
Ableton Live Developers at Work [video] - lispm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tILlZRLhBJE
======
sitkack
This style of video is the future of marketing, though I would tone (ha!) it
down a bit. It is like a personal brand for a corporation, giving a soft
persona to a logo and a product.

Another, absolutely brilliant move by Ableton was to host a MOOC,
[https://www.coursera.org/course/abletonlive](https://www.coursera.org/course/abletonlive)

~~~
datashovel
Completely agree. I'm not that tuned into the marketing industry at the
moment, but have wondered for a while why we haven't seen more news
organizations branching into marketing.

I can see that there would probably be concerns with conflicts of interest,
etc. But if done right (ie. keeping the marketing branch separate but
connected) I think it would be a great match.

My reasoning? Companies don't just want commercials anymore. They want their
story told. Who are better equipped to research and tell a comprehensive story
than journalists?

~~~
OneLessThing
News organizations already do this, they're called ads. You have (in theory) a
clearly defined content section that is (in theory) honest, and not biased or
bribed. This section earns consumers trust in the news organizations brand and
keeps eyeballs returning to their content. Then you have the advertising
section that is 100% biased to those buying the space. News organizations have
always been primarily an advertising business, getting eyes to ads.

The danger is letting companies influence sections that are believed to be
objective and honest. One example of this is Michael Arrington the founder and
former editor-in-chief of TechCrunch who is famous for investing in start-ups
that his blogs would then cover. Not only that but he was partner in two
investment funds during his tenure and now has his own fund, CrunchFund. All
this to say that he has special interests in dozens of companies at any one
time. When AOL bought TechCrunch they eventually let him go because in part of
his conflicts of interest.

~~~
datashovel
My comment might not have been clear. I didn't mean to infer ads. In my mind
there's a clear and distinct delineation between advertising and marketing.

I guess the point I was trying to make is that the kinds of marketing that
companies want these days is going to be far more immersive than your run of
the mill ads. This, I think, was one of the main points of the parent comment.
As such, I would postulate that the skillset necessary to write a good
article, or in-depth (eg. investigative journalism) story, is very similar to
the skillset necessary to create (or find?) the stories a company wants people
to know about it.

Now, the tricky part would be to engage in both journalism and marketing so as
not to uproot the integrity (or give people reason to think your integrity as
a news organization has been compromised, or that you are engaging in business
with clients who clearly create a conflict of interest.

For example, suppose you are a newspaper / magazine who has a reputation as
being a "watchdog" publication for the oil industry. Now suppose that while
that branch of your business has established a reputation as a "watchdog"
publication for the oil industry, the marketing arm of your business has
clients like Exxon or Shell. To maintain the integrity of your journalism
branch perhaps you should be working with clients seeking marketing services
from other (eg. retail) industries.

The only reason this synergy sounds reasonable and even plausible to me is the
well documented "crisis" news organizations worldwide are facing these days.

------
UserRights
Becaue Ableton Live is not available for Linux, I finally tried Bitwig Studio,
what was a very refreshing change of perspective. Before I tried it I had lots
of doubts and a feeling of "no, this can never work out, you need Live,
nothing can be better". But it was a big surprise - it feels like Live done
right, without the awkwardness. Since then I am so happy that I can use pro
music production software on top of linux, I have not looked back into my
Ableton setup for months now.

Linux is such a win for me, works much better, most stable, quick and fluid
system I have ever used, I do not want to change back to windows or osx. I
hope Bitwig will survive and finally bring some more long term attention to
the linux audio stack, which seems to be much better choice for making a
computer a music machine.

------
crucialfelix
I worked there for a bit in 2006 (Live 6/7) when there were only 13
programmers. That's an important threshold where you need to change from just
having casual discussions to having a formalized structure. At the time it was
frustrating and they really needed to make some changes. They knew that and
they were open to it, but it takes time.

I've been in touch over the years with Gerhard, Stefan and others and its been
good to hear how they did solve those growing pains. I think its more than a
hundred developers now.

Native Instruments had at one point 300, but they have a much larger product
line. Always fascinating to talk with those guys about how they coordinate
that.

------
thirdsun
While this video is of course a giant job ad, it's still pretty interesting -
Ableton seems like a great company and Live is an outstanding product. Really,
even if music production isn't anything you'd see as a hobby for yourself,
Live and Max might still offer lots of fun and a welcome change of setting for
any curious developer.

