Making A Drum Rack In Mixxx
If you’re building a drum track in Ableton Live, try reaching for a production-ready Drum Rack. What do I mean by “production-ready”? In the heat of the moment, when I’m feeling inspired and the ideas are flowing, I need tools that are ready to use right then and there–I don’t want to have to build them from scratch. I need tools that help me make decisions quickly by having them made ahead of time. And I need tools that won’t slow down any other part of the production process. A production-ready Drum Rack has all of my samples ready to go, macro knobs mapped to the parameters I use the most, and is easy on my computer’s hard disk.
In this tutorial, I’ll build a Drum Rack from the ground up, something I’d be able to use for future tracks. Follow along in the Splice file and see this pre-production process in action:
Add an instance of Sampler to a MIDI track. That’s all you’re going to need, you don’t need to add any effects, etc. Drag and drop the Sampler to User Library > Default > Slicing. Be sure to check out my previous article on creating more elaborate slicing presets. You’ll see why we made this preset in the next step.
Step 2: Set Up Your Samples
This part is going to sound strange, but just go with it because this is all part of the set up–we’re not writing music here. Omnisphere 2 steam folder location mac. Set the global clock to 60BPM. Then, go to the Arrangement View and set the grid to a Fixed Grid at 1 Bar.
Next, drag all of your favorite samples, of a particular type, and drop them on the Arrangement View. By setting the clock to 60BPM and fixing the grid to 1 Bar, the samples all start on the first beat of a bar.
Once the samples are in the Arrangement View, select and right-click them. Select the option to Consolidate the many audio files into a single audio file. This is what will allow you to use 100s and 100s of samples in one Drum Rack without killing your hard disk.
Finally, drag the newly consolidated audio clip to the Session View, right-click on it and select Slice to New MIDI Track. Here’s where Step 1 comes in handy: for “Create one slice per” choose Bar, and for “Slicing Preset” choose the simple Sampler preset that you made. A new MIDI track will be created that houses an instance of Sampler which holds a single audio file sliced at the beginning of each sample.
Step 3: Set Up Your Instrument
Now that the samples are all in one place – in one audio file sliced up in Sampler – it’s time to set up a Drum Rack so we can use these samples. Remember, this is all pre-production so be patient.
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Right-click on Sampler’s device title bar and select Group to place it in to an Instrument Rack. Then right-click on the rack itself and select Group to Drum Rack. This will place the instrument rack on a chain (C1) in a new Drum Rack.
Within Sampler, open the Zone tab and you’ll see all of the slices you made, one for each sample. This will take some trial and error, but place all of the key zones and their Root Notes (R) to C3. This makes it so Drum Rack can actually play the samples right away and at their original pitches.
Go to Sampler’s Sample Select Editor (Sel). We’re going to set it up so we can use a single macro knob to scroll through all of the samples. In the Splice file, I have 16 kick drums, so I’m looking for a range of 0 to 15 in the editor. Set all of the samples’ ranges to 0 to 15, right-click on the Sample Select Ruler, and select Distribute Ranges Equally.
Step 4: Map and Test the Drum Rack
We placed the Sampler in an Instrument Rack so we can take advantage of mapping some parameters to macro knobs. Back in Sampler’s Sample Select Editor, right-click on the Sample Select Ruler and select Map to Macro 1.
Next, click on the Macro Map Mode Switch (Map) of the Instrument Rack so you can edit the mapping. The Live Browser will then change to the Mapping Browser. The Min value of the Sample Select should stay at 00. However, the Max value need to change according to the number of samples you have. I used 16 kick drum samples, so my Max would be 15. If you had 100 samples, the range is 0 to 99. Exit Macro Map Mode–it’s time to test the Drum Rack.
Create a new MIDI clip and draw in some notes. Press play and you should hear the first sample that you dropped in. Turn the Sample Selector macro and you’ll hear the the other kick drum samples. Mission complete, but feel free to map some other parameters to the remaining seven macro knobs. I like to map the ADSR controls of the volume envelope and some Filter parameters.
