Tips for getting worship songs from GarageBand into Ableton Live

Ableton Live is the perfect software app to play back tracks or loops during your church worship services, but I much prefer something like GarageBand to actually create the tracks in the first place. In this video, I share my entire process for taking a song I created in GarageBand and putting it into Ableton Live ready for next Sunday.
This video covers:
1. Why I use GarageBand to create tracks but use Ableton Live to execute those tracks
2. How to create stem files in GarageBand
3. Why it’s better to use the AIFF file format instead of MP3 for stem files
4. How to make a mono stem file (when GarageBand only exports stereo files)
5. Why I choose to always use master files for click tracks, vocal guide cues, shakers and tambourines
6. How to set up the different warp modes in Ableton Live based on the type of instrument it is
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[@williamtomlinson6137]

Brother, your channel is such a blessing to me. I appreciate the helpful tips, as I've worked through this process with Ableton and GB.

[@brendaroman3345]

Thanks for the tips! They were are very useful to me

[@robsharp2941]

I always suggest storing all files on an external device. I store ours on our server, which is also backed up offsite.
Then I pull over onto the computer what I need for that week. This way I am not as concerned about memory and space, just design and functionality.
Also, if you run session view you really need to export stems that are all the same length.
But it's always interesting seeing how others do it.
Not that one is better than the other but curious as to why you chose to run in arrangement view rather than session.

[@practicalworship]

Hey Rob! I choose to use arrangement view (horizontal view), because it's gives us much more control on the transitions from one song to another. And because our arrangements are pretty well locked down for us, it works well for us. But I know a lot of churches that prefer session view (vertical view) and the flexibility it provides them.

[@robsharp2941]

Practical Worship we are A-Z as well but use Session. We have a lot of MIDI routing going on.

[@oldmannewmotorworks7443]

Hey man, great video! Question, tho... Why spend so much time to export only parts of each stem, knock stereo tracks down to mono, and carefully rebuild the whole track, when u could cut a LOT of time out of the process by just exporting each stem from GBand in its entirety, then drag and drop each stem to the beginning of the new Ableton file? Are you just looking to save HD space? I've got 150+ songs ion my Ableton folder that take up around 230GB of space. With hard drives only costing around $30/TB these days, it seems like maybe the juice isn't worth the squeeze if you're just trying to conserve HD space. Thoughts? Thanks again for some truly great videos & advice!!

[@practicalworship]

OldManNew MotorWorks That's a solid question. In the video I talk about finding the balance between how much HD space it takes up vs how much work it takes to create the stems. It's a balancing act, and it's probably different for different people. My Ableton folder is around 25GB, and that's about all I can spare on my 500GB internal drive. I've also got GarageBand files, MP3s, tons of photos and other stuff fighting for space, since I use my MacBook for pretty much everything. I actually have a 64GB USB thumb drive that always stays plugged in to my MacBook for all my video work because it all competes for space. For me the juice is worth the squeeze (love that analogy BTW!), but every situation is different I suppose.