Ableton Live

Digital Audio Workstation and Performance Tool [2001]

I make music with computers. But I am also deeply into creating tools for making music. And this is why I became one of the creators of a quite amazing piece of commercial music software. Ableton was founded by my former Monolake partner Gerhard Behles, together with a developer he met whilst working together for Native Instruments, Bernd Roggendorf and a finance person, Jan Bohl. Gerhard asked me to join the team to develop something that finally became a software called Ableton Live.

The screenshot above shows a very early internal version, probably around summer 2000. The image below is from Live Version 10, early 2019.

More insight into my complex relationship with the company and the genesis of it all can be found in this long interview: [Gerhard and Robert talk about Ableton]

Here is a custom color theme for Live12 which did not find its way in the official distribution and which I use since a long time: roberthenke-theme-live12.zip

Ableton Live 12, November 2023.