What’s new in Live 12

Whatever music you make, and whoever you are as a music maker, there’s always more to explore in Live. See how you can go further with Live 12.

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 the 12-tone equal temperament system, and access tunings with Live’s devices as well as any MPE-capable plugin.

Stay in key

Choose a scale in Live’s Control Bar to see its notes in any MIDI clip you create. Then 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. And access more tools from the Note Utilities panel on the left.

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

A creative space complete with Push, speakers and a monitor displaying one of Live’s new Stacked Detail Views.

Lose yourself in Meld

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

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, and its built-in compressor and feedback routing give you even more ways to shape your sound.

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.

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

A collection of sounds fashioned from unusual materials, percussive trinkets, unique foley recordings and expressive objects to infuse your productions with character and authenticity.

Performance Pack

A set of innovative devices from Iftah that enrich the experience of performing with Live. Capture snapshots of your sets and redeploy them later, create microperformances with multilayered automation, play loops in Arrangement View or prearrange the structure of a performance in real time.

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

Take advantage of Live’s new Stacked Detail Views to see more of what your track’s doing at a glance. Display the Clip Editor or automation and device parameters at the same time as the Device View, 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

Make sound selection easier with the help of Live’s new tagging system. Sound content 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 categories 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

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