I'm just discovering instrument racks!

Gtrance · Post by **Gtrance** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 1:17 pm

I've only just started to actually try out and learn about the racks in live 6.

Before now, for my drums, I would use a simpler for each drum sound and obviously this would create a lot of tracks and clutter up the session view.

After 5 mins looking at the racks, it seems I can build one big rack with lots of simplers, audio effects after each simpler so I can process each sound individually and then place audio effects after the entire rack to process all drums together! And have all this on just one track!

The only limitation to doing this I can find so far is that I couldn't use sends effects for the individual sounds if I do this.

Is this the only limitation or are there other things I haven't considered as well.?

I can't believe I haven't discovered the use of racks before.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 1:24 pm

I used Simplers in Racks for my drums for as long as there have been racks. They are very good for it.

I believe you will like the dedicated drum racks in Live7 a bit better though,
you can send to effects and you can also make 'choke' groups.

Gtrance · Post by **Gtrance** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 1:31 pm

Choke groups??

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 2:41 pm

you know, so that one sound can cut off another, such as a hi-hat

Rogue Scrunt · Post by **Rogue Scrunt** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 2:53 pm

racks are great.

the new drum racks in live 7 will be based on simplers

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 3:32 pm

... or Samplers, or Operators, or anything else really ... depending on what you select

Rogue Scrunt · Post by **Rogue Scrunt** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 3:37 pm

thank you, I have not tried the beta

Rahlo · Post by **Rahlo** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:38 am

Why do you guys prefer Simplers for your drum racks instead of Impulses? I ask b/c I want to make sure I'm not overlooking some advantage to using them.

I prefer racks of Impulses b/c of the time stretching that happens when I change the tempo. Simplers don't do this, do they?

Tia for your insights.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:52 am

I didn't think that Impulses stretched the individual hits when the tempo was slowed,

Although there is the option to stretch the sound for special effects on each hit. When you slow a midi beat down the hits get more widely spaced as the tempos slows of course, as is the case with any midi instrument. but I'm unaware of anything special that Impulse does in that situation, or why stretching would actually be desired .. as it would lower sound quality , as these are individual hits after all.

Anyway - to your question:
I have used Simplers mainly because I can build a hit as I want it, one hit at a time with whatever processing that hit needs (saturation, compression , EQ).
So a kick might be constructed from 2 Simplers in two layered chains with a lot of effects thrown in, one Simpler layer takes care of the low part and is a long boom, with a macro connected to alter that length. The high part is in a parallel chain , it has a load of other effects to enable me to shape the 'poke'.
I can have saved rack groups of such editable drums such as a 'jazz cymbals' rack and 'analogue cymbals' and 'weird cymbals', etc ... These would contain 5 or 6 different rides, crashes , etc all in the appropriate style. That way if I want to swap 'jazz cymbals' for 'drum machine cymbals' I can do it very easily. The same for snares, kicks, etc.

Other benefits being velocity layering for 'real' drum samples, which Impulse can't do. Actually it's not so much doing my drums in Simpler as doing my drums in racks ... with everything available to me there. There are drawbacks to doing drums in Samplers/Simplers this way in Live6, but that's exactly why Ableton spent a lot of effort on developing the DrumRacks for Live 7. IE - adding drum pads, chokes, routing, grouping, and various other stuff which is too much trouble to list here.

I think DrumRacks are very much the Ableton's "replacement" for Impulse.

R.J.Dubya · Post by **R.J.Dubya** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:01 am

Angstrom wrote:I didn't think that Impulses stretched the individual hits when the tempo was slowed,
Although there is the option to stretch the sound for special effects on each hit. When you slow a midi beat down the hits get more widely spaced as the tempos slows of course, as is the case with any midi instrument. but I'm unaware of anything special that Impulse does in that situation, or why stretching would actually be desired .. as it would lower sound quality , as these are individual hits after all.

