Deafman’s set of retro themes for Ableton Live, originally inspired by Silicon Graphics workstations, impressed when I first wrote about them. This summer, Clem has a bunch of updates: improved themes, a theme editor, a new pack, updated fonts (with Retina and bold versions), and easy installers. It’s a one-stop makeover kit for Ableton Live. But it’s more than that: it’s a mood enhancer. I smiled, like, literally.
Attention to detail
Tapping into nostalgia is one thing, but that can wear off. (The South Park Memberberries bit summed that up.) Clem’s themes do something else: they can rekindle that love affair with computer displays. They’ve got personality. And they do that via a deeper level of Live customization.
I certainly never used an SGI workstation. But color matters. Good as Ableton’s contrast and visibility are with their Live 11-12 themes, the range of options here give you everything the defaults are missing, full of character and different contrast and lumen levels that fit a range of situations.
It’s easy to get lost staring into Live’s interface. Creativity is weird. Yeah, I’ve sometimes changed my mindset by swapping the colors on the screen.
As before, these are “production-ready” themes grouped contrast, color palette, and brightness.
- MONO for bright environments, with upper luminance but with excellent accessibility and balance (the bit you normally lose with these)
- MID with base color temperatures and contrasting styles (and two variants each)
- INFRA dark themes, 80s and 90s inspiration, designed for low-light use
- RED, ultra-dark versions that may or may not have an impact on your brain. (“When scotopic vision occurs, it is believed to enhance the brain’s auditory processing capacity.”)
- CRT, a “dumping ground for experimental themes” — the “director’s cut.”
CRT isn’t necessarily Hot Dog Stand material. (Ah, Windows 3.1!) A couple of my favorites were in there.
The other important detail is the work Clem has done on custom fonts, which transform the experience.
Check the specimens here; they’re gorgeous. I switched to DeafType3 for everyday use and haven’t looked back. It just signals to my brain that when I’m opening Live, it’s fun time, not work time. (Uh, even though I use Live a lot for whatever it is I seem to now do for a living.)
Samples
The omnibus installer for Complete is a joy to use. Despite some warnings about voiding the warranty, etc., I got it to run on the first try without a hitch. (You may need to adjust security settings if you’re on the Mac.) And then you have these beautiful options. They aren’t just aesthetic; they also work in different lighting environments when the handful of official choices don’t fit.
Theme gamut
Here are more options from Clem by group:
CRT|Light – XRust
RED: Newkid
LIGHT: Bubble
INFRA: Octane
MID: Bizpuin
MID: Solarix
But those were just my favorites. You could hate those and wind up finding a different one you like. What impressed me was that even the more extreme choices remain accessible in terms of contrast and legibility.
What impressed me was that even the more extreme choices remain accessible in terms of contrast and legibility.
Deeper editing
Clem is part of a growing community of Ableton Live users and hackers pushing for more customization, even if those options don’t yet have official support from Ableton.
That includes the powerful ThemTools editor, now available on macOS and coming soon to Windows. You can use this to edit not only Clem’s themes but other Live themes, as well. (Clem also uses the incredible Textual framework for customizing terminal UIs, used in the theme editing tool.)
You might also want to check out the name-your-own-price Live Swatch Editor (LSE), developed by ANTIREL, which lets you customize swatch colors for use on tracks. Deafman already added “experimental” presets for LSE in the complete download, with more to come. You can also load this up and auto-generate a gradient.
It’s available on Itch:
Grab Complete
It’s brilliant. If I’m going to use Live all day, the five minutes to use this are well worth it. €15 each or €49 for complete with all these extra tools. I know it’s a labor of love for Clem, and he put an obscene amount of time into it. Ableton, hope you’re reading.
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Full documentation and more details
Now we just need Live on Linux. Or this kind of customization in Bitwig Studio. I’ll light some candles for both. Just because I know I have at least one Disney employee reading CDM, here you go:
Previously:
And where it began: