Drummers, how are you changing sounds/scenes while playing?

Schmidi · Post by **Schmidi** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 2:52 pm

I am in the process of making my band into a live on stage reality, and I am not sure how I am going to pull off the drums live!?!?! It's drum and bass music (www.myspace.com/triggerhappy206) and ideally I want to play most of the beat by hand triggerring one shot samples from Live. So, how am I going to change sound sets for each song????
I have a Firepod and a 2in 4 out midi box, a hybrid acoustic and mesh edrum set (running into a roland td3 drum brain) and a lot of drum samples thru Live v6.
I plan on having a keyboard within reach on stage, so is there some way I can map a different kit/drumset of samples to each key??? THANK YOU ALL.

agent_orange · Post by **agent_orange** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:29 pm

if you want to change the drumkit of your td3, you have to send a "programe change" signal via midi to the td3.

I generally recomend you a drumkit sampler like "Battery" where you store all your samples for one scene in one programm.
In Battery, you can create your own presets with different midi-assigment for eack preset.
You can change the preset of Battery with the known "Programe Change" Button on your keyboard (if you route the midi signal form your keyboard to the battery track and set monitor to "in".

If you want to trigger clips in ableton, you can only assign one controller-button (or Key) to one clip. so a general "preset Change", to have new clips on you buttons is not possible.
But if you use a Keyboard as Controller for Clip Start, you can set one clip for one key ON EACH CHANNEL.
so your keyboard has for example 25 keys, change the keyboard to channel 1, then set the midi assigment keys->clips. This is your "preset1".
Change the keyboard channel to 2, set new clips assigment. This is your "preset2"

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If you want to send "program change" to the td3 and you don't have an controller that supports that message, check Bome's Midi Translator out, there you can map a keypress to a midi command.

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 4:38 pm

I use Impulse for my drum kits that I play live, played on a Yamaha DD55 drum controller. The latency is starting to piss me off as my playing gets better, so I may move over to a hardware drum sampler.

I've MIDI-mapped various Impulse kits to FCB1010 buttons, so I can instantly swap Impulse sets with my feet. You could use an FCB1010 to MIDI-map patch changes on your TD3, so your hands are kept free for playing.

agent_orange · Post by **agent_orange** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 6:28 pm

@hambone1

yeah, i use the same drum controller and play for 4 months now.
At first, latency was no topic, but with the skill comes the pain!

I think a hardware unit is defnintely necessary because when playing drums you need 2-4 ms or so - impossible for a pc-setup.
But these big ones from Roland are pretty expensive...

At the moment, I play on a mik'ed real drumkit in our training-room.
Left of the snare, i got my digital drumkit and use it as "buttons" for ableton remote controll, cause my feets are not fast enough to reach the fcb1010 to cut loops.
So I play the real Drums and instantly can record/build-up loops or record my different patterns. Or I practice to previous band-recordings from my friends, mute their drumtrack, use headphones and can play my personal drumline to that track.
All nicely controlled with the sticks
real is real

vdrum · Post by **vdrum** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 1:54 pm

Im doing a lot of the same techniques mentioned here.. Im playing at 6ms through a RME Multiface and/or MOTU Ultralite...Dont give up on playing into the computer, it IS possible! I think 6 ms is acceptable...8+ is not!

TK

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 2:14 pm

agent_orange wrote: If you want to trigger clips in ableton, you can only assign one controller-button (or Key) to one clip. so a general "preset Change", to have new clips on you buttons is not possible.
But if you use a Keyboard as Controller for Clip Start, you can set one clip for one key ON EACH CHANNEL.

Fortunately that's not true. If you assign the track play button instead of slot play buttons you can move through scenes like they were presets. We do this in our rig (drum side of which is a full TD-20, an SPD-20 and an SPD-S) and it works quite well. As an aside we trigger all the samples at once and then mute/-unmute via midi. This works best for us right now..

agent_orange wrote:If you want to send "program change" to the td3 and you don't have an controller that supports that message, check Bome's Midi Translator out, there you can map a keypress to a midi command.

Fortunately: Also not true!
Set up a midi track, put midi clips in there that all have program change messages, and send them to your drum kit. This way you can even automate your set so that the right drum kits load up at the right scenes.

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Wed Jan 24, 2007 3:22 pm

I think I'm gonna pick up an SPD-S and load my Impulse samples into it to play live.

No more &£^%"$!!*& latency issues, and I can still use it to trigger video and lighting effects and scenes.