Ableton's LOOP summit is returning to Berlin in 2020 on April 24th to 26th. The conference took a year off in 2019, after moving to Los Angeles in late 2018. Now, it's returning to its spiritual home of Berlin, in a new cultural venue called Silent Green, with ticket registration opening in September 2019.
After its announcement almost a year ago, Massive X is finally here. Prior to its release, Point Blank were given a copy to test out and explore what the new powerhouse softsynth had to offer. Now, they have shared exactly what they found so impressive about the successor to one of Native Instruments’ most widely recognised plugins.
Ableton have added the ability to add emojis to track names, notes and any other text-based fields across the popular music-making tool. Finally, you can add a 'fire' to your beats, 'heart' to your vocals and '100' to your mixdown. In all seriousness, visual representations can be useful in the studio – it wouldn't be abnormal to see shapes and signs drawn across the masking tape of classic mixing consoles back in the day. It'll also add a bit of colour to your session, which is no bad thing.
Ableton have launched a new microsite teaching users how synthesis works, using interactive widgets allowing users to build their own rich-sounding synth while teaching the basics of synthesis along the way. You'll learn about amplitude, envelopes, LFO modulation, filters and more as you build your interactive synth from scratch.
Monstercat wonderboy Gammer joined Point Blank to breakdown his epic club track, ‘Out With The Old’. The “spiritual follow-up” to his previous hit, ‘The Drop’, ‘Out With The Old’ continues to embrace the producer and DJ’s trance roots and packs one hell of a punch. Crammed with euphoric strings, heavy-weight bass lines, screeching melodies and more, it’s everything you could want from a Gammer track. ‘Out With The Old’ is available now via DJ Snake’s new Premiere Classe imprint and continues the producer’s winning streak.
Since Ableton launched version 10 – and more recently announced Live 10.1 – there's been a whole host of major and minor changes to improve the workflow and popular user requests have been implemented by the German company.
But us DAW users can be very stuck in our ways, and rarely read the manual, resulting in sticking to workaround techniques that have already been solved in previous versions. A new video from YouTube user Dylan Tallchief succinctly sums up all the workflow, feature and even custom scripting enhancements Ableton users may have missed or didn't even know about.
For Point Blank’s latest video tutorial, they were joined by Tom Budin all the way from Down Under to show you how you can build a punchy house beat in FL Studio.
Ableton have announced a new update to Live. Version 10.1 includes new devices and updated features including the ability to import user samples into Live’s Waveform synth. There’s also a new device called Delay that combines the current Live devices Ping Pong and Simple Delay offering more stereo control and filtering of audio signals.
At the end of last year, Point Blank were joined by Ableton certified trainer and producer Marcello Ruggiu, for an exclusive masterclass in partnership with Ableton’s yearly Education Tour. The exclusive-to-students London event was hosted by Ableton's Danny White and followed PB’s previous showcase with Afrodeutsche.
At the end of last year, Point Blank were joined by UK-based producer and live performer Afrodeutsche for an exclusive showcase in partnership with Ableton’s yearly Education Tour.
