Ableton Live 11.0.5 just became public with loads of fixes, tweaks, and subtle additions – and the free Lite version that comes with lots of hardware now adds Live 11 functionality.

John Park of DIY boutique Adafruit seems to be having some serious fun with tiny mechanical keypads – as hackable, ultra-compact MIDI controllers and (with screen) even the tiniest Ableton Live controller I’ve ever seen.

Just like a fresh herb or spice, there’s some potential beauty in seasoning your musical ideas with something different. Note Raum does that with MIDI patterns – and it’s free, provided you’ve got Max for Live.

Don’t settle. These Max for Live creations can open up tons of extra ways of working with Ableton Live, including the deep Push customization you’ve always wanted.

Sometimes, people build things in Max for Live more audacious than any host has on its own. Dispatch is a global modulation matrix. It attenuates, it inverts, it mixes, it submixes. It talks to modular gear. It blows Live wide open.

The Link-enabled products page has gotten busy, but here’s one you may have heard of – Avid Pro Tools. It’s the latest to support Live’s tech for jamming together across apps, software, and hardware.

Now at 1.0, Videosync from Showsync is a deep Max for Live visual engine, complete with integration with Ableton Live’s native interface, modulation, Warp Markers, and edit/play workflows.

You’ve seen some feature lists – and this time Ableton is even doing a 90-day free trial. But how do you actually dig into what’s new in Live 11 and start working? Here’s a deep guide to all the essentials.

Live 11 is now available – not a beta, final release. And there’s a slightly different Max version out this week, too. Here’s the quick overview:

What is this MPE “polyphonic expression” about? Well, you can get your hands all over the vintage test tone goodness of Fundamental, and a bunch of synths will be easier to control in Ableton Live 11 out of the box. Let’s explain.