Template Preparation
Once again, before diving in, all of what I say here is detailed in my video if you’d prefer just to watch that.
Once your mix is built, there’s a couple of things that I like to do to prepare the track for the service. On the top of the arrangement window, there’s a box called the transport box. It will have the Play, Stop, and Record buttons (figure 15). Simply hit the stop button twice to move your “playhead” (the line that moves in the arrangement window while playing) to the beginning of the song. Then located on the top right of the arrangement window, there is a little button called “Set.” This will place a marker within your arrangement. Do this at the beginning of your track and a little bit after the end of your track. Once these have been placed, select all of your track by clicking and dragging or by clicking in the arrangement window and holding down shift and clicking where you want to end your selection. Personally I like to click at the end of the track and drag to the beginning. Once all of your tracks are selected, go to the “create” drop down menu on the file bar and select the option “consolidate time to new scene.” This is located near your “file” and “edit” drop down menus. This will take a little bit of time to process, but when it is done it’s time to go to the Session/Clip view window for the first time. Again, you can get here by pressing the tab key, or selecting the icon (figure 16) in the top right of the Arrangement view to switch over to the Session/Clip view.
Figure 15
Figure 16
Once here, you will see that things are arranged much differently. On the left side of your window, there will be two vertical rows. One is your group and one is your guide. Inside of these vertical columns is where your clips are located. You will see one at the top which is greyed out/empty, the second one will be filled in with the color of your first track, and then cells 3-9 will be empty. The second one is where your clips you just created by doing the “consolidate time to new scene” are located and are the only ones that need to appear in this file. So, if you want to delete the ones you are not using, on the right side of your screen you will see another vertical row called “Master.” In the master column, you will see the number 1, the number 9, and then the numbers 2-8. Click on the numbers you want to delete and delete them (leaving the one with your clips on it alone). This should leave your cell/group untouched.
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Once this is done, it’s important to rename your track and write in proper tempo marking. The tempo will either be included in your track file that is downloaded from multitracks.com, or can be seen on the top left in Live (figure 17). The way I name tracks is like this: Here Again D 68BPM 8/8. This will tell you which song it is, what key it is in, what the tempo is, and what the subdivision of the click is. In this case, the click would be in 4/4 with an 8th note subdivision. Next, select your clips (group and guide) that are in the first two vertical columns on the left. If your detailed view isn’t open, open it now. This can be done by pressing Shift + Tab. Press it until you see your waveforms (the visual display of your recorded audio). It usually needs to be pressed twice before you are navigated to this window. You can also open this by going to the bottom right of your Ableton window. There is an arrow on the bottom right. Click on it and it will open up your detailed view. Next to the arrow, there is a “guide” and another tab which should show your waveform (figure 18). Click on this window to get to the detailed view. Once in the detailed view, on the bottom left you will see a section called “Sample.” This window only appears when you have a clip selected. If it isn’t appearing, make sure that you have your group and guide clips selected. Once it is open, make sure that the “Warp” function is lit up/turned on. (figure 19) If it is not, be sure to turn that on. Underneath the warp button, there is a dropdown menu. In the dropdown menu, make sure the “Complex” option is selected. After this, in the section to the right deselect “Loop” (figure 19). This next step is very important, in fact I cannot stress enough how important this is. Go to your “File” dropdown menu and select “Collect All And Save.” This takes all the tracks/audio files that you just created and adds them to your current folder. Now you make sure all these changes are saved and open up your template file.
Figure 17
Figure 18
Figure 19
If you are using a stereo setup, you can download my stereo template file here or at the bottom of this page. After it is downloaded, go ahead and open up this file. It should open up in session/clip view. This template is set up to utilize Ableton’s internal click, (figure 20) but you can also use the track click if you want to. As it stands, this template is pre-routed to where your click and guide are going to output 1 (left) and the tracks are going to output 2 (right). On the left, you will see two columns labeled “1 - Audio” and "2 - Guide.” These allow you to fade in and fade out your tracks. Another function that this template comes with is that each song is designed to be played using key mapping. The key mapping function of Ableton allows you to map a key on your keyboard to a specific function in Ableton, allowing you to perform that function by pressing the key. In this template, you will see song numbers in the master column. Song 1-8 are mapped to numbers 1-8 on a keyboard, with number 0 being your fade out. This means that, once we have imported your tracks into the template, if you press number 1 on your keyboard song 1 will play (2 for song 2, etc.). If you want to change these, just press command + K and click on the function you want to change. Once selected, press whatever key you want to bind that function to. These are functions that make this template unique and will help in your execution of your service. Now, let’s import our tracks.
Figure 20
This step in the process is done after you have mixed all of your tracks for the weekend and have them saved in a folder of your choosing. Staying in session/clip view, on the left side of your window is the browser. If you cant see this, you can either click the arrow on the top left of your window, go to view and select view browser, or press option+command+b. On the bottom of this window, you will see the “Add Folder” button. When you click on this button it will bring up the Mac or windows file browser depending on your operating system. Select the folder that you have your multitracks in (the parent folder, not the individual song folder), and it will add that to your browser’s sidebar. In this folder, you should see both Ableton project files, and when you open up a project file (the arrow key next to the song name) you will see the .als file. From here you simply click and drag the .als file in to the window. You will see the clips appear as you are dragging them in the cell. This will show you where your clips will be placed. Your song order will determine where you place it. If it is song 1, drag it in to the cell and line it up with “song 1.” Once it is lined up, go ahead and drop it in the cell. You can then close your group so that you are not seeing all of your individual tracks. After this, be sure to rename it with the key, BPM and subdivision that you had in your session. This should have been saved with your session so that you can see it from the browser window. Repeat this process for all of your songs. Once they’re all lined up and renamed it should look something like this: (figure 21).
Figure 21
After this, select all of your group columns. This can be done by clicking on one of them and then command+click on the rest of them. Once the groups are selected, there is a drop down menu on the bottom of the column that says “Audio To.” Select this drop down menu and chose the option “1 - Audio.” This will route all of your groups to the 1 - Audio group. When this is done, you will see the “fade in” tracks turn grey. After this, do the same thing for your guide tracks, but instead route them to the “2 - Guide” track. Once done, you will see the “fade in” tracks turn grey. If you are using Ableton’s internal click, be sure that this button on the top left of your window is turned on: (figure 20). If you are not, be sure that your click is routed to external (ext.) out 1 (figure 22). At this point, when you press the number that corresponds to your song, audio should come out of your system.
Figure 22
Once all of your tracks are added to your template session, go to your “File” dropdown menu and select “Save As.” Save this as a new folder/file on your desktop or other file location that is not the original file of the template. It’s good not to save over the template file. Once you have hit “Save As” and created a new file path, go again to your “File” dropdown menu and select “Collect All And Save.” This is significantly more important once you have built your session off of your template. Until this function has been used, your session is looking for the original files in the folder you made to house all of your multitrack stems. This won’t be a problem if that drive is located on your computer. However, if you start accumulating a lot of tracks and decide to put them on an external hard drive, if that drive is disconnected, Ableton Live will still be looking for the drive which has all the audio files on it, and it won’t be able to find them; therefore, it won’t play. That’s why you collect all and save at a new file pathway when you are done building your template; a file pathway that is located on your computer and not an external drive so no loss of audio files can ever occur.
