Changing Your Metronome Sound!

08Jun07

I was emailing ableton back and forth recently concerning the built in metronome and how to change its sound. I got an email back from them today (which is weird cause they finally responded to an email I sent them forever ago) saying,

“The Metronome is preset, you can´t take out the downbeat sounds.”

Or can can you????? Ahhhh, yes you can… (from an earlier post, although I thought it was posting as a separate issue)

So how do you change that sound? Here ya go (thanks to some friends on the Ableton forum):

To find them on your Mac…
1. Right-Click (option click) on Live.app
2. Show Package Contents

3. Contents
4. App-Resources
5. Misc
You will see two files of interest… “Metronome.wav” and “MetronomeUp.wav”

Rename your “MetronomeUp.wav” to “MetronomeUpBackup.wav” (so you keep that file if you want to change it back). Next copy the “Metronome.wav” and paste it to your desktop. Change its name to “MetronomeUp.wav” and move it back into “Misc” folder you just copied it from. Whaaa-La. Now your click will be a static sound.

If you want to change it back simply delete the file you created and rename the backup file to its original file name.

Pretty simple eh?

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Filed under: Resources | 7 Comments

7 Responses to “Changing Your Metronome Sound!”

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1 Matt Huber on June 15, 2007 said:

Thanks so much for this tip, man. You’ve just made using Ableton a lot more attractive to me. Believe it or not, this is one of the biggest problems I have had with Ableton – its terrible metronome sounds…

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2 Sean on December 28, 2007 said:

you can take it a step further! i took my boss DB-90 (Dr Beat) and recorded my own up and metronome sounds into logic. Then i imported the original ones, i lined them up and edited mine so that the clip was the same length and the click wave was synced up with abletons wav. Then i replaced abletons sounds with DR beat sounds and now my loop clicks match the clicks we use for non loop songs.

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3 dptronz on May 3, 2008 said:

Thanks for sharing this. Ableton’s stock metronome makes my whole neighborhood angry.

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4 g-mac on November 26, 2008 said:

thank you thank you thank you! Exactly what I was looking for!!!

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5 Joey on January 30, 2009 said:

haha i find it easier to follow an annoying click like abeltons if i have one that blends in with the song i lose it quickly.

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6 paul on April 12, 2009 said:

wow this is great i dont like the stock metronome sounds a snare and kick or cymbal would be good i like a different sound on the up but abletons is a bit weird, this looks real useful. great post

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7 opendoerr on June 10, 2009 said:

I went a step further. I made a ‘click machine’ with Impulse. You can drag in 8 different click samples (or more if you’re click crazy) into Impulse’s drum pad cells. Then either play or pencil in a MIDI clip that triggers the cells you want. Loop it and you’re all set.

If you want to change your click for a certain song, just drag the MIDI notes up or down to trigger a different Impulse cell. If you want your click pattern to be 3/4 instead of 4/4, just change the loop length. Maybe you want 8th note sub-divisions in your click. Just pencil in more notes to trigger them. After I made a few click loops, I dragged them into the Clip Library and named them 4-4 Click, 3-4 click 6-8 click, etc. You also have control over the volume of each click now as well.

The other nice thing this does is it gives you a way to have odd meter clicks without having to worry about putting in meter changes in Lives timeline. This has helped me a ton on times when we are doing a cover of a song. I drag in the songs mp3. Tap in the tempo so that it matches the original song, line up the a downbeat in the song with Lives bar/beat grid, them just drag in one of my click loops to a new track. You can them loop it or paste it wherever you want, route it wherever you want, blah blah blah. Makes things really easy. I don’t ever have to worry about fiddling with metronome settings now since I can set them up separately for each song.

I’ve noticed that one of my drummers can lock to any click, so I give a really subtle UREI type click that just disappears. I’ve got other drummers that aren’t quite there yet, so they need an obnoxious click that is always audible in their mix. The Click Machine method with Impulse makes this a total no-brainer.

OD

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