What macros have you got setup on your 128 samplers?

[TomViolenz]

community Push mapping of Sampler

What mapping might that be, if I may ask?

It is just an edited text file (devices.py) to vastly improve Ableton's frankly shit coverage of Ableton's devices on Push. You may have noticed that many devices have many of their parameters missing and the present ones displayed in half-assed banks etc. This fixes all of that for all of Live's instruments and effects:

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=198946&p=1562395#p1562395

Installation is very simple. If any particular mapping does not suit you, it's very easy to edit.

Yeah please bump that thread, otherwise it will vanish into forum nirvana and no one, who doesn't already know about it will find it anymore.

[dewaldo]

somewhat off topic, but for all of you who didn't already know, you can normalize all samples within a given 128 rack by selecting all samples, right clicking, and going to either normalize volume or pan. just discovered this. Dope

[Stromkraft]

somewhat off topic, but for all of you who didn't already know, you can normalize all samples within a given 128 rack by selecting all samples, right clicking, and going to either normalize volume or pan. just discovered this. Dope

You use 16bit samples or less? If 24bit there are no valid reasons to do what you suggest. Let the samples be at the level they're at and learn gain staging. I mean right now. Just go do it.

[dewaldo]

i make hip hop with loud (and i mean near clipping) drums and lots of analogue noise. a critical element of my sound is choosing drums that fit the vibe of the sample i'm working with. i generally like to normalize my drum samples so I can compare their qualities without favoring certain sounds over others purely because of volume differences. most of the samples I work with are sampled off a SP1200 or MPC60, so they would be in 12 or 16 bit anyway, and already have a pretty high level of noise to signal level. plus i use the sampler's output level pre-mixer (the one whose default is -12db) to help with gain staging as i add effects to my drum sounds.

[Stromkraft]

i make hip hop with loud (and i mean near clipping) drums and lots of analogue noise. a critical element of my sound is choosing drums that fit the vibe of the sample i'm working with. i generally like to normalize my drum samples so I can compare their qualities without favoring certain sounds over others purely because of volume differences. most of the samples I work with are sampled off a SP1200 or MPC60, so they would be in 12 or 16 bit anyway, and already have a pretty high level of noise to signal level. plus i use the sampler's output level pre-mixer (the one whose default is -12db) to help with gain staging as i add effects to my drum sounds.

If you don't have 24bit samples you can of course cram out as much volume as possible, But doing this with 24bits or higher is typically counterproductive for getting loud. I mimic mastered levels with a gentle limiter on the master.

[tedlogan]

I toyed a bit with using Impulse loaded with 8 similar drum samples with Scale+Random MIDI effect per cell, and quite liked it, but realised I don't really use Stretch that much, so today went back to good old Sampler. LFO2+ModTargetA assigned to SampleSelect at 100%, RandomType at 30hz achieves the same random effect anyway, plus you can load a hell of a lot more samples than Impulse for a much greater range of random variation.

Anyway, macros:

I'm enjoying this setup a lot so far, as per drumcell's rack:

Sample Select
LFO2 on/off - this works quite well. As soon as you turn this on, the element of random samples comes into play. Depending on your choice of samples, it could range from very subtle timbre changes in say, your snare, to extreme variation, or anything you want really. Turn it off and you can go back to choosing a specific drumhit - maybe you've found a perfect single hit to overlay another snare cell that's random-activated, etc. Highly recommended.
Volume
Reverse
Attack
Decay
Shaper Amount (set to Sine usually)
FM Frequency (mapped so that at zero it turns the FM Oscillator off)

not too sure about the FM macro...I see it being replaced by something else perhaps...

If I had to choose one essential macro for drums, for what my ears like, it'll be Decay.

I don't use Sampler's Filter anymore, as I always have an EQ8 in every drumcell anyway, so I just use that instead. It's not mapped to any macros. My default EQ8's Push mapping's top level is altered from the community mapping, with Filters 1, 2 and 8 on and neutral by default:

Filt1 Frequency
Filt1 Resonance
Filt1 Type (default is 12db HP)
Filt2 Frequency
Filt2 Resonance
Filt2 Gain
Filt8 Frequency
Filt8 Resonance (filter 8 is set to 12db LP)

I find this perfect to quickly cut lows and highs when needed, and usually, but not always, use Filter2 to seek out and tame those horrible muddy and boxy frequencies between 120 - 400hz.

Combined with a Send Return Feedback loop, such as excellently taught here http://angstromnoises.com/tutorial-able ... ck-part-1/ makes for quite some enjoyment.

[tedlogan]

I've been trying various ways to setup the rack so that I can tweak each cell's macros(Sampler containing various hits of the same kind) individually, AS WELL as tweaking these same parameters (in the post above) from the master rack to affect all cells in the drumkit at once.

(A) I like playing around with Attack and Decay mainly, so first I gave up macros 7 and 8 (saturate and FM in my case) on each cell level to map those to Sampler's Aux, which was setup to control Attack and Decay just like the Global ADSR. These intermediate macros (7&8), where then mapped to the master drum rack. I did this for all the cells. Now I had control of attack and decay for each part of the drumkit individually as well as globally, and it works perfectly, but I had to sacrifice 2 other parameters on the individual level to achieve this. And what if I want to control the other parameters the same way?

(B) I reluctantly used M4L's Envelope mapped to a Utility's Gain, maxing out at 0db, set to the same ADSR settings I use with Sampler, Trigger mode, 10s etc, with the intention of being the master Attack and Decay controller, but the results are disappointing - clicking all over the place. Just terrible results. And Utility only goes down to -36db. I also thought of mapping to each Sample's Volume, which does go down to -inf dB, but this can't be mapped. I doubt I'd get rid of the woeful transient response, or rather clicking (not audio dropouts) anyway.
Nevermind, I don't want to use M4L if I can help it.

(C) Parallel chains. For example, the kickdrum: a Sampler racked like always, with the 8 macros of choice. I rack up this rack so that I can create a parallel chain of exactly the same Sampler. Chain "A" and chain "B". The intermediate rack containing A and B, which I name "----", will contain all the same parameters I mapped to the base-level Sampler rack, except for macro 1 (Attack) - this will also mute chain A and unmute chain B at around 0.13ms. This is then mapped to the master rack ,along with all the other parameters from this intermediate rack - Decay, FM, Saturate and so on. I do this for all the drumpads, or cells as I prefer to call them. This works great. I can now control everything on an individual level as well as from a global level with ease. Once you've set up just one cell you can quickly copy this template to the other cells, so the whole tedious setup needs only to be done once, with only the Samples needing changing of course.

The only drawback using this with Push is once you dive down to the base level to tweak an individual Sampler, you can't just select another pad from there to tweak another one - you have to go up two levels and then choose another pad. But, you get used to it fast.

Now - there must be a better way to do this - controlling "parent"/global macros or parameters while still being able to control their "children". Even though (C) works fine and I'm quite pleased with the operation of it, a more elegant solution would be most splendiferous, if anyone would care to enlighten me.

Cheers