Top 10 New Features In Ableton Live 10

1. New synthesizer: Wavetable

Live 10 introduces a powerful built-in synthesizer. It’s similar to Xfer Serum - it uses wavetables for its two oscillators. Its modulation section consists of two envelopes and two LFOs which can be mapped to any parameter in the synth. Other features include morphing wavetables, a Sub section and two filters - one for each oscillator.

2. New audio effects

Drum Buss

The most often used effects on drum groups are compressors, saturators and transient designers. Drum Buss combines these effects into one, allowing you to give character to your drums more easily. It also allows you to dial in bass boom at a specific frequency with decay control for extra character.

Echo

It’s a fancy new delay effect which combines the classic analog feel with modern digital sound. It’s got plenty of features including noise, modulation, saturation and even reverb.

Pedal

This effect gives you the sound of overdrive, distortion and fuzz guitar pedals. It could be useful to subtly warm up a vocal, add drive to a guitar part or add harmonics to a bass synth.

3. New option - “Capture”

This used to happen to me all the time - I would improvise and accidentally find something awesome, but then I’d find out I forgot to hit record before playing. After that I couldn’t play it the same way anymore and I would get frustrated.

To avoid this problem, Live now secretly records everything you play, even if you don’t hit record. All you need to do is hit the “Capture” button after you play something you want to save and it will be saved automatically. In case you want to use a different part than Live’s guess, you can always go back in time in the clip.

A “captured” part with previously played parts on the left.

4. Editing multiple MIDI clips at once

With Live 9 you can edit multiple MIDI clips at once. This means that you can edit your lead melody, pad and bass notes all at once. All you need to do is select a clip on each of these tracks and the notes will appear in Clip View. The colours of the notes are the same clip colours so you can tell which notes belong to which clip.

5. Note chasing

This feature is useful when you’re working ends of long sustained MIDI notes, like pads. Before, MIDI notes used to be triggered only if they were played from the start. Now you can start playing the track in the middle of a MIDI note and it’s going to be triggered. This allows you to work on ends of pads without the need to play the clip from the very start.

6. Browser collections (Tags)

Live 10 introduces a simple way of organising your browser. You can assign colour tags to devices or sounds and you’ll find it under “Browser collections”. This is a faster way of saving your favourite presets and samples - you don’t have to copy them over to custom folders.

7. Improved audio effects and Max for Live effects

Utility

Now the Gain knob goes down to -inf dB. It also introduces a Mono switch and a Bass Mono switch, which allows you to mono all frequencies below a certain frequency. You can even check what difference the Bass Mono switch makes! This makes it a perfect tool to check mono compatibility with.

Max for Live Essentials

The LFO, Envelope and other Max for Live effects have been updated. We also have a new effect - Shaper - which you can use as a transient designer, sidechain ducking device and much more.

8. Groups in groups

I always wanted to put groups inside groups in Live. Now it’s possible - you can even group groups of groups, yes.

9. Improved metronome

Are you sick of the metronome sound in Ableton? Live 10 allows you to change this sound for something else. It also has a mode in which the metronome plays just when you’re recording.

10. Global automation on/off switch

Do you also like to hide your automation lines to make the project file look nice and tidy? Now you can do it with one click, and then you can bring back the automations with one click as well.