drum workflow question

pat the dog · Post by **pat the dog** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 7:59 am

when i'm making drum tracks i tend to set up a 2 or 4 bar cycle and jam in the drums in overdub. what i really like about other sequencers is how easy it is to create new track to record to which uses the same drum instrument.

so in logic for example, i'd jam in the kick on one track, then with a single keyboard shortcut i create a new track that uses the same output instrument, and on that track jam in the snare, then do the same for the hi-hats, and so on.

the advantage then is that all the parts are separate in the arrangement so i can easily create variations, or mute out the kick for a section, etc. but since all tracks are pointing to the same instrument it's easy to manage a drum kit and the mix etc.

however in ableton live, i'm having trouble employing this workflow. i know there's the cmd+opt+t to create a new midi track, but then i have to grab the mouse and set the midi-out drop-down to point to my drum instrument, arm the track, drop into record, and by that time the spontaneity is gone and i've lost the idea.

so i guess what i'm asking is how other people go about recording their drums. do you jam everything into a single track and then separate them into different drums later? otherwise is there a keyboard-shortcut that i don't know about, that creates a new midi track with duplicate output settings??

snakedogman · Post by **snakedogman** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 9:16 am

Well you could set up a template project with multiple drum channels alread created and routed.

And idea I had was if Ableton made it somehow possible to play multiple midi clips at the same time in one channel. Which would then automatically merge all the playing notes together.
So you could have seperate clips for each drum sound, without having to make seperate channels.