Can I make professional and well rounded songs on Ableton alone?

C

Captainjazz123

New member
I really want to get the Push pad with Ableton Suite, but I'm reading a lot of threads saying people record beats on Ableton and do mixing and vocals on another DAW, like Pro-Tools or Logic...
I don't have that kind of money. I go a $5000 budget for other equipment, and from what I see I can't afford Pro-Tools or Logic.
And even though I love making electronic based music, I record a lot of non-electronic music too. Like me on an acoustic guitar or my band. Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated.
 
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Well basically all you need is a soundcard and a DAW. I have the focusrite saffire pro 14 and I love it. Logic is cheaper then ableton, especially if you are getting the push controller. You can do everything in Ableton as a DAW, including recording, but it is geared towards electronic music. But you have the arrangement view which looks exactly like any other traditional DAW. I personally bounce back and forth between Logic and Ableton, but there is no reason you cant do it all in Ableton
 
Yes you can with a soundcard. Make sure you get the Live 9 Suite, which includes all the instruments you'll need. Also if you're under 21 living at home with no kids, take the time to learn Max4Live programming. You'll be ahead of the curve.
 
DAWs are 95% the same in terms of functionality. And everything you need is in that 95%. The differences are almost entirely workflow.
 
Professional sounding tracks come from experience, knowledge and practice. With that said, yes you can get professional sounding tracks with Ableton, but you can with any other DAW also.
 
Logic isn't exactly expensive, btw. But yeah, you can certainly do everything within one app. Splitting up recording/production/mixing between different apps is, as mentioned, most likely a workflow thing than anything to do with capability.
 
Can you please detail how you intend to allocate this $5000? What equipment are you planning to buy exactly?
 
The push, ehh. I haven't personally used it but everything I have read and seen, it just doesn't look worth it. I personally like Ableton Live 8 better than 9...the new features are cool, but for the most part they are the same.

As far as recording and all, Ableton is legit. I used to always dump tracks in pro tools or rewire to pro tools because that's what I knew but once I started to really start recording vocals into live I like the workflow much better. I haven't used pro tools since version 7 or 8 so it may be different now, but setting up sends and returns used to be a pain to me, with live you just create a new return track, add your effect and send your audio to it. Also, saving effects racks will help your workflow in live as well, especially if you use the same elements or are working with the same artist, you can save your entire vocal chain and just drag and drop and then tweak for each song you are working on.

Suite is the way to go if you have the money, but you could get by without it and maybe buy Komplete 9 and a Waves bundle instead. Just depends on your style of music and what you like.
 
For me, a DAW is really just what a note sheet is for traditional composer. I load instruments and sounds to tracks and arrange whole song. What can make a difference is sample interpolation, sample rates and dithering options, but those are quite the same in every DAW. I recommend to focus on workflow, download some demos and choose what you like best.
 
Captainjazz123 said:
I really want to get the Push pad with Ableton Suite, but I'm reading a lot of threads saying people record beats on Ableton and do mixing and vocals on another DAW, like Pro-Tools or Logic...
I don't have that kind of money. I go a $5000 budget for other equipment, and from what I see I can't afford Pro-Tools or Logic.
And even though I love making electronic based music, I record a lot of non-electronic music too. Like me on an acoustic guitar or my band. Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated.
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Ableton Is a decent DAW Once u learn its quirks. It's built in plugins are great.
It's strong points is beat making and sampling but it has most of the mixing functions u would need. People are making good mixes with it. U would want a great computer though because it is resource hungry compared to other DAWS.

That said Reaper is an excellent DAW for mixing and is only $60. It's built in plugins give u the basics but can be supplemented with free plugins. Reaper has a quirky GUI but it has about every function an engineer would need for mixing. Reaper is very CPU efficient and surprisingly stable.
 
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