impulse tips/workarounds?

[azmotronik]

So I've been doing a fairly long workaround for a pretty simple feature that I think is missing in impulse, thought I'd share it here and see if there is an easier way to do this.

I am a fan of hardware, and a few of the old beatboxes I have let you mute parts of the drum sequence while playing the pattern. I know that impulse has mute and solo buttons, but they are not "playable". Buildups and breakdowns are usually what this technigue is used for... you want to drop everything out except the kick, then bring in the claps... whatever.

For some reason, if you crank the cell volume down as far as it will go, you can still hear whatever it is you're trying to mute. Results may vary depending on the type of drum sound, but I can't get the sound completely muted.

What I have been doing to remedy this is to split up my drum pattern by copying it into multiple midi tracks and then deleting all but one of the sounds (kick notes on one track, snare notes on the next and so on) then I map the clips to keys (kicks to 1, hats to 3, etc) so that when I'm playing a set I can hit keys 1,2,3,4 simultaneously and get the effect of muting everything, then drop in the snare by pressing 2, so on and so forth until the build is complete.

My question is, am I missing something totally obvious here? It seems there would be an easier way, maybe next version?

/a.

[hyerstay]

Use eight audio tracks for the eight parts of Impulse. Make the regular impulse track not play any sound at all, then sum all the independant outs to another audio track if you want a drum buss.

jh

[azmotronik]

This is another approach that I have tried, but I find using the midi information suits my musical needs best. This is because if I route the audio, the muting/unmuting of the tracks can cut off longer decays or drop the tail of something in. The impulse works much like a beatbox in this respect (a good thing in this case), if you hit the mute after the initial attack of a sound, the decay is left on while the triggering of the next sample stops. I think that most of the controls on impulse work this way. For example you can't pitch bend a cymbal, rather the next event will reflect transpose changes.

It would be nicest to just be able to map the mute buttons.

/a.

[relcad]

here's another thing to try

Filter the midi input using the Scale MIDI FX - that is 8 instances of the Scale MIDI FX - one for each note in impulse. You can then map a key or a controller toggle button to the on/off switch of each scale unit. ON = mute (keeps the note from reaching impulse) Off = passthru

1. Start with impulse in a MIDI track

2. make a test sequence that hits every impulse slot in order (notice if you click the FOLD button on the sequence grid you will see the notes instead of the impulse pad descriptions) - this will allow you to see the consequences of your actions.

3. Start with Slot 1 which is C3 - drag a scale FX into the midi track that has impulse in it - to the left of impulse - it will default to a diagonal line running up the interface grid. Click the one in the lower left hand corner - you will see that slot 1 no longer fires. You will also see that slot 8 no longer fires - this is becuse you are filtering out all midi data that is a C note - you need to narrow it down to only filter C3. Set the lowest note field to C3 and lower the range to 0st - now you are only filtrering C3.

4. repeat step 3 for slot 2 (D3), 3 (E3), 4(F3), 5(G3), 6 (A3), 7(B3) - you do not need explicitly set the note range to 0st as there is only one instance of each of these notes in impulse. When you get to Slot 8 (C4) repeat the step 3 exactly - except set the lowest note to C4 instead of C3.


pros: - you only need one midi sequence track
- you can group the scale effects and the impulse and save it as a preset

cons: you have 8 scale fx sitting in that workspace (it doesn't appear to take up that much CPU though)

hope this helps!

[hyerstay]

Can't you just achieve it with one instance of the scale plugin? Just map any white key to a black key to mute it.

jason

[Machinate]

Can't you just achieve it with one instance of the scale plugin? Just map any white key to a black key to mute it.

jason

yes, but that won't give you quick midi control to, say, mute kick and snare with two quick button presses. stacking up 8 of them and removing the buttons is easier, imo.

FWIW the scale fx is a really cool midi filter as well as scaler. And yes, the 8 scale setup may take up a bit of space, but they use like 1 percent cpu at most. They can be grouped to make the rig slightly smaller.

[Patrick DSP]

i've been using bome's midi translator and use an old korg electribe er1 as a midi drum sequencer with 80 midi control knobs. bome's converts the nrpn's into midi cc's that ableton can use. it's ace, and much better than entering drum patterns live with a mouse.

so with that and an audio drum mixer setup, it makes for a pretty powerful setup.

[azmotronik]

Thanks relcad, this solution seems much simpler than what I was doing before. I have the 8 scale effects grouped for easy access later. This is exactly what I was after. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just map those mutes on the impulse though?

Who uses a mouse to write beats anyway?

[auto_moment]

This is bloody fantastic