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Give Ableton Live its Missing LFO: Max for Live Device Modulates Everything

by Peter Kirn

(Note – please see update at the end of this story regarding controversy over this device in the Live community.)

Ableton Live users have wanted an LFO for a long time. Using basic wave shapes, you’d be able to modulate anything in a set, from clip parameters to instruments and effects, producing shifting timbres or rhythmic patterns or anything you’d like.

Julien Bayle, the Marseilles-based (certified) Live guru, ambient musician (as protofuse), and builder of the protodeck controller, has built a solution. “LFO Everything in Live” is a Max for Live device that allows you to control any parameter anywhere in Live using LFO waveforms. Features:

  • Tempo sync toggle
  • Multiple waveshapes – new ones added this version – or draw your own.
  • Route an LFO to another LFO to another LFO, etc., for some sophisticated signal chains.
  • Lifetime free updates.

You’ll need a recent version of Live – 8.2.1 required – plus a copy of Max for Live. But if you’ve got those two things, prepare for some serious LFO goodness.

The tool is normally EUR8, but anticipating some interest from CDM readers, you can get it for EUR6 and go buy yourself an espresso (or two) instead. Use coupon code CR3AT3 (first fifteen buyers only – you might ask nicely to extend that)!
http://designthemedia.com/products/abletonlive/
Follow Protofuse/Julien on Twitter, Facebook, and if you have opinions about what kind of hardware he should be building, take his survey

I’d still like to see an LFO as a default device, and for Max for Live devices to be easier to distribute to users who don’t own a copy – as well as for more M4L patchers to use a GPL license for patches they’re selling. But this looks like a terrific solution, nonetheless, and could really change the feeling of working with Live. Great work, Julien!

Updated: You’ll find plenty of reader discussion of alternative LFO patches for Max for Live, along with what people think of their relative merits, in comments. The maxforlive.com library is a terrific resource.

Also, unfortunately, I’ve learned of a dispute between Julien and an author of another LFO plug-in; I can’t comment directly on the content of that debate because I don’t feel I have all the facts. If a third party wishes to step in and let us know your opinion, please feel free. Otherwise, I’ve asked these two authors to communicate with one another directly.

Since asking them to do so, it appears they have not reached a resolution. You can follow the forum thread on Ableton’s forum in which Max for Live users weigh in here, as well as on the original LFO Everything thread.

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Crampe

Hey people, gives Live its missing ClipAutomation.
Patch and details are [url =http://www.tete-de-son.com/?page_id=535]HERE[/url]

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Peter Kirn

@y: If you continue to troll on this thread, your comments will be deleted. You've been warned.

I write these stories and these comments under my real name, not anonymously. And I run the site. So, actually, yes - I do get to decide when the conversation ends. Sorry.

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David A

Yes I noticed too late that you updated the story. I'm still loathe to see the article though. That's no reflection on you, just utterly disgusted by the behaviour of Julien Bayle. So I apologise if I seem to be assigning some of this negativity to you.

However I do think it is an "open source" issue. Julien Bayle harvested code from an open source project/device. Not only did he harvest the code but he took efforts to delete the original author's name from the device. Than he went about selling his own device which contained this code. That totally undermines the community from which he harvested the code in the first place. It jeopardises the sharing culture if people fear that, despite using licenses which explicitly forbid it, what they share will be harvested for commercial patches. Which is a debate in itself.

Julien Bayle's behaviour here, from the crime itself to his handling of it coming to light, has been despicable from start to finish.

He has done more than enough to damage the M4L community.

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y

you not rushing in writing a second story..but you rush like hell to be the FIRST one to give the FIRST story...

credibility...yes..

this days I browse this pages like I do with adverts...i look at the picts...i check the links...and I go and get some CREDIBLE objective information about the real value of the product SOMEWHERE else.

big up

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y

lol...mr Kirn...you are not the one who can put periods to this story...period.

and we won't give you a break either...period.

if you want a break...you need to lock it...let's see if you have the face to do that...and shit on your other foot.

i am trolling...yes...indeed...and i see more dignity in trolling than your patetic self defence...very similar in the attitude to the one of the thief.

give us a break PK..

like Julian said..peace...and paypal.

read my lips

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Peter Kirn

I updated the story the moment these issues came to light.

