The 12 Days of Christmas: Day 12

• Words: Tim Saputo

Ableton Live

I love field recordings. I love ambient music, New Age, and sleeping. For a while now, I have been formulating a plan for a podcast series of re-edits of ambient music, classic New Age, and found sounds, solely intended for relaxation and sleep. For this project, I knew I needed something that I could sketch out my ideas with that’s as intuitive for me to use as design programs like Illustrator. After many unsuccessful tries with janky setups involving samplers, delay pedals, CD players, tape decks, turntables, and MiniDisc players, I finally decided it would be much more productive to use something computer-based. My beat-making friends all swear by Ableton Live so I decided to go for it. Right away, I was so impressed at how incredibly easy it was to use. I was immediately able to get my ideas out and start moving forward with them. Live's interface, is user-friendly for someone visually oriented like myself, and way less confusing than Pro Tools or most sequencers. And I also discovered how much fun it is to DJ with, and how sweet it is to not cart around a giant crate of vinyl and books of CDs.

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More Days of Christmas
Day 1: Rhino Box Sets
Day 2: Death In June Brown Book
Day 3: Selk’Bags
Day 4: Hangar One Raspberry Vodka
Day 5: Mishka Keep Watch Eyeball Hat
Day 6: GRN Apple Tree Hoodie and Nixon Watch
Day 7: Canon HG10
Day 8: Gee Vaucher Artwork
Day 9: Kid Robot Smoker's Delight Bundle
Day 10: Eco-Friendly Bags from Colette
Day 11: XLR8R Subscription