A new Ableton Live game wants to turn your next creative block into five minutes of play: producer and educator Chuck Sutton has released Take 5: The Search for Sound, a title that runs entirely inside the DAW so many electronic producers already call home.
Gamers have spent years porting Doom to almost anything with a screen, but a full game living within an Ableton project is a new twist. Sutton sums it up as “a game you play by listening”, and that’s literal. There are no graphics to speak of. You move, find things and react using only your ears.
How the Ableton Live game works
Each session lasts about five minutes, set in a world you only hear. Walk through forests and your footsteps sound out as you go, while distant sounds get louder as you move toward them. In one kind of encounter you play a short melody, the game plays back a variation and you have to repeat it. Get it right and you’re rewarded with a burst of music plus fresh material to take into your own tracks.
Other encounters bring enemies that you find by stereo position, judging whether they sit to your left or right before you target them. Taking them down sets off unexpected effects. Along the way you pick up melodies, synth sounds and MIDI clips you can drop into a project, which is the whole point. Sutton says the game is designed to hand you ideas you would never have come up with yourself.
Stock devices only, no plugins
Take 5 isn’t a standalone app or a plugin. It ships as an Ableton Live project and is built only from Live’s stock devices, with no third-party plugins required. You need Live 12.4.1 or later in the Standard or Suite edition. According to the official site, Suite versions for Live 10 and 11 are on the way. It’s a $25 instant download.
If the name rings a bell, Sutton made the demo song for Live 12. He also runs a popular production tutorial channel on YouTube and has appeared on Ableton’s Doing Music podcast, where he talked about getting more out of Live’s built-in devices. That same approach is all over Take 5: everything in it is something you already own, just used in a way you probably haven’t tried.
For producers stuck on a loop that won’t turn into a track, it’s a fun alternative to scrolling through sample packs.
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