Dear Ableton users, how do you make your drums?

[Mear Bace]

Drum rack.
Impulse.
Sampler.
Separate drum racks and Impulses for each piece.

Just experimenting with different ways, and haven't found a way I feel most comfortable with. I tend to use Drum Racks so I can add different FX to different piece

[Sine69]

I just use a simpler for each drum, then group then all together.
I like being able to put different effects on each different drum

[Mear Bace]

I just use a simpler for each drum, then group then all together.
I like being able to put different effects on each different drum

Ah, so do you chop them up and rearrange in arrangement view? I might need to try that. But I've always been an advocate of making rough work with an MPC.

[notdecidedmusic]

what I do is use a really cool sample I got from prime loops for my house drums. Or if I am doing dubstep I use the drum rack because there is a simpler for each drum which is all grouped very nicely

[blinx]

Blank Drum Rack
Add samples
Program Drum beat
Drop any special processing/fx on the sample inside the drum rack.

Seems like a drum rack is just a bunch of simplers in one place, and allows me to program my drums in one place. I have tried using seperate simplers in seperate channels and grouping them back to gether but it got so time consuming for me and my beats would be jumbled juvenille and sound like poo. Now they sound less like poo when i use a single drum rack to program my beats.. just my 2 cents.

[bassinine]

well.... when you use a drum rack it automatically puts each drum sample into a simpler instrument and allows you to put individual effects on each hit.

i use the drum rack.

[Sine69]

I just use a simpler for each drum, then group then all together.
I like being able to put different effects on each different drum

Ah, so do you chop them up and rearrange in arrangement view? I might need to try that. But I've always been an advocate of making rough work with an MPC.

Yup I don't have a MIDI controller with pads, so it's a little difficult for me to do it any other way. Although I will occasionally drop all my drums into a rack, then record out a beat using my midi keyboard.
I always go through later though and get each different drum on it's own track.




Edit: wait, shit. I feel silly for just now realized that a drum rack works exactly like an instrument rack I take back what I said, I use drum racks all the time!

[contakt321]

I use a combination of just dragging audio files onto the Arrange view, Simpler, and Impulse depending on my mood and what the track needs.

For example:
Kicks - generally I just drag the samples onto the audio track, why complicate
HiHats - sometimes I use impulse, sometimes I drag the samples onto the audio track
Open HiHats - simpler or impulse are good for this because you can automate the release

Myself, I don't like using drum racks, big hit on my cpu processor, plus I don't like having all the midi data jumbled together. Separate tracks for each sound type are easier for me when writing and making arrangement changes.

Impulse is slept on to me, great controls, some random functions which are great, in addition you can stretch and lengthen or shorten sounds without affecting pitch which can be really useful.

[netrik]

Drop em on audio tracks.

[traffek]

hears my two cents:

drum rack is awesome to learn how to make beats with samples in ableton. or do MPC style stuff.

alot of my samples tend to freeze my projects up in a drum rack for some reason so i had to do away with it.

so now i just make a bunch of midi channels and drag my sample on. (puts it into a sampler)

make sure you adjust your release and velocity(tend to make mines at around 70%) for each hit. turn on a metronome. make a 2 bar loop and go crazy. it feels more like an MPC to me too cause i like recording hits instead of a whole beat on my click. (just me)

you also get the piano roll so you can shift your hits and do stuff (much like the stuff you hear in rap IE 6foot 7foot with wayne on it.)

you can send them all to effects. i will send all the audio to one audio channel labeled drums so i can bounce stuff out if i really want. i group them all but dont have audio come through the group cause its already routed through an audio channel.

what else. you can do paraellel compression right on that audio channel with a compressor. highlight it and hit apple+G and you have a group. make a new chain and boom. cut out an audio channel.

its all preference. that works best for me. when using midi hits. if i am chopping a break i build it all in the arrangement. for start pieces though i use the sequence because i can just double click and do it fast.

experiment and see what works for you though. i use to also like just straight audio but it runs a bit slow when you got a full song and does weird stuff with the clip fades. (least i cant figure it out.)

[amphibian]

Depends. Each of my drums gets it's own channel, and then grouped or bussed to other channels if needs be (like for snares, or hats). If you can't be bothered putting int he effort to do such little things (it really only takes a few mins to set it all up), I feel for your beat.

Before I got battery, I'd use drum rack, it's awesome. Almost as capable as battery which is amazing considering how small it is

[Puncture]

So far I've stuck to my trusty Drum Rack, its a little beast. But I've been very interested in popping my samples into grouped audio tracks like Netrix. I think I'll do some playing around with that idea.

[youthful_implants]

create progressive loops using battery or racks.

resample. cut to jiggery fuckery. add bass.

[GothamHero]

Drum. Rack.

Sampler + MPC enabled. Fun.

[EDN]

I put kicks and snares on seperate audio tracks, grouped according to what they are.
Then I normall use one drum rack or VST (i.e. XLN addictive drums or Abbey road) for cymbals and then another drum rack for percs.

Sometimes if I'm going for more natural drums I just use the VST's (XLN or Abbey Road) on one track (cause they have cool features; like when you hit any drum apart from the snare you get snare rattle, which sounds more authentic.)

[CBK81]

For the kick drum, I use audio and drop it into the timeline. For everything else, I use drum rack.

[Big Freq]

My default template opens with 3 separate drum racks:

Kick, Snare and Hats.

Each drum rack has a Limiter, and a Spec Analyzer on it.

I find it is easier to keep the drum elements in different racks. It works better for me.

The only thing I HATE about Ableton is when you drop samples into a drum rack the release time is automatically short! Does this annoy anyone else?

I find Impulse is best for high hats. Not as good as drum rack though bc you can't drop effects onto individual samples.

Simpler and sampler are interesting but I haven't found much use for them yet.

[GothamHero]

Anyone tried the DrumPulse method DubSpot publicised?

Not half bad at all. I'm thinking about adding it to my current template.

[Big Freq]

Anyone tried the DrumPulse method DubSpot publicised?

Not half bad at all. I'm thinking about adding it to my current template.

link???

[GothamHero]

Anyone tried the DrumPulse method DubSpot publicised?

Not half bad at all. I'm thinking about adding it to my current template.

link???

Boom.

All they really took advantage of was the random function of Impulse, but this does have greater potential.