From concept to concert, Ableton Live 7 can get you there.

Since 2001, Ableton Live has been helping musicians achieve their dreams, from laying down the initial licks to letting it all loose live. This is the 7th incarnation of the popular sequence software. And if you haven't heard, Ableton Live 8 has been announced. If you "can't wait for 8", Ableton has come up with special deals for customers who purchase Live 7 today. You'll get a $100 back mail-in rebate, free Operator and Drum Machines (a $238 value), and big savings on the upgrade to Live 8. So don't worry about getting left behind. Get Live 7 today, and take advantage of these special offer. When Live 8 is released, you'll be ahead of the game.

As with many other aspects of every day life, the art of creating, producing, and performing music has evolved to the point that computers are an integral part of the process. It is not uncommon now to see a laptop on stage during a performance whether you're at a hip-hop, rock, or DJ-oriented show.

One of the ways Live 7 is an advantage to its users, especially in the live setting, is it's two main views which allow you to do all your work within a single application. The Session View is essentially a musical scratch pad. You can work out new ideas and improvise in a free and easy environment. Each cell in the Session View grid can hold a recording, MIDI file, or any other musical idea, whether they're recorded on the spot or dragged in from the browser. Then you can play your ideas in any order or any time you wish. The Arrangement View takes a more traditional, timeline-based approach to multitrack recording, MIDI sequencing, and other music production tasks. It will record all your actions as you improvise in the Session View, allowing you to edit them whenever you like. Either view you use is simple and basic enough to make your tasks simple and efficient, which is especially useful during a live performance.

Elastic Audio
With Ableton Live 7, you can automate the tempo and it will adjust the music, drum loops, multitrack creations - whatever you add - for you. Record it at whatever speed you're comfortable with, and then play it back until you find the pace you're intending to use it at. Apply a variable amount swing or use Live's Warp Marking function to arbitrarily adjust beats within a loop or audio file. This makes it easier to match music to the hit points or key frames if imported video, or fix timing errors, and with the Auto Warping feature, you can drag in an audio file and it will automatically be assimilated to the tempo you're working in. This makes Live 7 a great ally for DJs, soundtrack producers, and every day musicians alike.

Uninterrupted Creative Flow
The drag-and-drop interface lets you experiment, browsing and previewing audio files at the project tempo, in realtime, so you can record perfectly cut loops, add effects, and mix and match audio without stopping the music. You'll also get full support for your favorite VST and AU effects and instruments. Utilize quantized loop recording to go straight from recording into looped playback by simply hitting a button. To help uncomplicate things when you're working with a large quantity of effects, instruments, and numerous tracks, Live has a Freeze function that keeps things moving while you continue experimenting with your editing and automation.

For Studios
Live 7 is a wonderful partner in the studio, serving as your main DAW or as an assistant producer, giving you the professional features you need to record, produce, and perfect ideas. It gives you multitrack recording up to 32-bit/192 kHz, with 64-bit mix bus summing, automatic plug-in delay compensation, and POW-r dithering. It also has a flexible routing scheme, with sidechaining, and allows you to insert and re-order effects as the music plays. While it comes with a large variety of effects and instruments, you can integrate your favorite VST and AU instruments too, creating your own complex "Racks" that can be saved for easy recall later. The amount of files, instruments, effects, and applications it's compatible means your range of creativity is limitless.

For Beat Creators
With a familiar drum-centric interface featuring 128 drum pads, each with its own device chain, the unique Drum Rack lets you assign your own instruments, samples, or effects, which then appear in the Session mixer for easy mixing. It allows you to chop up audio loops and imported REX format files, while the original groove is represented as a MIDI clip, making it easy to find and rearrange or process later. All of this is seamlessly integrated with the natural workflow of drag-and-drop simplicity. To give you more beats, the included Ableton Session Drums is a collection of acoustic drums that lets you control vicinity of the mics for each drum, the overheads and room mics, as well as Drum Machines, which are meticulously sampled reproductions of classic drum machine sounds. Both include MIDI grooves for diverse genres programmed as Drum Racks so you can manipulate them to meet your needs.

