Ableton Live 12.2 went from beta to public yesterday. And there’s more for all Live users – Iftah has an accessible tuner device called Pitch Pipe and Side Brain has an awesome free instrument rack for performing granular tricks, among other new add-ons. You don’t have time to wade through hours of videos; let’s put everything in one place and get bouncing tracks/spectral resonating/granulating.
TL:DR/TL:DW get that new Live/Push/Move
Now, I don’t have a lot more to add as I did the full feature round-up back at the beta launch, but the quick recap:
- That sweet rebooted Auto Filter
- Roar distortion adds Delay routing, Dispersion filter, external audio/MIDI sidechain
- Meld instrument gets Chord oscillator, Scrambler LFO
- Bounce in Place
- Scale awareness and Tuning System support
- Max 9 and RNBO are synced up with Live (actually up to RNBO 1.3.4 and Max 9.0.7 – there was a Max version bump and Cycling and Ableton managed to get that in, plus Take Lane API access and other LOM stuff and fixes)
- Push additions: Expressive 16 Pitches, Follow Actions, Expressive Chords, all the Auto Filter + Meld + Roar updates, External Audio Effect
Push with Live 12 – Release Notes
Don’t forget Move 1.5 has gotten some updates, too:
I’ve rounded up the best videos below, but first, if the Live 12.2 is old news to you, some free/donationware downloads landed at roughly the same time – plus the paid X-FX add-ons. It’s almost like getting extra Live features at the same time.
Manifest Audio
If you can’t get enough of tunable, tempo-locked, scale-aware devices, here are three of them arriving alongside 12.2:
X-Form: seven tunable modulation effects in one absolute unit
X-Pressor: tempo-locked dynamics control and saturation
X-Resonator: scale-aware modal resonation effects
X-FX is bundle on sale now for $39 (vs. regular $128)
If you buy something from a CDM link, we may earn a commission.
Going to try to review these shortly; it’s up in my review queue.
And Noah from Manifest Audio is about to go live on one of his legendary livestreams as I write this (should be available archived later, too):
Pitch Pipe
Iftah has been so prolific lately I can’t even keep up, but this almost feels like a Live 12.2 feature Ableton forgot – with Iftah’s usual design touch, of course.
Pitch Pipe is free or pay-if-you-can and continues on the accessibility theme we’ve been following. I’ll let the creator describe his work:
Today I’m releasing Pitch Pipe, a really nice Max for Live tuner. It’s fully accessible to blind, visually impaired, and sighted users.
Pitch Pipe can analyze complex signals and features a dedicated string mode with presets for various string instruments, as well as a piano roll mode designed for precise pitch detection of bass drums and other percussive sounds, allowing for quick and accurate tuning.
It features a resizable floating window, 11 color themes (including options for color blindness), and integrates seamlessly with popular screen readers like VoiceOver and NVDA—making it compatible with braille displays and other assistive tech. Every feature is accessible via keyboard shortcuts or tabbing.
Pitch Pipe is available as either a free or paid download. Both versions are identical, it’s simply a way to ensure that everyone can access it, regardless of their ability to support my work.
Download:
Oh and interesting behind-the-scenes detail, from Iftah’s Facebook page:
It’s an adaptation of Philip McLeod’s SNAC (Specially Normalized Auto-Correlation). It’s highly accurate and can analyze complex waveforms with minimal(or nearly non-existent) octave errors.
Free Granular Slicer Device
The awesome Yeuda Ben-atar over in LA is one of the most prolific voices is in the Live community, and he’s been doing a ton of stuff with Robert Henke’s Granulator III specifically.
This is a clever way to use it, though, and it’s not so obvious from the UI that Granulator can work this way. He’s making granular chord progressions and even making it into a slicing-style granular sampler, which was always what I was missing in the tool. It’s a free download from Side Brain:
https://sidebrain.net/granular-slicer
More from Side Brain below…
Still want more?
Free GroovePix Max 9-powered groovebox/visualizer
Expect we’ll see a bunch of Max 9 devices for Max for Live, but Ned Rush went ahead and made this free – no Patreon account required – so it’s a good place to start:
GroovePix – Live 12.2 Max For Live device.
Granular multi-sampling with just Sampler
Okay, the above is cool, but it does mean shifting to Granulator III’s workflow and – as far as I know, you still can’t run Granulator III on Push 3 standalone, either, while we’re on the topic. Here, Ned Rush does some granular multi-sampling in plain vanilla Live 12 Sampler. (I’ve got Ned’s 12.2 video below, too, but this works in any ‘ol Live 12 – just, again, once you learn to do this, it feels like a new feature.)
Power user 12.2 video round-up
So nowadays, you get a bunch of these with each new release – kind of too many, really. Here are some of the best resources (though let me know if I left yours out)!
Madeleine’s video (Sonic Bloom) came out a couple months ago, but it’s an ideal place to start:
Side Brain has a great little study group going on this stuff:
Ned Rush did a wonderful livestream with some fun insights:
I needed this one – time to finish some damned tracks. Sequence One goes over how to navigate arrangement and automation, all from keyboard shortcuts: