I would get up in the morning, work on it until like 10pm, 11pm and then I would go to bed.

From classics to curiosity and where melodies meet meaning welcome.

All right, welcome back, everybody.

Excited to be back.

Today's guest is an amazing guy who's been doing some great work in the music industry and causing a lot of noise, making a lot of noise and getting a lot of people really excited about the product that you're offering.

So let's talk about.

This is your second time here, so welcome back.

Leo Bernard.

It's good to have you from Able Set.

If you're not familiar with that, you will be by the end of this.

But if you know, you definitely know.

So, yeah, welcome back, man.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

Looking forward to catching up.

I know it's been a little while since we last chatted and some things have definitely changed recently, so I thought this would be a good time just to catch up and see what you've been up to.

You recently dropped Able Set three, so I definitely want to talk through some of the features and some of the ideas behind that and what people have looked to look forward to.

But I guess maybe just for anyone who hasn't heard or is not familiar with your work, maybe you can just give like an overview of what ableset really is and who it's for.

We can go from there, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Ableset, so at its core is a set list manager for Ableton Live that can be used by bands, by playback engineers, people like that, to more easily manage the songs that you have in your live project and control your playback from any device on stage.

So that might be a phone or a tablet or another computer, as long as it's connected to the same network.

But that's just the basics and there's lots of features stacked on top of that.

So if you need a teleprompter for lyrics, for example, or if you need a performance overview where you can see the current song and some notes and stuff like that, those are all things stacked on top of these basic setlist features.

So I guess that was the original idea.

What was the first iteration like?

Is it pretty much what you just described there?

Exactly.

So the first iteration, I think that wasn't even available as a.

As an app, but that was just like a beta product that I developed for my own band.

It just took the locators in the Live set and turned them into a set list that you could see in your browser.

So you can just, you know, jump to songs, but you couldn't even like rearrange songs or remove songs from the set list.

It was just like a one to one mirror of, you know, your projectual type of thing.

Yeah, exactly.

And, and I mean, Ableton's a great tool.

Like live is amazing, but it's one of those things where like you use it and there's like, oh man, if only you could do this.

And there's probably all these things that we all thought of.

Ah, you can't do this.

Like even with just ways to loop.

I guess it wasn't even really called Sections.

I don't know.

Did you come up with that?

I know and Abel said it's sections, but just like looping what would be a section or, you know, a part of a song, even just things like that you had to go around.

It was, it wasn't easy.

Definitely.

Yeah, yeah, you came along and you just, you took probably all the ideas that we all had in our heads collectively of, man, I wish I could do this.

If only this were possible, or how do you do this?

And you kind of just started to make it as an evolving thing.

So when you, when you dropped.

I think I came on when you dropped the second edition, that's when I became familiar and there was a lot happening there that was just like, oh my gosh, finally we can do it.

You know, all the set list reordering and just the things that.

It seems so simple now, but we're just game changers.

So I'm curious, I know I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but I'm just really curious for you to share with us some of the things that changed from version 2 to now 3.

Yeah.

So Eaglesat 3 comes with lots of new features and improvements and lots of little things, but I think the two biggest changes are the new canvas and the new mixer.

So the mixer is basically a feature that allows.

Allows you to specify groups of tracks.

So that could be a click track or the drum stems or the guitar stems.

And then it offers you a user interface that you can use to change the volume or mute some of them or solo them.

So let's say you have a bass stems track for when the bass player can't make it.

And if that's the case, you just unmute it, enable set, and then you're good to go.

Instead of having to go into your Ableton project file and unmuting the right tracks and stuff like that, then the Canvas is, I think, the most advanced feature I've built yet because it allows you to build your own completely Custom user interfaces.

So that means you can add buttons, you can write your own scripts, you can send MIDI to other devices, you can send OSC to other devices.

So you can control, control the entire show if you want to from your tablet.

And that's.

I think that's the two biggest features and the ones that I promoted the most.

But there's lots of smaller things as well.

Like the set list editor has some improvements.

I think it's just a little feature, but it's super useful, is that you can just copy the set list as plain text into your clipboard so you can send it to your bandmates or other people.

And the same works the other way around too.

