Ableton Forum

Ok,... i give in,... I am a violinist/ choir director, who has used Ableton for years simply to record tracks to create accompaniments to choir practice sessions,
and now my choir is clamoring for me to create a virtual choir in this Covid 19 era.

I have read up on it, and i think i know the pieces that are involved in doing this..
But,... I have NEVER done, nor, know a thing about quantizing, compressing, threshold, etc,... or anything else involved in the real business of sound engineering.
I always got completely lost when i tried to manipulate the track in any way at all ...

So,.. here is my question to you...
Would any of you experience sound engineers be willing to teach me, a totally non- technical musician how to do this ??
I could learn over zoom, if you shared your screen with me, and we recorded the process - i would be happy to pay you.
or , could anyone post a how- to here..
as a now stay-at-home church musc director attempting to create all the music for a pre-recorded service, i find myself desperately trying to learn new skills, mostly from you tube, but i haven't been able to find a you tube video that can make it simple enough for me.
the product does not have to be perfect,... just good enough that the congregation will enjoy seeing their friends on Sunday morning.
also... if any of you know of a you tube video designed for folks like me then just point me in that direction and i will learn.
thank you all !!
Alison
Music director
North Shore Unitarian church

The first challenge is getting the recordings from everyone. Maybe you’ve already solved this? Below is what I would do.

What’s most critical is that the recordings that choir members send you are in time with each other. The way to solve this is to send everyone the accompaniment track, and have them use a multi track recording program (DAW or rudimentary multitracking program) to record their part. They would drop your accompaniment in as one track, that they would listen to while recording their part. Their part needs to start recording from time 00:00, so that the start point of their track lines up with the start point of your accompaniment. Step by step I would do this..

Make the accompaniment
In Live, set your tempo as desired. Use the metronome while recording. While it’s not 100% necessary to have your song aligned to measures on the grid, it makes things more sensical later to be able to go to measure X in the song in Live. Make sure the accompaniment has something with melody or harmony in it (piano, etc. - not just drums) so everyone ends up being in key.

Export the track. Follow the instructions here in the Exporting Stems area, BUT change step 2 by setting it to Master so that all tracks get exported. Above, you may want to make more than one track to create the accompaniment, such as singing some parts yourself along with having a piano, all recorded into separate tracks. But when you export it, you want it all in one mixed audio file so it is easiest for others to use as a reference track for their recording.
https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... ting-stems

Members record their parts
Send the track to the choir members. Have them record their parts using a multitracking program. I recommend Studio One Prime or Audacity as the free options. Have them set their sample rate to 48kHz. Have them also set their tempo to the same as yours, if you used the metronome. That would let them optionally turn on their own metronome while recording, such as in Studio One Prime. They need to use headphones so that the reference accompaniment track doesn’t bleed into their recording. Simple earbuds would even work fine for this. They also need some kind of microphone to record with. Phone earbuds may work well enough, or the mic on their computer.

They then drag the accompaniment file in as track 1. This file must be placed so that it starts exactly at time 00:00 on track 1, so that their recording will be in time with all others. Create a new audio track as track 2. This will contain their recording. Arm the recording on track 2, and record while singing along with the accompaniment. They need to start recording from time 00:00, even if their part doesn’t start until later in the song. They could start recording later, only if they know how to export the entire length of their track starting from 00:00. Most important is that the start time of all exported files from everyone is the same.

Then they need to export only their track 2 singing track and send it to you. Besides being in time, they need to set their microphone level such that it doesn’t clip. Meaning, levels shouldn’t be going into the red. A bit too low is better than too high where it distorts.

Import the tracks
Import the tracks. See the same link above and follow the steps for Importing. So long as everyone started their audio files from time 00:00, everything should line up in time! Here’s a video also showing tracks being dragged/dropped in. Notice how warp needs to be disabled.
https://youtu.be/8wfPgiG_ZD0

From here it gets into mixing the tracks. It may be enough to set levels and, if needed, trim the lengths of recordings to cut out large areas of silence at the start/finish of when they are actually singing. If you need to do anything to a track beyond that, it would probably be limited to equalization and maybe compression. One suggestion is to sign up for a free 7 day membership at Groove3.com and search on those topics in the Ableton related videos. If you want more time, add on a 1 month membership. There is a lot of great content there.

I just started working with the Ableton Live and I'm working with a friend of mine who's more tech-oriented than I am and the trouble we're having is when we record something the volume is at a good level but then when we go to XSport it as to put it on Facebook or some type of media the volume seems to cut down in half are there any solutions to this?