Our inbox is full of fun stuff Ableton lovers can download, so we’re pronouncing it “Ableton Goodies” day. Enjoy!
Open up a platform to making custom tools, and the user can become the upgrade. They can devise new ways of making music – small inventions to spark creativity. And that’s happened in the case of Max for Live, allowing Max patches to run easily inside Ableton Live.
Ableton hardly needs to release their own patches, or take much action at all. The Max community has been robust for over two decades now. Sites like maxforlive.com have rich collections of instruments, effects, and the like – that site even just added a bunch of new features, including zip file posting, the ability to tag patches for Ableton’s Push hardware, and User Profile pages so you can get to know creators:
That said, Ableton has selected four Max for Live patches that are really special. They’re releasing them as “Premium” packs, right through the Ableton website. The company has done Max for Live downloads before, but this is the first time they’re selling them, making themselves a storefront to some of the favorite creations from the community. And somehow, they do have a certain Ableton-y flair.
You can check out the creations in a nice video overview:
In short, you can choose from:
Spectrum Effects: two spectral devices, each of which works with the timbral color of a sound in rhythmic and frequency snapshots.
A randomized rhythm generator/modifier called AutoBeat.
A reactive video player called RokVid, for adding live video to a performance.
Micah Frank, long-time friend of the site, formerly founder of Puremagnetik, and now at Ableton, agreed to talk to us a bit about what these mean. These are Micah’s own thoughts as a veteran Max user and sound designer and Live user, and as our friend, not the official word of Ableton, but they provide some invoice into why these are worth your time above even other great M4L offerings.
For me, these devices demonstrate what M4L is capable of in the right hands, with the right resources. More specifically, they define a benchmark in our M4L development expectations. They meet all of our M4L specifications, integrate beautifully into Live 9 and have gone through the rigors of normal software releases (quality assurance, beta testing, UI guidelines etc).
I think we have a great mixed bag of developers. K-Devices is a very streamlined, product oriented operation whereas the other two – Maurizio Giri and Adam Rokhsar – are quite accomplished educators.
I would love to see more M4L product releases from such skilled developers and (while still keeping an open source spirit) watch a competitive ecosystem emerge that really leverages the technology’s inherent potential.
Read about the announcement on the Ableton blog:
Inspiring New Max for Live Devices
(Nice title, something to aspire to – better than my currently-unreleased series, “Messy Pd Patches That I Don’t Remember How They Work Or What They Do Or Is This Even The Right File?”)