Ableton Forum

Hi guys,

I know on Cubuse, I recently saw - if you have a drum track, you can seperate each instrument (symbols, bass drum, snare etc) into seperate tracks, I tried doing this manually in Live, but it came out kind of messy, is there an option or a way to send each part of the drum midi to seperate channels/tracks?

Thanks !

I dont think in the way you want.

You can route them to their own Send and Return in the rack

I just use a different rack and track for each instrument.

You can start this in one rack as a kits and then remove channels to another track later it's been a while since i did it but I remember it being easier to take them apart than put them back together. It'll move the MIDI notes and everything. Pretty sweet.

Hope that helps

Yes, it is very simple! Just copy the whole MIDI track a few times, say twice, if you gave 3 hits (kick, hat, snare)... then on each track, remove the hits other than the one you want for that track... whoala!

if you're using a drumrack, right click on one of its tracks and choose "extract"

infiniteB wrote:Yes, it is very simple! Just copy the whole MIDI track a few times, say twice, if you gave 3 hits (kick, hat, snare)... then on each track, remove the hits other than the one you want for that track... whoala!

Lol, I usually copy each part manually. This is way easier now that I think about it.

klackt wrote:I know on Cubuse, I recently saw - if you have a drum track, you can seperate each instrument (symbols, bass drum, snare etc) into seperate tracks, I tried doing this manually in Live, but it came out kind of messy, is there an option or a way to send each part of the drum midi to seperate channels/tracks?

Why do you want or have to split them? Cubase sucks anyway or it is for stone age musicians.

But if you really want this, Live can not do it, you have to use some external tools like: Midi export from Live to exported.mid --> command-line tool for converting exported.mid to a midi-1 format style --> reimport into Live and you should get all your tracks separately in Live.

All of this can be automated, so you could press only a hotkey and get the desired result.

Open new MIDI Channel with DrumRack in it. Drag MIDI Clip into a slot on Session View. View your Drum Rack and grab onto the slot of whatever sound you want to export. Drag that slot out to create a new MIDI Channel. The clip will now contain only the notes from that sound.

Edit: Especially useful for when you need to add a swing to a specific sound.

infiniteB wrote:Yes, it is very simple! Just copy the whole MIDI track a few times, say twice, if you gave 3 hits (kick, hat, snare)... then on each track, remove the hits other than the one you want for that track... whoala!

I agree with InfinityB, at least that's how I do it.. just hit CMD + D while the drum track you want to split is selected and it will duplicate it. Repeat as many times as desired, then just rename the tracks KICK, SNARE, HH, etc.. then just delete the unwanted midi data in each track so for instance, on the KICK track your will delete the SNARE & HH and so on so forth..

Good luck!

Use a drum rack! All the kit pieces will be able to expand and you can see
the volume of each kit piece and you can easily change routing or add effects
to a single instrument.

The drum rack is effectively a group of separate tracks all being triggered by
a single midi pattern.

enomusic wrote:

infiniteB wrote:Yes, it is very simple! Just copy the whole MIDI track a few times, say twice, if you gave 3 hits (kick, hat, snare)... then on each track, remove the hits other than the one you want for that track... whoala!

I agree with InfinityB, at least that's how I do it.. just hit CMD + D while the drum track you want to split is selected and it will duplicate it. Repeat as many times as desired, then just rename the tracks KICK, SNARE, HH, etc.. then just delete the unwanted midi data in each track so for instance, on the KICK track your will delete the SNARE & HH and so on so forth..

Good luck!

trouble with this way is if the drum racks are big you will quickly eat your RAM and it will slow right down (unless you have beastly amounts of it of course!)

"extract chains" is probably easier

alex.the.forge wrote: trouble with this way is if the drum racks are big you will quickly eat your RAM and it will slow right down (unless you have beastly amounts of it of course!)

"extract chains" is probably easier

I didn't think about that! Duh!!!!! Thanks Alex!! I know exactly what you are talking about..

Cheers!

andrew_ wrote:if you're using a drumrack, right click on one of its tracks and choose "extract"

Holy crap. That just made the session I'm working on so much easier!

I agree with those saying you should copy the midi drum kit track to other midi tracks (and when you do, don't forget like I once did that those notes won't sound until you've also added the same kit to those tracks - midi notes are only triggers of synths, so no sound without the synth you are triggering). But I would add another artistic recommendation. In my view, the most "critical" drum parts around which all drum and non-drum instruments are going to revolve are the kick (also known as a bass drum typically) and the snare. When you sit on a drum throne (seat) you will find the kick right in front of you but furthest away and the snare also in front of you (not perfectly, it might be a touch to the left, but close enough to the middle). If the midi information is triggering an entire grouping of drum instruments (and this recommendation is for a more traditional rock song - obviously, you might decide to only use one or two percussion instruments for rhythm) I will always copy that midi track three times. On two of them I have deleted all drum instruments INSTEAD of the kick and snare which will then rest individually on separate tracks, because of how important in my mind the snare and the kick are. You want to process those very carefully. They are often in the roughly 95 Hz sound range. It is important to process those in particular individually - you'll want to use some combination of compression if needed, or EQ, to make those two instruments stand out particularly strongly. Those will be the only drum instruments to pan right in the middle at 0 (along with the voice and the bass guitar) since those instruments are always roughly in the middle. After processing the sounds of those two, the remaining two tracks you copied of drum midi information can be panned to the left and the right. I don't think one's average rock listener (or anyone else) has the ears to distinguish if you have properly panned the toms, cymbals, or hi-hats sufficiently to the right or left, or if the correct instrument is to the left when it is normally on the right, etc. For those remaining instruments (not kick or snare) I just delete the remaining instruments so that some are panned to the right, and some to the left. You'll also want the voice (if this is a sung song) and the bass guitar right in the middle. Everything else can normally be panned around voice and two critical drum instruments. So this splitting of midi tracks has been useful for an artistic, sonic, reason.