Purchased the One and Only

Finally, the Ableton Live 7.0.3 is officially installed and running on my laptop. No, the package hasn’t come yet if you wonder, but they were generous enough to send the download link (for the app only of course) and a bunch of the serials along with the order confirmation to get me started immediately upon charging my credit card. So, I spent 10 minutes downloading all the latest while they packed the boxed version for me.

The Ukraine is famous for its unreliable postal services (well, as many other distant corners of the world), however, I believe UPS or FedEx (still not sure are we in the EU or outside it) will do its best to save some silver hair to me. Hopefully there will be no problems with customs and everything. Even 5%-10% tax would be a LOT given the price I paid.

You may wonder, why am I drawing so much attention to the fact of the purchase? It’s easy to understand if you are in a music geek circles, and almost impossible otherwise. Long story short, (a) it’s the best music production workbench with all sines and saws world ever seen, (b) the fact that you purchased any software product in this country (and bordering Russia) is kind of … extraordinary and deserves attention by itself, and finally, (c) it let’s me immerse deeper into the creative part without a stupid thought “do I deserve to use this, or am I a smelly thief”.

Happy.

Upgrading my Toolbox

Many of you know me as a music geek. That would be a correct assessment of my attitude to everything composing / hardware / software related. I like experimentation, layering sounds, playing with tune structure and working on tiniest sonic details that are so subtle that affect the listener only on the subconscious level, like ghost notes and other miniature stuff.

I wrote before about the hardware MIDI console we built with my Farther for the live performances (and also see here). Not that I do lots of these lately, but we both enjoy building things and it was an excellent opportunity to create something beautiful and particularly useful.

Today I finally made a decision to make a purchase of the boxed version of an excellent Ableton Live 7 Suite — the best sequencer, sound editor and live session tool I’ve used over the years of my composing geekery. Not that I’m a pro in a $1.5M studio, but my personal taste says that neither Logic, nor Cubase, nor anything else works for me better. Now what the package includes (just to tease you and myself a bit):

• Ableton Live 7 itself
• Sampler — impressive multi-sample playback instrument with everything open to automation
• Operator — simply my latest favorite in the world of synthesizers
• Electric — instrument modeling classic electric pianos
• Tension — synthesizer modeling stringed instruments
• Analog — the analog sound beauty unleashed
• Drum Machines — huge collection of vintage drum samples in superb quality (Roland 606/707/808/909, Linndrum, Oberheim DMX and many more)
• Session Drums — 29Gb library of acoustic drum samples in multi-mic raw and processed versions ready for production
• Essential Instruments Collection 2 — massive set of instruments from drums to pianos and basses.

As you can see this even sounds massive. Having some experience with Ableton products and knowing who is the main visionary behind everything (yeah, you are right, it’s Robert Henke aka Monolake), I have no doubt it’s a money well-spent deal and will definitely pay off if not in the financial sense then simply as an excitement booster.

At the moment I mailed the request for the invoice (if you don’t pay VAT, you can ask them to subtract it from the price, which is really nice of you guys) and waiting for the response. My plans are to keep you posted on the progress and results. I believe It may be interesting to my fellow composers here in Ukraine to learn about the experience with the Ableton customer care service, prices and delivery times.

By the way, in case it reaches you Robert, I saw you didn’t know (during the Melbourne workshop) if there was someone in Europe playing live using the home-made MIDIbox controller and Live. Well, I do.