Every effect on all fourteen tracks, and where each track goes on its way to the master. The pans are set. The levels on top of that are yours.
The Ableton The Live set every song is cloned from, so each export opens with the tracks, buses, sends and pans already in place. on the session page is wired this way already, and the session you download arrives on it with the song in place. To work from your own template, drop each song's plain MIDI into it instead. Live throws controller data away when it imports MIDI, so the filter sweep and the swell come through only in the session. Any other DAW keeps them, so take the PDF above and build the same routing there.
Insert.Amp, EQ, compression, saturation, chorus, tremolo and filter change the sound itself, so they go on the track.
Send.Reverb and delay go on shared returns, so every part sits in the same room.
Signal Flow
Each track goes into its bus, or straight to the master where it has none, and every bus goes into the master with the sends beside them. A dashed line is a return, so it's the room coming back rather than the part.
Three buses, and each one is a group that has to sound like one thing. Drums is the
rhythm floor, and you glue the machine, the acoustic kit and the percussion or they never sound
like one musician. Guitars is just the pair summed, so the two takes move as one part. Synth is
Keys, Pad, Swells and Arp sitting as one bed, which is why the EQ there shapes the bed rather
than any one of them.
The bass and the lead go straight to the master instead. A bus around a single channel
gives you a fader and no decision, and what the bass has to work out is where it sits against
the kick, which is a level and EQ question rather than a routing one. The lead is the part you
ride by hand, and a shared compressor argues back every time you move it.
Tracks 1 and 2 are one groove for two kits, a drum machine and an acoustic kit, and both arrive written in full. The machine is the kit this genre runs on, so track 2 arrives muted. Unmute it to layer the acoustic kit under the machine, or mute track 1 and let track 2 play alone. The crash lives on the machine here, and the acoustic kit strikes its own only in a bar the machine rests, so copy the crash notes over from track 1 before you run it alone.
Track Inserts, Pans and Sends
Every effect the template puts on a track, in the order the signal hits them, and the colour says what kind of effect each one is. The pans don't move, because the two guitars are written as a hard-panned pair and closing that up collapses the part. Beside them is how much each track sends to returns A to D. There are only five levels, 0, −6, −12 or −18 dB, or off, and each is the whole number the template ships with, so you can read one off here and type it straight into Live's send field.
#
Track
Pan
APlateBHallCShimmerDDelay
Inserts
1
DRM Machine
Center
−12···
None
2
DRM Acoustic
Center
−6···
Comp
3
Aux Perc
±40
−12···
EQ
4
Bass
Center
····
CompEQSaturation
5
Guitar
Left 100
···−6
Amp simEQ
6
Guitar 2
Right 100
···−12
Amp simEQ
7
Keys
Right 25
···−12
Auto FilterAuto panChorusSaturationEQ
8
Pad
Center
··−12·
Auto FilterChorusEQ
9
Swells
Center
··0·
SaturationUtility
10
Arp
±60
··−12−6
Auto FilterEQ
11
Lead
Center
·−6−12−6
Comp
12
Vocal
Center
−6−12·−6
CompEQWidening
13
Harmony
Left 20
−6−12·−6
CompEQWidening
14
Vocal 2
Right 20
−6−12·−6
CompEQWidening
Buses and Returns
The same reading for the three buses, the four returns and the master, in the order the signal meets them. The buses feed the returns too, on the same five levels.