Drums In Ableton

[theferret]

So, how does everyone have theirs set up? I just have one drum rack for all my drums hits, and then throw eq's, effects etc onto each hit separately. Then i just group the snares, kicks etc so i can compress them as one. Is this the best way to do things. Should i have three separate drum tracks with a drum rack on each, one for kicks, one for snares and one for hi hats and other percussion? Or should i route the audio from my drum racks through seperate audio tracks? I've never really understood what people mean when they talk about drum buses, anyone care to explain?

[gnome]

I have never used drumracks probably never will.

Love the freedom of working exclusively with audio in arrangement view. Can have any amount of kicks, snares, claps, fx and the sorts.

[contakt321]

I was using several drumracks but they do eat up a lot of CPU, so I stopped.

It varies song by song, but generally I:

- Place the Kick Drum on the timeline as audio, or make a 4 bar audio loop of the kick drum.
- Use an impulse or two for cymbals - WHY? because of the stretch/length function + less CPU.
- Use drumrack or two for snares, other misc percussion, sometimes I bounce elements of this to audio, sometimes not.

I usually group all of my drums together too, so they take up less screen real estate when I am working on other stuff.

[narcissus]

i don't have money... so i'm still stuck on my copy of live 6 from years ago... it's only got impulse, but i find it's exactly what i need for all my tracks... it's only got 8 slots, but i find adding another instance gives me all the drums i need.. and if it doesn't... just add another! i used to effect my drums a lot, but these days it's very little if at all. sometimes i add a tiny bit of EQ... just to find it doesn't really help and i end up taking it off later..

if the drum isn't already sounding good, i switch it for another one, and then i can use stretch, filter, and decay to get it perfect for the track. i like to send them to some verb for ambience.. then i get 'em all mixed how i want in impulse, throw a compressor2 (which i think is obsolete on ableton 7+?) on the master and they start to bump after i get compression settings just right.

but that's just how i do it. there's a billion ways.

[djake]

I have never used drumracks probably never will.

Love the freedom of working exclusively with audio in arrangement view. Can have any amount of kicks, snares, claps, fx and the sorts.

this!

[zonetrooper5]

I use impulse to make the drums, I find it easier to work with midi than audio.

[mks]

Sometimes I use drumracks, but I find I more often use several instances of Impulse. Probably because I have loads of kits that I've made over the years. Often I'll layer drums in Sampler on top too. Buss these down to their own channel, usually send all of the kicks to one channel, snares to another etc.

There are so many different ways to do it though.

[polygonfiction]

I've never really understood what people mean when they talk about drum buses, anyone care to explain?

Basically you're sending audio from multiple tracks to a single track to all be effected as one. Imagine it like streams that all meet the river - the bus is the dam where you control shit.. So say you've got four snare samples - standard, rim, accent, roll - you can send the audio from all of these to a single track where you could say, apply reverb. It'll save you applying an instance of that effect to each individual element which would be expensive on your cpu. It can also help when it comes to mixing - your shit will be more organised, and you can drop a single slider if the snares are all sounding too loud, say.

At least that's what I think it is.

[Rickmansworth]

So, how does everyone have theirs set up? I just have one drum rack for all my drums hits, and then throw eq's, effects etc onto each hit separately. Then i just group the snares, kicks etc so i can compress them as one. Is this the best way to do things. Should i have three separate drum tracks with a drum rack on each, one for kicks, one for snares and one for hi hats and other percussion? Or should i route the audio from my drum racks through seperate audio tracks? I've never really understood what people mean when they talk about drum buses, anyone care to explain?

I think that the way you're doing it is fine.. Having a drum rack with a bunch of your favourite one hits is a great way to make loops quickly. Like you, I also throw EQ,reverb, etc on each hit individually... However, If its something I really like that has a bunch of FX on it, I will resample it and then load it into the drum rack. The difference for me is that I use two drum racks... one for kick/snare and the other for hats, percs, rides, etc. If you want to then throw a common effect on it, just group the two together and use that as your "main" drum channel (or bus). The term "bus" refers to the channel that all of your sound is running through. For ableton, think of each track as the "bus".

