Ableton Live 8 Power!: The Comprehensive Guide [Paperback]

Jon Margulies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2009 | Series: Power!

Ableton Live 8 Power! is the all-inclusive guide to making music with Ableton's revolutionary live performance and studio software, Live 8. Written for all Live users, from digital audio beginners to seasoned pros, this book explores each fundamental feature in Live. The book provides power-user tips and insider tricks for integrating Ableton Live into your home or professional studio. But Live's in-studio capabilities are just the beginning. Every last feature, button, fader, instrument, and effect in Live 8 was also designed with the live performer in mind. Ableton Live 8 Power! is a book written for musicians by a musician who uses and teaches the software on a daily basis. Whether you use Live for producing, composing, DJing, or film and television, Ableton Live 8 Power! will help you put the fun back into making music with computers, while taking your music to the next level.

Product Details

• Paperback: 413 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1 edition (October 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598639757
• ISBN-13: 978-1598639759
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #41 in Books > Arts & Photography > Music > Recording & Sound
  • #58 in Books > Computers & Technology > Digital Music

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Reasonable Intro to the more dense official User Manual, March 25, 2010

By 

Davis - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Ableton Live 8 Power!: The Comprehensive Guide (Paperback)

I bought this book when I bought Ableon Live 8 Suite, and I had never used the software before. I read a lot of technical texts -- mostly software / computer texts, and I am just now getting into DAW stuff for fun. The book is more like a slimmed down version of the very large official Ableton User Manual PDF. It is more readable, and more narrative than the PDF, but not really by all that much.

It follows a particular style for technical texts that I don't care for much, which is to have chapters that just describe each function/feature of the software in a linear fashion. It doesn't promote learning all that well, b/c you tend to get bored just reading about feature after feature without being more interactive. It has available some live sets that you can download and there are a few areas in the book where it prompts you to try things, but not many.

By comparison, I also have the book Reason 4 Ignite by Matt Piper (also Cengage Learning), and it takes a completely different approach. Each chapter in that book has you start with blank instrument and work through a short lesson. This style I found much more engaging, and I learn the software so much faster.

With the Ableton Power book, I feel like I've learned enough about the software now by playing with it, that the book doesn't really provide much of a reference for me anymore, as I'll probably just go straight to the PDF User Manual. Your mileage may vary.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but basic, December 7, 2011

By 

Kevin - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Ableton Live 8 Power!: The Comprehensive Guide (Paperback)

I recently started using Ableton Live 8 Suite as the main DAW for my home studio. This is an incredible program that can be used in a plethora of ways. I selected this book in hopes that it would help me learn all of the ins and outs of the software and give me some good tips on Live implementation. This is a well written book but it does not go much deeper than the manual that came with my software. By the time the book arrived I had already learned just about every thing in it by reading the manual, watching online videos, doing the tutorials included with Live, and playing around with the software. To be fair I am a professional engineer and have a lot of experience in audio recording, having worked with many different platforms over the years. If you are just getting started with Live and digital recording this may be a good book to read. However, for anyone related experience it may not be worth it.

4.0 out of 5 stars They could have renamed the Title, December 17, 2011

By 

Jacob (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ableton Live 8 Power!: The Comprehensive Guide (Paperback)

I actually bought a PDF format of this "Ableton Live 8 Power!" book online so I don't have a paperback or hardcover physically in my hands, but what I can give you is a brief overview of what's in the book. I recently switched from Avid's Pro Tools 9 to Ableton's Live 8 Suite (No I'm not crazy, Live is just a better DAW for the type of music I produce). So, obviously whenever you open up Live, you get confused and start to think how the heck does this work? I'm sure you've all seen Youtube video's of how easy users make Live seem, and honestly after reading up to Chapter 6 of this book, it is!

The first half of this book introduces you to the most basic concepts in Live such as the Arrangement and Session views. The chapters are very long and concepts that are touched on in earlier chapters are repeated in the following chapters (again, and again, and again). I recommend skipping around the book if you really need to know about a specific feature in Live. The book goes on to explain Clips, Scenes, Tracks, Warping Markers, Loop Markers, etc. The first six chapters will give you basically all you need to know on making music in Live. The chapters that follow describe Plug-Ins, Effects, Instruments (Midi Effects and Audio Effects, which are touched upon in the first six chapters). The author does an amazing job describing not only what a certain feature is used for, but what it does and how it works. I think this book is a "must have" for any Ableton Live 8 user that has just switched from a previous DAW.

I seriously underestimated Live (a couple years ago when I was using FL Studio). Now that I see what I've been missing, I don't think I'll ever switch from Ableton's Live.

I'll update this post when I'm finished reading the last chapters of the book. You can really fly through the book if you read a chapter or two everyday, but make sure you understand the material or you'll be stuck with no knowledge of Live at all.