Step 5: Repeat the Process for Other Sounds and SAVE
You’ve completed all of the steps for one bank of samples, kick drums in my example. Now go through the process again for your other samples. HOWEVER, drag the new Instrument Racks onto a new pad/chain of the Drum Rack that you’ve already made. Something to keep in mind i that you still have the 8 macro knobs of the Drum Rack that are free–use them for some top-level editing and sound design. Remember to SAVE your new Drum Rack by clicking on the disk icon in the top-right corner.
Maybe you’ve seen this technique before, but the steps I’ve laid out above will give you an instrument that’s much easier on your hard disk. In the Splice file, I really only have 5 audio files–if you don’t believe me, check the project files. That’s faster to load than 500-600 samples that might crash Live when called upon all at once. Again, this is all so I can get my ideas out as quickly as possible.
Good luck building your own production-ready Drum Racks.
August 21, 2014
Requirements: Live 9, Sampler
Ableton Live's various Racks allow for all sorts of flexible routing and sonic manipulation, and the Drum Rack in particular has become a familiar sight for Live users since its inception with Live 7. Not only can you build and save your own custom drum kits, but you can place incredible effects chains not only on the entire kit, but on each individual drum sound as well. Using a clever combination of Sampler (available with Live Suite), Instrument Racks and Drum Racks, we'll examine how to create a monster drum kit with 128 easily selectable drum sounds on each individual Drum Rack pad. With a total of 128 pads available, this means you could in theory create a Drum Rack with over 16,000 samples, all sensibly organized and available in real time.
Preparation
The first thing you'll need to do is navigate to the Drums folder in your browser.
Bring an empty Drum Rack into your set by simply double-clicking the Drum Rack icon or dragging it into your set, or onto an empty MIDI track.
Next, navigate to your Instruments folder in the browser and bring an Instrument Rack onto an empty pad in the Drum Rack.
Used Drum Rack
Last but not least, in the same Instrument folder of the browser, grab an empty Sampler and drag it into the empty Instrument Rack you've placed on the Drum Rack pad, right where it says “Drop an Instrument or Sample here”.
Macroscopic
Before we start loading our Sampler up with drum samples, we're going to configure our Macros first. Click on the Sampler's Zone selection tab in the upper left of the Sampler device; now with the Zone area showing, click the “Sel” button in the upper right of the Zone to select the Chain Selector view.
Now, right-click anywhere above the numbers (0-127) displayed at the top of the Chain Selector area, near where the orange marker is – this orange marker represents the value of your Chain selection, which we'll come back to later – and from the contextual menu that appears, click “Map to Macro 1”.
Now if you click on the Macro view of your Instrument Rack, you should see that the Chain Selector has been mapped to the first Macro dial.
This step is crucial as it will allow us to scroll through our 128 samples that we'll eventually fill our Sampler with. Right now though, we're going to create a drum Sampler template that we'll use for each of our Drum Rack pads, so I'll choose a few parameters to map to the other Macros that I imagine will come in handy with most drum sounds – but feel free to experiment with other assignments if you wish.
Using the right- or Control-click context menu by clicking directly on the Sampler parameter dial that I wish to assign, we can quickly make all the assignments necessary. First, I'll click on the Filter/Global tab of the Sampler and go to the volume envelope editor to bring the sustain value all the way down.
Now, I'll assign the Attack time to Macro 2 and Decay time to Macro 3; then I'll enable the Filter and assign the Cutoff Frequency to Macro 4.
I'll enable the Shaper and assign the Amount to Macro 5. Now I'll click on the Pitch/Osc tab and assign the Spread amount to Macro 6, then enable the Pitch Envelope and assign that amount to Macro 7, and, finally, assign the Transposition to Macro 8.
Now that we have all our Macros assigned, let's go to our Macro editor by clicking the Map button at the top of our Instrument Rack device, and opening the Browser.
For example, I don't want the Filter Cutoff to go below 333 Hz, so I've set that as the minimum value; I've constrained our Transposition range to -24/+24 st as twice that, which would be the default, is going to take us well outside of a musically useful range. I've also determined that I won't require attack or decay times longer than 3.33 seconds or decay times shorter than 7 milliseconds.
