What’s new in Live 12 | Ableton (2024)

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Whatever music you make, and whoever you are as a music maker, there’s always more to explore in Live. See how you can go further with Live 12.

Play freely with ideas

Reshape MIDI patterns

Apply a variety of simple or complex variations to your MIDI clips with new MIDI Transformations. Add ornaments and articulations, draw acceleration and deceleration curves, connect successive notes and chords, simulate the strum of a guitar, and more.

Generate inspiration

Conjure up melodies, chords and rhythms with the help of new MIDI Generators. Set constraints and let your chosen Generator create playful and original ideas for you to develop and turn into your own.

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Do more with Max for Live

Try out additional Max for Live Transformations and Generators that give you deeper ways of working with MIDI, or go even further by building new ones.

Embrace and explore tunings

Follow your preferred tuning systems or try different ones more easily. Work outside of 12-tone equal temperament, and use your tuning with Live’s devices as well as any MPE-capable plugin or hardware.

Stay in key

Transform or generate ideas within the confines of the selected scale, or sync the scale of MIDI devices and instruments to the clip being played.

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Edit MIDI more easily

Use keyboard and mouse operations to edit MIDI in new ways. Split a note in two, or chop it into several parts. Select a set of notes and join them together, or make them fill a selected time range. Plus, you can access to more tools from the Note Utilities panel on the left, such as Fit Scale, Humanize, Add Intervals, and more.

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Modulate more flexibly

Stay in control of a parameter, even after it’s been mapped to a modulation source; Max for Live devices like LFO, Shaper and Envelope Follower now let you freely adjust a destination that’s being modulated.

Surprise yourself with the sounds you create

Find inspiration

Start playing with any of Live’s new instruments and effects and you’ll soon find new textures and techniques to spark further experimentation.

Lose yourself in Meld

Live’s new MPE-capable synthesizer is designed for sound variety, playfulness and character. Equipped with two independent oscillators and an extensive modulation matrix, Meld excels at textural soundscapes, harmonic and atonal sounds, and rhythmic drones.

Meld’s Macro Oscillators provides simple access of complex waveforms made by various synthesis methods. Quickly dial up subtractive, FM, granular, and other sources, quantize the oscillators to a scale and even use the LFOs from one oscillator to modulate the other.

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Add color with Roar

Bathe your sound in subtle warmth – or break it down with wild distortion. Live’s new coloring and saturation device is made up of three saturation stages for serial, parallel or even mid/side and multiband configurations. Its built-in compressor and feedback routing give you even more ways to shape your sound, and its modulation section lets you add dynamic, evolving saturation and color.

Play: Monophonic Bassline
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Play: Guitar
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Play: Beat
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Play: Synth Arpeggio
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Get expressive with granular synthesis

Granulator III, the latest version of Robert Henke’s granular synthesizer, introduces expressive control that lets you bend notes and add vibrato and glissando. Plus, you can now capture audio in real time and start manipulating it immediately.

Go to the Granulator III Packs page

Play: Dream Stuff
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Play: Buzz String
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Play: Voices
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Play: Abstract
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Lost and Found

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Play: Lost and Found

Lost and Found brings together multi-sampled instruments, Drum Racks and samples inspired by the unexpected sound sources of the everyday – from household objects, DIY instruments and flea market finds to the organic materials and natural elements that surround us.

Go to the Lost and Found Pack page

Performance Pack

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Perform live more freely with four Max for Live devices from Iftah. Control any part of Live with advanced macros, capture and re-deploy snapshots of your Set, instantly loop your location in Arrangement View, and pre-arrange a song with clips that Live fills as you perform.

Go to the Performance Pack page

Golden Era Hip Hop Drums

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Explore the gritty drums of old-school hip hop with the new beat-focused Pack from heavyweight producer Sound Oracle. Get your hands on warm, authentic-sounding kits with built-in effects and enhanced MPE functionality, created especially for Live 12.

Go to the Golden Era Drums Pack page

Trap Drums

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Sound Oracle puts the creative power of his in-demand trap beats at your disposal with a Pack of 20 crisp, futuristic kits and clips made for Live 12, loaded with MPE functionality for added expressive control.

Go to the Trap Drums Pack page

Work more intuitively

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Set up to stay focused

Use Live’s Mixer in Arrangement View to get more information and control without moving to Session View and breaking the flow. Toggle the visibility of each Mixer section to fit your needs, and benefit from improved readability and feedback.

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See everything you need

Stack Live’s Clip and Device Views to see more of what’s going on in your track at a glance. See the Clip Editor or automation and the Instrument or Effect you’re working on at the same time, so you can work without repeatedly switching between views.

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Search with tags

Discover new sounds and find them again easier with the help of Live’s new tagging system. All factory sound content – including Packs – in Live now comes labeled in the Browser with instrument categories and helpful musical descriptors – and if you want more tags, you can create your own.

Browse better

Get search results that cover the whole library, rather than being confined to the Browser’s built-in categories. And explore your search history to see sounds or presets you've previously looked for.

Sound Similarity Search

Find sounds that fit

Try Live's new Sound Similarity Search to find sounds with similar characteristics to the one you're working on. Start with a sample and tell Live’s browser to find comparable sounds and instrument presets, with the help of a neural network.

Instantly replace drums

Swap all the samples in your Drum Rack for similar ones to quickly try out new percussive textures – like a drum machine with seemingly-infinite kits.

See all new features in Live12

What’s new in Live 12 | Ableton (2024)

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