8 Workflow Tips for Producers - Setting up a Quick Start Default Song Template

Ableton Live Custom Default Template

If you're producing with Ableton Live (or any other DAW) on a regular basis, you should start preparing a customized quick start default template. You can easily save the first 10 minutes of every session and jump right into the creative process.

Grab our "PML Default Template with Mixing Racks" here: http://bit.ly/pml_s_tmp_default

We are going to share our personalized default template with you:

PML Default Start Template - Contents:

Sidechain: Regardless of the type of track, we always use sidechaining at some point, so we have a special "ghost" sidechain track prepared.
Drums: If you're continuously working within the same genre you can have your preprogrammed drum MIDIs load with your default project. We load tracks with default Kicks, Claps and a couple of Hihats. The preloaded MIDIs are playing a standard 4/4 pattern. (You could also load a Drumrack here)
MIDI & Audio tracks: We are loading a couple of MIDI and Audio tracks, because we're going to need them later anyways
Favorite VST Instruments: Some of the loaded MIDI channels already contain our favorite VSTs, the one's that are most likely to be used anyways.
Audio Effects: With our preloaded MIDI and Audio channels, we also by default load up typically used audio effects like Compressor, Sidechain Compressor (already routed to the SC Channel), EQ8 (we always need an EQ on any channel) and an instance of the "Utility". Why do we load the utility? Just in case we want to do some quick volume fades without using the „track volume“ control - because we might want to change the volume mixing of several tracks later without having to manually drag automation curves around.
Predesigned Mixing Racks: We also load a couple of our predesigned easy mixing racks, with special settings for Bass sounds, Guitars, Pianos, Vocals and such, because we can save some valuable time that way - and we're still able to achieve a quick premixing state of our work. (You can grab our "PML Default Template with Mixing Racks" here: http://bit.ly/pml_s_tmp_default)

We also highly recommend:

7. Organizing the DAW

Save your Instrument Racks of sounds you love
Save your Effect Racks
Save your Midis

Organize your Sample Packs for easy access

If your buying sample packs, don’t buy the largest sample packs, try getting sample packs that offer high quality sounds, even if they contain only 10% of the contents of that 6gb on sale pack you saw somewhere.

8. Focus on a few synths: