[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome to this, our fourth edition of Berklee Online Live, which
is a biweekly interview series in which you
the listeners get to ask our amazing guests questions.
I'm here to facilitate, or do my best to facilitate and get answers
to what you want to hear.
Upcoming on the show, we will be pleased to welcome
more amazing guests, such as Thao Nguyen, Merrill Garbus, Kiran
Gandhi, Bob Ezrin, and many more amazing guests to follow and to be announced.
I'm your host, Benji.
I'm a father, recovering musician, coffee drinker--
I haven't had enough yet--
frequent flyer.
And I'm a Berklee alumni, and I am the current teacher of Digital Trends
and Strategies course at the Berklee Online school.
I founded PledgeMusic, and I'm currently the CEO
of a harebrained insane project called the Dot Blockchain Music Project.
And I'm also a proud board member of the Future of Music Coalition.
But that's enough about me.
I'm super excited.
The gentleman that I'm going to introduce you to shortly,
his name is Gerhard Behles, and he's the CEO of Ableton Live.
And I met him at a conference called BIME in Spain,
and I was absolutely inspired by his presentation.
And so Gerhard, welcome to the show.
Thanks for being with us today.
Thanks for having me.
So I don't want to read your bio.
So tell us who you are, what you do, and why you do it, please.
Sure.
So I grew up in Munich in the south of Germany.
And I went to live in Holland when I was 17.
And there I studied electronic music, because that was one place where
you could actually do that.
And then something remarkable happened in my home country--
the wall fell.
And I moved to Berlin to be there and witness what happened to the place
in the time ensuing.
And there I studied computer science.
I actually have a degree in that.
And somehow, I studied for a long time.
That's the kind of thing you used to do in Germany at the time.
And enjoyed it tremendously, and tutored composition students, helped them
with making sense of the electronics, worked at the electronics
studio that's there at the university.
Yep.
Learned a hell of a lot about music, made music, made albums,
toured a lot with my friend Robert as Monolake.
Somehow got in touch with Stephen Schmitt,
the guy who founded Native Instruments.
And worked with him for a little while, I would say,
before Native Instruments was a real company.
Through that, met Bernt, who would be the co-founder for Ableton.
Right.
And we somehow clicked.
Can't tell you why exactly.
It's a personal chemistry thing.
But I think it also is beyond that.
Bernt was not like a deep musician at all,
he was really a software engineer, but professional,
contrary to the rest of us.
And somehow, we convinced each other that we could pull this off.
And then that's my first real job.
It's what I've been doing since.
And I've been doing this now for, wait a minute--
1999--
100 years.
[LAUGHTER]
100 years, yeah.
So let me ask this, what's your first memory of music?
Like, when you think back to being a baby, what's your first sort of memory?
What's your thinking there?
Must be ABBA would be the most likely candidate.
Yeah?
Yeah.
And how would you listen to that?
Radio, records?
Yeah, I think it would be kitchen radio.
Yeah?
Mom, while cooking kind of thing.
And do you remember what the first record you bought,
or the first music you bought as a kind of adult or child?
No, I can give away a dirty secret about my musical awakening.
This is why we're doing this stuff.
So yeah, go ahead, please.
So one day, my brother gave me as a birthday present,
a record with electronic music.
I had no idea what that is.
It was Jean-Michel Jarre's Magnetic Fields, I think.
Yeah.
And I remember putting it on my uncle's stereo, which was impressive.
And I just could not somehow believe what was happening.
And I had to listen to that over and over for infinite times.
It was striking.
It changed my life.
Amazing.
And I want to be clear, it wasn't like the actual musical content
in what you would transcribe.
It was actually the opposite of that.
It was just the sound.
Right.
And that sort of phenomenon.
I couldn't cope with like, what that meant.
And is that because it was something that you felt that humans just
couldn't do in a room together?
Is it because it was expanding beyond what instruments were supposed to sound
like?
What's your thought there?
You know, maybe.
I don't know what the psychology of it is.
It was a genuine fascination with a phenomenon unlike any other
I had known.
And somehow, I wanted to know everything about how that happens,
how that is possible, how people can do this.
I wanted to be able to do this myself.
And that was going to be my thing now.
Amazing.
So when I first came across Ableton, I was
working at PledgeMusic, my previous company,
with an artist named Firehorse.
And she made this--
I mean, it's one of my favorite albums of the last 10 years.
And it was this combination of amazing songwriting, extraordinary sounds,
sonically speaking, what she'd put together.
And for her, this was just another instrument in her arsenal.
Do you see that?
Is that a common thing from your end?
Because I know you do a lot of user testing with your users.
So do you see them-- like, is it an extension instrument?
