Quick Tip: Tips on How to Keep Organized in Ableton Live
Tutorial Details
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Time: 5 minutes
- Requirements: Ableton Live or any DAW
« PreviousNext »
Hello everyone and welcome to another blog entry by Benjamin Coutts. This time I will be going on about how to keep yourself organized within Ableton Live and use it for when you do a gig using the same set up as your production setup.
Step 1: The More Returns the Better
When you open up Ableton Live you will be give a blank canvas to start off with. The first thing you should do is create returns for the individual instruments you will be using.
Like I said in my last tip, doing this will help keep your CPU down and will help with experimenting with different effects. The return you use for the drums you could route to be used for the bass and you might come up with something unusual but something very interesting.
Step 2: Keep Things Simple
Over the years I have produced I’ve recorded up to 30 channels in one arrangement and that I find is a bit much if you want to perform your tracks within Ableton. If you want to just press play and let the song play like a DJ that’s fine, but if you want to be able to trigger each clip then keeping things simple is the best thing you could do. I’ve now got a template where I have only five channels, with each one layered within the channels. I find it a hell of a lot easier to perform with five channels as opposed to 30 channels.
Step 3: Layering and Arranging your Key Zones
When you’ve got your instruments layered with your favorite instruments, mess around with your key zones to find the best key range for each instrument. For my bass part I have three different bass instruments within a channel layered, and assigned each instrument a key range. You have to spend the time finding the right instruments, which sound good for the high, mid, and low octaves. Also layer the instruments within the key zone so you can have many different layers for your sound.
Step 4: Make a Folder for Your “Go To” Instruments
I’m guilty of not doing this, but I’ve changed my ways and started to save every instrument I create. This is important so you can have a distinctive sound in your music. If you don’t save your instruments you forget how you got that sound and each track you make will sound different and you won’t have a flowing album.
Step 5: Keep a Designated Drum Rack
At the start of your template I feel having a designated drum rack to be very important. It keeps every track sounding similar and the listener will feel more grounded when listening to your album. Every artist has a sound that they call they’re own and it should be no different to you. I have a drum rack which has all my drum sounds that I want within it, so I can have a distinct sound with my drums and a sound everyone will remember as being me.
So there we go everyone, some quick tips on how to stay more organized when writing and performing your tracks. I hope you enjoy reading it and get inspired and have more fun writing your tracks.
The most important thing I’ve learned is to keep organization and creativity apart because it can interrupt your writing process. So take care and I look forward to writing another quick tip page for you.
Enjoyed this Post?
Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!
Join our newsletter!
Create a Tutorial, Get Paid!
Have something to teach the world? Want to earn money doing it? Tutorials, screencasts, and articles published here on Audiotuts+ are largely contributed by readers just like you! We'll pay you great money for good content. Find Out More
These are simple but helpful and inspiring tips – especially for a user coming from Logic and one month deep in Ableton. Thanks!
Hey David, i’m glad you enjoyed the tips. I’ll be thinking of more simple yet inspiring tips for everyone because inspiration is the key to writing music in my view :)
Thanks for tips. Currently I have started preparing Ableton sets for live performance, have you please any tip how to configure audio outputs? I mean if is better to be sending all mixed up to FOH as one mono or stereo output, or rather separate bass/drums/synths. etc. to separate channels to be mixed at FOH? Stereo vs. mono? I have 4 outputs on my audio interface. I haven’t found much useful info on that and would appreciate any tips on that, thanks…
Hey Jakub. To answer your question, id say have everything mixed etc already done in Ableton. If your using Ableton as a DJ deck you should have all your completed tracks polished and mastered etc and just place them on the clips. If you are running separate channels such as drums,bass,synth etc you shouldn’t have to worry about placing them into separate channels on the front of house mixer. If you’ve only got a 4 output soundcard then your going to have to mix stuff already in Ableton, so why not just send it to the front of house mixer thru 2 channels, a left and a right and pan them accordingly. Those would be my suggestions but then again Ableton Live is so flexible you could do so much with it. When i figure more ways of doing it i will write to you with them :)
I’ll definitely be implementing your advice, thanks.
Quick question about using the sends for effects – I’ve noticed that if I send 100% of my audio from a track to a send with a filter on it, it’s not as effective as using the filter as a device on the track. Like if I sweep the low pass filter on a send all the way down, i’ll still hear some of the unaltered audio coming through. Is a portion of the audio still being sent to the master?
Hey Steve P. I’m terribly sorry it’s taken me ages to reply back to your question i’ve just been really busy with projects and such any way to answer your question. Using the auto filter on the sends isn’t really an ideal thing to do. The auto filter is a dynamic effect which means it sticks to the audio so what ever you manipulate on the filter it’s going to change the audio all the time. What you want to use on the sends are Time based effects such as reverb,ping pong, or phazer. If you place these on the track itself it’s very difficult to dial how much of the effect you want without change the whole sound of the audio/midi. By placing it in the sends you have added control over how much effect you want to place on the audio track. I hope this answers your question and again i’m really sorry for being late about it. Well again thanks for reading and please send more questions :)