~~~
fnord42
Tbh, if Ableton were such a great place to work at and live a great product,
several core devs wouldnt have left to start Bitwig. I dont have any insights
in the internas, but I would take the movie with a grain of salt. It is
advertising, after all, not a documentary.

~~~
thirdsun
By that logic any company and product isn't that great - did anyone ever leave
Apple, Google and others to start their own thing? They sure did.

------
smartocci
What a great video, so much passion going into building the software to help
musicians reach their potential.

We have the same goal at Splice, but we're focused on connecting the music
creation process. Our core offering is a version control system for Ableton
(Logic, Garageband & FL Studio also supported). You can also publicly share
your sessions with our community.

Here is what a public release looks like:

[https://splice.com/henryfong/henry-fong-j-trick-scream-
origi...](https://splice.com/henryfong/henry-fong-j-trick-scream-original-mix)

------
deviyer
I haven't seen a mention of Ableton Live Packs
([https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/](https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/)). This
is an ingenious method Ableton invented for non-developers to create new
production technology (albeit, within the limits of Ableton) without knowing
how to code. It has created a third-party ecosystem by giving musicians the
power to create software packages. As a producer and heavy Ableton user, this
is very useful and is a feature not offered by other music production
programs. I feel Ableton and music production programs in general are
underrated in the dev community - some of the best programmers I know work at
these companies.

------
fenomas
Presumably an unintended consequence, but if I ever found myself needing this
software, after watching this video I can't imagine myself pirating it _.
Ditto for games whose developers I 've seen in documentaries (like Indie Games
The Movie).

I guess this video is mainly for recruiting, but showing users the people
behind the software seems like it would have lots of side benefits.

_ (I mean I haven't pirated anything in a decade or two anyway, but I can't
imagine child-me-who-sometimes-pirated-stuff pirating it. You know what I
mean.)

~~~
exodust
Pirating software of this kind is often not about "stealing with evil intent"
but more about "I literally have no money but want to mess around with this
software for personal use."

It's a marketing video. "cue happy moment"..."cue warm and fuzzy employee
interaction". It might make some people want to pirate the software even more!

That said, you can't pirate the Ableton Push hardware, which is where it's at
for this latest generation of Live. The Push really is a nice piece of
hardware - probably because Akai was behind the engineering.

~~~
nek4life
The original prototype for push was built in Lego and Akai did a great job
turning it into real hardware. Really cool project and makes Live so much fun
to use.

[http://www.askaudiomag.com/articles/interview-ableton-
push-c...](http://www.askaudiomag.com/articles/interview-ableton-push-co-
creator-jesse-terry-reveals-its-story)

------
andybak
For people not familiar with it, Ableton is an astonishing piece of content-
creation software. When it came out it felt revolutionary in terms of speed,
solidity and cleanliness of the UI.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Personally I've always found the UI rigid and not quite right, like everything
has one level of indirection and/or constraint it doesn't really need.

I dislike the fact there's no standard file manager dialog, and the preview
doesn't quite do what you expect - sometimes it plays-on-click and sometimes
it doesn't, and I have no idea why - and the event editor is hard to navigate,
especially if you want to micro-edit, and Arrangement mode still doesn't quite
make sense to me, even though I've been using it for a long time now.

It's true that Live has that let's-all-Mondrian Euro look, which is a thing, I
guess.

I used to use Sony Acid, so the time-stretch-on-a-grid idea wasn't new to me.
And I really preferred the Acid UI. It didn't look as nice, being
unapologetically Windows. But it never forced me to stop and think about how
to do something, which Live certainly did.

In Acid you could just draw loops directly into an arrangement. This always
seems complicated in Live, because of the switching between Session and
Arrangement modes.

9 is mostly okay. I still think a lot of UI assumptions feel alien and not
quite elegantly minimal. But having an open API is a big deal for users who
want to do more than Mondrian-with-loops. And as a long-time Max user, M4L is
a fun thing to have.

