So we’ve come to the last method for running tracks in Ableton Live and we like to call this one “the hybrid.” As the name suggests, it’s a combination, the hybrid method utilises both Session and Arrangement views.

A number of Ableton Arrangement view users format their songs into individual Ableton Live files and drag those files into their songs into a project to create a setlist. While this really common way is the default for many, it comes with a few complications.

If you’ve formatted your song in an Ableton file and want to drag and drop it into your setlist file, the song will drop on bar 1, you’ll soon find when you go to add another song it’ll also drop on bar 1, which poses an obvious issue. Our suggestion in the hybrid method is to have all of your songs lined up in Session view, from there you can simply drag and drop them anywhere on the Arrangement view timeline.

If you’ve got all of your tracks laid out in Session View, when you bring them into Arrangement view, how will you know where to put your locators? This poses another issue, but don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Those who format their songs individually tend to have a dedicated MIDI clip for every song section. We’ll be using a single MIDI clip to mark out all of your song sections, so you know where to put your locators. Okay, let’s get started.

Adding Labels

We’ll start by dragging our first song from Session View into Arrangement View. (If you’re not familiar with how to bring songs into Session View, check out this post.) We’ll right click on the scene that contains the song we want and click ‘Select All Slots in Scene.’ Then click and drag the first audio clip and hit tab to take you over to Arrangement View, finally, drop that clip onto its corresponding audio track. Next, locate the Section labels project in Ableton’s browser (or add it to your browser if you haven’t already) click the drop down arrow next to the ‘Section Labels’ als file, then the drop down menu next to ‘Markers.’ This will reveal all of the section labels. Scrub through your song and add in the corresponding MIDI clip at the beginning of each of your song sections. Repeat until you’ve gone through the whole song.

Consolidating MIDI Clips

Your next step is to drag the start of the first MIDI clip to the start of your song and drag the end of your last MIDI clip to the end of your song. Then, select all of the clips you’ve added and then Cmd-J to consolidate them into one MIDI clip. You can then rename and click and drag it back over to Session View.

One Final Check

This last step isn’t necessary but we recommend dragging your audio clips over to Arrangement View with your new MIDI clip to double-check that it’s been done properly. Repeat the steps from the ‘adding labels’ section earlier on in this post.

Closing Thoughts

The main idea is to build up a library of songs in Session View and build your setlists in Arrangement View. However, if you need to play a track that’s not in your setlist in Arrangement View, you can tab over to Session View, find the song and hit play.

Just one thing to bear in mind though, “Session View always wins”. So if you play a song in Session you’ll have to be sure to click the ‘Re-Enable Automation’ and ‘Back to Arrangement’ buttons, more on this later.

We hope this is helpful and if you need a copy of the Section Labels template, you’ll find it at our store or you can click here.

Thanks for reading!