Is it the only instrument?
Is it sort of-- where does the spread lie?
It really is all of these things for different people.
So we sort of break this down in so-called personas,
because we need a vehicle to talk about this internally.
And we have a persona for a user who this is their instrument.
They refer to it as like, the computer with the software running on it,
this is the instrument.
It's what they do to write music, to express themselves.
And they are not thinking of it in like, in a fundamentally different way
than I guess someone who would write the music on a piano.
So that's their instrument of choice.
But then, you also have a different persona, who is like a band musician.
Maybe could be the person that plays the keyboards in the band traditionally.
And they also man sort of the computer station.
And when it comes to recording, and falls on them.
And so that's like one classic.
And then we'd also have people that have intense musical exposure
through maybe even church or something.
And early, and they know everything about music,
have huge record collections, and their access into it
would be maybe more through existing music.
And often sampling, and you know, that's also big.
It's really very different pockets and profiles of people.
There's not a simple answer to it.
So that is a great answer, because obviously, the thing
that I've been struck by musicians-- so at Berklee,
there are thousands of musicians, tens of thousands of musicians
there, going to learn their craft.
So what would a more traditional musician
get by basically opening up Ableton, getting
the hardware for the first time?
Is it kind of shock of like, wait, how do I go from a violin to this?
Or have you kind of looked to ease that, so
that a musician could just out of the box start to do something?
It's not easy, definitely.
Like I mean, still also the way we think of it,
is it's not a goal to make anything easy here.
We acknowledge that it's hard, and will always be somehow.
And I mean, we are more interested in making it rewarding for people
to get themselves invested in this.
And I think somehow, for us it's more important that actually, we
arrive at a place where someone will say that's my instrument.
And I'm putting in time to become masterful,
and I want to get to the point where I can transparently play my instrument,
and then just express myself.
So that's more important to us than taking away the initial barriers, which
is maybe a excuse for the fact that oftentimes, there's
a first sort of intimidation moment, when people look at this,
and they're like, ooh, what's this?
But that said, I mean, we come from a time
when music software was really daunting for everybody.
So I think comparatively speaking to the world of digital audio workstations,
which is sort of the software category that Ableton Live lives in somehow, it
is relatively not intimidating.
The first music software I saw was Creator Notator.
Do you remember that, from Atari, I think it was?
Fellow Germans.
Yeah.
And we used to synchronize that to two-inch.
I remember we would lay down a track of MIDI,
and that was the way that I first interacted with it.
I remember watching notes show up on the screen
for the first time of what was happening, thought
that was extraordinary.
So I want to ask a question about--
it's in an older interview, I think it was from 2011--
you talked about the end result of music made on Ableton landing on a CD
or on Myspace.
So just for history's sake, I was a massive Myspace user as well.
And I teach-- one of the things we teach at the course
is to watch out for investing all of your time on to one platform like that.
But what do you think about--
having come from creating Ableton, land on a CD or on a Myspace page,
what do you think about where it lands now?
And more specifically, are you hopeful when
you see the creativity of people using your products that they
will be able to make a living in the new music economy?
Yeah, these are great questions.
And I guess I'm always ducking away from them.
Because somehow, we have as a company, drawn a line in the sand.
When it comes to the moment the money comes into play,
we're not part of that game.
And this is simply because we feel we have more
to contribute on the other side of the fence.
So our concern really, is about everything
in the way of creating and conceiving music,
all the issues that music makers will face,
not just in terms of the instrument and the tech, also
beyond like, inspiration, craft, skill.
This is all very interesting to us.
But we assume that somehow, the world of OK, now I have the music made,
now I'm going to make money with it is beyond our concern.
I guess I wasn't asking so much the question of how do you see them,
but are you confident that there is a new musical economy?
I mean, maybe it's not at all.
But do you see that there is an economy in which your creators can land in?
Where there maybe wasn't in the CD and Myspace age,
maybe now with Spotify, with on demand, that there is?
I mean, are you seeing any trends there?
It seems to continuously be difficult. And sure, there
are great careers to this day.
I think there's also new opportunities, obviously,
in areas that were not as open, game design, sound design, and so on.
There's a lot possible.
But I go back to thinking if this is what you want to do in your life,
making music, then you will find a way.
And I mean, our own audience speaks to this in literate ways.
Like, we have amongst what we call the tribe,
like the sort of inner circle of the people that we deal with.
Like, hundreds and hundreds of people that
have built careers on music that have nothing to
do with selling music, or putting out music in the first place.
Take for example, the network of certified Ableton trainers.
So that's people that are really good at making music to begin with.
They really know a whole lot about it.