This isn't an "open source" issue; it's an issue of proper attribution, period. 

I'm not going to say anything else, because I'll sound defensive; I probably already sound that way. You're entitled to your opinion.

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David A

Well excuse me, it seems you've already done that.

But I'd prefer to see the edit in the first half of the story where it can be read from the front page.

I guess beggars can't be choosers though

Regards,

A disgusted patron of open source communities.

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David A

I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

I won't argue in defense of "Y", I just offered my view on where they were potentially coming from.

But to clarify - my suggestion was to simply delete this post. Bury it in some kind of sin bin. Remove it from the front page. Etc.

But if you don't want to "unpublish" it then I would suggest, for the sake of credibility, to edit the story (as you have done on SO many other occassions when new info comes to light in the comments) to explicitly reflect the controversy and point readers in the direction of the M4L/Ableton.com threads where the issue is fully hashed out.

That is where I, personally, think your credibility is now lacking as a journalist and as a member of the audio community who claims to support open source initiatives etc.

Otherwise leaving the article as it is, unedited (unusually), on the front page, still serves as valuable and lucrative advertisement for someone who patently doesn't deserve it.

Regards

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Peter Kirn

Also, news flash: once something is published, it's published. It's inappropriate under most circumstances I think to *unpublish* something.

I appreciate David and others at least providing frank opinions and not simply (cough) trolling as some commenters are.

y isn't "questioning" my credibility; y is trolling, and I don't put much weight behind those kinds of comments.

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Peter Kirn

I believe that maintaining my credibility is important, which is why I'm not rushing to post a second story. I'm sorry you feel that way. I disagree, and it's my call. I've learned the hard way in the last six years, but I can't recall *any* instance where I found discretion or patience was something I regretted.

I was very much unaware that there was any controversy around this issue as I posted this story. So yes, it's very likely that I - unknowingly - did damage to the whole situation by posting the story.

I do not agree that rushing to post a second story is the wise move, precisely because it could do more damage before I've lined up the facts.

Edward and Julien are artists. Each of them contacted me independently, off-list.

I continue to communicate with them. When it's appropriate, I'll post an update. Before that, I won't. I'm not looking to pour gasoline one what is already a volatile situation. If people want to sling mud, they can do that on the forum.

That information is already out there and available; it's my obligation to either add responsibly to the conversation or say nothing at all.

I don't know if it's the "journalistically" right thing to do, but it's what I believe is the right thing to do, so it's what you're getting.

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David A

I don't think "Y" or anyone else who may have questioned your credibility here in the comments is doing so from the period of time where you weren't to know. I see what you mean about "jumping to conclusions" in that timeframe.

But now the facts are out, and are clear. Yet you still, effectively, promote the device here by giving it a popular platform despite being fully aware that Julien Bayle is the worst kind of Intellectual Property thief and handled his outting as such woefully to put it mildly.

And that certainly is worthy of questioning your credibility, and in all likeliness is probably the point where "Y" is coming from if not worded explicitly as such.

Julien Bayle didn't handle it right when he was caught, and now, journalistically (is that a word?) speaking, you aren't either.

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Peter Kirn

I stand behind my handling of the situation:

I didn't have all the facts.

Misunderstandings do sometimes occur between creators.

I'm not advertising anything; I'm writing up a tool that appeared to be of interest. 

Jumping to conclusions would immediately compromise my integrity. 

I don't find the open criticism of me to be fair or civil. I'm leaving the comments; I believe your tone speaks for itself.

But yes, do I write about things without checking every subpatcher for possible infringement of someone else's work? Yes, I do. Give me a break.

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David A

Why is this thieving scumbag's commercial device being promoted here ? In the interest of honesty, righteousness, community and common decency this article should be pulled lest his pockets be further lined with ill-gotten gain.