So if someone sends you a list of songs, you can just copy it and paste it into Able set and it will, you know, find the right songs and put them in the right order.

Just based on the text that you copy in.

Yeah.

Yes.

Just based on the text.

That's.

That's cool.

See there's all these time saving features that's just.

That's cool.

That's cool.

So I mean, you named a handful there that are just like now I feel like you probably on the first couple iterations and updates, you probably like checked all the, a lot of the boxes.

Boxes on things that people were definitely thinking about, if only like I mentioned before.

But now it sounds like you've gone past that and you're like, there's things that maybe nobody was really even thinking about on that level.

We were pretty happy, I think, with what we were able to do last time around.

So I'm wondering what was your development process like?

Do you just constantly just jot down notes of like, maybe this is an idea.

How does it work for you?

And how long did you have these concepts kind of in your mind and under development before you started to.

Before you put it out?

I guess so a lot of the ideas actually come from customers and users.

So there's the ableset forum, which has a feature request category.

So if you go in there, there's lots of ideas that people have.

And I think the canvas came from one of those ideas or just a kind of combination of different ideas that made me think, you know, there's so different ways to use a setist management tool life that, you know, there's not like it's not possible to have one user interface that fits every need.

So I thought, you know, the best way to make it work for everyone is to make it as customizable as possible, which is how the canvas came to Be.

And I think this feature took a bit over a year to really, like, develop and.

Wow.

Feature on its own.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's massive.

That's massive.

Okay.

Yeah, that's cool.

And I mean, so you've really just developed and built a community of users also that, like, must have.

We have a lot of faith in you and your abilities to execute on these ideas.

It was not like, people are like, you know, I'm gonna go do it myself.

Not a chance.

So you're like the guy when it comes to this.

That's neat.

And I imagine then you get a lot of ideas.

I mean, I don't want you to name any because you.

I mean, you can, but I imagine that there's some that you had to cut too.

Like, what's your process?

Deciding between what you keep, what you're going to run with?

Maybe you try some and decide it's not going to work.

Like, how does it.

What's the whole process there?

It's kind of a balance between how many people does this help and how difficult is it to implement.

There are some ideas that are great, but they would only help like a small percentage of users and they would be a lot of work to get right.

And you know that that would be like catering to one specific use case.

Those.

I usually, you know, I try to find workarounds, but I usually don't implement them.

And the ones that are like, immediately, I think, you know, this could be great, is.

Yeah, just ideas that benefit most of the users.

Okay.

And, you know, there's some in between stuff where, like, some features, they might not benefit a lot of people, but it's like an hour of work to add them.

And so it's not too difficult and

it doesn't make sense to just go ahead and get it done.

Exactly.

And I think one thing I always consider as well is how much does this make ableset more difficult for new users?

You can stack feature on feature on feature on feature, but in the end, if as a new user you open the app and you're bombarded with things that you can do, it might be difficult to get started.

And that's what I don't want.

I want new users to feel like it's just a set list, it's easy to get started and then they can dive deeper into the more advanced features.

That makes sense.

Yeah, because it could be overwhelming.

I mean, you're combining two great tools and there's a lot of features between the two as it is.

I could see that coming in and Kind of just freezing and not really being able to make good use and learn quickly.

So that's important too.

But I mean, just based on what you said, because you said the canvas took a year to implement fully, to build design, so that must have.

Was it because it came from, like, it was a common request that you were seeing, like, what made you decide to invest so much time into that specific feature, or did you just believe in it yourself?

I think it's.

Yeah, it's kind of a bit of both.

It's something where I thought this will basically benefit everyone because everyone can build their own user interfaces and everyone can cater it exactly.

To their use case.

But also I really like the feature myself.

That's also a factor.

Yeah, there's a personal connection in there as well.

Makes sense.

And then we're talking about building and growing and I mean, I kind of just skipped over, I mentioned the community, which is, I'm sure has grown significantly over the last few years, but can you talk to us about that?

Like, how much has your community grown and what impact has it had on your work and maybe motivating you too?

What does it look like now?

I don't think I have any numbers in mind, so I can't tell you.

It has grown from this number of users to this number of users, but there have definitely been lots of new users that joined the forum that reached out via email.

