find your thing again and again in ableton live

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Whatever music you make, and whoever you are as a music maker, there’s always more to explore in Live. See how you can go further with Live 12.

Find out what’s possible in Live 12

Play freely with ideas Play video

Reshape MIDI patterns

Apply a variety of simple or complex variations to your MIDI clips with new MIDI Transformations. Add ornaments and articulations, draw acceleration and deceleration curves, connect successive notes and chords, simulate the strum of a guitar, and more.

Generate inspiration

Conjure up melodies, chords and rhythms with the help of new MIDI Generators. Set constraints and let your chosen Generator create playful and original ideas for you to develop and turn into your own.

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Do more with Max for Live

Try out additional Max for Live Transformations and Generators that give you deeper ways of working with MIDI, or go even further by building new ones.

Embrace and explore tunings

Follow your preferred tuning systems or try different ones more easily. Work outside of 12-tone equal temperament, and use your tuning with Live’s devices as well as any MPE-capable plugin or hardware.

Stay in key

Transform or generate ideas within the confines of the selected scale, or sync the scale of MIDI devices and instruments to the clip being played.

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Edit MIDI more easily

Use keyboard and mouse operations to edit MIDI in new ways. Split a note in two, or chop it into several parts. Select a set of notes and join them together, or make them fill a selected time range. Plus, you can access to more tools from the Note Utilities panel on the left, such as Fit Scale, Humanize, Add Intervals, and more.

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Modulate more flexibly

Stay in control of a parameter, even after it’s been mapped to a modulation source; Max for Live devices like LFO, Shaper and Envelope Follower now let you freely adjust a destination that’s being modulated.

Surprise yourself with the sounds you create

Find inspirations

Start playing with any of Live’s new instruments and effects and you’ll soon find new textures and techniques to spark further experimentation.

Lose yourself in Meld

Live’s new MPE-capable synthesizer is designed for sound variety, playfulness and character. Equipped with two independent oscillators and an extensive modulation matrix, Meld excels at textural soundscapes, harmonic and atonal sounds, and rhythmic drones.

Meld’s Macro Oscillators provides simple access of complex waveforms made by various synthesis methods. Quickly dial up subtractive, FM, granular, and other sources, quantize the oscillators to a scale and even use the LFOs from one oscillator to modulate the other.

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Program Meld’s dual oscillators with dedicated LFOs and an extensive modulation matrix

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Each of Meld’s oscillator presets comes with two Engines parameters, carefully chosen for maximum sound design versatility

Add color with Roar

Bathe your sound in subtle warmth – or break it down with wild distortion. Live’s new coloring and saturation device is made up of three saturation stages for serial, parallel or even mid/side and multiband configurations. Its built-in compressor and feedback routing give you even more ways to shape your sound, and its modulation section lets you add dynamic, evolving saturation and color.

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Apply heavy distortion to a specific frequency range with Roar’s multiband configuration

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Modulate your sound with Roar’s Envelope Follower