Drum Racks+Trigger Finger live playing ala Jel, DiVinci etc?

Darwinist · Post by **Darwinist** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 11:43 pm

I have a Trigger Finger 16-pad MIDI controller and Ableton Live 7, and recently have been thinking about getting serious about treating it like an instrument similar to MPC maestros like Jel of Anticon Records. I have never been able to learn how to play any instrument, but this is one that I'm willing to put in the hours to master.

If you haven't heard how Jel rocks the MPC, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upKMyOh8Ch4&feature =related

Anyways, just wondering if anyone here has any hints, tips or tricks about how to train oneself to become an accurate and funky drummer on this kind of setup. I suspect that putting together some kind of a standard layout for the different kinds of drum sounds is a must, and then just practice, practice, practice, although I suspect there is more to it than that in terms of setting velocity levels and using multiple versions of kicks and snares etc.

So has anyone walked this path before with an Ableton + MPC-style MIDI controller? If so, care to share some info?

I'm also curious about whether any of the conventional drumming techniques or instructionals would apply to learning how to rock the pads..it's really IMO an underexplored instrument with only a handful of guys really mastering it.

Anyways, any and all advice appreciated.

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 1:30 am

How to learn any instrument......

hours of practice.

it sounds like a shit answer, especially with the way the forums been as of late... but really, just build the eye-hand, practice to a metronome, maybe for some good timing.... but practice..... 2 hours daily at the least...

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:35 am

I'm still waiting for people to start teaching finger drumming along with sample techniques. I've seen a lot of videos like this and sometimes wonder how much of the drums are one shots and if any are short loops, especially in reference to hi hats.

thesmallisbeautiful · Post by **thesmallisbeautiful** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:31 am

I have a couple things to suggest.

1) if you have one shots, it's nice to have a separate pad with different combinations of the sounds. You might have one pad with a kick, one with closed hats, one with snare, one with the same kick layered with the hats, one with the snare and the hats, etc...

2) I use impulse (I'm on live 6 still so I'm not sure about drum racks and how they work) for one shots, and I usually have a bunch of kits set up on a chain which I can scroll through using a knob.

3) I also like to take a loop and copy it to a bunch of clips in the same channel, set them all to no quantize firing, assign each clip to a different pad and set the start points on the loop to various drum hits within it. This way I can start the loop on the kick or snare or whatever, and play patterns that way, chopping up the loop in real time. There may be an easier way to do this, perhaps with drum racks and simpler/sampler, but I haven't been able to get it to work any other way.

nowtime · Post by **nowtime** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 6:18 pm

I'll give you a hint and it's something I really never here anybody else mention.

Find a way to play zero-latency drums. A standard rompler , sampler or MPC. Keyboards work the best for me. I've never gotten the chance to play an MPC, but I have the feeling the keyboard is better because the keys are smaller and closer together.

The difference of immediacy most definitely effects the quality of my finger drumming. There's some amazing kits on the Korg M3.

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:06 pm

nowtime wrote:I'll give you a hint and it's something I really never here anybody else mention.

Find a way to play zero-latency drums. A standard rompler , sampler or MPC. Keyboards work the best for me. I've never gotten the chance to play an MPC, but I have the feeling the keyboard is better because the keys are smaller and closer together.

The difference of immediacy most definitely effects the quality of my finger drumming. There's some amazing kits on the Korg M3.

Amen to that. I can never get latency low enough on software to where I can play things live that aren't extremely basic....like a 4/4 beat at 85 BPM. I may suck at finger drumming but I don't suck that bad. If you try to finger drum with bad latency it will make you want to quit writing music.

thesmallisbeautiful · Post by **thesmallisbeautiful** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:23 pm

I really don't understand this. I hear it all the time, but I don't know why it doesn't affect me. I run an mpd24 into live and I have no problems with latency at all. I play some extremely complicated stuff too. I have played drums for a living for almost 15 years, including modern jazz and live jungle. I use the mpd to trigger either impulse kits or a series of clips in session view and have really no problem at all. I have used an MPC and find no improvement on it at all. I actually prefer the mpd/live combo by far in terms of accuracy. If I do a roll, say 16th triplets at 115bpm, I find it more accurate on live than I did on the MPC (1000 at least).

