How do I get a Planning Center plan into Ableton Live?

The short answer

By hand, you set up each song in Live yourself: its tempo and time signature, its stems on tracks, and markers for its sections. Plan2Live is a Mac app that does that part for you. It imports a plan from Planning Center, finds each song's stems in your own folders, and builds an Ableton Live set with the songs in order.

Planning Center is optional. You can also type your setlist into Plan2Live.

Mac only (macOS 14.6 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel) · Ableton Live Standard or Suite

How Plan2Live does it

Connect Planning Center once

Plan2Live connects with a Planning Center Personal Access Token. You make one in Planning Center and paste two codes into Plan2Live. You only do this once.

  1. In your web browser, go to api.planningcenteronline.com/oauth/applications and sign in with your Planning Center account.
  2. Click New Personal Access Token and name it "Plan2Live".
  3. Copy the App ID and the Secret it shows you.
  4. In Plan2Live, paste them in and press Connect Planning Center.
  • Use a Personal Access Token, not an OAuth Application.
  • Plan2Live keeps the App ID and Secret in your Mac's Keychain. It never sends them to Plan2Live.

Pick the plan

  1. Choose Planning Center on the New Project screen.
  2. Choose the Service Type, then Upcoming, Past or All.
  3. Click the plan you're building for. Plan2Live imports it and opens Confirm + Edit.

What comes in from the plan

Items that aren't songs, like a welcome, a reading or announcements, are left out. If Planning Center didn't have a key, tempo or time signature for a song, that box comes in empty and highlighted, and the GENERATE button tells you what's missing.

  • The title of each song, in the plan's order.
  • The key, when the song's key is set in the plan.
  • The tempo, from the arrangement's BPM (or a tempo like "128 bpm" written in the item's notes).
  • The time signature, from the arrangement's meter, when it's 4/4, 3/4 or 6/8.
  • The sections, from the arrangement's sequence.

Add your stems and build

Point Plan2Live at the folder where your song folders live, one folder per song, named after the song. It finds each song's folder and puts each file on the right track.

Section names come from the spoken cues on each song's Guide track, or, for an imported plan, from the song's arrangement sections in Planning Center: choose Planning Center Labels in the Options card.

When everything looks right on Confirm + Edit, press GENERATE PROJECT. Most sets build in under a minute on an Apple Silicon Mac; very large stem folders take longer. Then press Open in Ableton.

What you get in Ableton Live

  • The songs one after another in Arrangement View, in your set's order.
  • Each song's tempo and time signature at its start.
  • A block of tracks for each song, named after the song and its key: Markers, Click and Guide, the stem tracks the song uses, and BGVs.
  • Section markers, and a copy of every stem inside the project folder.

What it doesn't do

  • Plan2Live is a Mac app (macOS 14.6 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel).
  • It builds in Arrangement View, not Session View.
  • It doesn't play the set. You run it in Ableton Live, like a set you made yourself.
  • The built-in template doesn't make a click. If you want a click, bring a click stem.

Read more in the manual