The more interesting sound packs are what Ableton calls “curated collections”: sets loosely grouped around a common music theme that capture “the musical threads that tie together evolving styles and scenes”.Ībleton has produced six in total: Chop and Swing, a collection based on old-school hip-hop sampling a dark techno collection called Punch and Tilt Drive and Glow, a collection of indie pop sounds Glitch and Wash, which is loosely inspired by IDM and ambient music a UK bass and club music collection called Skitter and Step and Build and Drop, the most overtly ‘commercial’ of the set, covering EDM and trap sounds. These are useful things to have, but fairly vanilla (three of them are also only part of the more expensive Live 10 Suite). The bread and butter of Live 10’s sound content comes in the form of four packs of samples and presets covering acoustic drums (Drum Booth), drum machines (Drum Essentials), vintage synths (Synth Essentials) and multi-sampled electric pianos and organs (Electric Keyboards). I’ve avoided sound and sample packs in the past because they usually feel too genre-specific, but Ableton’s approach in Live 10 is different: a genre-agnostic take on sound content that encourages experimentation rather than forcing users into a restrictive, pre-defined box. What I didn’t expect to be quite so useful are Live’s included sound packs. Why Ableton’s new “curated collections” are some of Live 10’s most useful tools.Ībleton Live 10 does a lot of things right: its new Wavetable synth, the brilliantly weird Echo effect and Pedal, a versatile guitar pedal-inspired sonic mangler, are all some of the best things to come out of Ableton’s Berlin HQ in years.