Seperating kick on its own channel

[Trypset]

Does anyone do this? Have the kick on its own channel completely?

Is mixing all the drums in a drumrack work well enough for most productions?

Trying to make an efficient live set template and want the most control over my punch.

[funky shit]

I have kick, snare percs, you name it. On separate channels.

[BlackMath]

yeah I definitely do this. Actually I have anywhere from 1 to 4 kicks seperated out. 1 for the actual kick and then 2 or 3 silent ones (playing different patterns) that trigger gates on some other synths and such.

I think its a pretty common practice.

[funky shit]

Usually have a seperate muted kick for sidechain aswell.

[Trypset]

can ya'll explain a little more....

whats the advantage of drum racks if it is common practice to seperate out the kick?

[nebulae]

Drum racks allow each pad to be on a separate subtrack. By separating the tracks, each pad has a lot more control in terms of how you shape the sound.

So you can take a loop, slice it to a drum rack. Then take the kick slice and compress it, or distort it, or whatever, and the final piece of audio can be ENTIRELY different from the original loop.

[leisuremuffin]

does not matter. do what you are comfortable with.

sonically you can achieve the same results no matter if you use its own track or a drum rack track.


reason to pick drum rack? --> programing you're drums with one midi clip where you can see everything. if you like working that way, its a good reason.
Also, you can work in drum rack, and if a situation comes up where you need to separate the kick, easy to extract the chain to a new track. it even extracts with the midi clip for itself.





.lm.

[Trypset]

thanks so much.

I thought i could achieve the same thing with the kick in a drum rack cell....it does put it on its own seperate "track" in the drum can rack.

As long as the same sound can be resulted I think I will mix all of my drum inside of the drum rack.

[evon]

thanks so much.

I thought i could achieve the same thing with the kick in a drum rack cell....it does put it on its own seperate "track" in the drum can rack.

As long as the same sound can be resulted I think I will mix all of my drum inside of the drum rack.

I disagree..I think you should put each instrument/voice on a track by itself. There are lots of reason for this. The main one is that it enables you to zero in and fix /re-do a part more effectively if a problem develops later on in the project.

[andydes]

thanks so much.

I thought i could achieve the same thing with the kick in a drum rack cell....it does put it on its own seperate "track" in the drum can rack.

As long as the same sound can be resulted I think I will mix all of my drum inside of the drum rack.

I disagree..I think you should put each instrument/voice on a track by itself. There are lots of reason for this. The main one is that it enables you to zero in and fix /re-do a part more effectively if a problem develops later on in the project.

Can you explain this? I wouldn’t have thought it would make any difference as with drum racks each chain can be treated separately, including sends etc. Surely it comes down to personal preference on how you organise tracks. About the only things I can think of is if you wanted to apply effects to your kick and bass together (some people compress them together, right?). Am I missing something?

[contakt321]

I have kick, snare percs, you name it. On separate channels.

I do this too, I find it suits my workflow better.

I also make drumracks that are "all kicks", "all snares", "all cymbals", and "all percussion" so I can quickly load all 4, then I make a pattern and just shift midi notes up and down until I found a particular snare, kick, etc that I like.

[sgx]

I have kick, snare percs, you name it. On separate channels.

I do this too, I find it suits my workflow better.

I also make drumracks that are "all kicks", "all snares", "all cymbals", and "all percussion" so I can quickly load all 4, then I make a pattern and just shift midi notes up and down until I found a particular snare, kick, etc that I like.

That's pretty rad. I'll have to keep that in mind. I'm really disorganized and never have racks or templates set up. I always start from square one every time and it really slows me down.

I really wish though, that there was a way to bus drum rack pads together within the track. I layer drum samples a lot and often want to process my three snares in the same manner.

[contakt321]

That's exactly why I do it this way. That way I process my snares the same way, hihats a diff way, etc.

This started in my analog days. I would have a channel on my MPC out and mixing board for snares, 1 for kicks, etc.

Also, the way I start my beats, I kinda pick drum sounds really quickly from my racks and program the drums really quick and get back to song writing, sample arranging, etc then when I am 50-75% done I come back and swap the drum sounds to perfection. This helps me not get bogged down on minutiae and focus on the overall song.

[mdk]

Am I missing something?

no, evon isnt reading.

For me the only difference between a drum rack track and a normal track is working with sends and routing.

I often end up with a hierarchical arrangement starting at the bottom with individual tracks for each part within a 'kit' (Kick, snare, hats etc) then either route them all into one track for that set of drums or group them by type with other kits (i.e. all kicks, all snares, all percs) then that will go into one top level track for drums.

That way when im mixing i can take an overall approach, e.g. more bass, more drums etc by adjusting one track and then dig deeper into the groups if i need to adjust the parts of the submix.

[Incy]

oh oh! get this...

First, I set up Kicks on each octave C-2 to C10 in a Drum Rack.
Then, I added serveral midi Pitch effects at +12, +12, +24, +36, -36 in that rack, whatever combinations to cover all ten octaves.
Then, I map'd the on/off button of those pitch effects to controller buttons.
Then, I repeated the process for snares and hi hats on other tracks. D-2 to D10 for snares.
Then, on the separate snare and hh racks, I used a Scale effect to switch between snare to side stick (D#-2 through D#10) or clap; and closed or open hit hats respectively, keeping all drums aligned to basic General Midi for consistency.
Finally, I pat myself on the back for being such a genius.

Someone needs to add this to tips and tricks... least I may do a Youtube video of it. Same idea as previously posted by Funky and Contakt but strictly kept to GM standards should I wish to import a third party midi track. Now that I think of it, Contakt's idea could be better for most users. What I wish would work for Contakt's method is the Random Midi effect. But it wont work as it will randomize on each hit instead of once every 16 bars or so.

What happens is I punch the octave in and out in various combinations, hence switching out the active kick in real time while feeding the rack from a midi loop on another track entirely. The midi track feeds three separate rack tracks, kick, snare, and HH. This gives me more possibilities then the simple switch sample option. As we may agree, not every kick or snare works, and this way I can get one that does on the fly.