Now they also have a hand for teaching.
And they find that there's a way for them
to do this, typically through the internet in one-to-one sessions,
but often also through schools, or maybe like a city college or something,
to disseminate their knowledge to other people.
And well, that's the way they found to make a career.
And I mean, we're happy to help a little bit through the certification program,
and establishing contacts and so on.
But I mean, this is a way it can go.
I think as long as there's people, there will be music.
There will be people wanting to make music.
Maybe you can be someone who can help.
And that's a way to make the ends meet.
Yeah.
Because one of things that I found fascinating
was-- and I think the point that inspired me,
and one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you was to me,
you've given actually, an ability for thousands
of people who maybe did not grow up in a culture that
was conducive or friendly to learning an instrument
and taking 15 years to get good at it.
And so now, they can with software and hardware, go up on stage
and actually create a living, and do what
would be really hard for someone who plays in an orchestra to do.
So is that feedback that you've seen?
That like, it's not my primary living, but I
get to go night after night to clubs in Berlin, all over the world,
and use this tool, and be the voice of 100 musicians, versus just one.
Exactly.
I think that's big.
I think it's also somehow the--
I mean, this is the single biggest difference
between the sort of capability today and just a few years back.
I think the fact that a single person has
that kind of command over the entire experience
is still something we're trying to catch up with culturally.
It's so huge.
You
Like, if you think about it, all through the last 40,000 years,
something, since we have musical instruments,
you were playing a part, but never the whole thing.
And you were not in command of the detail or the composition.
That was somebody else's job.
And I mean, it has so many built-in needs for economy around it
and collaboration to happen in a certain way, that are now all up to our design.
We can change this any way we want.
Like you collaborate with someone not because you have to,
but because you want to.
And maybe you collaborate with someone who has not complementary skill,
but maybe they have the same skill, because it's interesting.
And there's like, all these fascinating trends in even the, I guess,
social aspects of music making.
This enables.
I think that's such a rich field of innovation now.
So going on what the [INAUDIBLE].
So I read an interview in which you said that the arrangement
field is a tribute to the legacy and reality of the multi-track.
So when you were--
how much time do you spend in traditional studios?
And is there still a valid kind of case to be made for the traditional studio
workflow, do you think?
Absolutely.
Like, I think for a lot of--
look, I mean, the sober reality is Ableton Live
looks different from the other DAWs that are much more closely modeled
after a traditional recording studio.
Because we as music makers, were not musically capable enough
to ever make it to a real music studio, and even have that point of reference.
Like, the way we make music was not somehow compatible with that world.
And I think I have only respect and awe for real musicians
that have a place and meaning in a traditional music recording
context, of course.
Yeah.
And so what do you think--
I mean, I don't like to deal with hypotheticals a lot.
But I had this though.
So what do you think someone like Beethoven, or Mozart, or someone
who has no context of this would think about the power of what
you've built If it were in their hands?
Do you ever think about that?
Hard to know.
Because I mean, you're talking about geniuses.
And somehow, the I guess, the definition of genius
is the normal rules don't apply.
So maybe these guys bent the rules at that time
in ways that don't allow me to think how they would do it now.
Yeah.
But I guess more if you think about--
I mean, I remember reading Mozart in particular
was like, he had to go through the process of writing out
the entire score.
So like, have you seen anyone that you think is genius coming through,
that's has bent what you've built into ways that you could never ever imagined
it?
Yes, this happens.
I think where I see some genius at work often is in people that--
OK, let's make a concrete example.
Coincidentally, my friend Eric [? Arrowsmith, ?] I think is a genius.
And the genius there is in how he can combine
really deep technical knowledge--
like, he can build all this stuff.
But he just doesn't care to do it.
He starts elsewhere, with a very compact musical vision.
And I think there's a span between designing the tech
to build the instruments, to build the song, to perform the song,
there's a span that he covers in all this that's unprecedented.
And few people like this, you know, Robert Henke, Tim Exile,
couple of people like this, they cover so much ground
on that axis between the silicon and the music delivered.
I think that's a space for genius to do it's magic.
Amazing.
So you mentioned in an earlier interview that for an album like Thriller,
there'll be sort of 50 names in the album credits.
And one of the things that you said that really struck me,
you said it's hard to get that kind of an impact today, because so much
is being created.
And you mentioned that greater--
that you felt at the time, and this is, again, 2011,
so this is a long time ago, that greater collaboration will change this.
So how do you feel about that now?
And what are you doing to kind of help with that greater collaboration
to exist, so that an Ableton session or track could involve 50 people?
Is that something that's still in your mind?
That's a tall order.