~~~
MichaelGG
It's been a long time since I've used the Acid software, but I don't recall it
being aimed at impromptu or live performance. Whereas Live is ... well Live.
Wireup all sorts of stuff, forget arrangement view completely (or maybe, leave
it running on record), and then just jam out.

~~~
thirdsun
I don't agree - while Live was one of the first mature tools for performing,
don't be fooled by the name. Studio work, production and arrangement view
aren't second class citizens at all in my opinion. I switched from Logic to
Live and spend most of my time in arrangement view. The session view is just a
bonus for quick sketching for me.

------
cubano
I've been a big Ableton user for many years now, after I "graduated" from
cubase and moved on from rock to electronic many years ago.

In fact, I self-produced a tribute to Snowden's NSA revelations[1] using no
external sources besides my trusty Martin. It's kinda corny and the duel
overlapping lead is out there, but overall it was an interesting exercise in
learning the power of Live.

I think i did it sitting on my couch (no studio just a condenser mic) over a
few days.

It is a ridiculously amazing music production platform, and my only wish is
that I could be 15 again and start with it as my instrument of choice instead
of guitar.

Great job by the development team in fixing almost all the crashes that
plagued it for years...its very solid now.

[1][https://soundcloud.com/lostvegas-productions/for-what-its-
wo...](https://soundcloud.com/lostvegas-productions/for-what-its-worth-stop-
whats)

------
vermooten
One of Ableton's many great features is the integration with Max 4 Live which
gives the user an insane amount of control.
[https://www.ableton.com/en/live/max-for-
live/](https://www.ableton.com/en/live/max-for-live/)

You can create your own synths, effects, workflows... Incredible.

------
hokkos
I posted this link few days ago and it didn't had any traction

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9143993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9143993)

------
dylanz
I've been an Ableton user for the last year, but running on a pirated copy. I
usually pirate until I know I'm going to buy, and just the other week, wrote
myself a note to finally throw down the cash (If you're listening Ableton
team, congrats on 9.2 beta release. Impressive!).

That said, this was a fantastic video and you've got my money. Keep up the
great work on an amazing product.

------
pithon
Anyone know what software they're using at 1:53?

~~~
sborsje
Isn't that opendiff?
[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/opendiff.1.html)

~~~
juliangregorian
FileMerge technically, but yeah it sure looks like it.

------
locusm
I just started out with Ableton Live at the beginning of the year (call it
scratching a long time itch) and its been so much fun learning the product.
I've just started with a midi keyboard, a pair of headphones and watching a
ton of youtube vids. If you have an inkling to dabble in any kind of music
production I highly recommend trying Live...

------
JDiculous
Nice to get a glimpse at their work environment.

Ableton, please fix your piano roll (make it like FL Studio's)! I've emailed
you guys before, and even made a Youtube video showing why I hate it.

I love Ableton Live, but I really hope the open source community for music
software matures to a point where it's comparable with Ableton.

------
Buge
They say they're a German company. Is it common for them to mostly speak
English?

~~~
heyalexej
Berlin's startup culture is very international with employees from all around
the world. Not really different to any other tech hub I know of. So English is
the company's operating language, especially for global players like
SoundCloud, Wooga, Ableton etc.. There are few companies in the tech sector
who have German as their corporate language - and those mostly target the
German market only.

------
bbgm
Like some others on this thread I loved from Cubase to Ableton some years ago
because of the UX, non-linear workflow, and friendlier licensing. All the
controller action around it makes it even more awesome.

------
aswanson
Looks like a nice work environment. Obviously not as relaxed as that all the
time in real life, but they seem to emphasize modularity and transparency in
the code base.

