The basics
also on every product pageStencils are arrangement breakdowns of popular songs in Ableton Live that show every instrument in a song and where to put it on the timeline. You can learn from them and fill them out with your own sounds, coming up with something completely unique. Every section is placed, color coded and professionally organized to the highest level so you can make quick decisions and stay in the creative flow.
A remake gives you the whole song. Presets, processing, musical choices, all of it. Great for learning, but you are working inside someone else's sound. A stencil gives you the outline and nothing else. Play in your sounds, move the sections, take it wherever you want. The structure helps you stay organized and make decisions on the fly, so you stay in the flow state.
No. It opens with nothing but stock Ableton devices, so there is nothing to install. Fill it in with whatever plugins and samples you already own.
Both, used differently. If you are learning, it is a guide. The sections are already placed, so you find out where things go by filling them in rather than guessing. I color code these in extreme detail so you can spot patterns easily and speed drill sections to get your reps in. If you already produce, it is an organization and decision shortcut. You skip the blank session and spend time working on the music and the song itself. They use it to get ideas down quickly and pick the best one, rearranging the structure and the instruments on the fly as the song demands.
You can, but following it note for note usually makes a track harder to finish. Add something that is not there, take out what is not needed, and practice rearranging the pieces in different ways until you find what works for the song you are making.
No, and they are more fun when you do not. Take that house stencil and bump it to 140, or turn a dubstep arrangement into a tech house track. Have fun with it, be creative, and bring your own sound to arrangements you would not normally think to use.
Using the stencil
One Ableton session. Every section mapped, color coded and labeled across the full timeline, automation notes written into the clips, and a key mapped frequency check rack to check highs, mids, lows, sides and mono against two key mapped reference channels.
Two reference channels sit at the top of every stencil, both routed to the reference group.
Load up to two reference tracks at the top of every stencil, both routed to the reference group. Switch between them and your own mix with the keys below.
On the master and the reference group there is a rack mapped to keys as well, so you can solo highs, mids, lows and sides and check mono on your own track and on either reference, and hear exactly where the two differ.
The keys sit at the bottom of the keyboard laid out like an EQ. M is mono, then lows, mids and highs run left to right along the bottom row, and sides sits just above highs.
Hover over any lit key to see what it does
Hover any lit key to see what it does.
Mono is a capital M. Caps lock is the easiest way to get it.