With an MPE-capable controller, you can perform and record pitch, slide, velocity, pressure and velocity release per note. Put simply, this allows for sound parameters to change per-note, not just to entire instruments. The final addition to MIDI in Live 11 is the MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) protocol. ( 1:16) Traditional note editing still has its place, but the new sonic opportunities with MPE are very exciting for pitch and timbre changes in polyphonic composition. Users of Push 2 will be very familiar with this behaviour, so it’s great to see this option for software orientated programmers. This feature folds away notes outside your chosen scale and gives you access to a broader range of scales than you might otherwise be able to summon from memory. Scale overlays also speed up programming within a specific scale. You can set these to 100% for foundational notes, then choose lower values for less integral notes to decorate your idea. You can now give MIDI notes a probability of playing from one pass of a MIDI Clip to the next, and even create a range of velocity values for each pass. Live’s handling of MIDI data has been significantly improved in version 11 with randomisation factors via the new probability editor.

(Watch our overview video at 13:14 to see the feature in action.) Couple this with the power of Live’s audio warp modes, and you’ve got stacks of editing options for natural – and unnatural – results. You can choose to keep this comp live and editable, or render the audio (or MIDI) and commit. Simply drawing in the desired sections of your takes across the many lanes of recordings will create a non-destructive comp in your main lane. Live 11 rectifies this situation, allowing comping of MIDI and Audio recordings, and it works exceptionally well.

Then you can draw to let different portions of each ‘take’ become one new idea in the Main Lane.

Take Lanes for compiling can be used creatively to host different audio files. Comping (or compiling) is virtually essential when recording multiple takes of a performance, and it’s a feature that has been available in almost all the other DAWs for years. However, as Live has added practical features over the years to make it more competitive against traditional DAWs, its Achilles heel has long been a lack of comping tools. Despite Live’s DNA in performance, one of its great strengths is the number of use cases it serves, making it the production software of choice for a wide variety of audio professionals.

Is ableton live lite good