For Sound Designers
All editing in Live is non-destructive, in realtime, so you can draw effects automation, pitch changes, volume and pan envelopes, and more over the top of your samples, getting as radical as you want. Live Clips allow you to easily copy and paste your new creations, including combining clip envelopes, effects chains, MIDI pattern, and more in one Live Clip. Drag you formulation into the Browser, name it, and save it for later, simply dragging it back to the Live Set when needed. To help you get the sonic results you want, Live 7 includes powerful tools including more than 20 built-in audio effects, the Simpler and Impulse instruments, several MIDI effects, Clip Envelopes, Warp Markers, Follow Actions, extensive routing, ReWire, VST and AU support, and much more.

For DJs
Ableton Live's real-time features give DJs the freedom to mix multiple tracks and loops, remix, create or capture audio loops in realtime from decks and other external sources, incorporate your own pre-done compositions into the mix, and much more. It allows you to mix as many tracks or track elements as you want and you can choose from plenty of built-in, studio-quality EQs, filters, and delays. And mixing from decks to Live and back is as simple as the traditional way of using dual decks. Whether you make it the crux of your DJing rig or just use it as an addition to your existing setup, Live 7 brings you even more possibilities to DJing.

No Idea Lost
As mentioned above, this music software provides a great breeding ground for ideas, but it also has some built-in safety nets for ensuring those inspirations don't fall through the net when new ones come along, or while you're in the middle of something new. Between the Live Clips, Racks, and intuitive Browser, you can be sure it's easy to find, move, and improvise with samples and not worry about losing the original piece or its different, tweaked versions.

Hands-On Control
With the ability to use any MIDI controller, and dedicated support for those with other dedicated control surfaces, playback, recording, clip and scene launching, effects controls, tempo, and just about any other feature will be a simple control away. Live turns your computer into a musical instrument capable of improvising it's own performance. Simply enter MIDI Map Mode, select the parameter you want, twist a MIDI knob, hit a key, footswitch, or pad, and it will assigned, ready for action.

Ableton Live 7 Features:

• Live 7
• Multitrack recording up to 32-bit/192kHz
• Complete nondestructive editing with unlimited undo
• Powerful and creative MIDI sequencing of software and hardware instruments
• Realtime time-stretching and warping of AIFF, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and MP3 files for improvisation and instant remixing
• A comprehensive selection of built-in audio effects, including a host of creative delays, filters, distortions, studio compressors, and EQs
• Built-in software instruments: Simpler for creative sample-based synthesis, Impulse for sampled drums
• Instrument-, Drum-, Effect Racks for creating and managing complex performance setups, drum kits, and multi-effects
• VST and AU effects and instruments support; automatic plug-in delay compensation
• REX file support and native sliced audio file creation
• Video import and export for scoring to picture or warping picture to music
• Realtime control of parameters with any MIDI controller just MIDI-map it or choose from a list of popular supported controllers for instant mapping
• Full ReWire support
• Single-screen user interface for simple, creativity-focused operation
• Multicore and multiprocessor support
• Extensive built-in step-by-step tutorials
• Localized software menus, tutorials, and PDF reference manuals available in English, Spanish, French, German, and Japanese
• Printed reference manual in English, Spanish, French, German, or Japanese
• Includes Essential Instrument Collection 2 a multi-gigabyte library of meticulously sampled instruments providing a choice selection of acoustic and electric pianos, guitars, bass, drums, orchestral strings, brass, woodwinds and more
• Loops and construction kits: Unnatural Selection by puremagnetik

Get the latest, greatest Ableton Live yet.