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y

give back CDM its missing credibility...check twice before advertizing another gimmick.

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y

actually...I will go on on this a bit longer.

Peter...you are the dirtiest of the hypocrits here.

1st shame :

first you publish this article WITHOUT checking the ableton forum and without knowing ehat is really going on..very naive and very umprofessionale EDITOR attitude...if I was your publisher you would be fired yesterday.

second (even smellier) shame :

once the shit start to spread all over the place and this RIP OFF shines in all its splendour...you invite the ppl to resolve thier issues privatly and not on your pages....your pages that so blatantly advertize STOLEN work.

instead I reckon that we should give to this issue the LOUDEST publicity.

bottom line...both you and mr Julien lost credibility...and you smell.

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y

yay

this time Peter shit on his own foot...bloody hilarious !

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Edward

You can access it in hz and pulse, but I found that you couldn't manipulate a parameter via the live api much higher then 250 hz without the CPU starting to explode (which is why I limit the update rate in my Device LFO to 100hz, just to have some headroom for slower machines).  At slower rates, sync'd to the clock it also seems to keep perfect time. 

I found the real problem interacting with the live api is the order of operations things occur in max in relation to events in live when loading song/live set. Often I had to defer live api operations as much as possible with loading a live set because the live set had not been fully initialized and i would get bogus or null values.  There is no guarantee that the live set has fully loaded when max patches are starting to get initialized.

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23fx

edward, sorry to bump but you are one that may know, what's max speed you can access to liveApi , for ex, a parameter, in Hz or ms of shorter pulse? and what latency? ie such lfo.

i would really need to know. thanx

(what's fastest clock of non audio communications keeping stable)

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Edward

Does Reaktor have access to the live api for manipulating midi data and devices?

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Brian Biggs

jason, you mention LFO in Logic and Reaktor. If you read the article it's about Live, not Logic. For various technical reasons, Live hasn't had one built in and using one via VST or AU through Reaktor has been flaky at best.

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jason

an article about an LFO??? logic's environment has had these for ages...plus there is reaktor which has tons of lfos. am i missing something?

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salamanderanagram

@peter, i agree with seppe, his comments refuse to own up to the fact that several people have noticed an improbable number of similarities with previously released code.

an update would probably be in order at the least.

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Seppe

Dear Peter,

I'm sorry to bring this up again, but I'm really worried about the license issues for this device. Julien seems to respond really badly to questions about this on the Ableton Live forums. I know you care a lot about licensing, so I think it would be a shame if you were promoting something that infringes an existing open source license.

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Jon Starr

The thing this one brings to the table that the Puremagnetik ell Effo from the Max Fuel set can't do is the cropping of your drawn in waveforms. You can have the LFO Everything grab however much of what you've drawn in as you want in real time and change it without losing sync. It just means I can make more complicated evolving modulations in real time without having to rely on prepared automation. 

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Aaron Zilch

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Max Fuel by Pure Magnetic, which in addition to an LFO features a few other often requested Ableton features: universal sidechaining (though there is now sort of a secret, non-realtime but editable, workaround for this using the Groove feature ), universal macro knobs and some other goodies. A lot pricier total, but cheaper on a per-plug basis.

AFA the whole native LFO in Ableton issue and the problems Robert Henke points out (thanks so much to pointing me to that post BTW, fascinating to get a look into his skull), I have a bit of an idea. How about a feature in the Clip Envelope Editor to automatically print common shapes ( and hopefully not so common, love the LFO selection in Malstrom for example ) at a desired rate. Also include the ability to double or half the speed of individual clip envelopes. Or maybe some features along the lines of Massive's "Performer". Select a time frame, shape, and speed and then print it to the clip envelope. I think Clip envelopes are more powerful in certain ways than LFO's, but LFO's are so much better for quick gratification experimentation. Having more options for creating Clip Envelopes than drawing them in by hand or copy and pasting could help bridge the gap a bit.

