I have been watching many of the tutorials and have began to understand the concept of using Impulse to program drums. I also can see why it’s important to separate out kicks for side-chain compression. I had a few questions regarding a couple of techniques that i’ve seen used in some of the tutorials. I was wondering if someone can give me a bit of perspective as to concept of programming drums within Ableton (or any DAW for that matter).
Separating Drum Tracks vs. Grouping Instrument Tracks
In the “How to Make Techno” Tutorial, 1 impulse rack was used to load all of the relevant drum samples and then separated out into separate tracks. Then a "hats’ group is created to group the 3 different hats and hat loop tracks together.
Is there an advantage to doing it this way as opposed to using multiple impulse tracks (say one for kick / snare & one for hats) then creating a group for the hats and hats loop?
Can you help define or give examples as to when it’s best to use multiple impulses for like instruments vs 1 impulse with all of your drums? Is there a particular ‘rule of thumb’ to go by?
Also, how would you compare Impulse vs Drum Rack options for programming drums? are there advantages/disadvantages to each? if so, what are they?
alright, for the impulse vs drum racks debate, use the search function. There is a whole discussion on that topic.
However, you have a few ways to do it. I prefer drum racks. The reason to do it all in impulse or drum racks vs individual tracks, is that you can put different samples all on one instrument and play each sample on a keyboard. its easier to program the entire rhythm (or vast majority of) in one instrument rather then a bunch of them. Drum racks lets you do this, and impulse lets you do something like 8 or whatever till you have to make another one. Good for your meat and potatoes sounds. Drum racks is definately more flexible while impulse is quicker. I do both, personally when I make rhythm in Live. I will use drum racks for my meat and potatoes sounds (I never use impulse) and for all other percussive sounds, I use either Simpler or Sampler. I will add those as I go along.
The cool thing about Drum Racks, is each sound technically has its own sampler track and you can add effects on it to shape your sound. You cant do this in impulse without Jerry rigging the sh!t.
Thanks for the info Howie. Much appreciated
[quote]J.HiZ (01/09/2010)[hr]Thanks for the info Howie. Much appreciated[/quote]
very welcome
So I have a question again regarding the drum rack. Does using the drum rack in an essence get rid of the need to send instruments to audio tracks like the impulse does?
[quote]J.HiZ (04/09/2010)[hr]So I have a question again regarding the drum rack. Does using the drum rack in an essence get rid of the need to send instruments to audio tracks like the impulse does?[/quote]
Correct. In a drum rack, you can monitor the vitals of each sound bc in essence, it is its own simpler track. You can control the volume, pan, as well as add any effects you want to it.
However, lets say that you wanted to put compression on the hihats and the hats only. You would either need to create its own drumrack for it and compress it that way, or in your master drum rack, you can set the routing to go back into one channel and compress it together that way. Its what you feel most comfortable with, I suppose.
Also J, dont be put off by routing in Ableton Live. Its very easy. Routing is probably one of the biggest things to learn in music production. It can be daunting at first, but once you grasp the principals, it is very easy. If you are in the UK, there is a time difference from the United States. Granted you dont hate Americans like apparently some people on this forum do (;)), I can show you or walk you through what I’m talking about over the internet. If you are on Skype or AIM, that would work. If you have a Mac, let me know. That would be the best.
-HK
[quote]howiegroove (04/09/2010)[hr][quote]J.HiZ (04/09/2010)[hr]So I have a question again regarding the drum rack. Does using the drum rack in an essence get rid of the need to send instruments to audio tracks like the impulse does?[/quote]
Correct. In a drum rack, you can monitor the vitals of each sound bc in essence, it is its own simpler track. You can control the volume, pan, as well as add any effects you want to it.
However, lets say that you wanted to put compression on the hihats and the hats only. You would either need to create its own drumrack for it and compress it that way, or in your master drum rack, you can set the routing to go back into one channel and compress it together that way. Its what you feel most comfortable with, I suppose.[/quote]
I finally got a concept right… how about that… haha!
I dont think i’m fulling understanding your example of compressing the high hats. Lets take the French House in Cubase tutorial for example. I’m attempting to recreate it in Ableton (to help me apply the concepts and principles) and this is how I decided to program the drums.
In the Drums there are two Kicks, Finger snap & Clap, and 3 snares. In the cubase tutorial they create group the two kicks to a channel, the finger snap, clap, snare 1 & snare 2 to a channel, and snare 3 to a third channel.
What I then did was created a drum rack, imported each of the 7 instruments and created a group for the kicks, a group for the snare 3, and a group for the rest of the snares and claps.
It was my assumption that I could place a compressor on the sub track inside the drum rack to achieve that.
In this example, would I have to sent say snare 3 to an audio channel just to compress it by itself? How would you go about programing the french house cubase tutorial in ableton?
[quote]howiegroove (04/09/2010)[hr]Also J, dont be put off by routing in Ableton Live. Its very easy. Routing is probably one of the biggest things to learn in music production. It can be daunting at first, but once you grasp the principals, it is very easy. If you are in the UK, there is a time difference from the United States. Granted you dont hate Americans like apparently some people on this forum do (;)), I can show you or walk you through what I’m talking about over the internet. If you are on Skype or AIM, that would work. If you have a Mac, let me know. That would be the best.
-HK[/quote]
It seems like I have a tendency to over complicate things sometimes…
Where are you from? I’m in the states as well! and I love everyone! haha but I can see why some brits would hate americans
That would be awesome if you could walk me through it. Makes it so much easier… I’m on a Mac as well. Let me know what you need to make it happen
[quote]J.HiZ (05/09/2010)[hr][quote]howiegroove (04/09/2010)[hr]Also J, dont be put off by routing in Ableton Live. Its very easy. Routing is probably one of the biggest things to learn in music production. It can be daunting at first, but once you grasp the principals, it is very easy. If you are in the UK, there is a time difference from the United States. Granted you dont hate Americans like apparently some people on this forum do (;)), I can show you or walk you through what I’m talking about over the internet. If you are on Skype or AIM, that would work. If you have a Mac, let me know. That would be the best.
-HK[/quote]
It seems like I have a tendency to over complicate things sometimes…
Where are you from? I’m in the states as well! and I love everyone! haha but I can see why some brits would hate americans
That would be awesome if you could walk me through it. Makes it so much easier… I’m on a Mac as well. Let me know what you need to make it happen[/quote]
Yeah man, Im in Florida (Mickey Land), so Im on EST. If you look me up on AIM, my screen name is djhowiegroove. Hit me up whenever. Im always on. You will have to do it through iChat so I can show you on your screen or vice versa. When I get instant messages, i get them to my phone too, so I will let you know if I am by my laptop. Talk to you soon.
Howard
It’s all a matter of preference mate. Tbh if you wanted to you can load up one impule put all your samples in their and use one midi track for all your drums then route each individual sample to a different audio track so you can individually process each sound. The more controll you have over every aspect in a loop or riff or whatever the better. Then in the later part of your mixdown or whatever you can start adding processors accross tho whole thing, whether it’s a group or a bus or whatever. You need something to gel everything together. See your impulse or drum racks as a real life drummer usually the more natural it sounds and the more I sounds as if it’s all being played by the same drummer on the same kit or instrument or set of bongos whatever in the same room , the better.