Press Release
For Immediate Release
ABLETON ANNOUNCES LIVE 3
Live 3 brings yet another breakthrough in audio sequencing by allowing users to animate their samples.
Berlin, Germany - September 3, 2003 — Today Ableton announced the upcoming release of Live 3, a new upgrade of their award-winning sequencing instrument for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Windows. Live 3 is scheduled for release in October of this year and will be available for public beta testing from www.ableton.com this weekend.
Live 3 is the first integrated audio sequencing tool that gives users control "inside" of the sample. Live 3 now offers sound designers and musicians a whole new world in which they can easily and flexibly animate their samples. In Live 3, changes in volume, pitch, pan, effects controls and more can be drawn onto any section of a sample as clip envelopes. Clip envelopes add unlimited dynamic musical expression to previously static samples. Live 3 allows the user to create infinite variations from just one sample in real-time — anything from subtle corrections to entirely new and exciting sounds.
"We are very proud to release the first audio sequencer that will allow you to 'get into the loop'," says Gerhard Behles, CEO and founder of Ableton AG. "As we know, making music with samples and loops is fast and fun. To a lot of people though, an annoying problem has been that samples always sound the same. Live 3 now ends this problem and allows you to 'open up' or 'unfold' your samples and work 'from within'. In Live 3 you will be able to reveal the millions of sounds a sample can make as you draw volume, pitch and effect curves onto it. With Live's new clip envelopes, an arsenal of built-in effects and all VST Plug-in effects become the building blocks of a dream (re-)synthesizer."
Clip envelopes extend Live's "elastic" approach to audio by allowing the musician to achieve endless variations of a sample. Every clip in Live 3 contains independent envelopes to draw pitch, volume, warping, mixer and effects parameters. The sample is processed non-destructively and in real-time.
Other new features of Live 3 include:
- MIDI Key Mapping and Velocity Sensitivity: In conjunction with Live's beat-synchronized playback and real-time quantization, the MIDI keyboard becomes a powerful song arrangement aid. Improvise new melodies over vocal phrases or spoken passages, or play variations of an instrumental solo on the fly — and capture it all in the Arrangement for further editing. With MIDI key mapping, velocity sensitivity, clip envelopes and the new Legato Mode, Live 3 has become even more of a musical instrument.
- Consolidate: Live 3 has a new Consolidate command which turns each track within a selected time range of the Arrangement into a new clip, ready to be looped or dragged into the Session View for instant use.
- New Effects: Resonators, Compressor II, EQ Three, Utility
- Insert Captured Scene: The Insert Captured Scene command captures all running clips as a new Session View scene.
- New Quantization Values: The Quantization menus now include triplet note values; the global Quantization setting includes values greater than one bar.
- VST Plug-In Improvements: View multiple VST Plug-in editor windows; New VST Plug-in program and bank handling; Mach-O VST Plug-in support for Mac OS X.
- Recording Improvements: Automatic handling of audio input monitoring; Automatic thinning of recorded automation data.
- New Clip Settings and Features: Clips can individually be set to play from RAM instead of from disk; dropping a sample from the File Browsers onto the Clip View replaces the clip's sample while retaining all other clip settings; increased ranges for clip volume and transposition; Session View clips keep playing when dragged to other clip slots; all clip Launch Modes are now available for the computer keyboard.
Pricing and Availability
Live 3 for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Windows will be available in stores worldwide and in the Ableton Webshop for EUR/USD 399 (MSRP) in October. Upgrades from previous Live versions will be available online at www.ableton.com. Upgrades from LIVE 2 are EUR/USD 69 for the download version and EUR/USD 99 for the boxed version. Upgrades from LIVE 1 are EUR/USD 99 for the download version and EUR/USD 129 for the boxed version. Users that buy or unlock* Live 2 for the first time after August 1st 2003 will be eligible to receive a free upgrade to Live 3.
About Live
Live has introduced the notion of the sequencer as an instrument. Launch loops or sound effects on the fly; follow intuition rather than a fixed linear timeline. Automatic beat-matching and real-time quantization help creativity keep the flow. Improvise song arrangements, instantly drop samples on cue, interact with other performers, musicians or DJs. Recording, arranging, experimenting and improvising have never been faster or easier. Since its introduction in 2001, Live was quickly embraced by studio musicians and post-production professionals because of the swiftness and ease with which they could sketch out musical ideas and edit them to perfection.
About Ableton
Ableton's function is to develop modern software technology that empowers and inspires creative people. Since the company started in 1999, more than twenty developers and business professionals have joined Ableton—many of them active musicians or DJs. The company has received outstanding press and customer feedback since the launch of Live in October 2001.
* Ableton uses a challenge-response copy protection. When running Live the first time, the user will need to unlock the program.
Images and Live Demo Version available on our website: www.ableton.com
For more information, contact:
Claudia Weidner, Public RelationsAbleton
Schönhauser Allee 6/7
10119 Berlin, Germany
ph: +49-(0)30 288763-211
fax: +49-(0)30 288763-11
press@ableton.com
http://www.ableton.com