Alrighty Kids, here’s some info about our journey switching from Pro Tools to Ableton Live for running click, loops and tracks for live performance, specifically in our worship services.
Re: Click track ONLY through the headphones??? Did you set the cue out on the master track to 3/4 in ableton (what ever output numbered output your cue mix is). What are you using to send audio to your PA from ableton. A mixing console or audio interface. If you're using an interface you probably have to set the headphone out to 3/4. Exporting tracks with a metronome. I've looked elsewhere around the internet and couldn't seem to find any features in ableton that allow the click track to be exported in the recording. I have already mucked around drawing out midi tracks with the click.wav, but it's such an incredibly tedious process, and I don't want to spend like 8 hours. Exact same sort of thing to 1234 Yeah. So there you go. Different sets of tracks. Um, there's also even one tune in here, Um, over here. Where, um, we have a click track set up, Um, and I mostly just playing percussion on the song. So actually just used the click track just account in the band just to give them time. Alrighty Kids, here’s some info about our journey switching from Pro Tools to Ableton Live for running click, loops and tracks for live performance, specifically in our worship services. – – – – – Up until a few weeks ago, we used Pro Tools as our on-stage software to create and run loops, sequenced programming and a click track. Ableton Live is my number one recommendation for software for running this and doing a whole lot of other cool things for your worship ministry. Of all the software options, Ableton is hands down the most powerful for running a click and tracks in worship.
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Up until a few weeks ago, we used Pro Tools as our on-stage software to create and run loops, sequenced programming and a click track. I do most of my music creation via Pro Tools – whether a simple loop for a worship song, or a full, complex video score. So using Pro Tools to play some or all of those audio elements in conjunction with a live band was totally natural. ESPECIALLY since you can create a click track using the “Click” plug-in and route it to a specific audio output, apart from, say, a stereo loop track.
Pro Tools also allows “Markers”, which we would use as the start of the next song. You can tab to them, or select them with the mouse in a special Markers Window. There is also the powerful ability to input tempo changes, time signature changes, and click subdivision changes at those markers, or anywhere in a song’s timeline.
If you’d like more info on running loops via Pro Tools in a live performance situation, check out: Gear Questions: Pro Tools running loops
So Pro Tools is very powerful in many cases – but not all…
While I see myself using PT as a main Digital Audio Workstation for song creation, video scoring, and audio recording, it still falls short in many areas that we need, specifically our live performance / worship services.
Enter Ableton LIVE…
While I was not unfamiliar with Live and its concepts from years past, there were still some things that fell short for me. But many of those have been addressed/changed/tweaked and generally improved over the last few versions.
However, the biggest dislike I had – and still have – of Live is its internal click.
I mean, it’s horrible.
First, the click tone is obnoxious, and cannot be changed without highjacking the root library in your computer’s Operating System (NOT advisable for the faint of heart). And second, you cannot subdivide the click PROPERLY.
Sure, other sites or videos show someone manipulating the song’s tempo and/or time signature, but that’s not the way it should be. I SHOULD be able to enter the proper tempo and time signature of a song, and have the ability to choose a click tone and subdivide it.
Why do I want to subdivide a click? Because if you’re playing a song at anything less than about 110 bpm, your ability as a singer or instrumentalist to “lock into the groove” of a song is GREATLY increased when you can hear/feel the subdivisions of a measure (1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &).
So for me, even now, Ableton Live is a great program, we WANT to use it for all that it can bring to a live performance (MIDI mapping to external pads/triggers, easy song tempo change without messing up other songs later down a “timeline”, etc.), but it still has this one giant FLAW – the click.
It’s kind of like dating the best person in the world – but they smoke.
PROBLEM = SOLUTION
So this was my Everest. I wouldn’t switch to Ableton until we could figure a way around this click issue.
Well, after lots of research and brainstorming – and a few trials, errors, and less-than-satisfactory solutions, Jared Hamilton and I came up with a winner.
Or at least the winner until something better comes along or Ableton gets their act together…
IMPULSE + SAMPLE = WINNER
If you’ve used Redrum in Reason or Boom in Pro Tools 8, or any pattern-based drum machine, you’re already ahead of the game….
Basically, we created an instance of Impulse, Live’s drum pattern sequencer, imported a desired click tone, and created MIDI notes in the sequencer to trigger the sample as desired (quarters for fast songs, quarters and 8ths for slower songs). We even increased the velocity (thus volume) of the downbeats to help define where the “1” is…
Then we saved the instance of Impulse (with the desired sample and MIDI data) as a clip to the clip library. That way, in the future you can just drag that Click clip into an audio column in about 2 seconds – never having to create a click clip from scratch again!
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STEP-BY-STEP:
OK, here’s are the steps…
Pioneer chainsaw manual. #1 – TURN OFF the horrible internal click of death.
From this:
To This:
Ahhh, much better…
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STEP #2 – Create an instance of IMPULSE:
Impulse can easily be found by clicking on the Live Device Browser (yellow icon on LEFT underneath the arrow). Click on Impulse and drag it into a MIDI track or “Clip/Device Drop Area” (big grey area that says “Drop Files and Devices Here”.
