The Perfect Template for Ableton Live 11 & Live 12 | A Complete Guide...

I've scoured the internet for all of the best rooting and mixing strategies to ensure that I've made a template that allows me to work in the most optimal fashion if you're curious about how to get your ideas on the page more quickly how to root your instruments in the most professional and clean manner or just to create your own template then you've come to the right place and of course if you don't have the patience or time to follow any of this then just hop over to the patreon where you can download everything covered in the episode let's dive into it this video is sponsored by Dr kid and I'll have more about them at the end of the video that's my lunch so I've shown this template off in a couple of episodes now and some of you have been asking for a walkr of everything that is on screen so consider this the MTV Cribs of Ableton this is where the magic happens all right so we're going to start off with how I arrange my my page move through the tracks to the routing before finally meeting the preaster master and any other exciting doohickeys that I have around the edge of the screen so grab something to write on and let's start with the tempo I've set my Tempo at 140 there's a reason for this I compose a lot of sleepy music at 70 BPM and make a lot of UK bass at 140 even though this can change from time to time it helps to know that this is my most common BPM you'll find out through this episode that a lot of these tools are just one cck adjustments but they all come together to save you time in the long run from here I set up my markers I've got my intro main Loop main with energy break build main two and the outro This falls at 1 minute it's not long enough to create a whole tune but what it does allow me to do is create all of my main sections to create enough of a narrative that I can then go on to expand and fill in the gaps afterwards and when I laid out these markers I used a reference track which made me add this this reference track track we're going to come back to the specific routing of this track because it bypasses all of the other rules of the template but moving on and just for me I have an SC sender this might not be applicable to everyone but it's essentially a side chain sender I use a lot of Shapers but sometimes just go with the oldfashioned kick side chain so I've set up a track so I can drop my kicks in straight away again just saving a little bit of time and from there with the same rule is my resample group from here I have a resample track because I do a lot of resampling don't want to continuously create a new audio track find resampling and resample the track so this is ready to go record on but I've just set it into bypass mode when I don't need it so it's not always listening and taking up CPU you can see that my CPU is currently very low right now by the way if you do want to add an emoji to your tracks it's really easy I keep these emojis on the group headers for the most part just so they're easier to see with like dyslexia and everything but if you want to add your own just come to rename and then I choose control command and space and that brings up the emojis that I want to use under the resample track I've also got a granulator because it helps to know that throughout all of these episodes that I've recorded I often like using the granulator so I've thrown that underneath from the get-go and here's where we come to my first go-to effects Rack in every track you'll find my go-to effects rack which is set to bypass for the most part so again it doesn't use up too much CPU in that go-to effects rack I have a glue compressor an eq8 Ott utility and the compressor OT by the way is the free XO OT which you can find in the description below these are the most common tools that I use on most tracks so I've set these up ahead of time and you might have seen this in my previous episode which is the workflow hacks episode I'll link it in the top right if you haven't checked that out with the eqa I've already got my rolloff set and then these two node because I'm normally scooping out this frequency and boosting this frequency there or there about so these are all set up ready to go starting with my eq8 and then I've saved this as my goto effects rack to save your own effects R you just come down to the floppy disc icon and then save that effect rack if you want to save it on every audio a midi track then you just rightclick that particular track and then save as default midi track then you'll need to do the same for an audio track as well if you think this video is going to be helpful by the way do make sure you hit that magic button so you can see more like it in the future and it greatly helps out the channel moving on from this I've got my main group the main group is for your lead Melody VOC call whatever is going to be your main instrument so I've put my sampler in here as well because I often start with a sampled melody or chord pattern but if not I can throw my vocal audio in there or my lead midi instrument I'm going to move more quickly through the tracks now as you often see that there's a midi and an audio track setup in each group just so I can jump to getting the idea down even quicker now you may have noticed when I opened this template it was already highlighted with the scaler trap and this is because I often choose my key through scaler and maybe get a rough cord progression in so scaler is one of the few instruments that is already loaded in this template for me at least it won't be in the patreon version because you might not have Scala and I very much want you to choose your own instruments it's going to get you work to your strengths and not trying to follow in my footsteps so scala's already set up and record armed with the track off of bypass then I've got my chords track and