------
lukeh
Great video! I'd be interested to see the Avid equivalent (don't get me wrong,
I love Pro Tools, but it seems like a culturally different organization).

~~~
tacos
Trust me ... you really don't. Stripped to shreds by the parent corporation.
On last breaths, brought in an ex-Bain asshole who previously worked at the
two worst hard drive companies (because music = hard drives, right?) who
stripped engineering to the bone. Lost him then promoted an internal guy with
no business experience. Who couldn't keep it in his pants at Digi, got swiped
by Apple, then booted from there after 7 months.

I believe those are the high points.

The audio CTO during their best moments (Mike Rockwell) just left Dolby for
Apple. But I don't think he'll be working on audio.

The state of audio technology (and audio software) remains in utter shambles.
And not in a "needs disruption" kind of way. In a "needs a bullet to the head"
kind of way.

Ableton is one of the rare bright spots and deserves massive props for being a
pearl despite having to swim upstream through the shittiest corner of art and
tech.

~~~
thirdsun
Now that you mention some of that people involved in making audio software:
Camel Audio, developers of the highly praised Alchemy Synth, recently closed
shop as they were most likely bought by Apple. There's a bunch of talent at
Camel Audio - would have been a great addition to the Ableton team in my
opinion. Too bad the results of that acquisition will likely only be available
through Logic in the future.

------
grayfox
Thanks for posting this!

My musical journey started, and continues, to use Ableton as the primary
musical instrument.

The APC40 is a beautiful, beautiful tool.

And, as @sitkack pointed out... they have a MOOC!!

------
kentt
If there is a dog in my office, I quit.

~~~
fern4lvarez
Probably many people would quit if _you_ were in their office.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, only he's a developer. A dog is a useless nuisance in an office.

~~~
dash2
Hmm.

    
    
      developer  dog
      ---------  ---
          x       x   hairy
          x       x   over-affectionate
          x       x   personal hygiene issues
                  x   spends time burying bones
          x           spends time buried in code
                  x   chasing tail
          x           debugging
          x           can write C++
          x       x   sometimes tries to lick own balls when nobody is looking
                  x   succeeds
    

I think I'll take the dog.

~~~
bvanslyke
Come on, no need to compare programmer hygiene to that of dogs... you'll upset
some dogs :-P

------
twohearted
Wonderful video. I am a white man of european descent so it looks like I would
be a great fit to work here.

~~~
cjbprime
You're getting downvoted for the throwaway, but I had the same thought.
Amazing to see such a complete lack of diversity, and sad to see it being
ignored by almost everyone in their responses.

~~~
orbifold
This is a company located in Germany, there are almost no non white people
here...

~~~
pistle
I call doener kebab on that. Almost 10% are from Turkey. Depends on what you
mean by almost.

~~~
lispm
If you count all from Turkish descent in Berlin, then that would be 6%. Most
are 'white'.

------
yuvadam
Ableton couldn't find a single talented female developer on their team to
speak on the video?

~~~
allendoerfer
Did you actually watch the video?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tILlZRLhBJE#t=362](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tILlZRLhBJE#t=362)

------
joesmo
Last time I used Ableton (2011), the recording cut off somewhere between 5 and
6 hours. From the email exchange I had with them, this was because they were
using 32bit ints instead of 64bit ones. For a company that touts its
partnership with Serato, and the ability of their program to work with
Serato's DJ tools to specifically record DJ mixes (which can be many hours or
even days long), this is absolutely unacceptable. Perhaps they fixed this
since then, but after experiencing that, I could no longer see Ableton as
anything but amateur software at best. The UI is not very intuitive or
particularly great either, at least for composition, compared to other music
software.

~~~
cubano
Oh my...it has changed drastically from 2011 and I'm sure it now records music
until your hard drive is full.

The idea it is "amateur software as best" flies in the face of the fact that
most professional electronic producers use it if they use Windows, at least as
far as I can tell from the various computer music magazines.

