[HN Gopher] Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke on Ableton (2016)
___________________________________________________________________
Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke on Ableton (2016)
Author : antidnan
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-01-04 08:41 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (roberthenke.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (roberthenke.com)
| ano-ther wrote:
| Great interview.
|
| They also have been very good at marketing.
|
| When I was looking for a DAW a couple of years ago, the sheer
| amount of helpful content and tutorials stood out, both from the
| company and the community they built. I also like their creator-
| focused events (Loop) and the one-thing series which reminds me
| to try something new.
| diggan wrote:
| Useful reminder that even if all you can see is differences, you
| probably have a lot of commonalities with others:
|
| > So from the moment you met, did you know you wanted to work
| together and make music?
|
| > GB: No! We hated each other!
|
| > RH: We came from a very different background and, actually it's
| a good question because later we figured out we have a lot of
| things in common. But on first sight we only saw the differences.
|
| > RH: To paint a totally cliche picture, I was at that time the
| kind of totally lost goth punk person. And Gerhard pretty much
| looked the same as he did now [...] nice white scarf and a very
| stable demeanor. Like the type of people I hated at school.
|
| > RH: Right after noticing that the other was there too, we ran
| up the auditorium to the exit and said: "What the fuck are you
| doing here?" And well the next thing you do is you decide you
| need to have some coffee to discuss that problem.
|
| > Ok, so that's basically where everything stems from. You became
| friends through mutual hatred of each other, and how did that
| become music? Like were you making electronic music already?
|
| > RH: Yes.
|
| And then they both went on to collaborate and create one of the
| most popular DAWs out there :)
| chris_st wrote:
| A software meet-cute!
| v1ne wrote:
| It's been a pleasure to work at Ableton and to be at Loop.
| Gerhard as a co-founder always had an open ear, and the company
| deeply cared about its employees. And Robert provided valuable
| guidance from an artistic perspective.
|
| I think the way Ableton works is responsible for a good part of
| Live's success: Treat people with respect, as something valuable
| and unique, and they will create an awesome product. There's a
| lot of attention to detail, a lot of dedication towards the
| artists that use Live every day. I mean, in the end, Live should
| not only enable very different people to create their own unique
| sound and music, but also work reliably, on stage, in real time,
| on a desktop OS. There isn't much talk about that, but DAWs are
| pretty complex, tightly coupled pieces of software, due to those
| requirements. There's a lot of unsung heroes.
|
| Anyway, I'm grateful for all the lovely people I met at Ableton,
| for what I learnt, on a technical and social level, and the trust
| that was put into me, by giving me quite a free hand over a few
| subsystems of the software.
| dmje wrote:
| It's really nice (as a very long term user - and lover! - of
| Ableton) to hear that they're a great company as well as a
| company that makes great software. This makes me happy. Thanks
| for posting :-)
| weinzierl wrote:
| I like how Ableton brought a breath of fresh air into traditional
| DAWs. If you use Reaper, but want it to be more like Ableton
| there is Playtime[1]. From what I understand it is currently
| rewritten in Rust with a new release expected in 2024.
|
| [1] https://www.helgoboss.org/projects/playtime/
| squarefoot wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for posting. I was looking for something
| similar although aimed primarily at drum patterns programming
| and later arranging them into a song, not unlike the older drum
| machines allowed, but more modern with visual representation of
| patterns as objects on screen and the ability to create
| variations just by cloning them for example by drag&drop then
| applying the needed changes, then link them together. This
| could be also used live, possibly creating different paths
| according to MIDI signals from external devices (pads? -
| pedalboard?) for example to choose to continue a song for a few
| more bars, or a different ending, a song variation based on the
| audience mood, etc.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Live user here. Fantastic interview.
|
| While Live certainly isn't perfect and there are other DAWs out
| there that are quite feature-rich and offer a different &
| interesting workflow, I keep coming back to Live as my main DAW.
| It's just so versatile. Keep up the great work, Ableton!
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| What's your view on Bitwig? Created by ex Ableton folks.
| NickC25 wrote:
| I've toyed around with it a few times. I like it! It's
| definitely a cool product, and I think with its focus on
| modularity it blurs the line between a traditional DAW
| focused on production/composition and a more experimental DAW
| focused on sound design, as opposed to Live's focus on
| blurring the line between a DAW focused on live performance
| and a DAW focused on composition/production.
|
| I'm not one who is focused on a DAW's particular weaknesses,
| rather, what makes each one unique from a functionality point
| of view.
