Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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 title is not a particularly good guide to Ableton Live. It was the first one published to cover version 8 of the software, so I pre-ordered it. Boy was that a mistake. I should have waited for the "Ableton Live 8 Power!" book instead.

I find that when I turn to the book to help me figure out a specific piece of functionality or solve a specific problem it is no help. Point number one, and this is VERY IMPORTANT: This book's index is only SIX pages long, while the index for "Ableton Live 8 Power!" is TWENTY FIVE PAGES LONG!!! (Use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature for each book and see for yourself.) Think of that. When you go to look up a specific topic in the index of this book you are four times less likely to find that topic listed. This has bitten me in the a** more times than I can count. I have been keeping the book on my desktop as I use Ableton and again and again find that the book does not have an entry for the function I am trying to use, or when it does the explanation is not fleshed out. Often I finish a chapter and am left scratching my head because the concepts weren't fully explained yet the chapter is already over.

The author spends more time rambling on without detail than he does intricately explaining the functions of the software. Even for the absolute beginner this is a waste of time. I would recommend "Ableton Live 8 Power!" I am ordering my copy today and selling this other book on the used market. Any takers?

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.

I've been using Ableton for two years. I started with 7 and recently upgraded to Suite 8. People starting with the program now are in luck since there are so many video and text tutorials on the net. Despite all the info on the web I still like having books for reference. Sometimes its quicker for me to look up information in a book than it is to look for a tutorial online or sit through a video. Tutorials online also vary greatly in quality. The author of this book is obviously an informed and intelligent user.

When I bought Ableton 7 I also bought Ableton Live 7 Power the Comprehensive Guide (Book).
I thought "Ableton Live 8 and Suite 8" explained the core program better. I found the information on Ableton instruments (Operator, Analog, Sampler, etc) to be better in the "Ableton 7 Power book." I should mention that the chapter on Ableton instruments is not in the actual book for "Ableton Live 8 and Suite 8." It is accessible at the publisher's website along with some materials.

If it is in your budget I would buy "Ableton Live 8 and Suite 8: Create Produce and Perform." If you are new to Ableton this is a good way to get familiarized with the program. If you don't want to read the book from cover to cover it is a good reference to have around when you want to look up something like "groove extraction" or "automation lanes."

For the novice who doesn't mind reading this will speed up the learning curve. For the experienced user this a good reference.

Ableton is easy to use but it also a deep program. I don't think any two people use it the same. After two years of using it, reading books, watching video tutorials and reading articles online I am still learning.

There are some things you won't find in any resource simply because the program itself is creative. I don't use everything the way the programmers intended and there are things that even they probably didn't realize were possible with the program.

If you use Ableton 8 frequently I really recommend you buy this book.

Since I already own Jon Margulies Ableton Live 7 Power (and since the bulk of the Power books seems to be repeated in each subsequent edition), I bought this book for a different approach. It covers some subjects thoroughly, but others in a cursory fashion: for example, the author repeatedly urges the reader to upgrade to Live 8 suite (which contains all of the Live instruments), but only describes the two that come with the basic version of Live (Impulse and Simpler). Explanations of many crucial features are far better addressed in Live's included PDF manual.

The only aspect of this book that is better than Margulies is the color screen shots-- much clearer than the grey-on-grey examples in the Power series.

As a novice Ableton 8 Suite user, I have found this book to be just what I needed to get the most out of Ableton. Its structure, and wealth of information, would make it a valuable asset to any Ableton user wether a novice or advanced.

Bizarre book. Just when you think he's about to tell you how to do something, he instead launches into a long paragraph that yet again tells you how great Ableton Live is. Again and again about how cool it is to have both Session and Arrangement views. Weird. Then quickly passes over some of the most important things you'd like to better understand (lke how to precisely warp). I think it's just bad editing. On page 133, half way through a step-by-step on to use the A and B Sends, the chapter just ends (I'm assuming they missed some pages in the printing). I'm on page 150 and he still hasn't gotten down to creating a multi-track song. O well. Looks like it's still one of the better books out there. Go fish.

It helped me to understand Ableton a bit better, now if only I was actually smart enough to put together all the instruction that was give to me.

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.