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
I think the way of collaboration that made
something amazing like the Thriller album possible
also is based on a model of collaboration that's
well understood and known.
So there's so many decades and centuries preceding
the event of this album being recorded that has
built the structures and the processes for people to work together.
I mean, that alone makes it possible for 50 people
to meaningfully contribute on one thing.
And they didn't spend years doing it.
I mean, they came to a session, did their thing, walked away
and it was phenomenal.
And I think what we are--
it would be asking a little much to think we could pull off
something like shortcutting all this building of processes and structures.
I think we're more interested in trying some new ones,
or helping try some new ones.
Like we're really interested in what happens when
people collaborate with electronics.
Music that may find a totally different way of collaborating.
Like, the traditional model that leads up to an album like Thriller
is in a way, really hierarchical.
There's someone that wrote the song.
And then that's a piece of input, but then there's the producer at the top.
And they hire all the other people.
And you know it works.
So nothing wrong with it.
Like a symphony orchestra has a conductor for a reason, yada yada.
But now we are really looking at how does free improv work?
How does a lot of jazz work?
And I find that inspiring.
Like, there's totally different models that don't have that notion of we
even know what we're going to make.
We go into this blank, and let's see what happens.
And I come from that tradition somehow myself musically.
Not through jazz or mastering an instrument,
but I come from this through electronics.
But it's the only way I've ever meaningfully made music.
It was only ever with somebody in a jam.
And I think there's much more to explore there.
Yeah, I think one of the things that's interesting about when producers
would go into the studio back in the day,
their job was to capture a performance.
Whereas what you're building towards, and what I see people using it for
is to actually create something that could never be potentially performed,
or would require hundreds of people to perform it.
And that's really interesting.
So on the business side of things, this is a question from Lauren
[? Delench. ?] How do you help your team at Ableton do their best work,
and be the most productive?
So more on the business side.
Whoa.
That's a big question.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's more and more, because it's
a large organization at this point, I think
the best contribution I feel I can make is in what they nebulously
call creating alignment.
I think it's really about somehow bringing us
all back on the same page about why do we even show up at work every day.
Do you ask that question?
Yeah, a lot.
Sure, sure.
I mean, I think it really is down to establishing meaning.
And maybe already, when it comes to breaking it
down to what they will do on a given day, that's far beyond my capacity.
Because I'm not good at this.
But I hope that raising these conversations
and having them again and again with people--
they will change my mind.
And this happens.
I get a lot of influence through this.
But I also stand a chance to make them ask
questions about what they do every day.
And maybe they find out that they should be doing something else,
and that's then good, and important, because it
may lead to a change in their work or in the organization that is needed.
So it really is more about trying to connect our mission with the work.
Yeah.
So this is a question, again, another one from Lauren [? Delench, ?]
who is asking good ones right now.
How do you structure your product roadmap?
How do you make decisions about what's in the pipeline six months from now
to five years from now?
And I'd ask-- as a person who has run companies, I like this--
how often do you hit the mark when you really go far out?
It's hard.
Because we make few products.
I mean, up until Push which was what--
I forgot.
We only made one product, really.
2014, I think it was.
Thank you, Benji.
So I mean, at this point, we make two products, and they're tightly related.
I think if you are living in that sort of environment,
it's not like you have so many shots.
And there is a lot of scrutiny, and I can tell you in honesty,
we fail an awful lot.
And our pride is in not shipping the failures.
But there is no way you can sort of analyze yourself out
of all the unknowns.
You have to often really go there, and go also far ways, and then find out
it doesn't work for some reason, then cut it off.
And this causes lots of pain and frustration,
and that's part of our reality too.
But there's a--
I mean, to answer the question better--
we do try this of course.
And we have--
I guess what we try to do is per some rough learnings,
we try to separate as good as we can the concerns of what
is the core business that pays for the bills,
that we try to build out, and evolve, and maintain from new initiatives that
are nascent and emerging.
And we try to develop these in a somewhat different mode,
but in such a way that they're protected from the core business and vice versa.
And then we also pursue some really long shots, fantasies,
destinations that are not even clear as for how might that ever be a product.
But that's also part of the activity.
And somehow, the art is in not mixing up these levels.
We've gotten ourselves into unnecessary pain by doing this.
Like, if you come from a startup mindset,
where everything is about the next thing,
like you're only ever thinking about what's next,
and you make everybody directed at the thing that's next
then you are not somehow naturally working in these parallel tracks.
And this is something we had to learn that was super important.
So without telling me what's on it, what does your roadmap look like?
Is it five years out?
Is it two years out?
Do you have like--
because just from my experience, I had the road map.
Basically, if I wanted a feature built, if it went on the action plan,
it was going to happen.