|
| I love Live, but that doesn't mean I hate FL Studio, Reason,
| Logic, Bitwig, VCV Rack, etc... In fact, as someone who
| spends more time in the DAW doing crazy and experimental
| sound design versus actual song production (blame my ADHD for
| that!), I enjoy some of the unique features of all the major
| DAWs.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying ;)
|
| Do you have a bandcamp or similar where you post your sound
| design experiments?
| NickC25 wrote:
| I wish I had enough complete projects to actually put up
| on SC or Bandcamp or whatever.
|
| I have close to a thousand uncompleted Live projects
| sitting on my current laptop and old laptop, some are
| just little melodic loops, some are fully built out
| EDM/house/techno/electronic loops, some are just whatever
| happened when opening Ableton after a night of substance
| abuse (read: completely unorganized, unmixed, heavily
| distorted sonic chaos).
|
| I can't arrange for shit, even though it's easy and
| straightforward. This is the one part of Live I don't
| like - you can just noodle around in clip view if you'd
| like, and unlike FL, Logic, Pro Tools, you aren't
| arranging from the start.
|
| What I really enjoy doing is just being unfamiliar with a
| new plugin or piece of equipment and just noodling around
| with it creating happy accidents. Presets are cool if you
| want to just make music and not learn the plugin.
|
| I would love if it there was a HN thread for DAW geeks
| with regular meetups or Zoom chats so we could all show
| off what little nuggets of production we've learned.
| There are so many things in Live that I don't use or even
| know exists (or how to use) that I wish someone could
| just show me, or vice versa.
| dottjt wrote:
| It's funny, because I went full Bitwig after being
| dissatisfied with the lack of certain workflow features in
| Ableton Live (for example, no customisable shortcuts, crappy
| bounce workflow etc.)
|
| ...and while I loved Bitwig, and while Bitwig is vastly
| superior on a technical and workflow level, I had this
| epiphany about music making: It should be about making music.
|
| It's not about having shortcuts or having better ways of
| doing things. The problem is that I ended up spending more
| time customising Bitwig and playing around with all the cool
| things it could do, that it kind of took the focus away from
| actually making music.
|
| Basically, I'm the kind of person that likes to tinker and
| that's a huge distraction for me. I think what makes Ableton
| Live so valuable to me, is that there is no tinker.
|
| It's the fact that it is so bare-bones in a lot of ways, that
| makes it work for me and allows me to focus on making music.
| NickC25 wrote:
| That's one of the reasons I think FL is a great DAW,
| because there's no session mode, only an arrangement mode.
| You're forced to compose rather than loop endlessly or muck
| about tweaking parameters.
|
| I think Live is geared to "do whatever you want, quickly"
| as opposed to Bitwig being "make any sort of noise you can
| imagine" or FL "write whatever you want, quickly".
|
| All great tools, just depends on what you'd like to do,
| honestly. Nothing is inherently bad.
| dottjt wrote:
| I had the opposite experience with FL Studio.
|
| I think the problem is that there's too many different
| ways to do the same thing in FL Studio, whereas Ableton
| Live keeps it pretty simple in terms of workflow.
|
| There's no session mode, but you get that sequencer
| instead. But to be fair, I never used session mode in
| Ableton, only arrangement.
|
| But at the end of the day, DAWs are so personal. Everyone
| has a different preference for something different.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Live user for around 15 years here. Looking forward to getting
| 12!
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Does anyone have recommendations for a DAW that's more for
| jamming - playing along to a song, or making stuff up on top of
| on a premade drum loop & bass line?
|
| I found that most DAWs seem to be aimed at music creation
| instead. Camelot is close, but it can't take in a drum loop.
|
| Disclaimer: I haven't tried (or put in effort into learning) many
| DAWs.
| roddylindsay wrote:
| Ableton Live!
| Philpax wrote:
| You'll never believe what this article is about :-)
| parenthesis wrote:
| You might want to look at https://www.irealpro.com/ and Band in
| a Box ( https://www.pgmusic.com/ ).
| an_aparallel wrote:
| in 2019 bought a serious amount of hardware. As an FL user - i
| tried to make it work in FL - it was a miserable experience. FF
| to a few months ago - bought an RME AES midi card - connect my
| physical synths to it....grab an ableton demo - fire up ableton
| - and with an extra piece of magic - the Novation Launchpad MK3
| - im jamming, looping, combining patterns - all screen
| free...its the best of "dawless" and computer music production
| i've ever experienced.
|
| I get the whole Live fanboying. It's really great for open
| ended production - and perfectly suites the fluidity and
| separation of "audio finger painting" - and "song finishing".
|
| I have many gripes about it - which both FL and Reaper address
| - but i highly recommend it as a DAW for people who want to
| "play"/"bash stuff out".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-06 23:01 UTC)