If you don’t use stems but need click tracks, drum or percussion loops to help the band keep time, you’ve come to the right post. It’s really simple to achieve this using Ableton’s Session View and we’ll demonstrate how to do it. Before we begin, please make sure your click tracks/loops etc are quantized and you know the correct tempo and time signature.

Importing Audio Files

Let’s begin by dragging your audio files into Ableton. We’ve mentioned before that it’s a good idea to add your folders into Ableton’s browser using the ‘Add folder’ function. If you’ve got a number of loops you can select them and drag and drop them in. They’ll automatically be on 2 different scenes in Ableton. If you have 2 or more audio files that need to be on the same scene on separate tracks, it’s the same process as before but this time you’ll hold down Command so they’ll stack horizontally across the same scene.

Warping Audio Files

Next step is to warp your audio files. We recommend warping files so you’ll be able to change the tempo of a song and your audio files will still be in time. (However, this isn’t necessary if you will never adjust the tempo of any of your songs.)

Start by double clicking on an audio clip, press the warp button and then adjust the tempo accordingly. You may find that your audio file automatically sets to the tempo of your current Ableton file, so be sure to set it to that of the audio file. Another thing to note is the start/end and loop positions. On the right hand side, there’s a waveform of the audio file. There are 2 braces to indicate the start/end positions and the part of the audio file you want to loop. In our case, the end point for one of our clips is wrong and needs to be extended to the end so that the drum loop loops correctly. When your audio files are ready, select all of them and change the warp type to ‘Beats’. We recommend using this warp type for rhythmic audio files.

Naming Scenes

Next step is to assign your song names, tempos and time signatures. Do this by renaming the corresponding scenes on the Master channel.

Reordering Setlists

Reordering your set is simple, click and drag your scenes up and down to the desired position.

Well done, you’re good to go. Thanks for reading!