The metronome sound in Ableton Live is pretty piercing and can easily bleed into your audio recordings. Especially when recording vocals. Have you ever wondered how you can change the sound to something more pleasing and less shrill? Here’s how:
On Mac OS X:
- Browse to the Live.app in Finder and right- or Ctrl-click it. Choose Show Package Contents.
- Go to Contents /App-Resources/Misc/Metronome/Samples where you will find the files Metronome.wav and MetronomeUp.wav.
- It’s best to rename MetronomeUp.wav and Metronome.wav to something like MetronomeUpOld.wav and MetronomeOld.wav, so you can keep these files if you want to change them back later. Alternatively you can move them somewhere safe on your hard drive.
- Decide which sounds you want to use for the new metronome. Change their names to Metronome.wav and MetronomeUp.wav and paste them to the folder Contents/App-Resources/Misc/Metronome/Samples.
- If you want to restore the original metronome sounds, delete the custom sound files and rename the old files. Or move them back to the folder if you had chosen the alternative method.
On Windows:
- With Windows Explorer browse to the following folder:
Program FilesAbleton Live x.x.xResourcesMiscMetronomeSamples
(x signifies the specific version, e.g. Live 8.2.8) - It’s best to rename MetronomeUp.wav and Metronome.wav to something like MetronomeUpOld.wav and MetronomeOld.wav, so you can keep these files if you want to change them back later. Alternatively you can move them somewhere safe on your hard drive.
- Choose your own metronome sounds, name them Metronome.wav and MetronomeUp.wav and paste them to the folder Program FilesAbleton Live x.x.xResourcesMiscSamples
- If you want to revert back to the old metronome sounds, delete your custom sounds and rename the original files by removing Old from the names. Or move them back from where you had stored them in the meantime.
By the way, once you install a newer version of Live, you need to do the same procedure for it as Live versions are not updated on top of older versions, but installed alongside each other.
Free Download
I’ve created my own metronome sounds and thought I could share them with you. You can get them and more goodies as free downloads under Freebies after signing up on the right.
Do you have any questions or comments? I’m curious to read them. Happy recording!
There are plenty more Ableton Live tutorials where this one came from.
2 responses
Hi,
Danke schonmal für den kleinen Guide.
Ich habe noch eine andere Frage: Ich kann leider keinen Sound nun mehr höhren vom Metronom, weder die neuen, noch die alten Metronom- Sounds… was kann ich da tun?
Grüße
Auch wenn Du die Standardmetronomsounds einfach zurück kopierst und Live neu startest? Hast Du vielleicht versehentlich die Cue/Solo Lautstärke herunter gedreht? Die hat ein kleines Kopfhörer-Symbol und ist in der Session Ansicht im Master ganz unten zu finden. Ich hoffe, das hilft.