The software company makes its first foray into publishing.

Ableton’s Live software might be one of the more user-friendly music production solutions on the market, but it doesn’t mean anything if you’re lacking in musical inspiration. To help producers struggling with the creative process, the company has published its first book called Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers, written by composer and producer Dennis DeSantis.

It might look a bit like a hardback manual for using Live, but as Ableton explains, “it will not teach you how to use a compressor, program a synthesizer, or make a great-sounding kick drum.” Instead, the book is divided into three main sections addressing the problems of beginning, progressing with and finishing music, each offering “a systematic, concrete set of patterns that you can use when making music in order to move forward.”

You can preview some of Making Music at the book’s microsite. Chapters available to read include “Presets as Starting Points”, “Deliberately Bad Listening” and “Diminishing Returns”. It’s available now through the Ableton store, and while it might not make a bad producer good, it does at least offer an alternative to Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies.

For more on Ableton and other music software, check our list of the 14 pieces of software that changed modern music. [via Resident Advisor]