You can even Capture overdubs to existing MIDI clips. Live has done the job for you: hit the Capture button and your little gem will not only be remembered, but tidied up and neatly fitted to tempo. Whenever you arm a MIDI track, Live 10 is sneakily keeping track of everything you play through it, so any time your bandmate says ‘Whoa! What was that you just played? That was awesome!’ you don’t need to try to play it again. Well, with Capture, that needn’t be a problem. We’ve all had the unfortunate experience of merrily jamming away on a keyboard or MIDI controller, coming up with a stream of great ideas that suddenly seem to vanish from our heads the moment we try to knuckle down and hit A simple idea, but one that tackles a really basic issue with the psychology of music-making: red light syndrome. If so, don’t be too hasty in writing off Live 10, because although some of these new features might not sound all that impressive on paper, they have the potential to make a huge difference to the Live experience.
In fact, you might be looking at the list of new features and wondering whether things like “I/O renaming” and “Note chasing” really justify parting with the upgrade price, especially if you’re not a Live Suite user and so don’t get the fancy new Wavetable and Echo devices. So with Live 10, they’ve gone even further, thrown the rulebook out of the window, changed the game and reinvented music software from the ground up… right? Well, no.
Whereas other software companies expect their users to fork out for a paid upgrade every year, or try to force us all onto subscription plans, Ableton have given us a ton of stuff for free in the various point upgrades to Live 9. Three years, in fact - which, if you think about it, is actually pretty generous on Ableton’s part.
Ableton Live 10 has been a long time coming.