Battery vs. Drum Racks?

[jlgrimes]

Ableton impulse for Life

What's up now! LoL


I kinda wonder why ableton still carries it over even to L9, oh well thats the least of my wonders about what ableton is thinking......

Backwards compatibility and time stretch.


Drum Racks is IMO better for quickly creating basic kits.

You can spend money for battery on a killer drum library.

That said Battery has much better sounding preset kits.

[h3rtz]

Battery's humanize functions are absolutly ace.

since i a while i am trying to like drum racks, and by coincidence i just researched on humanize with drum racks today.

i couldnt find anything as convinient and powerful as what battery offers. especially for timing there isn't anything for drum racks to not only make delayed but also predelayed drum hits with all those m4l devices and grooves and whatnot. battery (i'm on 3 by the way)does this with the turn of a knob. at least i think it does.

i am close to throw one instance of battery on each pad of a drum rack just to get this function back - although i spend a week on dragging all of battery's cells together and resave them to get access to the sample wavs.

[djadonis206]

Also as far as I know drum racks don't have a tag based sample browser.

Have you used the new search feature in 9? Powerful stuff right there. I search, "noise" and it give's me all my noise samples. I search, "Am" and all my A minor basslines and music loops are displayed.

One of the unsung cool things about Live 9 in my opinion. Granted I have quite a few sample packs and libraries. For me, it's great

[agent314]

This is why the main reason Im using battery now. Just for those quick artics from single samples.

Could you explain this or link a tutorial? I have been trying to figure out a good workflow with Battery and this seems like it could help

i couldnt find anything as convinient and powerful as what battery offers. especially for timing there isn't anything for drum racks to not only make delayed but also predelayed drum hits with all those m4l devices and grooves and whatnot. battery (i'm on 3 by the way)does this with the turn of a knob. at least i think it does.

Again, could you explain/give a tutorial about this? Also sounds just like what I'm looking for

[h3rtz]

Again, could you explain/give a tutorial about this? Also sounds just like what I'm looking for

I would post a screenshot but internet sucks where i live. It's dead simple anyway.

For each cell (means pad containing a single drum sound) you get a whole set of tools. "Humanize" is under "setup". 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.

Just messed around with lives grooves a little and it seems pretty powerful as well. Thing is, if you apply a groove, it affects the whole clip and every intrument of your kit the same way. I found two m4l devices that can random delay single instruments but i havent checked them out yet.

Geez, what a hassle just for avoiding manually dragging midi hits off grid but honestly, in the 21st century i think there should be smarter ways than this. Actually a good excuse to buy push. That way u can use knobs to move hits off grid.

[ezelkow1]

Just messed around with lives grooves a little and it seems pretty powerful as well. Thing is, if you apply a groove, it affects the whole clip and every intrument of your kit the same way. I found two m4l devices that can random delay single instruments but i havent checked them out yet.

There is another way around it, if you open up the chains view of the drum rack, go to the hit you want, right click on the chain and hit 'extract chain', it will pull out that one pad into its own drum rack on its own track with all its midi notes pulled out as well. Then you can apply a groove only to that one hit.

Just offering up another option

[h3rtz]

Just messed around with lives grooves a little and it seems pretty powerful as well. Thing is, if you apply a groove, it affects the whole clip and every intrument of your kit the same way. I found two m4l devices that can random delay single instruments but i havent checked them out yet.

There is another way around it, if you open up the chains view of the drum rack, go to the hit you want, right click on the chain and hit 'extract chain', it will pull out that one pad into its own drum rack on its own track with all its midi notes pulled out as well. Then you can apply a groove only to that one hit.

Just offering up another option

cool thx. i'll look into that.

i just learned that grooves allow u to adjust the amount of quantising in percent before the groove is applied. that pretty much settles it for me. finger dum beats unquantised, then alter quantisation to taste.

i wonder why that feature isnt available outside of the groove pool.

[h3rtz]

There is another way around it, if you open up the chains view of the drum rack, go to the hit you want, right click on the chain and hit 'extract chain', it will pull out that one pad into its own drum rack on its own track with all its midi notes pulled out as well. Then you can apply a groove only to that one hit.

Just offering up another option

hmm kind of kills the purpose why i started using drum racks. having all the midi in one clip but being able to individually process every instrument.

[agent314]

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.

[beats me]

Also as far as I know drum racks don't have a tag based sample browser.

Have you used the new search feature in 9? Powerful stuff right there. I search, "noise" and it give's me all my noise samples. I search, "Am" and all my A minor basslines and music loops are displayed.

One of the unsung cool things about Live 9 in my opinion. Granted I have quite a few sample packs and libraries. For me, it's great

I don't have 9 but it sounds like the browser is a marked improvement in that regard (and a living hell in other regards for other people I've heard)

Does it use tags or if you are looking for a noise sample it has to have "noise" in the name of the file?

[djadonis206]

Noise has to be in the name of the sample

[delicioso]

imo Battery4 was a waste of resources as Maschine had made it kindof obsolete..
although Maschine isn't a part of Komplete so battery takes care of drum needs for Komp users so it kindof makes sense..
they could've should've integrated Battery "cells" into Maschine if you ask me.. maybe in V2 ?
the way you can use fx in Maschine is more robust still..

I think the point is that people who are fine with a mouse-centric workflow already use Battery in the sequencer of their DAW of choice, whereas Maschine is more about having a totally hands-on hardware based workflow.

As far as integrating Battery with Maschine, you could already browse the Battery library from Maschine and load the Battery samples onto Maschine pads. And since Battery 3, you've been able to midi assign Battery cells to match the Maschine's pad layout in MIDI mode and save it as a template in Battery. You can also just open Battery kits on a pad in Maschine and put that pad in keyboard mode and all the pads will play the cells in Battery.

As for Battery 4, all factory sample files are added to the Maschine browser with tags. Battery 4 samples being browsed directly from Maschine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcWIW6Muw9U

[3dot...]

As for Battery 4, all factory sample files are added to the Maschine browser with tags. Battery 4 samples being browsed directly from Maschine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcWIW6Muw9U

this.
now I want it...

[kitekrazy]

Ableton impulse for Life

What's up now! LoL


I kinda wonder why ableton still carries it over even to L9, oh well thats the least of my wonders about what ableton is thinking......

Backwards compatibility and time stretch.


Drum Racks is IMO better for quickly creating basic kits.

You can spend money for battery on a killer drum library.

That said Battery has much better sounding preset kits.

No one really develops kits for Battery. Most use Kontakt because of copy protection. I'm surprised NI came out with a new version instead of scrapping it.

[Citizen]

Some good points in this thread - thanks guys.

I use Maschine and Ableton, for the record.

One of the things that sucks about Maschine, is the limited functionality for layering drums. 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.

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?)