Ableton Rolls Out New Update – Welcome 11.3!
What You Need to Know About Ableton Live 11.3 and Its New Features
If you are a music producer, you probably know about Ableton Live, one of the market’s most popular digital audio workstations (DAWs). Ableton Live is known for its versatility, creativity, and performance capabilities.
But did you know that Ableton Live has just released a new update, version 11.3, that adds some exciting new features and improvements to the software? This blog post will give you an overview of what’s new in Live 11.3 and why you should check it out.
Drift: A New Synth for All Editions of Live 11
One of the most notable additions in Live 11.3 is Drift, an all-new MPE-capable synth that is available for all editions of Live 11, including Live Lite. Drift is a device filled with character and can produce a wide variety of sounds from every era of modern music.
Drift has a minimal layout and interactive controls, making it easy for beginners and experienced users to adjust the sound. Its inspiration comes from traditional hardware synthesizers, but it also incorporates modern synthesizers and Eurorack modules.
The sound quality of Drift has been meticulously calibrated to provide excellent audio in any environment with ease and speed. Drift can create rich pads, warm basses, expressive leads, and more.
Drift also supports MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression), so you can use compatible controllers like ROLI Seaboard or Sensel Morph to modulate the sound with more nuance and expression. You can control parameters like pitch bend, vibrato, timbre, and volume with each note.
Improved Auto-Warping
Another improvement in Live 11.3 is the auto-warping feature. Auto-warping is the process of automatically adjusting the tempo and timing of imported audio files to match the project tempo.
Auto-warping in Live 11.3 has been improved to be more accurate and reliable. This implies that you’ll have to spend less time manually tweaking and adjusting warp settings and can effortlessly make changes whenever required.
Auto-warping works best with rhythmic audio files like drums, percussion, or loops. It can also work with melodic or harmonic audio files like vocals or instruments, but you may need to tweak some settings to get the best results.
More MPE-Capable Instruments
Live 11.3 also adds MPE capability to four more instruments: Analog, Collision, Electric, and Tension. These are physical modeling instruments that emulate the sound of analog synthesizers, mallet percussion, electric pianos, and string instruments.
With MPE support, you can now use these instruments with more expressive control over each note. You can modulate parameters like filter cutoff, resonance, decay, stiffness, brightness, and more with your MPE controller.
More Expressive Control of Your Music
Many features in Live 11 have now been updated to support MPE as well:
- The MPE Control device has added functionality, an updated UI, and reduced CPU load. This device can map MPE data to any parameter in Live or third-party plugins.
- Note Echo now supports MPE with feedback controls for each dimension. This offers a creative way to add delay effects that change over time with your MPE modulation.
- An updated Core Library with expressive content is available in 11.3. You can find new presets for Drift and other MPE-capable instruments, clips, and samples that showcase MPE.
Full Push Functionality
Live 11.3 also delivers full functionality to the new Push hardware. Push is a dedicated controller for Live that lets you play instruments, launch clips, mix tracks, and more.
If you own a Push with a processor, you will receive a prompt to update to the latest version of Live from the Push start menu. This will enable features like polyphonic aftertouch, high-resolution display mode, faster boot time, and more.
If you have a Live 11 license, you can get the Live 11.3 update for free. For more details on Live 11.3, please refer to the release notes.
Download the free update today and enjoy the new features and improvements in Live 11.3!