And for me, it's just great to see people are using the app and they have different kinds of feedback and maybe they're happy with it, maybe they have some ideas or things that can be improved and this is what motivates me to keep going, basically.

I think if I didn't have that, if I just sold my licenses and didn't have any contact with my customers, it would be a very lonely job.

That's true.

That makes sense.

That makes sense.

There's a lot of feedback and interaction, which is.

I mean, you're a musician and creative yourself, so feedback is important to us.

Definitely.

Crowd reactions, response from, say, your bandmates or management or whoever it is, that stuff helps.

It pushes you along.

Sometimes it's, you know, could you do this?

You can do this better.

Sometimes it's, this is great, but there's a little, you know, so that's important.

It is a motivator.

And I imagine that there are probably a lot more like your community is probably a lot bigger than the amount of people who are active in forums and things like that.

Right.

Some of us.

I'm speaking for myself now.

Because I'm not in the forums, but I'm, you know, I'm watching, I'm using the products and I'm cheering you on.

But also super happy, happy when things release.

And I'm always blown away by some of the, like, the new features that you're coming out with.

So I think that it's.

It's.

Yeah, no, it's really cool what you're doing.

It's really cool.

Are there any features that you thought would be really good but then just didn't make the cut?

Or at least not this time around?

Ooh.

Oh, that's a good question.

Or is that top secret stuff?

No, no, no.

I don't really have secrets when it comes to development.

I'm an open book.

What could that be?

There's always things that I would like to implement, but it's not possible based on limitations.

Maybe with the API that Ableton offers.

So one limitation that I'm always trying to find workarounds, but it seems like it's not possible yet is just being able to jump to sections within the song that don't have locators while Ableton is playing.

That's one of the biggest.

But can you explain that a little bit more?

Just make sure everyone understands.

Yeah, sure.

So there's two ways to split a song into sections.

So one would be to.

You have a locator at the start of each song, and then for each section, you put another locator and give it the section name.

But if you have a set with like, I don't know, 30 songs, 50 songs, 100 songs, that means you have a lot of locators in your project file.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

And it gets, you know, it gets messy quickly.

So one of the features I added, I think, in Able Set two, is that you can add a sections track.

So that's basically a MIDI track, and for each section, you just add an empty MIDI clip and name it after the section, which is great because it means less locators.

It's just a track.

You can collapse it if you don't need it, but it's not possible to jump to these sections while Ableton is playing.

And that's one of the downsides of using this, and I would love to make that possible, but it's not something that I can implement at this moment due to limitations with the API.

So is that like, you know, the song format is like intro, verse, chorus, verse, course, bridge or something?

If you're at, say, verse one, you couldn't then skip to the Bridge immediately.

Is that what you're talking, like, describing there?

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, very.

Yeah.

Would be very useful.

For sure.

For sure.

So that's just literally based on limitations that you can't really, at this point, get around.

Yeah.

Do you think that.

Is that something that you think.

Because they would.

Ableton would have to change that on their side.

Right.

Is that something that you see possible or in the future?

I hope so.

I told them about it.

I sent them some feedback and.

Yeah, would be great to have that sometime in the future.

Nice.

How's your relationship with the Live side?

I'm sure you have some back and forth with them on things that you're working on.

How do they respond to your work?

So there's not a lot of communication, to be honest.

It's mostly just, you know, if I notice something doesn't quite work as expected, I send them some feedback and they are aware that ableset exists and their support team.

I'm mostly in contact with their support team.

They own ableset as well, so they can help customers who have issues with ableset and Live kind of in combination, but other than that, there's not a lot of communication, unfortunately.

Okay, well, that's surprising, actually.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, let's.

Let's change that.

That would be great.

Yeah, that would be great.

It's actually hard.

It's hard to imagine, but.

Okay.

Well, I'm not.

I guess they're.

They probably have a lot of other people that are doing different types of development and software things as well, too.

But I don't know, I feel like yours is, you know, when you start to talk about, like, the cream of the crop and.

Thank you.

Speaking.

Actually, I do have a question based on this.

I know I'm jumping around a little bit.

I apologize, but.

Because I know there are a lot of, you know, musicians, music directors, playback engineers who are using Able Set.

