UTC +1
Design for Music Making at Ableton
Since 2015 I’ve worked as a product designer for musical instruments and audio effects at Ableton, focused on the music production software Live — a creative tool that has influenced music culture for over 20 years. My role ranges from leadership and facilitation to hands-on interface design work:
- As a Principal Designer in the Sound Unit leading design of instruments and effects
- As an individual contributor designing features for Ableton Live
- As a member of the Design Domain supporting Ableton’s system of products
This page is a general overview of that work, with a small selection of example projects.
Design Leadership in Sound Unit
Ableton’s Sound Unit creates instruments and effects for Ableton’s system of products. As Sound Unit’s Principal Designer I’m responsible for providing high-level UX/UI guidance, including developing design principles, formalizing design rituals, supporting designers, and ensuring a high standard of design output.
Role: Principal Designer
Auto Shift
Auto Shift is an audio effect for real-time vocal pitch correction. While pitch correction (often referred to as “Auto Tune”) has become a staple in modern music production, it had long been absent from Live’s built-in effects. We delivered a version with the qualities native to Live: simple, creative, and fun to use.
Role: Individual Contributor, UI/UX Design
Auto Shift on Push
Auto Shift was also adapted to Push, Ableton’s hardware controller. This required expanding Push’s design system to support Auto Shift’s unique input requirements, ensuring a coherent experience across differing but complimentary interfaces.
Meld
Meld is a powerful, dual-engine synthesizer designed to deliver instant gratification while offering deep control for advanced users. Sound on Sound magazine said: “... it looks simple, but its well‑crafted component parts quickly assemble themselves into surprisingly versatile generators of sonic material.”
Role: Individual Contributor, UI/UX Design
Meld's various oscillator types have a significant influence on its sound, so it was important for us to highlight their different qualities. For some icons we prioritized communicating a particular technical characteristic, while for others a more evocative quality was chosen. These were done in collaboration with Kostya Kazhev.
Drift
Drift is a subtractive synthesizer with a unique non-linear character inspired by classic analog hardware. It’s also the first designed specifically for Ableton’s system of products, making it our most widely accessible instrument. Free with Live 11.3, Drift is also included in both the Move hardware and Note iOS app.
Role: Individual Contributor, UI/UX Design
Drift on Push
Drift, like Auto Shift, was adapted for Push. A prominent waveform display contributes to the instrument’s identity while providing real-time visual feedback. Its streamlined control set keeps interaction simple, immediate, and musical.
Live Design System
The Live Design System is a comprehensive library of interface patterns, developed collaboratively by designers in the Live and Sound Units. Since its inception in 2023, I’ve helped to contribute components, write documentation, review submissions, and refactor Live’s color system.
Role: Individual Contributor, UI/UX Design
Supporting a System of Products
As a Principal Designer I contribute to Ableton’s Design Domain, a team of representatives from Ableton’s system of products: Live, Push, Move, and Note. Our work is focused on coherence and quality — similar features are adapted to different contexts, making for complex design challenges. The Design Domain addresses dependencies, constraints, opportunities, and provides resources and guidance.
Role: Principal Designer
