Battery vs. Drum Racks?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Citizen
Posts: 801
Joined: Mon Jan 17, 2011 4:34 am

Re: Battery vs. Drum Racks?

Post by Citizen » Sun May 05, 2013 2:58 am

I guess the whole point of me starting this thread is to establish whether I should even bother investing the time to learn Battery inside out.

I just felt it was a bit of a waste having Battery (via Komplete) and having only opened it once or twice to have a play with it. :P

At, this point, I think my time might be better used simply getting on with making tunes and using Maschine and drum racks.

Thoughts?

h3rtz
Posts: 252
Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2011 9:35 am
Location: Beijing

Re: Battery vs. Drum Racks?

Post by h3rtz » Sun May 05, 2013 6:31 am

agent314 wrote:
It offers 4 knobs controlling velocity, tune, timing and volume randomisation. Again, thats for each drum sound of your kit. You could for instance have the bd fixed on he grid and only humanise the hats (more) and the snare (less). I was wrong in one point though. Theres also just delaying for timing, no predelay.
Interesting - and these affect the timing of MIDI information going into Battery? Or are these producing effects whenever you click and hold the pad? i.e. the way if you hold Push's pads in drum rack mode it gives you a repeat.

Didn't realize those were there - thanks much.
First assumption is right.
Citizen wrote:I was hoping that the Battery 4 update would integrate with Maschine in such a way to be able to independently effect (EQ/saturation etc) multiple layers on a single drum pad.

So - in summary - the only real advantages that Battery has over Drum Racks are the articulations/humanising functions and the actual library of sounds - which, if I upgrade to K9 or Battery 4, will browsable directly from Maschine.


I dont know about machines compatibility with battery nor have i messed with battery 4. Layering drums in battery 3 though is a piece of cake. All u have to do is make the pads with the drum sounds u'd like to layer respond to the same midi note. And yes, each sound can be processed individually with batterys fx which already covers a lot.

The thing i prefer with drum racks is that u get each instrument as an individual track in lives mixer while the midi is all in one clip. I worked with multiple instances of battery before, one track and one clip per instrument. Editing was a nightmare as u never knew where the other drum hits sat. Kind of overkill as well CPU wise. I believe theres a way to use batterys internal routing to route instruments to single tracks but i never figuered that out. Also, i never used batterys midi learn to use it with a drum controller. Thats just so much more convenient with drum racks.
Citizen wrote: So...really the only advantage is the articulations - right? (ie. flams, snare rolls etc) :?:

Also, don't most (all?) 'real' sampled kits in Battery have velocity sensitve multi-samples? (To my knowledge, this cannot be done in Drum Racks - correct me if I'm wrong)

(some of the other humanisation can effectively be achieved through Grooves in Live, right?)
Battery does a lot of things by default that are hard to achieve with drum racks imo. But multi-samples are not its strong point. Resolution is too coarse. If u try to avoid, say, machine gun effect of a snare roll the jumps between the samples of battery sound unnatural. No drummer would play like this.

I believe u can deal with multi-samples in sampler which u then can drop onto a pad in a drum rack. Haven't tried this yet. I am using addictive drums for real sounding drums.

As for grooves, u have to be aware that those affect the whole clip they're applied to and cannot be set up for each instrument individually without creating extra clips.

In summary i'd say that both have their raison d'être. Both are complete instruments and have large fields of overlapping functionality. Battery is easy to use and to set up and offers most u might ever need, especially if u are straight into edm. But if u don't know where your journey is going to take you or you are between handmade and electronic styles, drum racks give you a lot more flexibility. But you'll have to invest more time for sure.

Just my 2 mao.

Citizen
Posts: 801
Joined: Mon Jan 17, 2011 4:34 am

Re: Battery vs. Drum Racks?

Post by Citizen » Wed May 15, 2013 4:46 am

Ha...thanks for the detailed response.... Might just give battery a swerve for now....it's just one more thing to learn, and I'd rather do things natively in Ableton.

Now - if only Maschine had proper drum layering....

8O

3dot...
Posts: 9996
Joined: Tue Feb 20, 2007 11:10 pm

Re: Battery vs. Drum Racks?

Post by 3dot... » Wed May 15, 2013 7:20 am

Citizen wrote:
Now - if only Maschine had proper drum layering....

8O
what do you mean.. I can layer with maschine very easily...
Image

Jack McOck
Posts: 869
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 12:06 pm

Re: Battery vs. Drum Racks?

Post by Jack McOck » Wed May 15, 2013 8:17 am

beats me wrote:
JuanSOLO wrote:I haven't used Battery since DrumRacks, and I don't see why anyone would.
When Live isn't the only DAW you use.
What is this crazy talk??!

JuanSOLO
Posts: 3236
Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2007 8:21 am
Location: Shreveport LA, sometimes Dallas/Ft Worth TX

Re: Battery vs. Drum Racks?

Post by JuanSOLO » Wed May 15, 2013 4:04 pm

The modularity of drumRacks in conjunction with bluehanding macros and now session automation is my main attraction to them.

Some other advantages.
Sample selection from a Macro, or pitch.
Nesting drumRacks within drumRacks to map macros to sends
Nesting multiple fx racks within that^, distortion, phasing, EQ/comp
I find Sampler much easier to navigate/manage when using multisampled kits or LOTS of samples
The ability to combine, lets say, all kicks into 1 sample and slice to drumRack easing CPU or RAM?
Being able to tap into cells for side chaining easily from anywhere in Live.

Over all the modularity gives me a custom go-to rack that I know like the back of my hand, has EVERYTHING I will ever need to make drums.

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