Interactive Composition: Strategies Using Ableton Live and Max for Live

I purchased Ableton Live after a few days with the demo playing around with it because I thought it would be an enjoyable tool. I also purchased the Ableton Live 9 Power! book as it seemed to be a good, thorough introduction. I'm five chapters and several evenings through that book and I didn't do a single damn thing with Ableton Live and haven't made any music. (Amazon had the Kindle version of Power for something like $30, but the print book was like $28 plus a $3 Kindle upgrade, so I opted for that combo. FYI: The Kindle version of this book is really crappy with terrible resolution graphics - avoid it. The print book is fine, but large, almost letter size page format.)Browsing Amazon, I saw Interactive Composition: Strategies Using Ableton Live and Max for Live and picked it up. I wanted to get a PDF but it wasn't available from the usual places like O'Reilly so I purchased the Kindle book. (I prefer PDFs as most books with any layout or graphics are badly mangled by Kindle formatting.) So far, though, this book seems to be formatted adequately for Kindle, but I cannot say for certain without having seen the print book. The images have been adequate and I have no complaints with the Kindle format. It's not yet reformatted for the non-full-justified reading style that Amazon recently announced, though.I've been working my way through Interactive Composition on a 27" (non-Retina) iMac with Ableton Live 9 Suite, with it opened on the side of the screen and Live on the other side. This has been somewhat convenient but I also keep it open on my iPad on the table so I could maximize Live at the same time if I felt the need.Now, I have only completed the first chapter including all of its steps and the final exercise, and let me tell you after this one chapter I have learned and done more in Live than I did with almost six chapters of Ableton Live 9 Power. It has a fabulous hands-on approach with detailed, step-by-step directions on how to do things and explanations of what it is you're doing. You can of course stop at any time and play with Live to experiment with things. This is a truly great way to learn Live. Comparing it to Power, which just says things like "this does X, that does Y, this button here does Z" it's a no brainer. Perhaps if you know all about making music on a computer it's useful to have that sort of description provided by Live 9 Power, but I'm a classical pianist and am pretty new to making music directly on the computer. Furthermore, Power spends a few chapters just telling you about things that are completely incomprehensible and pointless to the user like preferences and window layouts. Sure, I might need that information as a reference one day, but reading the long, interminable chapter about Live's preferences in Power was an exercise in tedium that rivaled any of the horrible "classic" books I had to read decades ago in high school. Not that it wasn't well written, just that it was completely useless information to a new Live user with absolutely not context to understand any of it.Anyway, the first chapter of Interactive Composition is about the Arrangement View and how you can use it to make a song in what I have come to learn is the traditional DAW layout, with horizontal tracks. By the end you have enough information to make a full song using MIDI tools and built in instruments (probably not one that is mixed or has any effects or anything, but at least you have the notes and the outline and the clips). I seem to recall the book even had me record an audio clip, but didn't give much information on how to manipulate that, and my horrible solfege didn't quite line up with the timing so I figured out how to "fix" that by dragging little triangles. I feel like I could now put in my own songs (as MIDI anyway). The final exercise is to download a MIDI file from the Internet and set it all up. I found one ("Call Me" by Blondie) and spent hours tweaking it, modifying it and getting it to sound right - to my ear of course. I could probably spend another dozen hours or more on it, but it's time to move on...The second chapter of the book is about the Session View, which I've come to associate with the "Live" portion of Live and hence the most unusual part. I have a Push on order and will start that chapter this weekend. I'm looking forward to more time with this book and Live.I wanted to wholeheartedly recommend Interactive Composition to anyone wanting to get into Live. Although it shows as a $100 book for the print version, Amazon's Kindle version was less than $15. For such an expensive piece of software, it's a no-brainer. Great book.

Many chapters focus on a specific genre of music. Good info, but if those genres aren’t of interest to you then not helpful. For beginners the first 2 chapters are quite helpful.