my midi underneath for base I've set up sublab an 808 track which is just an audio track and my ample sound pbas track I often use sublab or ample sound if I'm not using a sample track so they're all ready to go as well because I'm rarely going to use anything else I've got a kick and snare group set up next with a kick audio track and a snare audio track setup you can see that these already have specific rolloffs as well as the go-to effects W and this is because these are those click and repeat things that I do in every project so let's just get our kicks and snares in mono from the Geto shall we and then I have a drum rack for any other drums that I want to use in the kick and snare track for later so from here I have the top drums group this is for any symbols percussion or higher ear candy stuff you can see here that I already have a rolloff and an align delay in the drum group itself and that's because I often set my sounds to be a little bit wider than those kicks snares hats and Tums that will be very Central and then finally of the instruments I have an effects group this is an empty audio track with the group titled effects with a limiter and an aligned delay once again this is for any atmospheric sounds sweeps swooshes and impact sounds so now we've hot stepped it through there it comes to the chains now the chains is something that a lot of us YouTube producers scoured from a famous Skrillex video where he showed off his Ableton template it's one of those things that is extremely obvious once you know the information but until you saw it you didn't think to do it in your own project this is the act of setting up various limiters which are their own tracks where your instruments will be sent to have their own independent limiting done to ensure that everything goes to the premaster or Master track cleanly rather than just having one limiter at your final track which is probably going to capture your loudest instrument or the loudest frequency which will have an effect on your overall mix makes sense right so from here we've got our chain group and inside that we have a Suiter which our bases will be sent to and I'll show you how to do that in just a sec that has a limiter a color limiter on which is free you can download it from the Ableton website over at P this adds just a little bit of saturation to your limiting which can roduce extra harmonics which can give the feeling like there's a little bit more loudness and with something like bass that can be extremely helpful I also have waves rbas setup which I've mentioned before is worth its weight in gold it's one of the best waves products in my opinion can really help pull your sound out of small speakers like phones and laptops and then an eq8 ready to go with that roll off there you can see my nodes look a little bit different here because I often set up an envelope follower which might end up ducking the frequency of a particular Dynamic and then have a basic limiter which is where most of my instruments are going to get sent to a top limiter for all of my top drums high hat more trebly based sound you can see that this eqa is set to the midside mode to ensure that I don't have too much treble or Bas way out at the sides of my mix and then finally I have a blank limiter which is where I'm going to send like kind of main cord progressions things that I don't want to have any effect so a vocal would go to my blank limiter I don't want to be cutting off any lows or any Highs at least at the start of making my piece of music and then the chain capture to capture all of these limiters and send them out to the preaster now before we get to the preaster how do I set up my limiters so I just go up to my groups and instead of selecting external out or to the master track I just select that particular limiter so for the main it was the blank limiter chords was the basic limiter base was of course the subl limiter kick and snare is also going to the blank limiter because I'm normally going to EQ those things respectively top drums to of course the top limiter and my effects to the top limiter as well these limiters are just audio tracks in their own group which are set at no input and in and are being sent to the chain capture each of these devices are being sent to this chain capture which is the last audio group and then the chain group is being sent to the premaster again premaster set to no input and in oh I did mention that the reference track is set to its own routing this you're just going to keep a standard set to the master output with the Master at the bottom here this ensures that it doesn't go through your preaster track which is only going to make that reference track even louder so coming to the end on my preaster I have my route 23 kind of Master chain template this is a group of plugins that I'm most commonly going to use on my premaster track to ensure that when I send demos out of preaster tracks They sound pretty loud and pretty clean from the get-go they only need final tweaks and adjustments in the mastering process I've saved this chain group the same as I Sav everything else save as default preset or come over here to the little floppy disc icon it starts off with a utility Checker first a monoch check then a midside check this is in its own group that's switched on and when I switch on the monoch check it's going to put all of my music into mono with the MS Checker allows me to see if there's any kind of phase issues happening within my mix I can move on to my first EQ by this point I probably eqed most instruments so I normally add a little dip on the high shelf or maybe a little dip on the low shelf here but occasionally I'll scoop out some frequencies I come over to my first glue compression here which is just a low attack and a very very low release and that allows me to of course have a little bit more of an even