What’s new in Live 12

Live 12.1 is out now, with new and updated features for all editions of Live.

Learn more

Get lost in Live 12’s creative features and sounds – and find your own way of making music.

Play freely with ideas

Reshape MIDI patterns

Apply a variety of simple or complex variations to your MIDI clips with new MIDI Transformations. Add ornaments and articulations, draw acceleration and deceleration curves, connect successive notes and chords, simulate the strum of a guitar, and more.

Generate inspiration

Conjure up melodies, chords and rhythms with the help of new MIDI Generators. Set constraints and let your chosen Generator create playful and original ideas for you to develop and turn into your own.

Transform and generate MIDI with new Max for Live tools

Do more with Max for Live

Try out additional Max for Live Transformations and Generators that give you deeper ways of working with MIDI, or go even further by building new ones.

Embrace and explore tunings

Follow your preferred tuning systems or try different ones more easily. Work outside of 12-tone equal temperament, and use your tuning with Live’s devices as well as any MPE-capable plugin or hardware.

Stay in key

Transform or generate ideas within the confines of the selected scale, or sync the scale of MIDI devices and instruments to the clip being played.

Some of the MIDI editing improvements in Live 12

Edit MIDI more easily

Use keyboard and mouse operations to edit MIDI in new ways. Split a note in two, or chop it into several parts. Select a set of notes and join them together, or make them fill a selected time range. Plus, you can access to more tools from the Note Utilities panel on the left, such as Fit to Scale, Humanize, Add Intervals, and more.

A screenshot showing the new modulation behaviour of Max for Live devices

Modulate more flexibly

Stay in control of a parameter, even after it’s been mapped to a modulation source; Max for Live devices like LFO, Shaper and Envelope Follower now let you freely adjust a destination that’s being modulated.

Surprise yourself with the sounds you create

Find inspiration

Start playing with any of Live’s new instruments and effects and you’ll soon find new textures and techniques to spark further experimentation.

Lose yourself in Meld

Live’s new MPE-capable synthesizer is designed for sound variety, playfulness and character. Equipped with two independent oscillators and an extensive modulation matrix, Meld excels at textural soundscapes, harmonic and atonal sounds, and rhythmic drones.

Meld’s Macro Oscillators provides simple access of complex waveforms made by various synthesis methods. Quickly dial up subtractive, FM, granular, and other sources, quantize the oscillators to a scale and even use the LFOs from one oscillator to modulate the other.

Explore Meld’s full modulation matrix, oscillators, LFOs and other parameters — Program Meld’s dual oscillators with dedicated LFOs and an extensive modulation matrix

Use Meld’s oscillator presets, Engines and twin LFOs — Each of Meld’s oscillator presets comes with two Engines parameters, carefully chosen for maximum sound design versatility

Listen to more sounds from Meld

Add color with Roar

Bathe your sound in subtle warmth – or break it down with wild distortion. Live’s new coloring and saturation device is made up of three saturation stages for serial, parallel or even mid/side and multiband configurations. Its built-in compressor and feedback routing give you even more ways to shape your sound, and its modulation section lets you add dynamic, evolving saturation and color.

Use Roar being in a multiband configuration — Apply heavy distortion to a specific frequency range with Roar’s multiband configuration

Process your sound with Roar’s Serial routing mode — Modulate your sound with Roar’s Envelope Follower

Take advantage of Roar’s modulation matrix — Process a beat in Serial mode to add two separate layers of saturation, one after the other

Modulate with Roar’s Envelope Follower — See what happens when you use Roar’s Feedback panel to distort your signal further

Get expressive with granular synthesis

Granulator III, the latest version of Robert Henke’s granular synthesizer, introduces expressive control that lets you bend notes and add vibrato and glissando. Plus, you can now capture audio in real time and start manipulating it immediately.

Go to the Granulator III Packs page

Layered pad and drone sounds with Granulator III’s Cloud playback mode — Granulator III’s Cloud playback mode excels at layered pad and drone sounds

Use Granulator III’s Loop playback mode to play grains of sound that don’t overlap — In Loop mode, grains play one after the other without overlapping

Overlap and fade grains of sound with Granulator III’s Classic playback mode — In Classic mode, grains overlap and fade into each other

Create the right sound easily with Granulator III’s intuitive controls — Create wild and unpredictable sounds with just a handful of intuitive controls

Lost and Found

Lost and Found brings together multi-sampled instruments, Drum Racks and samples inspired by the unexpected sound sources of the everyday – from household objects, DIY instruments and flea market finds to the organic materials and natural elements that surround us.

Go to the Lost and Found Pack page

Performance Pack

Perform live more freely with four Max for Live devices from Iftah. Control any part of Live with advanced macros, capture and re-deploy snapshots of your Set, instantly loop your location in Arrangement View, and pre-arrange a song with clips that Live fills as you perform.

Go to the Performance Pack page

Golden Era Hip Hop Drums

Explore the gritty drums of old-school hip hop with the new beat-focused Pack from heavyweight producer Sound Oracle. Get your hands on warm, authentic-sounding kits with built-in effects and enhanced MPE functionality, created especially for Live 12.

Go to the Golden Era Drums Pack page

Trap Drums

Sound Oracle puts the creative power of his in-demand trap beats at your disposal with a Pack of 20 crisp, futuristic kits and clips made for Live 12, loaded with MPE functionality for added expressive control.

Go to the Trap Drums Pack page

Sequencers

Whether you want precise control over complex patterns or ways to generate new ideas, this Pack of Max For Live Sequencers will open up all kinds of possibilities in your music-making.

Go to the Sequencers Pack page

MIDI Tools

Discover exciting ways to generate new patterns and manipulate your existing sequences with a Pack that demonstrates the potential of Live 12's MIDI Tools.

Go to the MIDI Tools Pack page

Work more intuitively

A screenshot of Live’s Mixer on a dark theme.

Set up to stay focused

Use Live’s Mixer in Arrangement View to get more information and control without moving to Session View and breaking the flow. Toggle the visibility of each Mixer section to fit your needs, and benefit from improved readability and feedback.

One of Live’s new Stacked Detail Views, showing automation parameters and the Device View at the same time.

See everything you need

Stack Live’s Clip and Device Views to see more of what’s going on in your track at a glance. See the Clip Editor or automation and the Instrument or Effect you’re working on at the same time, so you can work without repeatedly switching between views.

A screenshot showing how tags can now be used to search for sounds in the Browser.

Search with tags

Discover new sounds and find them again easier with the help of Live’s new tagging system. All factory sound content – including Packs – in Live now comes labeled in the Browser with instrument categories and helpful musical descriptors – and if you want more tags, you can create your own.

Browse better

Get search results that cover the whole library, rather than being confined to the Browser’s built-in categories. And explore your search history to see sounds or presets you've previously looked for.

Sound Similarity Search

Find sounds that fit

Try Live's new Sound Similarity Search to find sounds with similar characteristics to the one you're working on. Start with a sample and tell Live’s browser to find comparable sounds and instrument presets, with the help of a neural network.

Instantly replace drums

Swap all the samples in your Drum Rack for similar ones to quickly try out new percussive textures – like a drum machine with seemingly-infinite kits.

Loop

Learning Music

Learning Synths

Making Music

Find yourself again and again in Ableton Live