Customer Reviews

Ableton Live 5 Power!: The Comprehensive Guide

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I downloaded Live 5 using it as a demo now and also purchased Chads book: Ableton Live 5 Power so I can began to discover this much talked about program!

I have found Chads writing easy, fun and very informative. This book is worth the price alone simply for Chads excellent writing explaining analog and digital sound. Using multiple visuals the reader is able to grasp the ideas presented more fully and faster.

The book does not get into the "nitty gritty" details that a true Power User may demand but the books does give enough information for someone such as myself (a beginner) to feel like they know the program. I guess thats where the Power part stems from.

If you are looking to learn Live or more about it, buy this book. If you want lots of tricks, I do not believe this is what you want.

I can't believe i am the first to review it.
If you got Live 5.
YOU NEED THIS BOOK.

even if you think you know everything/ I'm sure you don't.

If you are a beginner you will love this book too.It is very simply written, and it is very easy to understand.

Get this book. Chad thanks for this book. I owe you a big one.

Ableton Live is the most intuitive sequencer available to today. About half of the book covers information that I feel is obvious, or explained very clearly in the operations manual provided by the vendor. The other half is useful information that leaves you wanting more. This is the information on how to use the effects, proper technique with envelopes and quite a few tutorials on leveraging Live's time warping feature on audio clips.... This information is worth the price of the book, even if you aren't a fan of the Power! series (untill we get another book on Live anyway, as of this writing this is the only one available).

I wish there was more information on production technique with the effects (really outside the scope of this book I guess) I think a chapter devoted to Impulse would have been nice. Impulse is the underrated rhythm sampler that comes bundled with live, it's a very powerful virtual instrument that has completely replaced my use of external ryhthm programming devices. The vendors operations manual doesn't cover Impulse very well and neither does this book...

The author of this book works for M-Audio, and is an avid user of Ableton Live. He wrote this book with passion and finesse, and it is an invaluable reference in my collection. I've been a DJ/Producer for a number of years, and there are a couple of sections in this book that made me look at the game from new and different angles. The book is filled with several ways of using this software that I wouldn't have come up with on my own. I would recommend this book to anyone who uses (or plans to use) Live 5.0.

Christopher Alan

ecspecialy with a program like Ableton where a new full update is released every year on the dot.
I've bought many of these teach yourself a program books and most of them become very outdated not too long after you receive them. For some programs it's not the biggest deal but for some there are major changes in a version upgrade so the info in the older version book would be false at that point.

hi .. this book is a good start if you want to do DJing, mixing or some music production using Ableton Live 5 (or 5x) software ...

Good points for the book:
- It covers a whole wide area of knowledge in a simple language.
- It is very positive and enthusiastic about the product.
- It does a great job discussing the different hardware that can be bought to work with Live.

Bad points for the book:
- The diagrams are very stagnant .. meaning, you see a scren shot, but its hard to know what the author is talking about!! The diagrams need a lot more work, like having arrows or text boxes explaining the different functionality being discussed.
- I wish that the book focus or explain a lot more on DJing, as not everyone is into production. The book does explain about djing but not in any depth ... things like warping, set points, effects .... can be explained in a lot more details.

Overall, the book does a decent job explaining Live to new comers (like myself hehe). If the author works a bit more on making those diagrams move "live", that would make the book a must-have, in my own opinion.

If you are in to music and video production. This is a great book to teach you ableton live.

The whole series of "Power!" is fantastic, but if you are not a person with lots of patience and basic music theory, technically and theoretically, this book will keep the whole Ableton thing above your head. Otherwise, this is all you will need to master Ableton...

First of all it's a good book, especially if you are beginner with LIVE 5.
But if you are expecting real in depth knowledge about the program this not the right book! The word "POWER" in the title is not supported by the context of the book! (The same go's by the way to all of the series of ""power"" by this publisher)

In the essence this book is a good operation manual, with a few examples and even less and far in between tips & tricks. This how the original lame operation manual should have look like from the beginning!

A few parts in the book are totally missing like in chapter 10 about the Resonators and I quote "This effect is better understood when heard, so open up the Resonators example set and try it for your self " the only problem this set is not on the accompany CD! This set is also not on the book web site!

After all said and done if you just forget the word "POWER" this is a good book for beginner level, it's clear enough and easy to understand.