So that’s totally easy. 🙂
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STEP #3 – IMPORT DESIRED CLICK TONE (Audio File)
For us, we love using the MPC click tone from the Pro Tools click plug-in. We’ve used it for years now, and all our players are fans. It’s distinct enough to establish tempo, but subtle enough to not drive you crazy or interfere with the sound you’re trying to create as a band.
But that’s just us – you can use a cowbell, woodblock, or car horn for all I care 🙂
So now drag that sample (audio file) into the first “audio sample slot” in Impulse. Below, you can see my MPC Click sample in the far left sqare. It’s greyed-out to show that an audio file has now been assigned to that slot.
NOTE: You may wish to change the DECAY or other parameters to suit your taste.
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STEP #4 – ENTER MIDI DATA in Impulse’s Sequencer Window
Just double click on the grid where you want the click sample to activate.
Here’s an example of a sub-divided click (1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &):
And here’s a simple quarter-note pattern:
Note the VELOCITY increase for the downbeat of the bar (lower half of the window). You can play around with this until you get what tones / volumes you desire for the downbeats.
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STEP #5 – RENAME and SAVE CLIP(S) for future use
OK, now the hard part’s done. And by saving this clip, you can then easily drag and drop desired Click Clips into a session as you desire.
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STEP #6 – SETTING TEMPOS for Songs
If you’re already using Ableton for a multi-song set, you’re probably familiar with how tempos are set for the different songs using the Master Scenes.
Using the Rename feature (click on a box and type z-R), you can then type the name of the song, its TEMPO (be sure to add “bpm” after the tempo), and its time signature. (Press RETURN when you’re done!)
Now, when you click on that Master Scene box in the future, the click (and any other audio files/loops/programming, etc.) that you’ve imported along that horizontal scene will start at the exact tempo you’ve typed in.
Here’s an example of a recent Ableton Live set used for a live worship service performance.
All of those scenes had Click clips, while only some of those scenes also had count-offs, loops, and programmed tracks as needed.
While you can manually activate the scenes by clicking them, you can also map them to either keys on your computer or – more effectively – by MIDI-mapping them to an external controller. Products like M-Audio’s Trigger Finger and Novation Launchpad are widely used, while we currently use the Akai Professional LPD8 due to its smaller footprint.
But that’s a different story…
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There you go, kids! Have fun – and here’s a special treat: A download of the Click Clips and MPC Audio sample!
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00:54–3:20
Helps band members play in time with each other
No more rushing or dragging during your worship songs. Having a click track is going to make sure the songs are at the tempo that they're supposed to be.
Gives you the ability to use guide cues
Guide cues tell you what part of the song is coming up next. I love how guide cues give you the ability to just start a song without a drummer counting off with his or her sticks because it's counting off the song and into everybody's in-ear monitors,
Supplement the sound of your band
Backing tracks make the sounds of Hillsong, Bethel and Elevation Worship really accessible for us worship leader serving at smaller to mid size churches.
Sync lighting a lyric cues
Every Sunday at our church, we use Ableton Live to cue up all the lyric slides running in ProPresenter, and all of our lighting cues that are running in Lightkey, which is our DMX software. I'm a huge geek about Ableton Live and automating things, because it just makes things go so smoothly in worship. It eliminates so many mistakes.
3:20–3:58
In order to get up and running smoothly with a click and tracks, you need to make sure your band has in-ear monitoring. In-ear monitoring is important because you want your band members to hear the click and the guide cues in their ears. You can't send that signal through the floor wedges or else that will just sound really weird.
3:58–4:36
Now let's talk about the software and gear to make it possible to run a click and track for your worship band. A click and backing tracks rig consists of three parts.
Software
Playing back all the audio files, whether it's the click, the guide cues, as well as ambient pads or other backing tracks you may buy.
Playback device
Simply runs the software that is running the audio files (desktop, ipad, etc.).
Connectivity devices
Sends audio from play-back device to the front-of-house sound console. So it goes through the sound system, the main PA, as well as the in-ear monitors.
4:36–8:16 Zte mf626 driver windows 10.
1. Ableton live
Ableton Live is my number one recommendation for software for running this and doing a whole lot of other cool things for your worship ministry. Of all the software options, Ableton is hands down the most powerful for running a click and tracks in worship. That's why bands like Hillsong, Elevation, Bethel, Jesus Culture, Red Rocks Worship, all use Ableton Live to run their tracks.
Cost
Ableton Live is the great route to go if you're super serious about running a click and tracks and automation, and it's a great route to go if you have the funds. I always recommend the standard version of $500 for worship leaders.
I actually created a 60 minute masterclass on it and I dive into a seven step process for running a click, tracks and automating lyrics and lighting in worship so that you can easily understand Ableton and its capabilities.
2. Prime app
My next recommendation for software is the Prime app created by the Loop Community. It’s an iOS-based software, so it runs on your iPhone, iPad and Mac operating system. It's completely free, and since it was designed specifically for this purpose of running a click and tracks in worship, the user interface is simple and super user friendly.
