Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[Jarrepeggiator]

Jean-Michel Jarre loves Ableton Live. Here are his reasons from interviews from the last decade for being such a fan of this software:

"Ableton Live changed my life a lot. These days, for me, Pro Tools/24 tracks/analog tape is the past, even if it’s still in a lot of studios for mixing.
I consider Ableton Live more as a musical instrument, not just a Digital Audio Workstation. It changed my way of working. It gives me the ability to write some music at the same time of producing and mixing it. Doing everything at once is really something. Also, it’s live performance features. It certainly encapsulates all of the different paths and moments of the creative process for a musician, from the musical idea to the performance through composition, mixing, producing, recording, performing, and even distributing."

“I was traveling with my Ableton Live all over the planet, recording here and there in a very easy way. Even if it took me five years recording for this quite massive project [the Electronica project], it was not due to the equipment; it was more due to the project itself.”

“I used to be a Pro Tools guy for a long time, but…I really fell in love with Ableton Live. It became my main DAW. I did some tests, bouncing down the Pro Tools stems and Live 9. The bounce on Ableton 9 was, for me, better and more transparent. The quality is fantastic and it’s so flexible. With Ableton Live, it’s absolutely transparent, even visually on the spectrogram and when you listen to it."

[Jote]

I wanted to switch to Ableton but no precise MIDI event editing (manually entering start time/duration/velocity) is a deal breaker for me. Also IIRC you can't clone clips so that they become linked (i.e. you edit data in one clip and the copies change automatically)

[plate of chips]

I can't be sure. I think JMJ hardly ever uses MIDI or no MIDI at all for recording an album.
It's nearly all or all audio.
Recording audio is what JMJ grew up with easy for JMJ his bread n butter.
Ableton does this easiest for JMJ.

On album sleeve notes it says recorded at studios Croissy, La Frette, Clinton, Coral, Square Production, his own studio.
Ableton is the easiest way for JMJ to do this nowadays especially when on the move.

[markorbit]

I wanted to switch to Ableton but no precise MIDI event editing (manually entering start time/duration/velocity) is a deal breaker for me. Also IIRC you can't clone clips so that they become linked (i.e. you edit data in one clip and the copies change automatically)

These were EXACTLY my two concerns with Ableton and nearly stopped me switching from Logic. But Ableton has so much going for it in other areas and I prefer the sleek design,