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Dawbrain

Changelog · September 7, 2026

What's new: automation, locators, and arrangements that build themselves

Abstract pattern of an automation envelope with breakpoints, a row of section markers beneath it, and arrangement lanes filling in section by section with the last still forming, in blue on a light background

Four weeks of shipping since the last update. The short version: Dawbrain writes automation now, marks your sections in one pass, and can build a whole arrangement from a form you describe in a sentence.

Automation

Ask for a filter sweep and you get one. Dawbrain writes breakpoints onto a clip parameter’s envelope: a filter opening over eight bars, a riser, a volume shape under the vocal.

Breakpoints interpolate linearly, so two make a ramp and a handful make a curve. Ask for a change and the rest of the envelope survives; ask it to start clean and it clears that parameter first. On an Arrangement clip it empties the envelope instead of deleting it, so the clip stays automatable afterwards.

Two limits worth knowing. It won’t automate pitch: Live truncates Transpose and Detune to whole semitones and cents, so a glide comes out as a staircase, and Dawbrain tells you that rather than writing it. And it can’t read an envelope back across a range yet, so “show me what the filter is doing” is still a question for your eyes.

Locators

Ask for markers and you get all of them at once. Give Dawbrain the section map, intro through outro, and it creates and names every Arrangement locator in one pass instead of walking the playhead bar by bar.

Running the same map again is safe: a bar that already has a locator gets renamed, not removed. One caveat. A marker you dropped slightly off the bar line may not be recognized as that bar’s, so check hand-placed ones afterwards.

Arrangements that build themselves

Describe the form and Dawbrain builds it. Say 8 bars of intro, 16 of main, 8 of breakdown, 16 of drop, 8 out, and it plans the whole thing, then writes every clip for every role in one go: drums, bass, chords, melody. Point each role at a track, or leave it and Dawbrain makes the track.

Because it plans before it writes, the sections relate to each other. The breakdown is the same material thinned rather than a different idea, and the chord progression fits each section’s length instead of stopping mid-phrase.

Intensity, one number

Density used to mean naming a genre that happened to be sparser. Now it’s a number, and it means the same thing to the drums, the bass and the melody at once. Turn it down and the hat line thins, the bass drops its passing notes, the melody keeps the notes that carry the phrase. Same part, quieter, not a different part.

A few more things in the generators. You can ask for fills, and if the pattern leaves no room for one, Dawbrain says so instead of writing a fill you’ll never hear. Half-time and double-time apply to the groove you already have, so you can flip the feel without regenerating the part. Chord progressions follow your project’s scale. And the 808 slides properly, through the instrument’s own pitch envelope.

Audio generation

Describe a sound and Dawbrain renders it into your Set. A one-shot up to ten seconds, an instrumental loop up to a minute, or a whole song up to three minutes. It arrives on a track a minute or two later, named after what you asked for, ready to warp and chop like any other sample.

Say where it goes and it goes there: a new audio track by default, an existing one by name, or the Arrangement at a bar you name. It renders in the background, so the conversation is yours while you wait, and it lands as a single undo step.

One credit for a one-shot, two for a loop, three for a song, and a generation that fails costs nothing. The full post has the rest, including where it is still rough.

Learn Ableton in your own session

There’s a new Learn page and a fuller Getting Started guide, both for people still finding their way around Live.

The Learn page is about teaching inside your own session: Dawbrain explains the move on your sounds, you do the clicking, then it reads your set back and tells you what landed. Getting Started is the shorter path: first run, eleven prompts to try, what a request costs and how to undo it.

Four tutorials went up too, each a technique you can follow with or without Dawbrain: finding the 200-500 Hz buildup, level-matching a reference track, sidechaining kick and bass, and finishing a track by shipping it at 70 percent.

Also shipped

Install Dawbrain, describe a song form at it, and email info@dawbrain.com with what breaks.