I have been looking around Ableton session view and it looks interesting. My question is if it works for other genres besides electric music or hip-hop. It looks pretty suit for those genres and I am not sure if it suits rock music as well. Or even for orchestral tracks too.
Plus, can the live function be applied in rock concert as well?

Another question is about the learning curve. I mainly have been learning Studio One for a year as it has a pretty low learning curve for noobs like me. I heard Ableton has a steep learning curve and I can't afford to put my effort and time to it for a while. If yes, I am gonna try only session view.

The last question is if Ableton is lightweight. I only can use my laptop, so I have been managed most of my software as lightweight and portable for performance sake. I noticed that the file size of Ableton is much larger than Studio One. Around 10 times larger. I used to use Cubase before and it drove me crazy. Heavy, buggy, and crash...
Once I settled in Studio One, I got peace of mind. So I am wondering if Ableton is heavy and buggy like Cubase.

 

ableton 10.0.6 is very stable and is fully capable of handling rock n roll and live rock performances. if it works for Peter Gabriel why not ?

what you need Ableton for live use ? playing backing tracks? an mp3player wold be better. controlling it live? needs a complicated and expensive setup. it's very easy to use imho. took me only 15 years to understand it fully. take your time. i use it for creating my crazy genre which is a mix of rock/world/funk/jazzy/elektronic style

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 7, 2019

I tried it once. I didn't find it easy.
Except for "Max for Live" which you can set up in the standalone Cycling Max, it has no other benefits over Studio One.
Here you see someone explaining:

Here see a kind of similar workflow but much more intuitive:

 

Last edited: Apr 7, 2019

logic or pro tools are more suitable for rock than ableton live.

unless you do indus-rock, maybe, or playing with rock loops?.

but logic or pro tools are more efficient when it comes to sends, recording and mixing.
I don't say live can't do the job, but the two options above seems preferable to me.

same thing with orchestral.

I barely tried studio one once, and it unvalidated all my plugins, so I was like "thanks, but no thanks" lol

are you on mac or pc ? you didn't mention it

 

Nice post as I'm sort of in the same situation but looking for an alternative to Ableton Live (been using Live for about a year). To the OP, what is it that makes you think that 'Ableton is suited for electronic musicians instead'? I hear this *alot* so I'm curious and would like to know peoples opinion on this statement. FWIW, I use Ableton's Arrangement view 99% of the time, the session view makes my ideas sound way to repetitive and loop-based and I don't find it as useful as others so that's one reason I'm curious if a DAW with a more linear time-line would be better for me.

FWIW, I"ve been playing with Studio One for the last few weeks. It's definitely more lightweight feeling than Ableton Live 10 Suite. One reason is that I think Max For Live is slowing it down some. Also, if you are not going to use M4L then I see no real reason to switch. That is what makes Ableton so powerful for me...so many cool MIDI effects for triggering midi/audio.

 

Give Bitwig a go if you like Abletons midi stuff. the modulators are awesome. As a 10 year long Ableton user, Bitwig seems more streamlined and organised somehow, learning it quickly and using more and more. For rock music, well any DAW that has a workflow that works for YOU....try them all, but everything feels like bloatware now that i've used Bitwig .....

 

I have no idea about it yet how to perform on live. I saw some people use the pad for live, but it is for EDM. So I was curious if it can be possible on rock performance as well.

14 years! Man, I'd rather give up the session view in that case. It is too long. Life is short.

 

In my opinion, ableton is only good at looping clip in session view. Arrange view is awfull to work with.
Some people says ableton is best at EDM, I produce EDM and use Reaper.
In ableton, you can have several an instrument with effects nested at several levels inside each others and it is a mess to see what happens.
Some people says Reaper is not good for EDM because midi editing is not powerfull enought. That's bullshit because Abeton midi editing is really poorer than Reaper.
In my opinion, Reaper is also more adapted for rock.
Ableton is overrated and there must be a strong lobbying toward famous DJ to say the wold Live is great.
Live is good for ... ready to use waves lopping in session view, that's all.

 

A DAW is generally not "genre dependent", but DAWs like Pro Tools, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper, Logic, etc are much more aimed towards working with audio in comparison to MIDI (I'm not saying you can't work with both. Working/recording/mixing rock is a different ballgame than doing EDM/electronic music). Ableton Live is quite cramped (GUI-wise) and meant to focus on live music making/playing.
If you are working with Studio One I suggest you just get to know it.
Cubase is not buggy. Maybe you got the early Cubase 10 version, which (all round number versions) had the usual baby deseases.

 

Last edited: Apr 7, 2019

I got it. I worked my songs with Studio One as the second video. Thanks for the informative ones.

 

I am on PC. Well, all my plug-ins available with Studio One, so I can't complain about it.

 

Lobby...it makes sense. I also overwhelmed when I tried Ableton and had no idea what I should do. In other hands, I found that I just played around when I launched Studio One. But, I have been interested in the session view. You blow it up from my mind. Thanks!

 

Well, actually most of my job with midi. I have a guitar but not good at it. So I usually work with a midi keyboard.
I used to use Cubase 7, 8, 9 (but not 9.5 so far) and they are pretty heavy, buggy and laggy for my laptop (i7 6th gen with 16gb ram and dedicated gpu). It can be good for desktop users, but I don't think it is for laptop users.

 

It'll only work if u get a dirty leather jacket, and don't wash your hair for a month...

Think of it like an ilok/dongle to enable rock mode.

 

indeed, both of these guys are right.

i.e Leo Moracchioli is on Reaper ( rock - covers ) and Daniel James is on Cubase ( neo-orchestral ) (unless I'm wrong, he switched from Live to cubase )

I never tried bitwig, but I think you'd be good with the 4 @Baxter mentioned..

here's a little taste of what doing rock with ableton would be like to me

( sorry if I digress, but bad sunday, and I couldn't help the joke )

anyways.

have fun

 

Having used a few DAWs over the last 20 years: Atari, Cubase, Reason, ProTools, Ableton & Reaper.
At the moment I like composing/mixing in Ableton & Mastering in Reaper.
I write rock/orchestral/edm/pop & everything in between with Ableton. Any DAW is capable of writing all genres.
If somebody wanting to make rock music today, i would strongly recommend Reaper.
Reason being it is so CPU efficient, only downside (dependent on the user) is it can work in anyway you like, so you have to formulate a way to work and adapt Reaper to it. Limitations is the mother of creativity.
Anything it doesn't do....you can write a script for it to do it.
Put in some ground work to learn it and it will really pay off.

Great company, that won't rip you off and is soo cheap compared to the competition, It does way more than all of them. I think you can even make it run like Ableton session view, that's how powerful it is!

Great free tutorial series on the site by Kenny G (not the sax player from the 80s).
Enjoy the journey

 

[QUOTE="black bounty",


here's a little taste of what doing rock with ableton would be like to me


[/QUOTE]

I told you it was bullshit, here is an evidence.

 

@"black bounty"


here's a little taste of what doing rock with ableton would be like to me


I told you it was bullshit, here is an evidence.

 

I think people get this impression from the steinberg forums because everyone who posts there is basically just a bunch of angry people fussing over the one thing that doesn't work how they want it to.