If I had a more up-to-date computer instead of this boat anchor, I could be playing around with the Ableton Live 5 demo while I review Ableton Live 5 - Tips and Tricks. Lucky me downloaded the Live demo and then found my system did not meet the minimum requirements: Mac: G3 or better, 512 MB RAM, OSX 10.2.8 or later. Windows: 600 MHZ or faster, 512 RAM, Win 2000/XP, compatible soundcard.
Oh well, I'll try to slog through this anyway. Any of you Ableton Live experts will have to excuse my ignorance. I’m still using Voyetra's Digital Orchestrator Pro. I've tried my best (sure) to understand what Ableton Live 5 - Tips and Tricks is all about.
Ableton Live is a loop-based jamming tool used in performance, composition, recording, jamming, and remixing. The author of Ableton Live 5 - Tips and Tricks, Martin Delaney is a performing musician who uses Live in performance on a laptop (Apple G4 PowerBook 12inch, 1.5 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM, 80 GB hard drive at the time of writing the book) along with various other electronic gadgets. He is also the author of Laptop Music.
Delaney begins with the admonishment to RTFM. Any further information he gives is based on the user of Ableton Live 5 being familiar with the basics of the program.
The chapter "Get Organised" covers the basics of setting up your system for optimal performance of Live 5. Basics such as checking for updates, keeping file sizes down, signal routing, hardware configurations, etc. are covered. Don't forget to use the Live tutorials.
Delaney mentions a new feature in Live 5, a "nudge" control which allows you to jump through clips in the increment of global quantization values. New audio effects are Flanger, Phaser, Saturator, Auto Pan, and Beat Repeat. The use of the optional Operator synth includes Impulse, a sample playing instrument and Simpler, a sampler.
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