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Drum racks rule! I always used to use Impulse and it's great for some things but really limited in other ways. You can use drum racks for anything as well not just drums. Vocal slices/cutting up synths etc. Slice to MIDI function is great too

Drum racks.

1. Load in a Sampler to your kick slot. I'll use c1.
2. Open the sampler and select the "zones" tab to open the "zones window".
3. Go find your kick samples and drag in 128 kicks to the zone window
4. Select the "chain" button in the "zones" area.
5. Right click the top sample and select "distribute ranges equally"
6. Now go above the little "zone blocks" and right click on the little orange "chain selector" block and select map to macro 1 (or whatever macro you want to use)

Now when you hit the pad and turn the knob you should hear the kick sample changing to a new drum. Do this for every drum slot. Be sure to use multiple kick, snare, hats, and perc slots to get a nice variety and be able to mix different hats and shakers and whatnot.

Now you have an ultimate kit that's easy to tune to the song.

The other thing you can do is actually change the entire kit with one macro. Just map the chain selectors all to the same macro and make sure you have all the drum sounds that you want to go together as a kit in the same position in the Zones window. (i.e. First one in the zones list) Just move the knob one notch and you have an entirely new kit pre setup. It's actually possible to have most of your drum sounds and kits in ONE DRUM RACK. If that's your thing....

Another tip, if you want Release or some parameter on every slot to be the same, set the value on one of the samplers, right click and select Copy to Sibling. Now you have the same release setting on every sampler in the rack. Saves time when applicable.

Drum rack is AWESOME!! I love laying beats down in midi with my fingers instead of clicking them in (seems so lifeless).

Drum Rack is possibly the most tidy way to make drum patterns because now in Live 8 you can 'Group' Drums which is a god send when equalising

our ableton setups keep changing, but right now i'm just using session view and triggering audio clips of drum sounds. really, really straight ahead. not sure if this'd work for you guys writing stuff but as a live tool-- basically partly using ableton as 1 big sampler.

I break up my drums into snares kicks hats and percs, then i find 128 samples of each and drag them into sampler. I then to into the "zone" tab, go to "sel," right click and click "Distribute ranges equally." After that i right click on the sampler and "group" it, then go back to the "zone" tab right click on the orange line above the keys and map it to one of the macro knobs. by doing this you can make your beat and then scroll through all your drum samples and see which drums sound best, it saves a lot of time of constantly making new drum racks. you can then drag the samplers into drum racks as many times as you want and start making your beats.

mt

I use drum rack and I draw in the notes. I use velocity to get my swing on my hats. Does anyone use groove templetes? I extracted a groove from another track of mine and used it on this new track I was working on last night and it worked awesome. I just dont know where to get the right groove templetes for dubstep. Does anyone else do this?

Make all my drums in impulse, make groups for drums, synths, samples and bassline. Make separate channels for each drum hit within impulse to give me more control over effects etc.

nykx17 wrote:I use drum rack and I draw in the notes. I use velocity to get my swing on my hats. Does anyone use groove templetes? I extracted a groove from another track of mine and used it on this new track I was working on last night and it worked awesome. I just dont know where to get the right groove templetes for dubstep. Does anyone else do this?

I do it all the time man it's so slick. I use the mpc swings for hip hop beats and for dubstep, under others(I think its others) theres a 2 step groove thats perfect.

Do you use your swing on the whole beat or just the hi-hats?

I meant groove template not swing

Depends on what i'm doing.