[dash exp]

samples samples samples.

and i'll use the drumkits for hats occasionally its just super quick and easy

[hurlingdervish]

one drum rack for kicks and snares and hihats

follow actions for the percussion

and audio timeline for other things or the follow actions after consolidated

[ianks]

i create sampler instruments with 128 hits in each one. distribute the ranges equally and each note has its own hit, turn the scale to 0%, normalize all the samples, then add one pitch effect to -128 st, then another one is mapped to the macro with a range of 0-128. so i can jsut make a beat and scroll through sample. huge way to save time.

i make my initial beat in drum rack. you can even use the sends and returns for reverb and delay. clutch feature. i dont leave the drums set in drum rack though, after the initial beat is mixed down, i will right click on the each part (snares, hats, kick, etc) and select "extract chains." this creates a whole new track with a drum rack for just that parts selected, so i can create variations on individual clips to trigger with the APC. sex.

[contakt321]

after the initial beat is mixed down, i will right click on the each part (snares, hats, kick, etc) and select "extract chains." this creates a whole new track with a drum rack for just that parts selected, so i can create variations on individual clips to trigger with the APC. sex.

Nice tip! I will have to try this.

[theferret]

Interesting stuff, will certainly take some of this on board when i start my next tune. Seems to me theres so many ways of having them set up, I guess its just down to personal preference. Thanks for the clearing up the drum bus thing for me, its pretty much what i thought it was, sometimes think i expect things to be more difficult than they are! Don't understand what follow actions are though, feel free to tell me Should really just read the manual though...

[Blue Patterns]

I have four separate racks. a snare rack, kick rack, hats rack, and other percs rack. kick and snare racks I just layer the sounds over one pad. but for hats and percs racks I'll lay out several different types of hats or percs across a few pads...tweak accordingly...etc etc etc.

follow actions to create variations when necessary. extremely flexible...for me anyway. however many bar intro, let's say 32 bars for the intro...then have the drop, starting off with 32 bars following....then maybe a next 32 bars with another variation...maybe a couple of bars of a random pattern...half bar variation...quarter bar variation....jump back to a 32 bar pattern. it's good cuz if you actually put effort into it, you can end up with really glitchy ass drum patterns.

click scene 1 and let the drums bang out! then freeze and flatten each rack and process the audio after. and when you flatten that shit it flattens the individual scenes as well so it's not like I'm stuck with one singular 128 bar audio track of kick patterns. (lol I like this aspect a lot)

then it's all fx, resample, fx, resample etc after that.

I ignored drum racks for a long time beforehand...it's the shit now though

Don't understand what follow actions are though, feel free to tell me Should really just read the manual though...

read this thread. breaks it all down.

http://www.dubstepforum.com/ableton-liv ... %20actions

[theferret]

Thats brilliant, cheers. Definitely guna revolutionise the way i create variations of a beat, can't wait to give it a go!

[venuq]

I use drum rack and the one thing I didn't realise for ages was that you can make the drum samples velocity sensitive using that vel percentage bar at the bottom right hand corner of the sample section. Sounds stupid I know but I used to have 3 of the same sample at different volumes on 3 different notes just to get some dynamics into my patterns, learned the hard way I guess! But yeah I can see how using audio channels with the samples on the timeline could be interesting, I might have to give that approach a go one day!

Oh and cheers for that link Blue Patterns I'll be having a look at that too!

[magma]

Similar drumracks set up to you, but also got a serious Addictive Drums habit at the moment.

[jsills]

I have never used drumracks probably never will.

Love the freedom of working exclusively with audio in arrangement view. Can have any amount of kicks, snares, claps, fx and the sorts.

this. i usually place each drum hit by hand. odd way to work i guess but it allows me to manipulate things the way i like.

[mistayif]

drumrack with kicks and snares on one, impulse with hihats on another and impulse with random hits and stabs on a 3rd