Is there a better way to map an external drum VST?

[Caligula Cuddles]

Semi-newbie question here:
I recently got a copy of Superior Drummer 2 (because I didn't realize 3 was coming out and was just amped on the discount), and I'm still struggling to understand how to make it a more viable tool for some rock-ish stuff I'm working on.

Is there an easy way to map it so that it works well on Push 2? I loaded it into a drum rack, and can use it on Push, but the 16 pads are unlit, and the sequencer pads sometimes stop showing the beats altogether. Also, it would be nice to change the way the pads are mapped, especially the surplus of cymbals. What's the best way to reassign the location of different hits so that I can move the cymbals around? While I'm at it, how much should I care about multichannel routing?

Bonus question: What's the easiest way of making organic-sounding acoustic flourishes like flams and ghost notes? Just drag the midi around and adjust the velocity manually? Ha ha. I'm discovering that I'm still trying to get a feel for the manual tweaking involved in that, because it's coming off pretty clunky so far.

[jestermgee]

https://www.ableton.com/answers/how-to- ... -in-live-9

If you haven't already followed that to get a VST setup in a drum rack.

In regards to re-arranging the cells, I wouldn't bother to even try.

You can colour the cells if you create a chain device for each cell so it has something on it. You can then group all the snare/cymbal/kick etc. chains so you can control the colours of cells quick and easy.

In regards to Multi-Channel it's definitely useful especially if you have your own favourite effects you like to use or just to easily adjust the levels without having to go into the plugin mixer. You can setup a template and save it as a channel strip for recall later or just deal with the mixing within the plugin until you get further along in the production then move to routing it out if you feel you need to.

Bonus question: What's the easiest way of making organic-sounding acoustic flourishes like flams and ghost notes? Just drag the midi around and adjust the velocity manually? Ha ha. I'm discovering that I'm still trying to get a feel for the manual tweaking involved in that, because it's coming off pretty clunky so far.

I have EZD2 not SD (yet) but the easiest way I found was to simply listen to the MIDI patterns that are already included/available and then just drag the pattern into live and copy the element i'm interested in. Ill mostly always start with a dead simple programmed beat then slowly fill it out as time goes on using copy/paste, playing and manual drawing. All depends on what's happening.

[miyaru]

I have EZD2 not SD (yet) but the easiest way I found was to simply listen to the MIDI patterns that are already included/available and then just drag the pattern into live and copy the element i'm interested in. Ill mostly always start with a dead simple programmed beat then slowly fill it out as time goes on using copy/paste, playing and manual drawing. All depends on what's happening

This is excactly the way I always used BFD in Cubase 5.5. BFD2 doesn't work with Live 9 suite so I ditched it, but still looking for some kind of drum program will I need some in the future.

[Stromkraft]

BFD2 doesn't work with Live 9 suite so I ditched it, but still looking for some kind of drum program will I need some in the future.

How does BFD2 not work? It worked fine for me when i tried it some years ago around Live 9.2.

[Khazul]

I end up filling the drum rack full of external instruments to route midi in and audio out of the multi-channel drum plugin. Once you have done this for each of your drum plugins and saved the resulting racks, then you can drop multiple different drum plugins into another other layer of drum rack to facilitate mixing and matching.

For eg, I have done this for all of my D16 drum machines (909, 808, 70, 606) so I can make mixed racks with and combine with operators/simplers etc if needed, but by the time I had done thjose and I just could not be bothered to do it again for NI drums as well.

Ableton do need to look at this use case for drum racks and think long and hard about automating this process and TBH setting them up is a horrible process and just falls apart cxompletely once sends get involved.
Automating creation an instrument/drum rack to map a multi-output plugin with chains containing external instruments would be a good start (with an option to assume mono channels or stereo pairs).

Something similar for multi-track instruments would help as well - Lush 101, Virus TI etc but its less obvious how to approach that for automated wrapping.