These are all educated guesses based on years of experience, but you should feel free to follow them as a template and/or adjust to taste. Now I'll click on the Instrument Rack's Map button again to exit Map mode, and set our two pitch-based Macros to a default of zero semitones by clicking the dials to select them and hitting the Delete key; I'll also set the Decay macro value to 333 milliseconds for starters, and bring the Cutoff all the way to the top so we can hear our full frequency range to start – and then I'll select each Macro and rename them (Command-R) more sensibly.
PRO-TIP: Right-click on each Macro to assign it a color from the context menu – this will give you color-coded parameter assignments for easy adjustments at a glance.
Before we save our Instrument Rack as a default, we'll add a couple more tools to the rack. From the MIDI Effects section of our browser, we'll grab a Chord and place it before the Sampler in the Instrument Rack; this will allow us to instantly fatten our drum sounds by stacking them with higher and lower notes simultaneously. We'll also grab a Velocity so we can compress, randomize or humanize incoming note velocities later on; in this case I've placed it before the Chord but you can experiment with placing it after the Chord for different results. Now we'll click the Save button of the Instrument Rack; I'll name it “Default Drum Pad” for easy reference in the browser.
Load It Up
Now it's time to start filling our Sampler. Live 9 offers some great browser configuration options; hopefully you've already got your Places set up to easily locate your drum samples with whatever folders you've stashed them in added to the Places tab; if not, just click the instructive “Add Folder” button to navigate your Finder/Explorer, and add them. I've navigated to the “classic kicks” sub-folder of the awesome Wave Alchemy Synth Drums collection.
Now, I'll go back to the Sampler, click the “Sample” tab, and, having made a selection of multiple kick samples from the browser by using the Shift modifier key, I'll drag them all into the main Sample window, where it says “Drop Sample Here”.
Since I can see that I've only added the 36 of a possible 128 samples (as the number of contained samples is displayed in the Sample view window, I'll go back to my browser and find more kick drums, dropping them now (and this is important) into the sample list in the Zone view – as dropping them into the Sample window will replace the current sample selection – until I've got 128 in total; if you end up going over 128, you can select and delete them from the Zone view sample list until you hit the magic number.
Now, right- or Control-click any of the periwinkle blue Zone selection bars in the Chain view of the Zone area, and from the context menu that appears, select “Distribute Ranges Equally”.
55 Gal Drum Rack
Voila! If we scroll through and examine our Chain Selector, we can see that each sample now occupies a single discrete value between 0-127; if you play a pattern on that Drum Rack pad and change the value of our Selector Macro dial, you'll “scroll” through each of the 128 samples, with one at each value. This makes it easier than ever to find the right drum sound easily, quickly, and in the context of your composition.
Now I'll name this first one accordingly (“Kicks”), then copy the Instrument Rack to the next pad in my Drum Rack by holding the Alt/Option (Mac) or Control (PC), modifier and dragging the entire Instrument Rack over to the next pad in the Drum Rack pad view. In this second instance, I'll select and delete all the kick samples from the Zone View sample list, and replace them with different samples from the browser, preferably of the same type of sound – perhaps snares, claps or hi-hats – then, once again, I'll distribute their ranges equally in the Chain Selector view as we did with the kicks, rename the rack pad appropriately, copy it again to a new pad, replace and distribute new samples, rename, and continue this process, in theory until our entire drum library is sensibly mapped to a single Drum Rack – or at least until a usable Drum Rack is ready to go.
PRO-TIP: Access the Drum Rack's integrated In/Out routing and internal Send and Return to add effects sends for the entire rack and configure your Choke groups for realistic hi-hat interactions.
Pearl Icon Drum Rack
Ultrakit
Finally, once this is all configured, I'll save the entire Drum Rack to my library by hitting the Drum Rack's save button, and it'll be ready in the Browser whenever I need a go-to kit.
PRO-TIP: Create a default template including your ultimate Drum Rack and save it as the default set in the File/Folder tab of Live's preferences – all your new projects will include the ultimate Drum Rack straight away, though it may take some time to load all the samples.
It might take a few hours of homework and some configurational tinkering, but by combining Sampler's multi-sample functionality, controlling it with the Macros of an Instrument Rack, and placing it within the context of a Drum Rack, you'll have a potentially massive arsenal of drum samples available at your fingertips in real time, whenever you need it.