Ableton Live - Quick Tip #3

Drum Rack Return Chains
Many Live users don't realise that drum racks have there own built in sends and return track chains. This allows us to setup a number of return tracks within our drum racks and send any sound within the rack to them. It is also possible to use the return chains to send out to the main return tracks in our session. This can be really useful for some mixing applications.

To start setting up return tracks within a drum rack, we first need to show the ‘Return Chains’. Then if we would like to send the signal out of the rack to our main return channels, we also need to show the I/Os. These can all be shown and hidden, using the icons in the bottom left hand corner of the drum rack device (Highlighted by the red rectangle below) (These won't be available unless you have selected 'Show Chains'). We then have two options; we can either drop audio effect devices onto the return chain section (Highlighted by the blue rectangle), or alternatively right click in this area and select the 'Create Return Chain' option. The latter option will create an empty return chain.

Once we have create an empty return chain, we can then use the I/O's to route it to our main return tracks in our Live session. This is shown below.

If you have a template session setup in Live, you could set this routing behaviour up as the default for all new Drum Rack's. Once we have setup our return chains in a Drum Rack, we can access the sends either in the rack or on our mixer in session view, by expanding the Drum Rack's chains.  Both approaches are shown below.

Use the buttons in the red rectangle to display the send and return controls/sections. Drop effects into the section highlighted by the blue rectangle to add effects and create return chains.