Ableton

If I was in the market for new recording software Ableton would probable be my first choice. Ableton has really cool real time looping abilities that make it really fun to come up with new ideas or trigger loops and tweak on the fly. You can plug in a guitar, start playing a riff tweak the riff and loop it then start jamming on top all without hitting the stop button. I think this is really cool because it lets you come up with tons of ideas by quickly making new loops and playing endless stuff on top. It’s kind of like using a looping pedal and having all the loops available on separate tracks to edit later. Of course all of this works with MIDI too.

Ableton makes a great live performance tool too. You can pre load a project with loops and trigger them as you see fit.

Let’s say that you have some loops lined up for a verse, some for the chorus and some for a guitar lead, and you’re coming to the end of the lead but you don’t want to stop. No problem, if you are triggering them you can go as long as you want, or at least until the crowd starts throwing tomatoes anyway. Most other DAWs require that you stick to predetermined sections.

You’ll definitely want to head over to their web site to check out the videos.