This is undoubtedly a fine introduction to Ableton Live, probably the best book I have seen yet on getting started with Ableton Live. However, I did end up returning this book because an intro book was not what I was looking for, and I was misled by the title.Years ago I had a book by Todd Winkler called "Composing Interactive Music: Techniques and Ideas Using Max." This was a fantastic book about using MAX for creating musical environments to engage with interactively. This book is quite outdated at this point, I think it relies on MAX 3 and the CD ROM will only work with OS 9 or below. My naivety and wishful thinking led me to buy "Interactive Composition" as it seemed like a fresh, technologically relevant replacement to Winkler's book. Once I received "Interactive Composition," it was immediately clear that this was not the case.In sum, this book is a fantastic book to get beginners working with Live, with a very basic overview on working with Max. However, it is not, as its title suggests, a book about using Live and Max for true interactive music.

As a classically trained music professor who dabbles in music technology, this has been a terrific book to prepare me to introduce Ableton and a new way of thinking about composition to my students. I am currently working my way through the book and have never used Ableton Live before. It's been very easy to jump right into the projects and produce music. The supplemental downloads are great and easy to use. I've had the pleasure of attending workshops by Will, and now I more fully understand how to use the software and see the possibilities in creating my own course materials. This book is fantastic for anyone looking to use Ableton to create a variety of styles of music. The book covers ambient, hip-hop, modern house, chiptune, dubstep, drum and bass, pop/rock, and more. Check it out!

This is a rare and wonderful book. It not only introduced me to Max for Live but also all of the potential for music making contained in it. It was also a fantastic introduction to composing for different musical genres i was not familiar with. I would highly encourage other producers to explore all of the genres especially those outside of your normal interests since there is so much to be gained musically, technically and in your knowledge of Ableton Live and Max for Live. For those of you that have been swimming about doing a lot of Ableton Live tutorials and not really making music, this book may be just the thing to get you making music and inspire to explore different ideas.

a lot of stuff that would even be useful if you don't use Ableton, but if you do, this book is a must. Some basic how to info in the beginning, but it's more about creating a workflow and set up that compliment each other. Very well written and a a large number of downloadable material to compliment the book. If you're someone who learns best by doing, this is for you, from the start you're given tasks that expose you to actually using all the things he talks about. Can't recommend this highly enough.

Fantastic. Guides you through every step and teaches you a lot. Takes you through how to use Ableton within various genres and even shows how to program in Max for Live. Really enjoy this Author. Recommend!!

Great book, helps you dig a lot deeper in Ableton. Great tutorials on Max for live... I really recommend it to any wanna be "music Producer" ,like me hahaha...

I was very excited about this book's release, as it looks like a valuable resource in the age of ableton + max/msp; and the exploration of a wide range of electroacoustic/electronic styles through practical ableton/max tutorials is a quite brilliant and potentially very useful idea. I would recommend this book to live/max novices and those who are just learning about a wider range of electronic styles. To that end this is really well put together. But it's rather slow and basic (but not without inspiration) if you already have live/max chops and looking for anything intermediate-advanced. Great for beginners (univeristy electronic novices), but i can't recommend for people who have already got their (technological) feet wet.

This book takes from the basic ideas to the most complex in easy stages. Indispensable for Max Live.

Good.

Great for learning more about Max for live

If you understand anything about interactive composition, you will understand that this book is not about interactive composition. It is a sort of summary of various electronic music styles, seemingly written by someone who has only a passing understanding of each, combined with very basic tutorials. The author has misunderstood the essence some of the genres he seeks to define, particularly that of electroacoustic music, which is disappointing given the amount of literature available on each. The techniques described are already dated (as are many of the genres it describes) and the book reads more like a beginners tutorial for Ableton with some MaxMSP content that is so simplistic, it is hardly worth including. If you are hoping to start using Ableton live with little or no experience and you enjoy learning from a book, this book is ok. There are far better ways to learn, there are some excellent video tutorials online for both Ableton and MaxMSP/Max for Live. In summary, the worst part of this book is the misleading nature of the title. I was hoping for some advanced compositional techniques and original implementations, what I got was something more in the realms of a half decent undergraduate thesis.