If it went on the road map, it would never happen.
So if someone said that sounds great, I'll put it on the road map,
I knew that that was basically the scrap heap.
[LAUGHTER]
So I had an action plan and a roadmap as two separate things.
What's your method for that?
Yeah, I think there's meaningful compartmentalization.
So there's Live 9 now.
And I'm not giving away a big secret when I say there will be Live 10.
And the people that make Live 10 have a great deal
of autonomy in how they choose what to do.
So this is nothing messing with in any way of detail.
I will look at what comes out, and I will offer my opinions and feedback
and so on, just like everybody else as a concerned user, so to say.
But this isn't something I'm trying to actively steer.
It's more where I get involved is the road map.
This will be indeed looking at the next five years, 10 years, even.
And when you speak of 10 years, then you're not speaking of
and we're going to make a product X, and it's going to ship in 2027, May.
It's more like what would be the topics we need to investigate,
or where do we need to get our feet wet to even learn about this area
that we think is interesting?
So of course it gets more concrete the closer it gets.
Yeah, so action plan versus the road map because that's
the one that I've got, yeah.
So you said before-- this is a question from [? Gerard ?] [? Lahey. ?] You said
that this was your first real job, and that it will hopefully be your last.
If you hadn't created Ableton, what do you think you would be doing now?
Yeah.
That's a big hypothetical question.
I'm sometimes thinking I owe everything to music.
I think if I hadn't found music, without a Jean-Michel Jarre record actually,
and everything that ensued, I could be in a really difficult place in life.
I was not set up to be a happy achiever.
I'm an unlikely CEO, and somehow an oddity in this.
And I think it only worked because of music,
and everything happened through music.
I met the right people through music.
I got the right kind of drive to do anything.
I got interested in learning through music.
I got interested in work through music.
That's why I'm so adamant about music needs to be taught.
It needs to be brought to kids.
It's a scandal that music is so neglected in school now, especially
in the States, but here too.
Yeah.
And I remember in the video that you showed
at BIME, which I'd love for you to send them a link to it
here, if that's doable.
But can you talk about the educational initiatives
that you are really passionate about if you wouldn't mind?
Yeah, I mean, there's--
maybe because I have a kid for seven years now--
you kind of become more aware of this than when I was younger.
There's a real problem with music education.
Because a lot of what happens in music education
now is it looks like unless you have by the time you get to high school
already picked up an instrument and had lessons, and gotten into a groove,
you drop out.
Like, high school will do nothing for you.
High school will offer you a continuation of that path
if you're already on it, which often means if you had the privilege
to be exposed earlier.
And if you didn't, then there's nothing.
And I think we need to find new ways to engage kids throughout school,
and show them what kind of happiness and excitement they can get out of music.
And I think this is something I have learned
through witnessing what pioneering educators are doing in class with tools
like we make them.
And it's just something we found as a cause that we totally need to support.
The thing that in practice we did, we made Push, a physical instrument,
that really goes meaningfully well with Ableton Live.
And when the second generation of that was coming around,
we decided that for us to offer people that
already owned the first Push to buy it back from them, refurbish the units,
and donate them to schools and educators.
And we had a really huge amount of Pushes come back to us,
and they're now all in place, I think.
We're done.
So they are now used in schools worldwide.
And I think this summer, we will report back to people.
That's awesome.
We're going to show people what happened to the Push.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
What kind of talk it's doing in their field.
Yeah.
So two questions that came in online here.
This is a question from [? Mark ?] [? Hanna. ?] I have no idea about this.
I love Ableton.
Can you use Ableton Light with the looping modules, question mark,
question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark?
Mark, I'm not sure I know what the looping modules are.
I don't either.
OK, in that case, question from Pat Healy.
Please describe the first time you tried out Ableton Live with samples.
What were the first samples you used to break in the brand-new software you
helped create?
[LAUGHTER]
That's a good one.
I think basic channel.
I put in basic channel music.
And you can tell you why, because it's so forgiving to time stretching.
You don't hear the artifacts so bad, because it's so noisy.
That was part of it, Like the first NEM Show demo or something.
Very cool.
OK, I read that you never felt at home on stage and playing live.
And yet you called your product Live, and it's facilitated thousands
of people playing live.
Was that conscious in your mind?
Yeah.
I mean, we wanted thinking of Live as the name
to literally describe the use case.
It was more like the way we as musicians went about making music,
was as if it was on a stage with an audience in the room.
And it was actually never really different,
whether the music making happened in the studio or on stage.
So really, it was like as if live.
And maybe at the time, we were just enjoying the contrast
with Logic, which was prevalent DAW at the time, and still is.
