples will always recognize them in other songs. But combined with a controller, synthesizer, external plugins, own samples or other DAW's, FL Studio provides limitless capabilities. It remains the most user-friendly DAW on the market, which was always FL's key to success. Anyone who has an idea, can just sit down and realize it quickly. And you don't have to be Timbaland to do it.

Personally, I love Fruity Loops and the concept behind it. But since I came across Ableton Live a while back and Native Instruments' Maschine more recently (which has a very similar software setup to FL Studio), I've just been losing touch.

What's your favorite DAW? Any tweakers out there, let us know what you think!

Watch Benga working on a beat here.

Benga - Pleasure

Toolbox Records - Paris, FR

On my recent trip to Paris, I was lucky enough to visit the infamous Toolbox Records - located in the hip 11th arrondissement on Rue St. Ambroise (also a short walk from Jim Morrison's resting place). When I informed a close friend of mine that I was going to be in Paris and wanted to pick up some of the obscure, French banger records that I couldn't find digitized on the net, he pointed me here.
George and Ivan. These two were super helpful. I kept asking for them to pull out their favorite records and I wasn't disappointed. Each time I'd head to a turntable to listen to a stack, they'd start putting on AMAZING tracks on the store's main turntable that would blow my mind.
Sadly, they were out of the one record I was looking for, Sa Bat' Machines new 12". But they clearly are in the know in Paris and were able to call the Sa Bat' producer, Stefan to bring a copy and hang out for a bit. He also previewed his newest track (made exclusively on Ableton, I had to mention) from his USB key.
Stefan from Sa Bat' Machines.

I'll leave you with a sweet Reso track I picked up at Toolbox:

Reso - If Ya Can't Beat 'Em

Ableton Live on tour

Berlin-based software company Ableton, responsible for one of today's most popular DAWs, is taking its updated flagship product Live 8 on tour. Supported by DJ/production team DubSpot, Ableton is set host educational workshops in 8 cities in the US, kicking off in San Francisco and leading through Boston, Chicago, LA and DC, among other cities. The tour, which will take place throughout the month of May, aims to display new features to those that have used previous versions of the software, as well as introduce the program and its revolutionary capabilities to people that haven't worked with it before. While interactive learning sessions are to take place during the day, the nights will be filled with some sweet live performances. Tickets will be $125 for a single day, $225 for the entire weekend. Sounds like a lot of cash, but it's pennies well spent for those interested in audio production or DJing.
Check out Dubspot's website for more info on schedules, participating artists and purchasing tickets.