ABLETON LIVE at 20

It wouldn’t be too hyperbolic to liken the influence Ableton Live has had on electronic music in the 21st century to that of Roland’s grooveboxes in the 1980s. Live is far from the only software tool around – for every track created in Ableton’s DAW, there are countless others made in the likes of Logic, Cubase or Reason – but just as the TR-808 and TR-909 laid down the blueprint for both the tone and sequencing style of modern electronic drums, so has Ableton Live defined a specific style of music software; one that bridges the gap between recording workspace and instrument in its own right.

Live launched on 30 October 2001, at a time when processing power was just making the concept of laptop-based live performance realistic for electronic musicians. The design of Live 1 wasn’t entirely without precedent, Sonic Foundry’s Acid already allowed musicians to play with time-stretched loops, and Propellerhead’s Rebirth had cemented the idea of computer-as-instrument. Still, the majority of recording software at the time was built around a ‘digital tape machine’ paradigm, focused on replicating the workflow of traditional studio recording systems.

It’s significant that the creators of Ableton were forward-thinking musicians first. While Ableton is hardly the only music-making brand with a musician at the helm, its design is undoubtedly a product of its originators’ DIY ethos and the adventurous spirit of Berlin’s 1990s music scene. Ableton Live co-creators Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke originally gained recognition with Monolake, their minimal techno project signed to the influential Chain Reaction label owned by Basic Channel’s Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus. Having first met each other at the Munich branch of the legendary Synthesizerstudio Bonn, Monolake was formed when Behles and Henke reconnected in Berlin, where they had both relocated to study Computer Science. In those early years the pair released a string of cult classic releases including the albums Hongkong and Interstate, both of which hold up remarkably well over 20 years later.

ONCE UPON A TIME…

The Berlin scene in the ’90s was evidently fertile ground for forward-looking music-making. As well as birthing the genre-bending dub techno of Basic Channel and classic albums like Porter Ricks’ , it also provided the roots of several big music tech brands, including Native