The other cool thing about the Loop Community Prime ecosystem is that you can have free Cloud storage to store all of your tracks in their Cloud. Whether you buy from Loop Community or somewhere else, they'll keep them stored in the Cloud. Then you open up the app on your phone or your iPad, and your purchases will show up right there in the app within your account.
Ableton Live Click Tracks
3. The Playback app
My next recommendation is the Playback app created by the team at Multitracks. It’s very similar to Prime and very user friendly.
The downside is it only runs on iOS devices, so it doesn’t have a Mac version. But once again, this app is also very user friendly and intuitive.
Playback’s rental program
When you start getting tracks to use for worship, you discover that it can get really expensive really fast. Because if you buy full Multitrack stems, it can cost anywhere from $25 to $35 per song.
BUT Playback has a great rental program. You can pay 50-100 bucks a month to have access to however many unique songs you'll need for your worship team.
That was a ton of information so here’s a quick recap:
I recommend Ableton Live if you're really serious about this and you have at least one to two hours a week that you can spend on prepping your click and backing track sessions.
If you just want the quick and easy way to run a click and tracks, and you don't need that advanced control, then check out Prime or Playback. I recommend downloading both of them, giving both of them a try, and see which one of them you prefer.
8:16–9:06
Now that we've covered the software side of things, let's talk about the actual playback device.
Mac
If you're using Ableton Live, run it on a Mac. It works on PC, but your life is going to be much easier, especially if you do automation, if you're running everything on a Mac ecosystem.
iPad
If you're going the Prime and Playback route, then go ahead and find a decent iPad that you can use. Especially these more recent iPads, like the iPad Pro is super powerful, it can easily run either one of these apps very smoothly.
9:06–12:43
Now let's talk about getting the sound from your playback device and software to the front of house sound console.
1. 3.5 mm, put into DI box
You could easily just pull the audio from the headphone jack, whether it's from your laptop or your iPad, and send the audio to your front of house console that way.
Usually with those headphone jacks, what you can do is get a 3.5 millimeter dual quarter inch cable and put it into a DI box.
On the left, you're going to have just the click and guide cue, so that goes into its own channel on the mixer.
On the right, you're going to have all your backing tracks which goes into a separate channel.
Then, your front- of-house sound engineer can actually send just the click and guide cues to the in-ear monitoring, and then all the tracks can go to the front of house PA, as well as in-ear monitors if you want to hear that.
2. Find a dedicated audio interface like the Behringer 404 HD Audio Interface
Another option I recommend is finding a dedicated audio interface. This can work whether you're running Ableton on a Mac, or if you're running Prime or Playback on an iPad.
At my church with our Ableton Live rig, we’re running the Behringer 404 HD audio interface. Rose in a yuri field. It has four quarter inch outputs on the back of the audio interface, so instead of being limited to just the two outputs we get from a headphone jack–being a left and right stereo–we can actually have up to four outputs.
Here's how we divvy up our audio outputs from Ableton
We put our click and guide cues on channel one.
We put all of our really bass heavy tracks on channel two.
Then for channels three and four, we run all the rest of the tracks in stereo.
Benefits of this setup
We found that this keeps our setup really simple. We could get a bigger interface and send more channels to our front of house sound console, but I want to make it easy for my sound techs to mix in the tracks with the rest of the band.
It also keeps the bass track separate from the other tracks which really clarifies our mix and it sounds awesome.
Sidenote: With the Behringer audio interface, we use a quarter inch to XLR snake to get the sound from the audio interface to our stage box.
3. Track Rig
I also want to mention another great option you can use that just came out called the Track Rig by Loop Community.
I haven’t used it myself, but it looks incredible.
This is an audio interface designed specifically for running tracks in worship. They have eight XLR outputs on the front of this thing, you could just mount it in a rack if you want, you could just put your computer on top of it.
It has a USB hub on it for getting the connection from your computer to the interface, as well as plugging in any other many devices that you're using alongside of your rig.
Hopefully I'll get my hands on one soon. I just wanted to make sure that you guys knew about it, and if you had the budget for it, I think it's definitely worth giving a try.
4. Peavey USB-P audio interface
Finally, while I'm talking about connectivity devices, one of my favorite devices I've come across is the Peavey USB-P audio interface.
It's a little two channel audio interface and it's great if you just want to separate your backing tracks into the click on the left and all the other tracks on the right.
This audio interface is only 50 bucks, it has two XLR outputs on it and I made a video showing you how to set it up. Definitely worth looking into if you just want a simple interface and you’re using a Mac computer to run either Ableton or Prime.
There you have it, folks. Those are my recommendations for the software, the playback devices and connectivity devices to build your own click and backing tracks rig for your worship band.
It’s definitely a lot of information and I get it if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by all of it so I opened up my calendar to chat with you about any questions you might have.
If you’re interested in running this rig let’s set up a call.
**Click HERE to chat**
Ableton Live Gospel Click Tracks
Talk soon!