I know you're a musician and a big fan of music overall.

So have.

Well, how do I say?

Have there been any, you know, users that have been in contact with you that kind of like, you know, almost like you're a fan of.

So almost was like, you know, you get that feeling of real excitement of, like, you know, so and so is using the product?

Definitely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's happened a lot of times as well.

Sometimes I've had some situations where I already had tickets for a band and then I found out they were using ableset.

So I sent them a message and asked if they wanted to meet up.

So that happens.

But sometimes people Just reach out to me themselves and they're like, you know, hey, we're using ableset.

We are around Germany in the next few months.

Would you like to meet up?

And that's something I always like to do.

Just.

Of course.

Yeah.

To discover how people are using it, their setups.

It's always super interesting.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's cool.

That's really neat.

That just shows it speaks to the quality of your work.

Now, as far as that goes, are you working with a team or is it mostly you?

So it's mostly me.

Since the end of last year, I have my first kind of employee that helps with customer support.

So that's a big help, I must say, because having this kind of context, switching between there's like 50 emails waiting for you to be answered.

But also you need to focus on actually working on the app was getting kind of difficult.

Especially as you get more customers, you get more support requests as well.

So having someone that just takes care of most of the emails basically and just that's great.

Pushes the ones that are very specific over to me so I can take care.

That's a huge help.

But so we're a team of two, basically.

Wow.

I mean, I get it, but it is mind blowing because it's like you're talking like global impact and reach.

I'm sure have people all around the world using Able Set.

Yeah.

And you know, you've kept up with demands and probably support and everything by yourself.

Did you have to stop or pull back on, you know, other aspects of music for yourself because of this?

Yeah, definitely some trade off there.

Especially in the past few months, I spent a lot of time really like working on the app.

Like, you know, I get up in the morning or I would get up in the morning, work on it until like 10pm, 11pm and then I would go to bed.

So that was basically my past few months.

But now it's better because now that the version three is out, I can focus more on a bit of customer support and just working on little features, maybe a bug fix here and there.

So that's something more free time for me.

Yeah.

Because I mean, really, you started this to use for yourself.

Yeah.

For your own performance and things.

But it got so big that you had to stop using it for yourself so everyone else could enjoy it.

So, I mean, thank you for that sacrifice.

I hope that things sort of balance out where you're able to do more of, you know, both sides of it as well.

But no, that's.

That's really neat.

Really Neat.

I know we've talked about some of the features, but what's the feedback been from users based on able set 3 features?

It's been very positive so far.

I'm glad about that because it's always a bit frightening.

You have some new version that you've worked on for over a year and then you put it out there and you're like, are people gonna like it?

Or did I just add features that nobody wants or nobody uses?

But no, feedback has been very positive.

And I've seen lots of people already renewing their license for Able Set three or buying Able Set three.

So.

Yeah, and in the forum, you know, people are happy as well.

Yeah, that was very relieving.

Yeah.

That's big because, I mean, it's your baby.

You spend all day working on something.

I mean, you don't really get the feedback until it's out.

I'm sure you have a circle and, you know, you're.

You know, some people that probably check things over and I.

Sure.

You go through it, you know, every single detail of it.

But it's not till you get like that, you know, that mass feedback from people that you really.

It's the same process.

You know, songwriters experience the same thing.

Like, you work on this thing, it's in your mind, it's in your heart, and then it's like, does the world like it?

It's like.

Like you're fully exposed at that point because it's like all of your thoughts, all of your creative work and energy goes into this thing.

And what's that like?

Do you get really, like, what's the feeling when you're about to say, okay, world, here it is.

What does it feel like at that moment?

It was really exciting.

Yeah.

But also scary.

Yeah.

I must add maybe that the night before, because I still had to finish the Ableset 3 introduction videos.

So I think I stayed up until like 6am that night.

And the release was scheduled for noon.

This basically the same day.

So I had like three hours of sleep or four hours of sleep.

You dreamt about Able Set?

Yeah.

And so it was, I think, a mix of lots of caffeine and lots of excitement and just a bit of scary feeling as well.

But yeah, it was a huge relief to just get it out there and just.