And of course I know that still would mean copy and pasting if you wanted to control parameters from multiple tracks and you still couldn't play with the speed in realtime, but it would still be a step in a nice direction without opening a can of worms.

And then maybe we could get the tasty filters and AM/FM from Sampler as effects units too. ;-)

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23fx

I did an equivalent using usine and liveOsc,

but i suffer from a max precision of 60ms

that seem limit from remote python scripts.

or i wonder if it's live Api limit.

Anybody know

what's max pecision MFL can acces a live deviceparameter real time? is it free of jitter and latency? is it 60ms, or <?

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stringtapper

I can confirm that the subpatches for LFO Everything and Device LFO that contain the mechanism for choosing tracks/devices/parameters are virtually identical. I purchased Julien's device and I don't want a refund or anything, but his attitude in the face of pretty clear evidence that he's selling someone else's code has been pretty bad over on the Abes' M4L forum. He just needs to give Edward Majcher credit for that bit of code and I think this could all be resolved. Like I said, I still value what he's done with the device whether the code is all his and I'm ok that I paid for it, just give the other guy credit (and an apology at this point). 

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Dr Speed

Well, it does indeed seem appear that code was commandeered, that's a shame. I suppose the temptation is great but it's still it's a shame. I've been using Device LFO for months.

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Peter Kirn

I would ask that you please take this discussion off of CDM comments. It's not really the proper venue; you'll need to communicate between the two of you, I'm afraid. I was unaware of any dispute prior to it appearing here.

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Edward

Or you could have emailed me before you lifted the code from a non-commercially licensed patch and asked me if it was ok to use it, I would have said yes.  

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Julien Bayle

Edward, you're wasting your time here too.

I didn't steal anything.

I respect your anger.

but please don't waste time with me.

I'll refund you because I just saw you bought it too.

take your way, I'm taking mine.

I would have preferred to have a nice email from you, saying "hey man, I'm SO involved that I want to collaborate with you making a nicest LFO than the one you want to make"

It would have been a pleasure to collaborate with you too.

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Edward

It is interesting that the first comment on this board is a reference to the Device LFO plugin I released on maxforlive.com since LFO everything steals code for the bpatcher module for persisting track/device/parameters with a live set lifted from my Device LFO which I posted on maxforlive.com under a non-commercial license @ http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device.php?id=3... way back in July.   

The creative commons license explicitly states:

"This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms."

The bpatcher is identical, down to the module positions, font I use and the name of every single parameter based on the naming conventions I use when I develop M4L patches.   Asking for permission would have been the proper approach before you renamed the object and started to sell it with your patch; designing a LFO that controls Live was academic (which can be seen from the number of LFO's on maxforlive.com), the hard part was persisting the parameters with the live set in a reliable fashion.  I am not a big fan of selling m4l patches, especially where you are lifting code specifically from a device that is marked as non-commericial only.

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Edward

@Julien

I wouldn't quite say there is no support for open source, as an avid open source user and developer I released Device LFO (http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device.php?id=35...) on maxforlive.com in July and added the first feature that was requested (the ability to re-trigger the LFO).

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Julien Bayle

@Brian Biggs: you just conclude the thread.

so, I can now write something: I'll IMPROVE the beast asap!

trust me :)

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Brian Biggs

Yeah I second the request for higher tempo syncs. I go to sleep dreaming about 1/16ths.

A lot of crap being thrown at this topic. Feels like YouTube. Obviously one wouldn't buy M4L just to have a LFO. And obviously while some don't like tweaking and coding there are a lot of users who do. That's half of the creativity for me, at least. To open it up and play with the guts and see what else can be made. There are guitarists that modify their pickups, synth players that build modules, etc. If it weren't for the creativity of tweaking and coding, Ableton wouldn't exist in the first place, nor would this LFO.

Charging for a device has no inherent problem. There's no where that says that one can't. It goes without saying that if someone is charging $15 for a LFO and it's not as good as those being given away, it's not gonna sell. I've downloaded 10+ LFOs to use with M4L and none of them have the features that this one does. My money is spent.