And I thought like, what is the opposite of Logic?
And Live, actually.
Oh, that's very cool.
Yeah, so I read, or actually, in an interview that you said--
and I don't mean to get political, but this country
is currently, in America, is not so crazy about bringing immigrants
in at the moment.
But you have hired people from all over the world.
You help them with visas, accommodation, et cetera.
What's your thinking here?
I mean, has that been a wise move?
Has it paid off, in terms of investing in people from other countries?
I think it's our lifeblood.
We would not exist otherwise, clearly.
I mean, we are lucky in that we have a pretty global reach.
We don't recruit via usual means.
Most of the amazing people that end up here
come through somehow use of the product, or knowing
someone who uses the product.
And that's somehow their awareness.
So this has an impetus to tap talent from all over the world.
And I think otherwise, it would be impossible to do what we're doing.
I don't know how that's going to work out for you guys
over your current political climate.
Yeah, no, it's been on a lot of people's minds, obviously.
Because I judged at SXSW, the hackathon.
And I saw girls, boys from all over the world building things.
And my first thought was if we don't make
where we are accommodating to them, there are plenty
of places that will have them go.
And was something that just happened?
Was it conscious?
What was your sort of--
I mean, as a CEO, that's a decision you've got to make,
to invest in these men and women.
I think it happened quite organically.
Because you simply look at the resumes that you receive.
And you find, wow, there's a really amazing one here
from a person in India.
And there's a really fantastic talent that you can maybe
track from the Silicon Valley.
Well, it's naturally what you end up doing.
And then you push through and pursue that.
It's not too hard.
Like here in Germany, there's bureaucracy, like everywhere.
But we deal with it pretty well.
It's not too complicated.
Yep.
That's brilliant.
And then as far as--
this is a question from [? Macabre2007. ?] Will Ableton 10
please have a counterpoint tool that helps people
through all the different species of counterpoint automatically?
Whoa.
That would be awesome.
[LAUGHTER]
Thanks for the suggestion.
I think it is awesome.
All the more because to be perfectly honest,
I'm not mastering counterpoint at all.
I could.
OK.
So there we go, you're building the product as it goes live.
How many traditional musicians work at Ableton, roughly?
Like, sort of old school.
I don't want to say old school, because that's the wrong way of looking at it.
But like, more traditionally backed.
I went, I learned a musician, I got an instrument, I got really good at it,
and now I went digital.
I don't have the statistics, but I would think the majority.
Most people here are like--
I mean, it's like a lot of people that sing in the choir.
And lots of people come here who are into music, not necessarily electronic.
OK, well what do you do?
I feel like a splendid computer science guy, and you love music.
This is an interesting place to check in.
Yeah.
So you mentioned that you wanted to put as small of an obstacle as possible
between the creator and the music.
So this was from a 2011 interview, so I'm calling you from back in the day.
So in terms of ease of use and speed of creation,
do you think you've achieved that goal?
Do you think that you've kind of become a thin skin between them?
I think it's not like we do this.
I think it's the person themselves, in a way.
And frankly, you can achieve that with anything.
It's your choice of instrument.
Like, if you choose to pick up Ableton Live or Push, and make that yours,
my recommendation would always be don't go too wide.
Like, if you try to be fantastic at mastering everything that's out there,
you will never be really fluent.
Or you will not have motor memory with every piece of hardware out there.
At least, I find that hard to imagine.
So I guess it's more like if you pick something and spend enough time with it
to get fluent, really good, at some point, the thing itself goes
away, and becomes more transparent.
Yeah.
I mean, there's nothing we feel like we can
provide a total shortcut for, I think.
No, it's interesting, because obviously, that performer/creator to execution
is something that you live and breathe in that workflow.
And I remember in the interview, you were
saying we want to keep it as fluid as possible.
Have you achieved that, do you think?
Like, was that a goal that you still have?
And do you benchmark it?
It's an endless goal.
And I think that you can do better on this forever.
I mean, I think we've done some stuff I'm proud of.
Like, for example, when I think of Link, I actually
think that goes a long way at making a really
fluent, non-disruptive collaborative experience possible.
And it does really not much, if you think about it.
It just takes care of a small, small, small detail of the whole thing.
It's like entirely technical, like, just how
to stay in time between these different clocks.
But it does it.
It just takes the problem away, and let's
some people engage in a more fulfilling part of the whole challenge.
Yeah.
I think the challenge never goes away.
That's the bad news.
Yeah.
Something always is hard.
No, definitely.
So it's impossible to ask what your top five recordings are.
But let's say in the top 50 recordings in your life, have any of them
been made using your product?
