What instrument do you use in ableton for drums?

andm · Post by **andm** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 1:40 am

Drum rack, impulse or something else? Just started out producing and have a hard time figuring out whats best to use. Drum rack at first glance looks like the right one, but I wonder if it will get annoying that all different types of drums share the same midi clip.

djake · Post by **djake** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 3:56 am

i dnt use any, i work with audio

tokensunrise · Post by **tokensunrise** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:26 am

Battery from NI is a good place to start.

misk · Post by **misk** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 7:25 am

instrument? like, drums... dude. just drums.

whineo · Post by **whineo** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 8:00 am

djake wrote:i dnt use any, i work with audio

Disco Nutter · Post by **Disco Nutter** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 8:59 am

Usually just drop the audio in, but I use Impulse for hihats a lot.

slim · Post by **slim** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 2:23 pm

A mix of audio, drum racks and impulse.

Audio is great for editing drums there and then, no bouncing required

Drum racks are great for using effects on all the drums, and always good for getting ideas down

Impulse is probably my favorite because if you send each drum to a different channel you can apply effects to each individual drum without worrying about bouncing just yet.

But it all depends on what the drums need

Disco Nutter · Post by **Disco Nutter** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 2:37 pm

Oh, and I use Simpler for ADSR envelopes.

moki · Post by **moki** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:23 pm

Slim wrote:A mix of audio, drum racks and impulse.

Audio is great for editing drums there and then, no bouncing required

Drum racks are great for using effects on all the drums, and always good for getting ideas down

Impulse is probably my favorite because if you send each drum to a different channel you can apply effects to each individual drum without worrying about bouncing just yet.

But it all depends on what the drums need

Each drum has it's own effect chain on tha drum rack.

and yes it's kickin'

abZ · Post by **abZ** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 7:38 pm

There really isn't any need to use impulse anymore. There is nothing that it does that drum racks doesn't. Who is to say you can't use multiple instances of drum racks (to the original poster) I used 3 or 4 usually. It might be more tidy to use one and learn how to route everything properly but I have never maxed out my cpu because of too many instances of drum racks. I say load your project up. I use one each for the main kick and snare and one for the rest usually. That way it is really easy to sidechain them up later.

I love using audio too. Different tools for different jobs. This is the best way to do breaks imo.

ELLFIVEDEE · Post by **ELLFIVEDEE** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 10:15 pm

Drum Rack

nice n easy to use, seperate channel for each sample, stupid amounts of slots for samples too. It's the one

djshiva · Post by **djshiva** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 1:43 am

drum racks.

i used to use the impulse separated into individual channels, but now drum racks does that for you. nifty!

andm · Post by **andm** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 10:57 pm

Thanks for all the replies. There definitely seem to be some advantages with using drum racks. I'm curious though. How do you organise your tracks then? Since everything shares the same midi-clip, isn't it annoying sometimes? For example if you have following midi clips like this in the sequencer:

[HI-HAT1][HI-HAT2][HI-HAT1][HI-HAT3]
[SNARE - (same midi clip over 4 bars) ]

and then you wanna change something in the snare midi clip. With impulse thats pretty straight forward. If I would use drum racks, I would have to change the snare in all 4 different midi clip instances. A bit more work.

abZ, you mentioned that I could just use multiple instances of drum kit. It's kinda hard to foresee which grouping might make sense to avoid extra work like mentioned above. So the only safe solution would be to have one drumkit for each drum... which would be kinda pointless, no?

Anyways. Maybe I'm just doing it all wrong though

Would love to see some screenshots on how you organise those sorta things with drum racks. Thanks!

abZ · Post by **abZ** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 11:15 pm

I guess I am not the guy to help you. I don't use the session view really. I write all my midi directly into the sequencer. As far as I knew the midi was handled the same way for each plug-in.

Disco Nutter · Post by **Disco Nutter** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 11:25 pm

@ andm - That why you loop clips

Edit one instance and it results in edinting all of them

edit: Or maybe I misunderstood your question...

andm · Post by **andm** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:07 am

abZ, I'm also rarely using the session view. In my made up example I meant the arrangement view. Kinda hard to describe, maybe a screenshot is a good idea:

Here I can simply change something in one of the Hat1 midi clip and copy the midi clip over to all other bars, that have a Hat1.

If I would be using drum rack, where hats and snare would be in the same midi clip, I couldn't do that, since then it would overwrite the snare2 bit with the snare1 bit.

Obviously in this simple example I could simply group the two hihat midi clips together. But if you have a more complex drums, I think it would kind of get ouf of hand. In the end you would probably have one big drumrack midi clip throughout your whole track..

Complicated to explain

But yeah, would love to see a screenshot how your organise those sorta things.[/img]

Disco Nutter · Post by **Disco Nutter** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:19 am

I don't use that particular instrument but can't you route midi channels to control stuff in it?

abZ · Post by **abZ** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:38 am

andm wrote:abZ, I'm also rarely using the session view. In my made up example I meant the arrangement view. Kinda hard to describe, maybe a screenshot is a good idea:

Here I can simply change something in one of the Hat1 midi clip and copy the midi clip over to all other bars, that have a Hat1.

If I would be using drum rack, where hats and snare would be in the same midi clip, I couldn't do that, since then it would overwrite the snare2 bit with the snare1 bit.

Obviously in this simple example I could simply group the two hihat midi clips together. But if you have a more complex drums, I think it would kind of get ouf of hand. In the end you would probably have one big drumrack midi clip throughout your whole track..

Complicated to explain But yeah, would love to see a screenshot how your organise those sorta things.[/img]

I think I see what you are getting at but I didn't use Ableton much until version 7 so I haven't really used impulse that much. I am sure someone else will have a suitable answer for you though. Maybe I'll learn something!

ELLFIVEDEE · Post by **ELLFIVEDEE** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:45 am

andm wrote:abZ, I'm also rarely using the session view. In my made up example I meant the arrangement view. Kinda hard to describe, maybe a screenshot is a good idea:

Here I can simply change something in one of the Hat1 midi clip and copy the midi clip over to all other bars, that have a Hat1.

If I would be using drum rack, where hats and snare would be in the same midi clip, I couldn't do that, since then it would overwrite the snare2 bit with the snare1 bit.

Obviously in this simple example I could simply group the two hihat midi clips together. But if you have a more complex drums, I think it would kind of get ouf of hand. In the end you would probably have one big drumrack midi clip throughout your whole track..

Complicated to explain But yeah, would love to see a screenshot how your organise those sorta things.[/img]

I think I get what you mean.

The way I do it (using your example in an attempt to explain) is like I'd have Drum clip 1 containing the midi sequence from Snare 1, Hat 1 and Hat 2, Then drum clip 2 containing Snare 2, Hat 1 and Hat 3. And if for example I then wanted Snare 1, but with Hat 1 and Hat 3 (instead of 2) then just make a new clip and change it as desired.

I also find it a lot easier to keep tabs on by changing the colour of each clip any time it is different from another (on the same channel at least). That way you know what is different, and what is the same.

Hope this kind of helps and isn't just repeating what someone has already said a different way! Like abZ I have only started using Ableton since version 7, and haven't really played around with impulse as the Drum Rack seems to do everything I have needed it to so far.

What instrument do you use in ableton for drums?

What instrument do you use in ableton for drums?

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