Mixing (not DJing) in Ableton Live Workflow

[e-motion]

Hey everyone,

I recently moved from Cubase and now I'm near finishing my first track in live and would like to know what's your workflow for the mixing phase (the one you do after you have written your track) ?

In Cubase, I froze every channel (synth+effects) and only frozen the synth in the elements I was tweaking (so I could still use the effects). The problem is that in Ableton when you freeze a channel, you can no longer add effects, so, how do you do it? Is there some trick?

I'm thinking in saving to a new file, freeze/flatten every channel, but this can be a bit of pain in the ass if you want to go back somewhere during the process.

Thanks in advance.

[e-motion]

bump?

[Khazm]

You unfreeze the track, add said effect, then freeze again.

[e-motion]

Hmm, yeah could be one way of doing it, but won't it be too slow? (freezing big channels over & over again).

[societyloser1]

Do you need to freeze the tracks for cpu? Otherwise just leave the tracks unfrozen?

Or: Export Audio/video -> Rendered track: All tracks
Render it to your harddrive, open a new project, put all the rendered files, except for the master render in the project and start mixing!

[RandoRando]

1.add an audio track under each of your unfrozen tracks. (eg: if you have 20 original tracks your going to create 20 audio tracks under each one)

2. freeze all your original tracks

3.on the frozen parts, you can pull those down into the audio track and it will automatically be turned into audio instantly (becuase thats what freezing is)

4.mute your frozen tracks and add all the effects you want on your audio tracks.

[blinx]

I use ableton on a mid2010 MBP and usually get away with just mixing down (dont freeze anything) after my writing phase. I kind of mixdown while i write too. So my mixdown is usually an entire session dedicated to the mixing of the elements and mastering for comparable loudness/impact after the mixdown.

I only freeze tracks in ableton if i hit a cpu ceiling, which doesnt happen often at all, and then i only freeze the background and static channels leaving my midrange bass and leads unfozen for minor mixing/tweakings.

Thats just my workflow though so take it with a grain of salt.

[Aphile]

route your frozen tracks INTO a monitoring audio track and FX it there...easy as cake.

[dubesteppe]

on every track you want to freeze press controll g to group it. only group it with its self and you will be able to add effects still

[e-motion]

Thanks everyone for the tips, you opened my eyes a bit more to Ableton
~

on every track you want to freeze press controll g to group it. only group it with its self and you will be able to add effects still

This is spot on, exactly what I wanted. Simple, fast and effective.