That you would go, for the rest of my life, these--
like, if you had to go away, and you could
take 50 sort of recordings of your favorite things,
apart from Jean-Michel Jarre, obviously.
Hopefully the live show, where he played the lights.
But have any been made with Ableton?
Because I mean, as I said at the beginning of the interview,
one of my top 10 all-time recordings was made using a lot of Ableton software.
Yeah, I would say so.
There would be some.
Yeah.
I mean, definitely.
What would I take with me to the lonely island?
That would be a lot of music that existed
before there was any Ableton product.
But I would take some [? Mr. ?] [? Comic ?] with me.
That's Live stuff, for example.
Yeah.
And what are your thoughts on being a CEO?
Would you recommend it to people?
I mean, obviously some people listening to this
are from entrepreneurship classes, and are maybe thinking
of building their own software.
What do you think of being a CEO?
I love it.
I think it's a great job.
I mean, I don't know if I can recommend it, you know.
It's a weird job in many ways.
I think it has a big disadvantage, in that it
tends to alienate you from people.
It has somehow a built-in problem of distance that you cannot,
by the nature of it, overcome.
So that's the price you pay, somehow, for it.
But the reward is huge.
I mean, you get to oversee a lot of different things,
and you learn at an incredible rate.
Because you get exposed to so many different things, and variety ,
and like, a system, a huge system.
And with all the variety of concerns, people, technology, economy, I mean,
that's really rich.
It's a universe.
Yep.
Do you do you still make music?
Yeah.
And would you release it commercially, or is it just--
No.
No way.
I wouldn't play with you.
[LAUGHTER]
So you haven't got a secret name in which you push stuff out
on the SoundCloud, or anywhere?
No?
No way.
And do you play it for your 7-year-old?
He plays his own.
Yeah?
He doesn't care for mine, you know.
But he hears it.
He loves Push.
Like, he loves to play on the Push.
Right.
And what was the name of the artist you mentioned,
[? Mr. ?] [? Comic, ?] was it?
Yeah.
[? Mr. ?] [? Comic. ?] OK, cool.
So [? Mark ?] [? Hanna ?] updated his question here.
He said, I love Ableton, can you use Ableton Light with the looping modules?
He says sorry, live performance looping is
what I meant with the Ableton Live intro package.
OK, gotcha.
OK, so that's a good question.
I'm afraid I don't think this is possible.
So Mark, what you actually want to use, is within Live,
there's a device called Looper.
And that's the thing that most people use for doing what like a looper pedal
would do.
And it's like a looper pedal on steroids.
And I don't think that's included with Live Intro.
I think that comes with standard and up.
But I'm not entirely sure, I'm sorry.
That's OK.
Because he said, I know Ed Sheeran uses Ableton to power
his famous Mr. Chewie looper, using it live at the Grammys.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Yeah.
I'm sorry I don't have a firm answer on this one.
I'd have to look it up.
That's OK, we'll have to ask Ed as well.
What are you reading right now?
Do you read a lot?
Yeah, I unwind reading a lot.
Let's see, what's on my desk now?
I have a massive book about India.
It was a present from a friend from India.
I guess I would say the last book that really moved me in a deep
and I would recommend everybody on the planet to read,
because it concerns everybody, is Sapiens.
Yeah.
Like a short history of mankind.
Yeah.
Really insightful and enjoyable.
Yeah.
And do you think reading's a part of it?
I mean, one of the things--
I've been a CEO-- actually, I'm a CEO again,
twice now, reluctantly, I might add, most of the time.
It was always tough for me.
But I find that I have to have books continuously to keep me A,
fresh on the business side, but B, also to kind of, as you say,
to unwind, and not think about the job at hand.
I think there's different personalities.
Some people have a need for a huge amount of input,
but also the capacity to process it.
And other people like myself have a very high sensitivity,
so I can't even use a lot of input.
I have to be very selective in what I let in, because it always leaves a much
bigger impact, if you see what I mean.
So I have to tune in carefully, into what I actually want to absorb.
And then that's why often, if I read a business book,
it always moves me, somehow.
So I want to be sure I read the right business book, so I don't
get moved too much by random things.
Some really bad ideas.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah.
So this question from [? Chris ?] [? Keene, ?] when you first developed
Ableton, what was your main goal?
Were you trying to develop a powerful DAW that could compete with Pro Tools?
Or from the start, were you envisioning creating
such a tool that would revolutionize the art of electronic music, where
the app could be used not only to produce songs,
but also used in live settings with barely any limitations?
No, I think it was so that we expected--
I mean, it's maybe a little bit like now, what do you know about the future?
You know a few things.
You know that at some point, cars won't need a driver.
And you know they will be all-electric.
