Ableton Live is a widely used digital audio workstation (DAW).1 The program’s name refers to its intended use as a performance instrument for electronic musicians, a way to literally play the studio as an instrument in real time. This practice aligns with Brian Eno’s concept of “the studio as compositional tool.”2 Ableton Live’s main user base consists of electronic dance music and hip-hop producers, and it is also becoming common in experimental and academic circles. For example, the composer Morton Subotnick uses Live on stage to loop and process the output of his modular synthesizer. At the New School in New York where I teach, Live is the default DAW among students and faculty alike. This review evaluates Live’s utility for research and teaching in music studies.
Some of Live’s useful features are generic to all DAWs: visualizing and playing back audio and MIDI data; segmenting, annotating, and...
University of California Press