Max For Live Sneak Peak from max4live on Vimeo.

Suddenly, I have an image of American Ableton hackers patching on their MacBook over Thanksgiving turkey.

After a long, long wait, a public beta of Max for Live is available. The software incorporates the full version of Max/MSP/Jitter – complete with visual output, video processing, and 3D capabilities – with the Live host. Max patches operate with all their usual capabilities as devices inside Live. User interface elements are available to give Max patches conventional Ableton device interfaces, and there are even pre-built elements for useful functions like frequency displays and MIDI patterns. Via the Live API, Max for Live patches are also able to control most elements of the Live interface.

Because of Max’s networking capabilities, Max for Live devices can also be used to route OpenSoundControl data into Live. That isn’t necessarily with the same ease as you might route MIDI, and there’s still no native support in the Live interface, but it is a step forward.

Our friend Michael at max4live.info has been busy documenting the new software. His overview video is at top, and for OSC coverage, see his tutorial [part 1 | part 2].

Updated: Pricing has now been announced.
Max for Live is not included with Live 8 or even (perhaps surprisingly) Live Suite. It will be a US$299 / EUR249 download, available separately, on top of the cost of Live 8 or Live Suite 8. If you already own Max, you’ll have a set of crossgrades available:
1. You own Live. You can add Max for Live for US$99.
2. You don’t own Live, and want just Live. You can get that and Max for Live for US$449.
3. You don’t own Live, and want the whole Suite. Suite plus Max for Live crossgrade, US$699.

Total cost:
Max owners without Live: US$449-699
Live owners without Max: US$299 + cost of the upgrade to Live 8
Max + Live owners: US$99 + cost of the upgrade to Live 8

I think this could arguably be worth the investment, but given the discontinuation of support for developing VST, RTAS, and AU plug-ins in Max – a feature that was formerly free – I expect some resistance. Also, as previously announced, there is no known Max for Live “runtime,” meaning Max patch developers don’t really have a distribution outlet for work made in Max for Live, other than other Max for Live users.

Sign up for the public beta on Ableton’s site, and you’ll be able to grab the downloads (details below). You must be an Ableton Live 8 owner, though you don’t need to own Max 5:
http://www.ableton.com/maxforlive/beta

I got to spend yesterday working with the Launchpad; see the video above which I think should help you get a sense of scale and what it looks like. (Also on YouTube) We have additional videos from other sources below.

It’s only been public for less than 24 hours, but as we did with the APC40, I think it’s time for a superguide answering questions about the Novation Launchpad controller.

The Launchpad and the way it works reveals a lot about how controllers work with Ableton Live. You may be surprised to learn a lot of this doesn’t require a special controller and doesn’t require Max for Live – it’s standard Ableton stuff that works with MIDI. (Remember MIDI?) And I think some of these answers could be worth a read if you have interest in hardware control hacking in general.

There have been a lot of questions from myself and readers, so I’ve done my best to get answers. Realize, a lot of this information is developing and is based on my limited understanding, so it’s all subject to change. I’ll update this guide over the next couple of days if I get any corrections.

Side note: What about interoperability? I intend to talk more about OSC and the Live API (and each separately) in coming weeks. I think it’s impossible to judge the full picture of how Live can interoperate with other tools, though, until there’s some more information, so stay tuned on that.

Basic Questions

Q. What do you get with Live 8 Launchpad Edition, the bundled software?

New to Ableton Live, and wondering if you can get anything done with the “lite” Launchpad Edition bundled with the hardware. The short answer is, yes you can. The included edition has restrictions, but it’s still a reasonably capable version if you’re new to Live and want to experiment.

Getting handy with the $60 KORG Nano Series controllers and Ableton Live keeps getting more sophisticated. I did a "quick hack" using the text-based MIDI Remote Scripts with the nano as an example, and provided a download. Next, Raymond Weitekamp modified those scripts and added a monome for a full-blown Live performance. But now James Waterworth aka Myralfur takes the whole idea to the next level, with a fully custom set of scripts with control of additional channels, more control over tracks, and most importantly, interactive scene triggers.

