Ableton

Ableton are a company that's constantly pushing the boundaries of live music. They've set the standard for easy to-use software and hardware with Ableton Live & Ableton Push respectively.

Ableton was founded in 1999 and released their first version of Live in 2001. Their products have since been used widely by a dedicated community of musicians, sound designers, artists and DJs all around the world.

The driving force behind Ableton products is the fact that they remain easy to use in order to inspire and evoke creativity from musicians. They’ve taken what can sometimes be seen as a sterile environment for making music – making music with a laptop and software – and turned it into a vibrant and exciting experience. This passion comes through the minute you open the program for the first time and a simple tutorial takes you through how the software works.

Ableton Live is a powerful Digital Audio Workstation that works just as well for seasoned pros or budding enthusiasts. Whether that be in the standard linear track view or Abletons very own Live Session view that removes the constraint of a timeline. You can move freely between musical elements and play with ideas without ever stopping the music or breaking your flow.

Ableton Push is the hardware that connects with Ableton Live seamlessly to make the creation process that much easier. Experiment with samples, loops and beats by pulling them all together with a simple and intuitive device. Whether you’re putting chords, rhythms or samples together, Push is definitely the best way to maximise the software.

If you’re after a new way of expressing yourself with software, hardware and an acoustic instrument then you can seamlessly connect all three together with the Ableton Link which allows you to run the beats and samples and jump in and out when the time is right. Link is a technology that keeps devices in time over a local network, so you can forget the hassle of setting up and focus on playing music. Link is now part of Live, and also comes as a built-in feature of other music applications.