Pliris Docs

Guides and reference for Pliris™ — the multitrack stems player for live performance by From Studio to Stage. Learn how to import songs from Ableton Live, upload and analyze stems, build setlists, program MIDI cues, and send LTC/SMPTE timecode.

Getting Started

  • Drop Files, Analyze When Ready, Right-Click to Edit — Drop stems (upload starts immediately) or an Ableton project (Import to finish), optionally Analyze, then right-click to fix key, tempo, stems, and sections.
  • What Is Pliris? — The big-picture mental model — what Pliris is, who it's for, and the four nouns that hold your whole live rig together.
  • Signing In to Pliris — Where to sign in, how the magic-link flow works, and how one sign-in carries across every From Studio to Stage app — there is no separate Pliris login page.
  • Magic Link Sign-In Troubleshooting — What to do when the sign-in email does not arrive, the link loops, or Safari says it expired.
  • Your First Five Minutes with Pliris — The one path that takes you from a fresh account to running an Ableton show set — in about five minutes.
  • Bands, Songs, Arrangements, and Setlists — The full data model — how bands hold songs, songs hold arrangements, arrangements hold your show, and setlists put it all in order.
  • Creating Your First Band — Add your first band, set its name and profile image, and understand what a band actually holds — the front door to everything in Pliris.
  • Inviting Band Members — Invite someone to your band, pick their permissions, and control which bands they can access.
  • Band Access Levels — What each band permission can do — view only, download files, create setlists, manage arrangements, edit songs, manage members — plus how that differs from account admin.
  • Renamed Band Links Still Work — Changing a band's name shouldn't break old shared links — slug redirects keep the previous URL working.
  • Credits Explained — What Analyze does, how credits work, why analysis is priced per minute of audio, and why re-importing an Ableton file never costs you anything.
  • The Pliris Account Menu — The same avatar menu in every Pliris app — your profile, credit and storage meters, and account links that open already signed in.
  • Finding Course Downloads and Templates — Where lesson downloads live, free vs paid templates, and what to do when a Downloads tab is empty.

Songs & Setlists

  • Preparing Stems Before Upload — Drop exported stems in a DAW unwarped. If they play in time together — including the click — they are ready. Pliris puts files on the timeline as they are.
  • Uploading and Analyzing Your Stems — Drop stems and they upload immediately. Optionally Analyze (credits) for key, tempo, sections, lyrics, and chords — then rename and regroup on the song page.
  • How to Use the Song Arrangement Page — The arrangement page is where you rehearse and build a song — stems, sections, tempo, count-in, MIDI cues, lyrics, and playback all live here.
  • How to Edit Songs in Pliris — Rename a song, change cover art, and right-click on an arrangement to update key, tempo, sections, stems, and more — without touching the audio file itself unless you mean to.
  • Setting the Tempo of a Song — Tell Pliris what tempo the song is — for click, count-in, the grid, and Ableton export. This does not speed up or slow down your stems.
  • How to Rename Song Sections — Right-click a section on the arrangement timeline to rename it — the label updates on the player and in Ableton exports.
  • How to Change Cues in Pliris — Edit MIDI cues that fire external gear, record them live, drag them in Pro view, and map section cues for Ableton templates — all from the arrangement page.
  • How to Change Count-In — Set how many bars of click roll in before the downbeat — per arrangement, or inherit the band's global Count-in length.
  • Editing the Grid — Tempo, Meter and Sections — Pro mode adds a Measures, Meter and Tempo grid above the waveform. Right-click a bar to change its time signature, drag a tempo point, and right-click a section to rename, split, merge, loop or delete it. These edits change the GRID — the bar lines, meter and click — and never the audio: your stems are not time-stretched, re-rendered or sped up. ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows) undoes the last edit; History keeps version snapshots on save / leave edit / .als update.
  • How to Change the Length of a Song Section — Drag the boundary between two sections on the arrangement timeline in Pro mode — it snaps to the beat grid and ticks as you cross each beat. You can still do it in Ableton by moving locators and dropping the updated .als, if the set is where you work.
  • Adding and Changing Song Sections — Rename, split, merge, delete and loop sections directly in Pliris — right-click any section on the arrangement timeline. Resizing is a Pro-mode boundary drag, not a right-click action. Reordering still happens in Ableton. Every edit is undoable and lands in History.
  • Chart files — Drop a PDF or PNG chart on a song (ForScore-style) so band members with download access can view and download it. Alpha testers.
  • How to Rename and Regroup Stems — Right-click stems to rename or change group / routing, create custom stem groups, and rename the ones you own — built-in algorithmic categories stay fixed.
  • Old Stems Play but Won't Download as WAV — Stems uploaded before March 2025 may only have MP3 versions — re-upload the original WAV to restore full-quality export.
  • Importing a Song from Ableton Live — Bring a song in from Ableton in one drop. Collect All and Save, zip the project folder, drop it on the uploader — Pliris reads your tempo, sections, and arrangement AND pulls in your stems together. (A bare .als is structure-only.)
  • Keyboard Shortcuts — Verified Pliris™ playback keys, right-click and click actions, and setlist shortcuts — a checked list, not every key in the app.
  • Using Your Own Click and Cue Sounds — Bands' built-in Click & Cues uses stock sounds — use stem uploads or a custom Ableton template when you need your own samples.
  • Building and Sharing a Setlist — Create a setlist, add and reorder songs, share it public or private, print it to PDF, and assign LTC timecode values.
  • The Setlist Navigation Panel — Open a song from a setlist and a floating panel follows you — jump back to the set, skip to the next song, or leap anywhere in the list.
  • Why Does My Stem Show “Processing”? — What happens after upload, how long processing usually takes, and what to do when a stem is stuck.
  • Replacing Stems and Re-analyzing a Song — How to swap files on an existing song, avoid duplicates, and get a clean re-analysis.
  • Exporting Your Show Back to Ableton — Export a whole setlist as one Ableton Live Set with every arrangement in order and LTC timecode tracks pre-configured.
  • What’s in an Exported Ableton Project? — Stems, click, LTC, tempo automation, section markers, MIDI cues, and multi-song layout.
  • Updating an Arrangement from Ableton — Change a song in Ableton — mutes, deactivated clips, a duplicated chorus — drop the .als on its arrangement, and the on-page player updates in place. No re-upload.
  • Updating Your Set's Arrangements from Ableton — Export your set, rehearse and edit it in Ableton, drop the one file back on the setlist — and update each arrangement or spin up new versions, your call, song by song.
  • What Gets Imported When You Update from Ableton — Dropping an .als on an arrangement updates structure, tempo, mix, and clip alignment — not your stem audio. Here's exactly what Pliris reads.
  • How to Choose an Ableton Template — Your template decides how every Ableton export from the app is structured — single songs and whole sets alike. An account admin sets it per band under Account settings → Ableton template. CLI and API cloud builds take their own per-build template instead.
  • Snapshot History — Every Version of Your Work — Pliris saves a version every time you change an arrangement or setlist. See exactly what changed, and restore any version — safely, because restoring is itself undoable.
  • Exporting a ChordPro Chart — Download your song's lyrics and chords as a .cho file that any ChordPro-compatible chart app can open — timed from the same analysis that built the arrangement.
  • Setlist Solutions — Setlist, AbleSet, LIOBOX, Conductor & TAZ — How Pliris formats locators and talks to external setlist apps. Pick the right solution under Settings → Setlist.
  • Bulk Import and Catalog Moves — What bulk import can and cannot do today, and practical ways to bring a large catalog into Pliris.