Ableton Live 7 Specifications:

• System Requirements
• Mac: Any G4 or faster (Intel Mac recommended), 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended), Mac OS X 10.3.9 (10.4 or later recommended), QuickTime 6.5 or higher, DVD-ROM drive
  
  PC: 1.5 GHz CPU or faster, 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended), Windows XP or Vista, Windows-compatible sound card (ASIO driver support recommended), QuickTime 6.5 or higher, DVD-ROM drive

Ableton Live 7

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Average of 6 User Ratings

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Great Creative Tool

Posted by klatchband from Wichita on Mar 9, 2009

Experience w/product: I own it

Reviewer's Background: Active Musician

Reviewer's Play Style: Rock

I am fairly new the the DAW market (messed with it in the 90's). After a horrible start with Pro-Tools v8.0 (not compatible with my AMD PC), I decided to buy the full version of live. I am very happy with the product and features. What I like the best is that Live is a great creative tool. It does take much to learn the basics and start recording. The MIDI implementation is great and straight forward. Mastering is where Live is the weakest. But, because Live utilizes ReWire techology, it could easily integrate with most other DAW programs out there. Most people out there serious with computer based recording, use more than one DAW. Live is great for the "newby" and is powerful enough for the engineer or DJ looking to create on the fly!

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Can't wait to own =]

Posted by Me from Wisconsin on Jan 25, 2009

Experience w/product: I have used it

Reviewer's Background: Hobbyist

Reviewer's Play Style: Rock, Electronica, Synth Pop

I love this program. I am fairly new to MIDI and beatmaking, so I loved the tutorials that were included with it. The learning curve is short and the music you can create with the program is great. I will be purchasing the software as soon as my trial runs out.

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Beginner's Luck

Posted by myspace.com/EMFHofficial from VA on Dec 31, 2008

Experience w/product: I own it

Reviewer's Background: Musician, Engineer, Producer

Reviewer's Play Style: Metal, Industrial, Pop

This is the PERFECT d.a.w. for a young producer just starting out. Wonderful effects included, very good compression and enough tools to teach you everything you need to know. Me and ALL of my friends use this and couldn't be happier. Live or Studio, Ableton is a difficult d.a.w. suite to compete with. Very good software. If you haven't got it yet, you should.

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Worth Every Penny!

Posted by Josef from Corvallis, Oregon on Sep 5, 2008

Experience w/product: I own it

Reviewer's Background: Hobbyist/Musician/ Aspiring Engineer

Reviewer's Play Style: Folk/blues/rock/pop/indie/electronic

Live 7 is hands down the best creative recording software I have used. My first time using Ableton was at a friend's house. we were goofing around at first, the we dug out a few mics, an acoustic guitar and his M-Audio keyrig, and in less than 4 hours we had a pretty sweet demo. Live had an intuitive, keyboard controlled User Interface, all of the controls are midi assignable, so you can use it with just about any USB/MIDI interface, and the built in effects are good. It's very quick and painless to use. the learning curve is a little longer than, say, Audacity, but it pretty easy to pick up. Comes preloaded with built in lessons to teach you the basics, and will have you halfway through your first song an hour out of the box. The greatest thing about Live is that the execution is great, and it runs very light on the processor, so it's not too difficult to run plenty of VSTi plugins and some ReWire modules.

Live has many applications. You can use it as a digital tape machine, just top lay down simple tracks; use it as a powerful multitracker for more complicated projects, or you can use it as a DJ station, synth module, or drum machine (or all three) for just about any live application you can imagine. All around great software.

I Highly recommend it over FL Studio, ProTools LE or M-Powered, and Propellerhead Reason (That is, if you intend to use any analog instruments to lay down tracks). Overall, unbeatable software.

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The Best Of The Rest

Posted by Jeff420 from Thousand Oaks, CA on Sep 4, 2008

Experience w/product: I own it

Reviewer's Background: Recording Consultant

Reviewer's Play Style: Soul

Absolutely perfect! Let me tell you for those that don't already know.... Live is the solvant glue in the sticky equation of recording. WHy be hasseled? The whole point is to record with ease... and if youre recording with live instruments, workstations... Live is your only option, and thanks for that. It'll make me a million

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Ableton Live 7

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