Max for Live
Max for Live puts the vast creative potential of the Max development environment directly inside of Live. It powers a range of instruments and effects. And for those who want to go further, it lets you customize devices, create your own from scratch, and explore another world of devices produced by the Max for Live community.
Design your system
Create and customize
Max for Live is a platform to build your own instruments and effects, tools for live performance and visuals, and much more. You can open up any of Live’s Max devices, see how they’re built, and change them to meet your needs. You can build your own from scratch using the same components. And you can even use Max to change the way Live works, including the properties of tracks, clips and scenes.
Extend Live
Max for Live can completely change how Live interacts with all things external. Reconfigure connections to hardware controllers & synthesizers. Route audio to multiple sets of speakers from your Live project. Use Live to control physical objects like motors and lights using Arduino, OSC and other technologies—there are infinite possibilities for connection and control between Live and the world surrounding it.
Join a community of device builders
There’s a constantly growing collection of instruments, effects and tools. From curious tinkerers to professional designers, Max for Live’s worldwide community makes high-performance effects, customised hacks and everything in between. You can share your own, or just enjoy using the work of others.
Bengal – Combining the textural intricacy of FM with the freeform approach of a modular system, Bengal is a sound designer’s dream with its four operators, eight voices of polyphony, six audio effects and a flexible modulation architecture centred on an interactive virtual patchbay.
Grain Scanner – Grain Scanner lets you design experimental noises, glitchy effects, alien textures and massive clouds of ambience. Its advanced sound engine turns any sample into a blank slate for otherworldly synth parts.
FlexGroove – FlexGroove is a Max for Live device for off-the-grid MIDI sequencing. Give parts an expressive push and pull, fluidly transition from one time signature to another, or play with unconventional swing patterns.
PitchLoop89 – Create jittery glitch effects, delayed digital shimmers and outlandish vibrato with this Max for Live pitch shifting device created in collaboration with Robert Henke and inspired by the Publison DHM 89 – an early digital effects processor. It’s a flexible tool to add character to sounds in the studio, or for in-the-moment experimentation onstage.
Vector Grain – A granular looper that visualizes sound modulation by moving particles on the interface – play with attraction and magnetism or loop the particles through a flow field.
Tree Tone – Grow different fractal patterns inspired by plants, then use them as resonators for internally generated noise or incoming audio.
Bouncy Notes – Bounce balls up and down a piano roll to create pitch shifting delay effects or arpeggiation with this gravity-based MIDI sequencer.
Devices made by Ableton
In addition to the devices built by the Max for Live community, you’ll also find Max for Live devices in Live built by us. These devices are available right in the Live 11 Browser together with Live’s native Instruments and Effects. Included in the list are LFO, MIDI Monitor, the Drum Synth collection among many others.
Gated Delay – A delay with a gate sequencer that sends the incoming signal to a delay line on activated steps. Much like a send effect that is turned on and off in a defined rhythm.
Bass – A monophonic virtual analog synthesizer that provides the entire palette of bass sounds in one device – from classically deep and clean to heavily distorted, rumbling tones.
Color Limiter – Another flavor of limiting inspired by the gritty sounds achievable with hardware limiters. The Saturation and Color parameters are the key to its characterful sound.
Pitch Hack – A single delay line with transposition control, as well as the ability to reverse audio, randomize the transposition interval and fold the delayed signal back into itself.
Surround Panner – Multichannel Panning device for surround mixing with multi-channel speaker setups.
CV Clock In – Control Live’s tempo from your Eurorack system.
CV Utility – Merge multiple modulation signals to generate new shapes.
Convolution Reverb – Capture the characteristic reverb of real physical spaces with advanced sound shaping.
Shaper – A flexible envelope modulation device for creating custom modulation shapes.
LFO – An LFO with sync to modulate up to eight device parameters with one device.
Envelope Follower – Use the envelope of any audio material to control device parameters.
MIDI Monitor – Monitor your MIDI data stream.
Built on Max
What is Max?
For more than 20 years, Max has been an essential platform for artists and creatives who want to explore the limits of what’s possible with music, visuals and technology.