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Julien Bayle

@Millford: added to the wishlist!

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Millford

One absolutely necessary change to this patch is higher values in tempo sync. 1/32 at least. 1/4 just doesn't cut it. Otherwise it's just what I was looking for. Love it.

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Peter Kirn

Right, we have seen Reaktor and Max patches for sale, and that includes Reaktor patches *without* a runtime. (Only Max has the runtime.)

I think the difference here is, we're getting a more vocal group who think it's a bad idea. On the other hand, there was only ever a small handful of people willing to buy Reaktor patches. It might even be a slightly *larger* handful amidst the protests here.

Note that I said I thought easier distribution and a built-in LFO were a good idea; it's up to Ableton whether to actually do it. ;) An LFO would represent a significant architectural introduction to the tool. I'd generally like to see more of how Live could become more flexible; I don't know that the LFO is the place to start.

The M4L runtime issue is fairly straightforward: to do so would mean losing the ability to edit patches. But that's also competition is healthy: Reaper and Renoise, as mentioned here, each take their own approach, and it's different in a number of ways.

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Random Chance

Wow, this whole thing totally went past me without me noticing anything. I've seen Reaktor and Max patches you pay for, but Max4Live? It's a logical conclusion.

Sometimes I think I should try to sell some of my own stuff but apart from not knowing how to do it without (gotta have some shop system) it's probably to great a hassle for little profit and you'll have to deal with customers that demand you help them along at each step of the way.

I guess, we'll see a M4L runtime sooner or later. The current situation is like requiring Windows users to buy Visual Studio just to be able to run software written by third party vendors. It's probably a hard engineering problem that's prevented the release of a runtime so far. Plus, it's quite fair for a company that spent a whole lot of effort to bring something really cool about to recoup the cost of this extra engineering, or, in this case, two companies.

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bliss

Ableton are not fully to blame. That's if there is anybody to blame to begin with.

All of the arguments against buying M4L are stupid. There are plenty of free VSTs available, but you're going to have to buy a computer that has a compatible OS first. Then to download those plug-ins, you're going to have to buy a broadband subscription from a telecom or media company or broadband servicer. But you're also going to have to buy... Well, if you don't get at this point, never mind.

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Casimir's Blake

Vaihe brings up a pertinent issue. I don't own M4L. Many Live users don't. Probably because we like to compose with the bloody thing, not sit there tweaking modules and coding.

This is an impressive and, no doubt, powerful plugin and I'm glad to see someone has put something like this together. I could use it if I had M4L, but I don't. I have NO interest in M4L because I couldn't care less about creating my own "plugins". Racks are enough for me, otherwise I'm spending too much time looking and clicking and not enough time PLAYING KEYS. Or arranging, at least.

Anyway, if there was - as others have suggested - an M4L runtime, this would alleviate the problem. But no, Ableton continue to be greedy and want to charge you full whack just to "run" M4L plugins. Bah!

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TweakingKnobs

Feat ! but live should have a built in one...

i mean... lfo´s , midi , music software, duh !

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Julien Bayle

@all: thanks a lot for your feedbacks. it is precious for me.

@boomer: involving virtual midi ports is nice, but complexity drives to bugs & problems. native (or 99% native) solutions should be preferred.

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boonier

Why not try plogue bidule? Make an lfo of whatever flavour in it and connect it to one of the virtual midi ports. I've used it numerous times

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pepezabala

@ Vaihe - M4L is an expensive add on to run hundreds of free plug ins. And you get Max MSP for free with the expensive add on. I thought it's a deal ;-)

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Vaihe

Nice if you own M4L

Ableton REALLY needs to bring us M4L Runtime version.

I don't want to buy expensive ad-on to run 8€ plugins.

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gbsr

@pepezabala: well there is this famous live hack when someone hacked live to check his email, using the sessionview and the clips to display the topics - inbox style. :)

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