And so given that you know all this, there's
a couple things you can do now that make sense,
and that sort of have a meaningful trajectory towards that.
And at our time, I think it was entirely clear that at some point,
you would not, for reasons of technical capacity,
need anything else but a computer to make a piece of music.
So with that backdrop, we could ask the question
what made software enable us to do in that setting?
And then of course, you arrive at different answers then.
Well, I mean, we could use it to record a song that somebody wrote.
Of course, then you ask OK, then well, I guess
they could use it to write the song.
They could use it to play the song.
They could use it to record and everything.
And it becomes a much wider scope.
So somehow, that grandiosity was there from the beginning.
Yeah.
So I want to ask a question--
and this is something that [? Macabre2007 ?] was
asking, about how the company began.
And we did cover a lot of that.
But one of the things that would occur to me, is if you were to look back,
and you would say analog recording and its limitations, potentially,
led to the creation of what you've built.
So how do you feel about the AI and machine-learned creation of music?
And do you feel that in one sense, what you've created
is then going to morph towards that more AI side?
I mean, you mentioned self-driving cars.
From the horse and cart to the car to the self-driving car,
do you see AI and machine learning as a threat, as something interesting,
is something usable?
What's your thought?
No, I think the angle that I find most convincing with AI
in regards to the arts, is learning.
Like, I could think that it would be like--
to the question that the gentleman asked before,
about can Live 10 support counterpoint.
I think it would be awesome if somehow we could not write counterpoint
for people, because that seems meaningless to me,
but if there was ways to help people write meaningful counterpoint.
I don't want to say this is about assistance.
I think it's really more about learning and teaching.
And you could think that AI could play a big role there,
selecting what is the meaningful thing for people to take in next.
But also involving in meaningful interactions with people around what
they do.
Because it's interesting, because one of the things
that there's been several reports now about how automation and machine
learning is going to replace the low end, 35%, the high end,
48% of all jobs.
And I know that there's certain companies who are literally
creating machines that will make music.
And I wonder if we would look at-- in the same way that we would look up
parts of songs, or samples as a way of taking what someone else has done--
maybe you would say I need the machine to build this bit,
I'm going to build this bit, and I'm going to take what the machine's built
and remix it.
Like, do you have people in your team kind of thinking about this stuff?
Do you see it percolate up to you where you are?
Not really.
I don't think this is--
we don't have a product in the works around that.
Let's say I'm not worried that AI will take away the fascination for people
to create.
I think if anything, it will raise it, or will help raise the bar.
It will help people to break through experiences, because it somehow
interacts with them in meaningful ways.
But I don't think that even if you had algorithms
that could write better music than people,
people wouldn't still want to stop writing music.
It's just something that we need to do.
It's a need, I think, for humans to write music or create music,
like it's a need to be creative.
Gerhard, that's the best response I've heard to that question.
Because it's coming.
Every industry faces it, as far as I see it.
And I think that you're absolutely right, that people are
going to need to always search that.
So this question just came in from Dr. [? Hoffman ?] live,
and we've only got a couple of minutes, and I always
end with the same question, which I'll do.
But great talk.
I wish Ableton would not be so hard to the eye.
I find the GUI to be really tiring to work with for long hours a day.
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Sorry, Dr. Hoffman.
Yeah, I mean, sorry us.
Because we really try hard, you know?
It's always been a big focus to avoid that.
And well, let's see.
I hope you will be happier soon.
But it's difficult to get right for everybody.
Yep.
Sure.
And I'm sure it's subjective as well.
So I end every interview with this question.
And it was a question that was asked of me.
And this is music industry related, so if you feel it's not for you,
that's totally cool.
But if you could wave a magic wand and change
anything about the music industry as you know it, what would it be?
I mean, think of all the creators that you work with.
It could be to help them.
It could be to education.
It would be-- if you could wave a magic wand, and just change that.
I think it will be pre-industry.
My wish for change would be to bring the joy of music
making to kids at a time when it can have massive influence,
and develop mental outlook, even beyond music.
Like I said, I think being exposed to the potential
to create music that you love can have a profound impact on your intellect,
your emotional outlook.
It's huge.
I think even like, social implications, friendship.
I think there's so much in music that's good for people
that we need to use it better.
Brilliant.
Thank you.
Gerhard, thank you so much for your time and your insight.
I really appreciate it.
I want to thank the Berklee team, Josh, who's running the controls here.
Mike King, Jesse Borkowski, [? Jonna ?] Jackson, Kayley Kravitz, Pat Healy,
and of course, the amazing team.
Thank you for listening.
And Gerhard, really appreciate it.
Thank you, Benji.
Thank you for having me.
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