Recording Vocals/Instruments- Part 2

Read Part 1 of the article here

Setting up Ableton Live for Recording

There is a bunch of methods our there and people swear by certain methods. I am providing a simple step version of how I do it on my system

• Open Ableton Live and you should be greeted with the two tracks, an audio and a midi track.
• You will have an audio channel and a midi channel. You can delete the midi channel for now. More on midi in other tutorials.
• In the Ableton Live preferences, make sure that the device is selected. In my case a USB device as shown below.

• Highly recommend you stay in session view for making overall channel setting adjustments and then move into the arrangement view once the recording starts. you can switch between the two views using the  TAB key on the MAC and PC.
• On the Audio channel Session view there is going to be a I/O panel as shown below.

• If you do not see this view make sure you have turned on I-O visibility on the bottom right hand corner of the interface. This is located under the scroll bar on the right hand side.
• You need to make sure that the inputs for the channel are set to the device you are using to get the sound in. If you have installed the audio interface drivers on a PC, or plugged it into a MAC. Ableton will automatically populate it as one of the default choices available for choosing. Go ahead and pick that device as input. You can leave the output to Master as is. I will deal with sending audio to other channels such as sends or other tracks on a later post.
• Once the above steps are complete, if you go ahead and arm the track you should be able to hear the sound from the mike or instrument. If this is not happening, it is most likely that you have not set your audio in device correctly.
• Now would be a good time to hit the TAB key and go into the arrangement view. Hit the master record button to arm Ableton for recording.
• Set the tempo using the master tempo on the top left of the screen and when you hit play button you should be able to record the incoming signals as shown below.