Ableton Live is about making music; for composition, songwriting, recording, production, remixing and live performance. Live's nonlinear, intuitive flow, alongside powerful real-time editing and flexible performance options, make it a unique studio tool and a favorite with live performers. If you'd rather be "making music" than just "using music software," Ableton Live is for you. Live 8, the latest version, includes a wealth of new techniques and improvements with a new groove engine, revamped warping, live looping, new effects, crossfades in the Arrangement View and a reworked MIDI editor.

An audio environment for the creative mind
While Ableton Live 8 certainly offers all of the tools you need to make music in a traditional "linear" way, the gurus at Ableton developed this software suite to allow a uniquely creative approach to song creation. Use Ableton Live 8 to piece together song ideas and song structures by dragging around sections and loops in "Session View" (discussed further below). Or, use Live 8's Session View to enhance your live performances by assigning out massive MIDI controls — so you can record loops, overdub, perform in a massive synth part, and develop songs, all on the fly. Offering an inspiring workflow for everyone from DJs to solo musicians to top-level groove producers, Ableton Live 8 is a complete solution for brainstorming, creating, composing, building, growing, and performing your songs.

Session View lets you grow songs in a new way
Use Ableton Live 8's Session View to develop your songs — either in the creative environment of your studio or out in front of the audience. In this mode, you can quickly lay out all of each instrument's "changes" of a song — from up to down, instead of left to right. Each part is essentially a loop, and you can trigger different scenes to play different combinations of each part, trying out new song structures or parts just by dragging and dropping. Ableton Live 8 appeals to tons of electronic artists for just this feature — you can record audio into Live 8, leave it running as a loop, record in audio to another loop, and creatively mash, solo parts, or play synth parts over the top of everything. For songwriters, Ableton Live 8's Session View also offers a unique way to restructure songs and try out different verse/chorus/verse/bridge lengths and transitions, without messing up the audio and MIDI you've recorded and sequenced in your "linear" session. And, once you've landed on a structure you like, you can easily record it into your Ableton Live 8 regular timeline, just by triggering the transitions.

Easily MIDI-map nearly everything control in Ableton Live 8
Nearly every control in Ableton Live 8 is MIDI-mappable, so you can pair it with any MIDI controller for a serious amount of flexibility. Use your MIDI controller's knobs and sliders to adjust volumes, panning, effects, or to trigger scenes and virtual instruments. By assigning out your custom settings in Ableton Live 8, you can work — or perform — in any way you want.

New intelligent Looper for building massive one-man-band songs
Ableton Live 8 now includes an intelligent sound-on-sound Looper feature, which you can easily control remotely with a regular footswitch. What makes Live 8's Looper so cool is that it will read the tempo from the length of the first loop you record, and it automatically syncs up — that way, it eliminates timing issues and lets you record without the click. Use Live 8's Looper to loop endlessly — Multiple Looper sync lets you run as many Loopers as you want, without synchronization headaches. Plus, you can drag and drop a loop from Live 8's Looper right into a clip slot in Session View to make a clip. When you want it back in Looper, all you have to do is drag it back over.

Loaded with tools for beat and groove creation
If you're into grooving, Ableton Live 8 is even more exciting than the previously groundbreaking versions of Live. In addition to a massive Drum Rack for dragging and dropping samples, slicing them, and laying them out onto your MIDI controller, Live 8 now offers an enhanced groove engine. You can influence the timing and velocity/volume of audio and MIDI to give life and swing to straight patterns. Use the Live 8 groove engine to extract groove patterns from any audio or MIDI source — and you can build your own library of grooves from your favorite tracks, which you can apply to other tracks later. Ableton Live 8's groove engine also lets you quantize audio and MIDI in real time — or randomize it for a more "human" feel.

Packed with effects, including a new vocoder
Ableton Live 8 comes to you with tons of effects for developing your sound and producing it until it's ready to be published on your website or on CD. Along with creative choruses, delays, phasers, and other must-have effects, Live 8 is now packed with five new powerful effects, developed with a bit of extra "Ableton shine." The included Vocoder lets you get that famous "singing robot" effect, and offers you a ton of control for sound design. Beyond that, a new Multiband Dynamics effect lets you visualize what's going on with your audio, so you can process it more effectively. Other new effects in Ableton Live 8 include a stompbox-modeling Overdrive effect, the brick-wall Limiter, and the sci-fi-sounding Frequency Shifter.

Ableton Live 8 Digital Audio Workstation Features:

• Designed from the ground up for the creative studio or performing musician
• Unique Session View breaks out of "linear" music composition allows for a new, fluid approach to songwriting
• Nearly every control is MIDI-mappable, for a flexible workflow — onstage or in the studio
• Intelligent Looper makes it easy to build and record one-man-band songs
• Tons of tools to develop beats and apply grooves
• Includes a comprehensive selection of built-in audio effects, including a host of creative delays, filters, distortions, studio compressors, and EQs
• Features Elastic Audio, for tweaking the timing of your music as it plays
• Lets you mix, match, and add effects without ever stopping the music
• Powerful creative and performing environment for DJs and mash-up artists
• VST and AU effects and instrument support; automatic plug-in delay compensation
• REX file support and native sliced audio file creation
• Video import and export for scoring to picture or warping picture to music
• Includes built-in step-by-step tutorials