Anyway - to your question:
I have used Simplers mainly because I can build a hit as I want it, one hit at a time with whatever processing that hit needs (saturation, compression , EQ).
So a kick might be constructed from 2 Simplers in two layered chains with a lot of effects thrown in, one Simpler layer takes care of the low part and is a long boom, with a macro connected to alter that length. The high part is in a parallel chain , it has a load of other effects to enable me to shape the 'poke'.
I can have saved rack groups of such editable drums such as a 'jazz cymbals' rack and 'analogue cymbals' and 'weird cymbals', etc ... These would contain 5 or 6 different rides, crashes , etc all in the appropriate style. That way if I want to swap 'jazz cymbals' for 'drum machine cymbals' I can do it very easily. The same for snares, kicks, etc.

Other benefits being velocity layering for 'real' drum samples, which Impulse can't do. Actually it's not so much doing my drums in Simpler as doing my drums in racks ... with everything available to me there. There are drawbacks to doing drums in Samplers/Simplers this way in Live6, but that's exactly why Ableton spent a lot of effort on developing the DrumRacks for Live 7. IE - adding drum pads, chokes, routing, grouping, and various other stuff which is too much trouble to list here.

I think DrumRacks are very much the Ableton's "replacement" for Impulse.

But why not drum racks filled with impulses? Wouldn't that be the best?

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:09 am

No,
because the thing I didn't mention is : it's a hell of a lot easier to get rack chains to show up on the right keys in the midi editor window. If you want 20 hits to show up correctly in Impulse you need to do lots of twiddling with the midi transpose Device to try and get them to show up right. At least I did and I found the outcome to be poor.

I did try it .
When I first beta tested L6 I tried Impulse extension via racks, pretty much the first thing I did .. IE trying to get 30 pads working, but it was pretty unpleasant. Then I tried the rack method and found it very easy to manage. I could add whatever processing was required for each drum, set the key range graphically, and see it all in the midi editor very quickly.

Some people still like to use Impulse, but I always thought it was massively underpowered and flaky, so I was never tempted to jump through ugly shaped hoops to get it to 'extend'. Racks just worked and seemed less like I was trying to blow an EPROM to get my drums running.

Anyway - a lot of this is just history for anyone planning on moving to L7, and if you are still using Impulse for your drums ... you will be moving to L7

R.J.Dubya · Post by **R.J.Dubya** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:17 am

Angstrom wrote:No,
because the thing I didn't mention is : it's a hell of a lot easier to get rack chains to show up on the right keys in the midi editor window. If you want 20 hits to show up correctly in Impulse you need to do lots of twiddling with the midi transpose Device to try and get them to show up right. At least I did and I found the outcome to be poor.

I did try it .
When I first beta tested L6 I tried Impulse extension via racks, pretty much the first thing I did .. IE trying to get 30 pads working, but it was pretty unpleasant. Then I tried the rack method and found it very easy to manage. I could add whatever processing was required for each drum, set the key range graphically, and see it all in the midi editor very quickly.

Some people still like to use Impulse, but I always thought it was massively underpowered and flaky, so I was never tempted to jump through ugly shaped hoops to get it to 'extend'. Racks just worked and seemed less like I was trying to blow an EPROM to get my drums running.

But this was before drum racks right? So now that drum racks automatically set the pad to the right midi note, why not use impulses with drum racks instead of simpler - one sample per impulse instance. It would automatically map to the first impulse box right? I dunno, I'm just a big fan of the stretch function in impulse.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:24 am

It would most likely end up as a rack of impulses with only their first slot populated, but that's OK.

edit: I see you realize this. - there's no reason not to do it if you prefer the impulse device over simpler.

Gtrance · Post by **Gtrance** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:00 am

Simpler has LFO's which I like to use, Impulse doesn't. Impulse does have that stretch effect though which can be cool.

Really they should combine the different features of the two instruments into one because at the moment, you must sacrifice one feature to use another whcih seems silly.