Ableton Live 8 and Suite 8: Create, Produce, Perform

This is the best ableton reference book I have ever read. I dont know the author, I dont know the publisher. And seriously, this is absolutely the first book you should read on ableton live 8.I have been using ableton live since version 5. And since this is a program written by germans, the engineering is great, and the reference manuals have always sucked. Every update, I have to go out and buy about three books to help navigate the new features and make sense of the program in all its depth. I have owned and read many, many ableton books. Most of them are painful to read.Well, thanks to this book, I only need to buy one book to understand Live 8.This book is written in the language of the program. It starts to get you thinking like ableton thinks, just in the structure of the book.It was quick to cut to the chase of what I wanted to do in ableton. It has very accurate pictures, guide points, step by step pages. When I needed deeper information on a subject, it was there too. Full color photos- all over the book. the fine details clearly spelled out. Easy to read language.Really amazing guidebook. It made getting up and running with ableton a breeze. Then when I needed to go deep with the program, I was able to find that data further on in the book.Its rare to find a person who is both a technically adept and a great teacher. The author is one of those rare finds.Now lets hope he writes a book for logic pro.-- Wolfie[...]

This book is an unorthodox approach to learning a Digital Audio Workstation program. The book is intentionally designed for the reader to be able to jump around to different parts of the book, without having to worry if you miss a lesson that might be crucial to learning things later in the book. The authors tried to make it seem like it is merely an extension of Ableton Live/Suite itself, by using Live's terminology in the book. For example, chapters are called "scenes", and individual lessons are called "clips". I have only been reading this book for a few hours, but I feel like my knowledge of how Ableton works has increased ten-fold. The book is well-written and doesn't use technical jargon that will confuse you. If it does delve into a topic that may be beyond the scope of the average user, it does a pretty good job to at least provide a basic understanding of the concept, and will occasionally point you to an online resource to get more information on it.I would say that this book is a must have resource for the live user. It is useful for Composers, Producers, and Live Performers. If you own Ableton Live/Suite 8, you should probably own this book too.

I just started getting into music production with Ableton Live, and naturally, I needed a book to fully utilize it. Based on the reviews here, I decided on this one.Pros:*Well written and informative.*Doesn't require reading it from cover to cover. The book encourages you to read the first few chapters (or scenes, but more on this later) in order, but says that you can skip around after that to learn specific topics.*Covers a wide variety of topics and styles. I really wanted to learn how to use the Vocorder audio effect and it walked me through the details of using it, and was really helpful.Cons:*The book refers to everything in Ableton Live lingo, and while this is supposed to get you thinking in "Ableton Live" language, I found it mildly confusing. They call chapters scenes, and I found myself wondering what they were talking about sometimes.Summary:It's a great book for the money, it helped further my knowledge of Ableton Live, and I definitely don't regret purchasing it.

This book is difficult to read. The author tends to ramble a lot and to spend more time explaining how great Live is (often in very vague language) without actually explaining how to use it. A few paragraphs in the introduction to get people excited about it would have been fine, but a good portion of every single chapter it seems wastes time rambling on about how amazing Live is. Since I've obviously taken the time to read a book on it, do I really need to be told that, over and over and over? Can't I just try it out and make a decision on my own?The author obviously understands Live well and is a devoted and enthusiastic user, but this book badly needs an editor to cut away the fluff and keep him focused on explaining how to make music, rather than how Live is so much better than other production software and is going to "synergize your paradigms in a revolution" or some such.

I'm a DJ and just starting to get my feet wet in the world of music production. My interest in Ableton started with hearing about other people in the electronic music industry using it to not only produce music but DJ as well.The book can be read in a few ways: in a linear fashion, referring to chapters (or "scenes") for specific information, jumping from scene to scene to learn more on a specific topic, or just randomly opening the book and seeing what there is to offer. I would definitely start off reading the first scenes to get a feel for the lingo before going futher into the book, especially if you're new the Ableton Live world.I found this book to be a great asset and have learned many tips and tricks not only specific to using the Ableton Live program, but also to general music production. Whether you're a novice like me, or a seasoned music producer, I believe this book will be of great use...

Comes with alot of useful references but a cd with tutorials would come handy for it would be more hands on. At the end of the day its all preference of choosing a DAW and this book does give you a solid backgroud of what its capable of.

Amazing book! Good for begginers or medium level users (like me) that want to get deeper into ableton. It helped me discover a lot of new things and shortcuts to work on my music. And the way it's written it's quite easy to understand and not boring.

not bad

This is an excellent book, even though Ableton has gone to version 9, live still works in basically the same way.All the illustrations are in colour, and are clearly laid out. The only disappointment was the fact that the Website files needed for some of the exercises, don't appear to exist!

Desperately needs better editing, very comprehensive but not well structured. Hence not for the ableton novice.