I’ve built a custom python script for the nanoKontrol based on the hacked python scripts for the Axiom controller decompyled from live 7. It adds the ability to switch up to controlling channels 9-16 by changing midi channel (or changing up to scene 2 on the nanokontrol, which I had sending out on midi channel 2 instead of 1). It also has track on/off, solo/cue, panning, and also has the bottom row of buttons triggering clips on the relevant track, with forward and reverse skipping up and down scenes, and the loop button triggering the selected scene.

Best of all, you really don’t need to know – ahem – what you’re doing with scripting to make this work. Just follow the instructions below, and you’re ready to play – so you can get back to your set.

Now, James has polished off the script and fixed compatibility with Ableton Live 8, and this is ready for public testing. Give it a go and let us know what you think. I’ll work on a permanent home for all of this stuff, but for now, let’s just use comments for any issues. For some insane sounds, be sure to check out Myralfur’s music and DJ mixes on Soundcloud, too! He’s working on a rig that also incorporates a Sony PlayStation 3 controller.

Reminder: we’re meeting Saturday in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District to chill out, hear some music, and share strange and wonderful and hacked hardware controllers for Ableton Live as part of DubSpot’s Live Sessions tour. If you’re in the NYC area, you won’t want to miss out on music-controlling ironing boards, handheld controllers, and folks like RJ Valeo (Isomer Transition) above.

Full details
Facebook event

But if you’re not in New York, DubSpot and CDM are working together to make sure the weekend gets videoed, and we’re doing some work online.

Friday afternoon I’m chatting and answering questions as I work with the Live API to hack in OSC support for Live, and build a simple app for Google’s Android phone (which can be ported to other platforms, as well).
irc://irc.freenode.net/cdmblogs

Join the Noisepages Ableton Live hacker group for bleeding-edge discussion of some of these topics, too:
http://noisepages.com/groups/ableton-hackers
(I’ll be doing some link dumps with resources later today)

And Sunday, I’ll be giving a workshop about some controller secrets, with more to come online. (Sign up with promo code CDM for a discount if you happen to be registering at DubSpot; otherwise, hang out here.)

Novation’s Automap is coming to the iPhone – meaning a handheld device can provide interactive visual and textual feedback about what you’re manipulating in, say, an Ableton Live set.

Our friends at Hispasonic (Spanish-language) bring us the news. (Thanks, Xavier!) Photo credit: the new blog SaM’s burrow:

Novation Automap for iPhone in beta stage (first screen captures)

That gives you a closer look. I’m not even going to try to wonder what happened to Novation’s NDA. (We seem to be getting mostly “D.”) But, Novation, if you’re out there, trust me – buzz already suggests this is a good leak for you.

On the Ableton forums, some naysayers wonder why you’d want to run a Live set from an iPhone. The answer is, naturally, you wouldn’t – I think they’re missing the point. There are two larger issues here. One is, having a handheld device means there’s just another intelligent way to control your music set. It might be something you prop atop your keyboard or drum pad controller as a small dashboard, or that you carry with you so you can hear the sound in a venue during sound check. The other message is, interactive control with actual labels on parameters is the future for a lot of devices, not just the iPhone. That’s in stark contrast to the primitive way in which MIDI refers to everything in terms of (typically) meaningless numbers.

In fact, there are some promising other attempts to more easily see and manipulate clips away from your laptop screen, on devices like the Lemur. Thanks to the Live API (on which Max for Live’s control of Live is also based), it’s possible to finally get a full, controllable view of your clips. My only criticism would be that we still lack a single, open standard for this stuff. If Ableton Live supported OpenSoundControl (OSC) natively, it’d open all sorts of applications – without the hacking currently required. But that’s a topic for another day, and not just directed at Ableton.

Here’s the full text of this announcement from the Ableton forums. Stay tuned; hopefully we’ll hear official news soon.