Recording in Ableton Live is pretty straightforward if you follow all the steps carefully.
Check out this video and the steps below - it is extremely important you follow each one, if you have any missed steps, the recording will not work:
- Open up your Sunday Keys set in Ableton Live in Session View.
- Click on "All Off" to disable all sounds.
- Choose the sound you'd like to record, and click the play button and then click on the text in the cell. Choose ⌘C (Command C) to copy the sound.
- Go into Arrangement View by clicking the the tab key on your keyboard. Your screen should now look like below:
- Disable this button highlighted in yellow below:
- Now your screen should look like this below, the triangle on the left allows you to view/close the file structure and User Library info on the left pane:
- From here, you only want to "arm" the track you are using a sound from. In this case, we are recording Ballad Upright Piano, so you'll want to "dis-arm" all the other tracks by clicking on the buttons on other tracks that show in yellow below. Make sure to scroll down to get them all turned off:
- Now, paste the clip you copied from Session View into the rectangle on the track you want to record. The numbers at the top of your screen refer to measures, so paste in as many of the tracks as you need for the length of time you'd like to record. It should look something like this:
- Lastly, open "I-O" on the bottom right of the screen, and another box will open up on your track, and you can choose "Auto" instead of "In":
- Now, when you choose the record button, you'll see the track turn light red and you can begin to play. You shouldn't hear any audio until the cursor reaches your first copied clips, then you should be able to hear sound as you play from that point on:
- You should be able to see where your notes are with little black lines:
- You can now play it back to hear the recording. Press stop a couple times to move the cursor back to the start. Then, hit play. You should hear the captured recording:
- To export your recording, first select your recording on the track.
- Then, with the recording selected, go to File > Export Audio/Video. Turn off "Create Analysis File" Choose your File Type, and select MP3 if you'd like. Then choose "Export"
- After choosing Export, you'll choose a File Location. Ableton Live will place the recording in that location with 2 files - one .wav and one .mp3 if you chose that. Then, you can proceed to play it in a music player of your choice like Apple Music.