Dynamic across the whole of my track then I've got this dud preset here which of course has its EQ settings set to the band pass mode what I'm doing here is capturing some of those lower muddier frequencies and just trying to squash them a little bit all of the things that overlap in all of your trap to create that kind of Muddy hum I want to reduce that if I can and that is the job of the dud preset as we move on I use gfos often some of you use soothe and Goos is very much the same it just helps reduce some of those muddy frequencies and add a little bit of brightness to your track but you can also use multiband compression or Ott then some final eq8 here just one node at the end here because I'm normally just reducing one frequency it needs to be linear subtractive EQ at this stage in your template you shouldn't be adding any frequencies that should have been taken care of Prior in your above tracks finally I'm met with a color limiter and then a limiter I apologize because I forget where I got this tip I think it might have been seed to Stage that showed us the benefit of using two limiters together saturation or color limiter as I explained earlier can help boost an extra bit of loudness before your final limiter so sometimes I'll increase the loudness of the color limiter and maybe introduce a little bit of saturation and then use the final limiter with different ceiling look ahead and release settings to increase hopefully the overall loudness and that is my preaster chain as we move down we have a verb which is just my favorite valhall vintage verb preset and then B verb main which is the same preset with a compressor after if you've ever had a patreon one to1 session with me you've probably heard me talk about side chaining your Reverb often times when you've got something like a lead vocal that you add Reverb to it gets a little bit muddy because that Reverb is drifting over the vocal so what you want to do is have a side chain compressor set up to listen to the track itself and anytime that vocal plays there won't be any side chain but in any space there will be Reverb it's a great trick to use with delay as well after this I have my master track which you can see has a final limiter on it this is more so for the reference track in case that is exceptionally loud and then I have Spectrum set up and this cool Pomodoro Timer which is the thing that you see floating up here in this space this is actually the only space that I could find for the timer to sit so I often put it here where it's not going to be covering up any tools this is something that I found on patches gumroad which you can download for free but it's pay what you want so I would suggest supporting other creators it's an exceptional toour which basically just starts your Pomodoro Technique timer which I use often in my live streams and when I'm working on my own projects to make sure that I don't become stagnant in the nitty-gritty this will count down from 30 or whatever you've set your timer set to and then when it hits pause you'll hear a little Ding and it will actually pause your overall music you then have a 5minute break where you can focus on something else drink some water stretch and then when that timer goes off again you're ready to start your next 30 minutes inside the template and after it goes off a couple of times you get a longer break so this is super helpful and very in keeping with the Pomodoro Technique you can see that all of my groups are set to minus 10 to ensure that all of my tracks are coming in with plenty of head room so I'm not starting with a 0 kick which is already the loudest thing in my mix it's going to mean that your music starts a little bit quieter but as you add instruments you should have a more even spread which doesn't hit the limiter straight away and still allows for a little bit of head room so you can bring it up in the master if you're not making your own then this template is available at the patreon just without the specific instruments or the granulator because you might not have that in your own template and as I said it's important to set up your own tools that you most commonly use if you want to save own template then just come to the top left of the screen and select save Liv set as template when you do so it's going to save that in user Library first and then templates and then you can choose to save that template and it will be right here in templates a lot of my templates I make sure are blue because some of these are ablet in presets so I make sure all of my presets are up here in groups if you want to see more that maybe I glossed over in this video is probably because it was featured in my workspace video which again you should check out after this video I hope that was helpful guys as always thank you so much for swinging by let me know what you want to see in future videos and I'll catch you next time at the beginning of this video I told you we were sponsored by drro Kid and it's true I release all of my music with drro kid with the help of their splits functions mixia their promo tools it makes it so easy to get your music on over 200 platforms if you want to get 7% off your first year just use the link in the description below thanks thiso kid thanks you person watching this until the end of the [Music] [Applause] [Music] video

Channel: Will Hatton

Views: 30,194

Keywords: ableton live 11, ableton live tutorial, ableton live, ableton tips, ableton 11, Ableton Templates, Download Ableton Template, Ableton Project, Perfect Template live 11, Pro Template Ableton, Live 11 tips, live 11 templates, mixing template for ableton, mixing template for live 11, workflow hack ableton, Will hatton, Ableton Live 11, Inspired By, Hush Child, Ableton How To, Ableton first steps, Ableton For Beginners

Id: ZVLu3m928vA

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023