It seems like nobody shares this experience with me though. I always assumed it was the placebo effect, people's expectations of the MPC coloring their perceptions, but it's too widespread. I also have hardly got the fastest computer of all time here. I run a Macbook pro 2 gig from 2 years ago, so I assume a lot of people have much quicker computers. I can't figure out why everyone else has a problem.

scientist · Post by **scientist** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:31 pm

yep, practice is the key. experiment a lot to find how you're most comfortable playing, and adjust pad set up as you go. after a bit of tweaking i've found my perfect set up:
1. left two columns are hihat type sounds, with similar sounds on two pads per row (so i can play double time parts with two fingers).
2. upper right four pads are various kick sounds, played with right hand index/middle fingers
3. lower right four pads for various snare type sounds, played with right hand thumb.

that's for 100% drum sounds. adding in melodic hits, i'll usually start in the bottom left and work my way up. if i get to have too many samples for one bank, then i just switch to the next bank, and duplicate any re-used sounds to the same pad in the next bank.

jeffthefish · Post by **jeffthefish** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:56 pm

thesmallisbeautiful wrote: It seems like nobody shares this experience with me though. I always assumed it was the placebo effect, people's expectations of the MPC coloring their perceptions, but it's too widespread. I also have hardly got the fastest computer of all time here. I run a Macbook pro 2 gig from 2 years ago, so I assume a lot of people have much quicker computers. I can't figure out why everyone else has a problem.

I switched from using a trigger finger w/ Ableton on a PC to the same setup on a Macbook (not pro), and let me tell you, it was a world of difference. I used to have serious latency problems, and I thought I just really sucked. Now this set up can keep with anything I can do, which isn't much, and I wouldn't be surprised if it could keep up with your chops too. Maybe people just need to switch to Macs?

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:20 pm

I'm on a Macbook Pro from 2 years ago too. What audio interface are you using?

Another issue might be how many tracks and plug-ins you are using too. If I have a lot going on in the song that is playing then it starts to glitch and cut out so I have to slide the buffer across to get that to stop which in turn causes my MIDI latency to turn to poop.

If you're just using Live to trigger some samples and minimal audio clips or just using it like a sample database then you may not have those issues, but load on a song with a lot of softsynths and effects plugs and garbage ensues.

scientist · Post by **scientist** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:49 pm

latency for me is a hardware dependent crapshoot. macbook + fw1884 = okay, macbook + usb uno = horrible, 12" powerbook + us-428 = excellent. who knew that the most out of date set up would have the least latency.

djlimbs · Post by **djlimbs** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:24 pm

right now i've got a mbp (2.2 ghz, generation right before the ones currently sold) and when i plug my mpd24 in, it works fine w/ little latency on native sound. can't tell much difference between that and when i plug in my firewire audiophile...since they're both core audio i didn't expect much of one...odd that u get latency on a mac, core audio is pretty good in my experience.

thesmallisbeautiful · Post by **thesmallisbeautiful** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:56 pm

I use an mbox2 pro as my soundcard, but I get negligible latency even when I don't use any soundcard at all.

It also may be that I don't have as much running when I program the drums, but I usually freeze any track that I'm not currently working on anyways, and can easily have several instances of synths and effects without it becoming a problem. I play live and usually have at least 8 audio tracks going, and at least 1 synth, send tracks going out to a nord G2 and then back in and a few effects and it's never been an issue to drum along.

That being said, live has always worked pretty much perfectly for me, and I have never experienced any of the problems that people mention in here, so maybe I'm just lucky.

Darwinist · Post by **Darwinist** » Fri Aug 22, 2008 10:49 pm

Thanks to all who replied, esp. scientist whose setup I´m going to try out!

Will post some examples later of my progress as a "finger drummer"

P.S Scientist, are you by any chance left-handed? I´m getting much better results by flipping your setup so the hihat samples are on the right side of the trigger finger