You stare at its interface for hours on end. Why not give your eyes something different to look at? Now Ableton Live 10, too, gets access to custom colors.
Judging by looking over people’s shoulders, a lot of Live users simply don’t know that you can hack into Ableton’s custom theme files and modify things. And so we’re all caught in drab uniformity, with the same color theme – both unoriginal and uninspiring.
Fortunately, we have Berlin native and leading Ableton Live guru and educator Madeleine Bloom to come to our rescue. Madeleine has long made some pleasing variations for Live’s colors. Now she’s got two new sets (with more on the way) for Ableton Live 10. Live 10 can still read your old color modifications, but because of some minor changes to the interface, files made for its new XML-based format will work better. (Ableton also changed the name from “skins” to “themes,” for some reason.)
Free Ableton Live Themes Set #1
Free Ableton Live Themes Set #2 [I spot a naming pattern here]
To install theme, follow this tutorial (for both Live 10 and Live 9 and earlier):
Ableton Live Tutorial: How to install new Skins
And if you think these colors aren’t quite right, Madeleine has also written a tutorial for creating your own themes or making modifications to these:
How to Create Your Own Ableton Live Themes & Free PDF Theming Guide
There’s even a link there to a graphical theme editor for Mac and Windows with previews, in case you don’t like editing XML files.
“But, Peter!” says you, “you’re just now a paid shill for Ableton, trying to force me to upgrade to Live 10 when I don’t need it!”
Why, you’ve just made me spit out some of this lifetime supply of Club-Mate soda that Ableton has delivered to my flat every day, you ungrateful readers! Of course, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t upgrade to Live 10 — why, it’s The Future of Sound. Oh… wait, actually, that’s Native Instruments’ slogan. Sometimes I forget who I’m shilling for.
Anyway, if you are stuck on the clearly inferior and not-having-an-Echo effect Live 9 or earlier, Madeleine is nice enough to have you covered, too, with a whole bunch of skins for those versions. There are dozens of those, including various from readers:
https://sonicbloom.net/en/?s=ableton+live+skins&submit=Search
And there’s an accompanying guide to making your own skins, as well.
Now, enjoy. I have to go lie down, as I think all this Club-Mate sponsorship has made me feel a bit lightheaded.
You’ll find a ton of resources for Live at Sonic Bloom, the site Madeleine runs. It’s a complete hub for information, which is way better than trying to navigate random YouTube uploads: