My Drum Auditioner rack!

[Eloheim]

I'm not claiming to have invented the wheel here, I'm sure others use racks like this too, but I just figured out a really nice rack to audition drum samples! And if anyone has any additions or suggestions I'd love to here them.

It's basically like a standard drum rack, but with a dial to scroll though different samples for each pad. There are just 7 pads- C1 D1 E1 F1 G1 A1 B1. And each pad has another drum rack inside of it. These inside drum racks each have a Pitch midi effect right before them, which are setup to be controlled by the Macros of the main rack. So you drop samples into the inner drum rack, and use the Macro knob to flip through which sample is actually triggered.

For example, you could drop a bunch of Kick samples into the C1 pad/chain. At first, playing C1 would trigger the first kick. But then you can use the Macro Knob 1 to flip through all the different kicks in the rack and audition each one at will with your C1 key. And you could put all your snares in the D1 chain and choose which of those gets played via Macro Knob 2. And so on.

The nice thing is you can just drop your samples right in the racks and they're ready to go. Or if you have pre-made drum racks of your samples, you can drag those from the browser in right on top of the drum racks, eg. C1, and it will still function the same.

Below I've attached a link to the rack so anyone can play with it. You do have to rename it by removing the ".txt" at the end of the filename though! So instead of "DrumAuditioner-Share.adg.txt" it should be just "DrumAuditioner-Share.adg". It's from Live 8.1.

Link: DrumAuditioner-Share.adg.txt

[Slightlydelic]

yeah i mentioned doing something like this recently, best tip i can give is to use samper instead of simpler and spread the samples acoss the keys instead of droping them on pads in a drum rack, its much more memory and CPU efficent.

[selthym]

Although I have seen a similar idea in one of the free loopmasters packs for ableton, you have just inspired me to set up a rack similar to yours for all my drum hits.

How much does Sampler save on memory CPU? I was of the understanding that unless a Live device is being used it uses now CPU at all. If I use Sampler is there a simple way to map a number of hits across the keyboard without having to manually draw in the keyzones?

[selthym]

Whilst writing the above I thought I should try right clicking and see what appeared and there is an option to Distribute ranges equally.

Very easy.

[Eloheim]

yeah i mentioned doing something like this recently, best tip i can give is to use samper instead of simpler and spread the samples acoss the keys instead of droping them on pads in a drum rack, its much more memory and CPU efficent.

If I use Sampler is there a simple way to map a number of hits across the keyboard without having to manually draw in the keyzones?

Whilst writing the above I thought I should try right clicking and see what appeared and there is an option to Distribute ranges equally.

I had almost the exact same thought process as you selthym upon reading Slightlydelic's response to my OP. Personally I haven't any problems at all with slowdown/mem usage even with many of these Audition Racks at once, but I have heard before that Simpler works my loading the sample into RAM, whereas Sampler reads from the hard disk. So is this what you are referring to Slightlydelic??

To me there are big advantages to using Simplers in a drum rack (instead of one sampler though). I should note though, that the Macro ranges in my rack SHOULD BE CHANGED to the default [0-127] for it to work like I like now. The reason for this is then you can simply drop any samples you want into the drum rack, and they will each be assigned to only one of the 128 pads. This is important because I've figured out that the computer KEYBOARD's arrow keys are perfect for flipping through samples too. So I click on the Macro and then use the left/right arrow keys to move through the possible samples. The catch is that (as far as I can tell ) the arrows always move in +1 increments. Basically, the Macro knob must have a full 128-step range in order for each key-press cycle you 1 sample.

You need to use the "simpler racks"-method to ensure that your samples aren't spread across multiple notes. This is where the "Distribute Ranges Equally" trick fails, unless you have exactly 128 samples . The "Distribute" command also makes putting together Audition Racks on the fly unworkable, (even if you don't care about using the arrow keys) because you'd have to select every sample and RE-"distribute" again each time you added another sample. Using the drum racks you can remove and add samples at will with no hiccups.

And another powerful bonus to using the simplers ( ) is that you can look at the Macro knob to see what SampleNumber you're on, and the sample will always have that number, even if you delete prior samples or add extra samples in the rack. Once again, because of the [(one sample)=(one note)] thing, you can, for example, look at the Macro knob to see that you like "C1-Sample#17", and easily find it again later. If you do the single sampler or "distribute ranges equally" thing, then any one sample will likely be spread over multiple note#'s, which will change any time that sample SET is altered.

Sorry...lol , if you can't tell I spent a good while playing around with this stuff the other day. If there's another way to do the things I refer to above, like "Arrow Key Cycling", "Sample Naming #'s", "Sample SET Alteration", etc., then I'd love to hear it because I imagine there are advantages to using a single samplers too.

Peace.

[selthym]

One thing I am going to try is to map the macro to Samplers Sample Select Ruler (under Zone -> Sel) this will allow you to flick through samples easily with a keyboard. The plus side to distribute rows evenly and having less than 128 samples is if you are using a midi rotary control you don't have to be ultra precise and only move 1 cc at a time.

... Despite This I believe Drum Racks would be easier to use + you can always use a smaple inside the rack instead of simpler

[Eloheim]

The plus side to distribute rows evenly and having less than 128 samples is if you are using a midi rotary control you don't have to be ultra precise and only move 1 cc at a time.

Yea I know exactly what you mean. Originally I actually had the rack set up a little differently. I had the regular macro-pitch knob with a range of only 0-15, so I could spin through the samples without having to be too precise like you say. (Also on my APC40 the knobs have exactly 16 little green led lights around then so you could use that as a visual clue for how far to turn the knob for the next sample! ) Then what I did is put ANOTHER pitch effect right before the macro-controlled one. So the first one would, you might say, set the "Base" for the 15 samples the macro knob would scroll through. This would be pretty cool if you could have as many macros as you want, but even with all the macros being taken up by the regular duty, you can just click with the mouse on the second pitch effect and use the blue hand to change the "Base" setting.

In the end, obviously, I decided to just go with the full 128 note range, which works best for me for the reasons highlighted in my previous post. The way I've solved the "having to be too precise"-problem is by modifying how my midi controller knob works. It's an 'endless encoder' so I just set the step size small enough that I can control it more easily. In other words, I made my midi controller's knob take like 8 full (physical) rotations in order for the macro knob on the rack to make one. Of course it is annoying that it's so slow now...lol. Which reminds me, I was gonna try to change it to one of the "Midi Relative" settings, instead...

[Slightlydelic]

Although I have seen a similar idea in one of the free loopmasters packs for ableton, you have just inspired me to set up a rack similar to yours for all my drum hits.

How much does Sampler save on memory CPU? I was of the understanding that unless a Live device is being used it uses now CPU at all. If I use Sampler is there a simple way to map a number of hits across the keyboard without having to manually draw in the keyzones?

with sampler i have 5000 kicks loaded into a rack for auditionioning, i dont do it with simpler because each sample would be contained in its own simpler, so their would be 5000 instances of simpler open, live simply falls over if i do it, with sampler their is no shouch problem.

how i build the rack is to open an empty drum rack drop an empty sampler onto the fist pad,open the chane and add a midi pitch plugin before the sampler, open the sampler select zone, then drop 128 samples into the box, then right click and select "distribute ranges equaly" this gives you one sample per key.

i repeat this process dropping another sampler onto the next drum rack pad adding a pitch, dropping anoher 128 samples. just keep repeating as required to build whatever libary your needing.

then i add another midi pitch plug, this time outside the rack, and placed before the rack. this one lets me select the drum pad, each drum rack pad innefect becoming a bank of 128 samples.

so no i select a bank of 128, then use the pitch plug inside the rack attached to the sampler to dial into the 128 samples contained in that bank.

[Eloheim]

Ahh yea that makes sense especially if you're working with thousands of samples like you say.

Just wondering but how do you keep them all sorted? Are they in folderse by what disc/set they came from mostly?

[selthym]

You don't need the pitch plug in between the drum rack and sampler. You can map a macro directly to samplers Sample Select Ruler (under Zone -> Sel).

[jimyson]

I can't seem to get this whole process put together and working properly. Maybe someone can help.

I did the above mentioned and put a Sampler on a pad inside of a Drum Rack and added 128 samples into the Zone section. Then I distributed equally which spread them across the keys. I mapped a macro to the Sample Select in Zone. The macro does change the slider on the top section of Sample Select but the only sample that will play is C3. I also don't understand how Midi Pitch does anything other than change the pitch of the sample. Please explain this as well. Thanks.

[Guff Tong]

^^When the samples are evenly distributed across the whole of a sampler (Select all samples then right click and hit the 'distribute evenly' option) the midi pitch plug-in (placed in front of the sampler) serves to scroll trough each note (or in this case each sample as each note has a different sample).

NB: Not yet worked out -
1) A further option would be to have one more midi pitch plug in right at the front of the drum rack, this would allow rotary selection of each cell individualy, freeing up the amount of rotatries needed. This would also give room to being able to controll each of samplers individual controlls such as volume, length etc....

The problem I get doing this is that the midi pitch plug in also affects my drum pad making it un-playable....

If ableton allowed midi mapping to drum cells themsleves this would not be a problem (though I am of course hoping someone will give me an obvious answer that I have missed????!!!!)

[selthym]

I can't seem to get this whole process put together and working properly. Maybe someone can help.

I did the above mentioned and put a Sampler on a pad inside of a Drum Rack and added 128 samples into the Zone section. Then I distributed equally which spread them across the keys. I mapped a macro to the Sample Select in Zone. The macro does change the slider on the top section of Sample Select but the only sample that will play is C3. I also don't understand how Midi Pitch does anything other than change the pitch of the sample. Please explain this as well. Thanks.

Where did you distribute equally? If you did this in the keyzone editor, you will need to use a pitch effect, if you did this in the sample select editor you can map a macro to the ruler (as long as you have each sample placed acrossed the entire keyrange). You can also distribute evenly in the velocity editor but this will not achieve what you are after.

[jimyson]

I got it yesterday. Works like a charm now. I ended up building it w samplers and putting only 64 samples per drum pad to make it easier to scroll through samples with my POT.

[TechnoPrisoner]

excellent tool mate!!!
fecking excellent!!!

big thanks for sharing!