Number of employees ~200 Founder Gerhard Behles Type Aktiengesellschaft | Website www.ableton.com Founded 1999 Revenue 18.5 million USD | |
Industry Music Software, Music Equipment Manufacturer Products Ableton Live, Operator, Ableton Push Subsidiaries Ableton, Inc. (US Subsidiary) Profiles | ||
Ableton AG is a Berlin-based music software company that produces and distributes the production and performance program Ableton Live and a collection of related instruments and sample libraries, as well as their own software controller Ableton Push.
Contents
Ableton live 9 tutorial part 1 audio interface setup
History
Ableton was founded in 1999 by Gerhard Behles, Robert Henke of Monolake, and Bernd Roggendorf. After Behles' work on granular synthesis features for Native Instruments' Reaktor, as well as earlier software using a Silicon Graphics workstation at the Technical University of Berlin, Live was first released as commercial software in 2001. Behles remains the chief executive officer of Ableton. Ableton's office is located in the Mitte district of Berlin, Germany with a second office in Pasadena, California.
In March 2007, Ableton announced it was beginning a collaboration with Cycling '74, producers of Max/MSP. This collaboration is not directly based on Live or Max/MSP, but rather combines the two companies' strengths in a new product.
In January 2009 the Ableton/Cycling '74 product "Max for Live" was announced. "Max for Live" makes it possible to create Max/MSP patches directly inside of Live. The patches act like other plug-ins in Live do, supporting preset saving, automation, and other features. It is possible to create both customized hardware plug-ins and patches as well as actions within those plug-ins that control every aspect of Live, essentially anything that can be clicked with a mouse.
Ableton Live is currently in its ninth version. There are three versions of the software available for purchase: Live 9 Standard (the core software for music performance and creation), Live 9 Suite (Ableton Live, Max for Live + all of Ableton's software instruments/effects) and Live 9 Intro (an introductory version of Live with fewer track and effect slots). Ableton Live is designed to be used with a wide range of USB and MIDI controllers, as well as instruments and virtual instruments.
The company constructed the Push controller for Live 9 in cooperation with Akai Professional. It gives access to every element within the Digital audio workstation from the one unit, playing notes on a device or instrument, sequencing melodic notes and parameters, and triggering clips via a 64 pad matrix.
Ableton holds many music production sessions and seminars to learn to use their software, and licenses "certified Ableton trainers."
In April 2015, Ableton published the hardcover book Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers. The work is organized according to three main categories: Problems of Beginning, Problems of Progressing, and Problems of Finishing and aims primarily to address "the non-technical aspects of the process [of making music]."While it shows images only of Ableton Live, the information is not specific to Ableton Live. The author, Dennis DeSantis, works as Head of Documentation at Ableton and was formerly a sound designer for Native Instruments.