Ableton announces Live 9 and the Push Controller

Wow.  Ableton has just stepped up and killed it with their announcement of Live 9 and their new controller Push.  Live 9 has a variety of great improvements over Live 8, many of which were demanded by the users themselves, like automation curves and automation to clips.  They've added the fantastic Glue Compressor as a standard to Live 9, and made visual editing in the EQ and compressor much easier as well.  The library, which was before clunky and slow, has been completely overhauled to make finding patches and plugins much quicker.  My favorite addition in Live 9 might be the conversion capabilities of audio to MIDI.  This means you can either sing a set of notes, and turn it into MIDI for a plugin, play some guitar notes and do the same, or beatbox a beat and turn that into a drum pattern on the computer.  This works with sampled audio, or you could easily drop in a track you enjoy.  Absolutely awesome.  MIDI transform has been upgraded, giving you the ability to get some great changes very quickly over a MIDI section.  Some great Max for Live devices have been added as well. All fantastic features-- nothing here is going to be skipped over and ignored.  I haven't heard any word on 64 bit support, but I'm hoping it's there.  64 bit is supported!

Excellent set of Ableton Live Tutorials via Future Music

Looking for new ways to get creative with Ableton Live?  Future Music has you covered.  They've uploaded some recent tutorials from their magazine as a free playlist on YouTube, so you can get a visual explanation of some great ideas, from DJing and sampling to MIDI tricks.  Check out the playlist above.

Manchester Week: Jules Schimmer

The Sanfernando Sound - This Is The Sound Jules Schimmers Italo Dub by Jules Schimmer

Closing out our feature on Manchester this week is the brilliant JULES SCHIMMER.  Recently he's been releasing great mixes on his SoundCloud and he is currently working on new tracks that you'll see sometime soon.  You'll also find a wealth of his awesome remixes there as well.  Like the other Mancunians, Jules very much loves the sounds of the 80s, which ties this feature together really well.  If I had to explain Jules' sound to a new listener, I'd simply say "he makes his synths Schimmer".

Check below to find out about Jules' influences, what he uses in the studio, and read about his live shows.  He'll also break down an amazing bass that's featured in his remix of Anoraak, which will help you get started on making your own great bass patches.