Mixing Multitracks In Ableton Live
Mixing is the part of the process where you get your multitracks (tracks) ready for the weekend service. Before diving in, all of what I say here is detailed in my video if you’d prefer just to watch that.
When you download a track from multitracks.com, I find it useful to have a folder which houses all of your tracks instead of saving them directly to your desktop. Once downloaded and saved to your folder, find the file. It will have been saved as a .zip file. Once it is saved, unzip it. It will create a folder which includes the .wav files and an Ableton (.als) file entitled “MultiTrack.als.” Open this file and it will open up Live.
Once open you will have two different windows within Ableton that you are going to utilize, known as the Clip/Session view and the Arrangement view. These can be changed by either selecting the icon on the top right of your main Ableton window (figure 13), or by pressing the “tab” key. Let's start our mix. The way that I am going to tell you to mix will help you no matter what template you use; however, it is specifically designed for use with my template that I built at Cherry Hills. In my process, I will first get a balance/mix of the tracks before doing anything else. So, once you have opened your file, it will usually put you in arrangement view. If not, navigate there by pressing the tab key or selecting the icon in the top right. Once here, you should see a lot of colored bars that run horizontally across the window, with lines running up and down your screen. These lines are called “markers,” and tell you where different parts of the song are. If you wish to keep them you can, but if you would like to remove the markers (as I do), simply select the marker by clicking on it and press the delete key on your keyboard. If you follow the lines to the top of arrangement view, you will see some flags. These flags are your markers.
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After that, click and drag your guide track to the bottom of the tracks. Then select all of the tracks except your guide (Shift+click) in the arrangement window and press Command + G. This will put all of the tracks into a group that you can then rename to the title of the song, or whatever you want to. Renaming is done by pressing Command + R or right clicking on the group and selecting “rename.” Sometimes the tracks that you receive are well mixed, but often you will need to mix them for your specific space/venue. After grouping the tracks, I start by first going to the loudest part of the song. This is usually when all of the instruments are playing at once and I can see what I’m working with. After finding this portion of the song, I select it (click and drag inside the cell/window) and press command + L. This will loop that section for me and make mixing easier. After that, I turn off all of the tracks and start with no sound. This can be done by selecting all of your tracks and pushing the button that is numbered and located near the track title, lit up yellow (figure 14).
Figure 13
Figure 14
Then I begin mixing by turning on the drum tracks (clicking the now greyed out number on the right of the drum track. The same one that you clicked to turn tracks off). Even if you aren’t going to use these, it will give you a good baseline of where to start mixing your levels. Once the drums are at a good level (I usually just keep them at 0 unless they’re way too loud, at which point I’ll turn them down to -2 or -3), I will add any percussion tracks that are included. Depending on the track, I will usually treat these similar to the drums, leaving them at 0 and sometimes bringing them down -2 or -3. After these are mixed in, I add the bass. I will balance the bass where it’s just slightly behind the drums. This is because the bass is usually louder in the room than it is when you’re mixing on near field monitors or headphones. I have found -6 to -8 to be a good starting point for mixing bass.
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After the percussion and bass are mixed, I move on to the electric guitars. Usually with the electric guitars, they will come labeled “EG 1, EG 2,” etc. I personally find this confusing, especially when there’s more than 2 EG tracks. So, I will go through and figure out which EG tracks are the lead electric guitars and which ones are the rhythm electric guitars. I do this by soloing each track and seeing which one is playing the lead line and which one isn't. Once found, relabel them (Command+R, or right click and relabel). After that is done, I will get a good mix between the guitars. I will usually start with the rhythm guitars and turn them down a little, then add the lead guitars at a level where you can hear them louder than the rhythm. To adjust the volume of a track in arrangement view, there is a blue/green number underneath the on/off (figure 14). You can either click and drag this up or down to turn the volume up or down, or you can click inside this and enter the value you want from your keyboard (if you want it at -2, just click on it and type -2 and press enter). If you want to hear more than one of them at a time, simply select the tracks you want to hear and press the solo button/hotkey. It will solo all selected tracks. Once you have mixed these, add them to your mix by turning off the solo and turning on the track (if you haven’t already engaged it). If the level that you have mixed your guitars at is somewhere near the 0 range, the drums shouldn’t be overpowering your guitars at all and should fall right into place.
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Once done with EG’s, I move on to the keyboards. There are usually a lot of them. First, I solo through all my keyboard pads and hear what I’m working with. My goal is to find the main synth pad and be able to delineate it from any effects pads. This main synth is usually going to be mixed down a little bit from where it starts off. After determining what tracks I have to work with, I will do the same thing I did with the EG’s. I will solo through the tracks, adding one to the other and getting a good balance between them. The hope is that you can hear every keyboard, with the melody a little higher than the pads. Once I get a good balance between all of my keyboards, I’ll add this to the rest of the mix and see how they fit. At this point, if it sounds like the synth is too loud and is overpowering the lead guitar, I will turn them down. Or, if it is not audible, I will turn them up slightly. It is okay for keyboards not to be as audible as the electric guitars because they’re not usually lead instruments. Finally, I’ll mix in any additional tracks. If you want to have the background vocal tracks, you can mix those in, but it’s not necessary at all.
Doing all of this will get you in a good place for whatever template you decide to import your tracks into. There are some things that I do (moving the guide around) that are specifically designed for my template, but getting a good mix will very likely help you no matter what template you decide to use.