Settings

  • Finding Your Way Around Settings — The Settings rail is split by how far a change reaches: Band, Account, You, and Labs. Here is what lives where, who can change it, and which pages to open for routing, exports, timing, and your own profile.
  • Settings and Routing — How stems become stem groups, how stem groups land on return tracks, and how to set the whole thing up before you upload a single file.
  • Settings → Template — Pick the Ableton Live Set your songs are exported into (Intro, Standard, Pro, or your own Custom template), understand which routing is saved per template, and reset a template's routing to its defaults.
  • Settings → Stems — Every stem name across your band's uploads, how many files use it, and the stem group it routes by. Change a name's group for every song at once, pre-define names before you upload, and rename a stem across the whole band.
  • Settings → Stem groups — Create custom stem groups, change their colors, and set the primary return track (or global track) each group lands on. Multi-return sends are set on the Returns page.
  • Settings → Returns — One row per return track in your export: its letter, color, name, the stem groups, stems and tracks that feed it, and where it outputs. Rename, recolor, add and remove sources, change outputs, and remove or restore returns.
  • Settings → Global tracks — The header tracks at the top of every song and every set (SONG, SECTIONS, TEMPO, CLICK, CUES, LTC, REF TRACK and the rest): where each one outputs, whether it starts muted, and its Ableton color.
  • Settings → Set options — How songs are laid out when a whole set is built: the gap left between them, and the color sequence songs cycle through.
  • Settings → Setlist management — Pick the setlist system your exports are written for (None, Setlist, AbleSet, LIOBOX, Conductor or TAZ) and switch its stop locators, section locators, song metadata and lyrics track on or off.
  • Settings → Song defaults — Band-level defaults for how Pliris prepares every song: auto-aligning stems to Live's grid, generating click, cues and slate automatically, and how many bars of count-in roll before the downbeat.
  • Settings → LTC — How LTC timecode values are assigned to your songs: automatically per arrangement, automatically per setlist, or by hand.
  • Settings → App view — Show or hide Lyrics, MIDI cues, Chord charts and Timecode on this band's arrangement pages, so the song page only shows what your band uses.
  • Settings → Account, You and Labs — The settings that reach beyond one band: Members and Plan & billing for the whole account, your own Profile, and the Beta features you can opt a band into.
  • How to Create Custom Stem Groups — Make a stem group of your own (Tim's Guitar, Programmed Drums, Tracks), give it a color, put stems in it, and decide which return it lands on. Groups are per band, and a stem is in exactly one group at a time.
  • How to Change a Stem's Group on a Song — Right-click a stem on the song page and choose Move to group to change where that one stem is routed. Use Settings → Stems instead when every song with that stem name should change.
  • How to Pre-Route Stems to Groups — Add your stem names to Settings → Stems before you upload, each pointed at a group, so every matching file lands routed the moment it arrives. Names match as keywords, longest wins, custom groups first.
  • How to Route One Stem to Multiple Return Tracks — A stem is in exactly one stem group, but it can land on as many return tracks as you like. Add the group, or the stem by name, as a source on a second return in Settings → Returns.
  • How to Route Return Tracks — Return tracks can receive stem groups, individual stems, and header tracks. Here is how to change what feeds a return, send one thing to several returns, change a return's output, and remove or restore returns.

Hardware & Setup

Troubleshooting

  • Stems Won't Play or Are Silent — A practical checklist for when audio won't start, a stem is silent, or your stems never uploaded — upload, analysis, browser, and output.
  • My song didn't analyze right — Analyze is a best guess — fix sections, tempo, meter, lyrics, and stems on the page, then refresh and re-export. You usually do not need to re-analyze.

Account & Billing

Still need help? Email support@fromstudiotostage.com.