Ableton Live Tutorial #1: Freeze and Squeeze MIDI into Audio.

In order to help grow this thing beyond posting mixes, tracks and bigging up other artists and events, the Fresh Air Love Crew will be throwing up various production tips, secrets, tutorials and techniques for use in Ableton Live, Logic and similar tingz in hopes that maybe you will find something useful. The goal is to assist in making your workflow more efficient, help you discover a new sound or technique, or anything that'll make you feel inspired to create and give something back to this crazy music thing that has given so much to us. Make it happen!

Ableton Tutorial #1: Freeze and Squeeze MIDI into Audio.

As anyone running a large project with multiple plug-in VSTs and effects can attest to, CPU usage quickly becomes a major player in how your recording session progresses. Most synthesizer VSTs are extremely taxing on your computer and, if running multiple tracks with various plug-ins at once, it can adversely affect your audio output and get your frustrated on the quick. One way to combat this is to render your MIDI to audio, relieving your CPU the strain of processing the MIDI through the plug-in. A typical way to acheive this is to route your MIDI track's signal to an Audio channel, arm the Audio channel and simply record the MIDI clip to an empty slot on the Audio channel. Unfortunately, this method can also take up alot of your time as you will have to play each MIDI clip "live", waiting for each clip to play in it's entirety as it records on to the Audio channel. If you have, say, a dozen MIDI clips on a single track (and dozens more on other MIDI tracks!), you could be looking at hour's worth of rendering MIDI to audio. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that this is not fun, especially when you're eager to keep working and moving along. So without further adieu, here's a quick and easy solution to converting any number of MIDI clips on a single track into separate, fully rendered audio clips in a matter of seconds.

Step 1: In Live's "Session View", select the MIDI track you wish to render to audio and freeze the entire track by right-clicking and selecting, appropriately enough, "Freeze Track". The entire track will now be frozen and each clip will be clear and read "Frozen".

Step 2: Drag the frozen MIDI clips to an empty Audio channel. A window will pop-up indicating that the MIDI is automatically rendering to the Audio track. Any effects on the MIDI track, as well as any automation within the MIDI clips themselves, will be captured and rendered also!

Step 3: And now for the hard part.. actually, nope, that's it! The frozen MIDI clips are now copied onto the Audio track as audio files. Unfreeze your MIDI clips if you'd like (I prefer to keep them frozen unless I absolutely need to render MIDI to audio again) and continue working on your project. Your computer will be grateful for no longer having to process the MIDI and you'll save time not having to wait for each clip to render individually.

This is also extremely useful for MIDI tracks that have plug-ins that generate random sounds and variations, such as Audio Damage's Replicant, Sugar Bytes' Effectrix or Ableton's own Beat Repeat. Create multiple copies of a MIDI clip, follow the freeze process outlined above, and you'll have multiple versions of the same clip but with different effect variations for you to pick and choose from! The random element is now removed so you are free to arrange and complete your project with no surprises.

This tip might save you only a few minutes here or there, but over the course of a 20-40 hour project, let alone an EP or LP's worth of material, it could mean the difference between a couple hours worth of tedious rendering and a night of creative exploration and fun. Caveat: this tip is not meant as a substitution for learning how to route audio in, out and through Ableton, which everyone should take the time to learn, but serves merely as a short-cut for those looking to save precious time while working on a project and wanting to conserve processing power at the same time.