Just kind of drawing a finish line and being like, so this is the final product, now go and try it out.

And yeah, a finish line is actually

a big deal when you're talking about development.

I'm sure it goes for other types of software.

Business ideas in general.

I mean, I'm sure once you're on a roll, ideas are flying.

You're doing the whole thing where you're like, all right, that's not going to make it.

No, focus on this one.

But then you have to decide like, all right, we're stopping at this point, do you take a break now that it's released?

I know you can kind of exhale a little bit, but do you have set time aside to pause from things or do you start.

Does your brain go to Able Set four?

Like, what happens?

So after releasing Able Set three, I took a one week vacation that was very good.

Just like get a change of scenery.

I still did a bit of work during the vacation.

I think it's never possible to completely stop working.

But now that I'm back, I'm already working on the next features.

So there's new stuff coming hopefully soon.

Oh, so these would be kind of like upgrades to able set three?

Not necessarily like, okay, okay.

Kind of like Ableset 3.1 or a 3.2 maybe?

Yeah, yeah.

So it's really an ongoing thing.

It's.

That's cool.

It's a project that just continues.

That's really neat.

Okay, so I guess the other thing I wanted to talk to you about quickly on your time here, but just on.

Now that things have kind of taken a little bit of a calmer.

You've reached a calm for a little bit.

Do you actually.

Before I ask this, let me.

I didn't actually clarify with you.

So when you're on stage, what's your role?

I am the singer and the keyboard player in my band.

Okay.

And I also take care of all of the playback stuff and all of the.

Gosh, you have your hands full.

You got like seven pedals and.

Okay, okay.

I just wanted to make sure.

Okay.

So.

So as the singer, are you doing original music as well?

Yeah, yeah, it's 99% original songs.

Yeah.

Creative process.

So that's what I was kind of thinking towards.

So is there a point now where you kind of.

Or I don't know if you ever stop, but do you continue writing or now do you focus more on that or are you just not there yet?

I think now I have some time to get back into writing music and just, you know, taking time aside to actually sit down in front of her keyboard and write some stuff, try out some ideas.

But I'm very happy that this is possible again, that I have the headspace to get into it again because it's, I think making music is such an important part of my life that it was possible to live without it.

But I noticed afterwards I really missed it.

Yeah, not quite the same without it, right?

No.

And also not being on stage because that's such a great feeling to be on stage and to play your stuff and to see the audience react and stuff like that.

So, yeah, looking forward to doing that again.

Nice.

That's cool.

Is that something that you'll keep your community posted on or is that like a separate project altogether for you?

Because now you've built this massive audience too?

Yeah, no, I think I like to keep the two separate because it feels a bit strange to use my reach as a Able Set developer to promote my band.

It's kind of two separate things.

But yeah, I'm sure there'll be some passive interest in there from a lot of people anyways, so.

No, really.

Cool.

So I guess we'll kind of wrap it up.

I'll let you run as promised, but let people know where to find you, where to find your product and keep up on your journey and what to look out for next.

Maybe if you could drop one or two things might be too soon.

Yeah, sure.

So if you'd like to check out Ableset, you can go to ableset.com there's links to the forum as well, which is forum ableset app where there's a huge community of playback engineers, musicians that just share ideas and feedback and stuff like that.

This is also where I post about new releases and beta versions and updates and stuff.

I don't really have a lot of social media apart from Instagram, which is also, I think, ableset app, which used to be my old domain.

Yeah.

And there I just post some stories from time to time.

I repost stories that others post of ableset in use, which might be some nice inspiration and maybe, yeah, check out the Ableset channel on YouTube.

I have a new Ableset tutorial series that goes from zero to, you know, all you need to know to be a Playback engineer.

Basically.

Perfect.

Yeah, man, Amazing.

Thanks so much for chatting.

Thanks for your time, man, and thanks for all that you're doing.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, you are.

I mean, if I can speak on behalf of all the Able Set community around the world.

You're greatly appreciated, man.

Keep doing what you're doing.

We're cheering you on, supporting you and yeah, appreciate you, man.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

All the best people as thanks for listening.

Listening, everybody.

Check out Able Set.

Follow Leo's work.

Cool.

Take care.

You too.

Bye.