Creating Drum Kits & Moving Clips Between Project

[Syncretia]

So, I recorded myself banging some knitting needles on stuff today. It made some nice sounds. I sliced it up and it made a drumkit. Now, I want to a) save the sliced up sample as several different samples b) turn those samples in to a drum kit preset so I can use it from other projects, and c) move the clip (drum beat) in to another project.

There is probably a lot of information I need here.

For starters. After slicing up an audio clip in to a midi track, what instrument is the result in the midi track? Is is Simpler? (I'm using Live - not Suite).

The bigger issue is that I'm trying to get my head around is the multiple different ways drums can work in Ableton. There is an instrument called Impulse, but that seems pretty limited because each sample doesn't get its own track. Whereas, when you slice up a loop, each transient gets its own track that you can add FX to. Then, simpler seems to be different yet again. So there seems to be three ways to do drums: simpler, impulse, and slicing. Why is this the case? Which one is the easiest to work with?

I realise that the questions here are manifold, but any information would be appreciated.

[dentaku]

I've found that Impulse doesn't get used much anymore.

Drum racks are actually just a bunch of Simplers grouped into a special rack that gives you more control than an Impulse. BUT it doesn't have to be a Simpler. Each cell in a drum rack can contain any type of instrument. It just happens that if you slice a drum loop to MIDI is creates a standard drum rack with Simplers in it by default.
If you look at the drum racks that come with Live you will see that some of them are made with Operators so they don't contain any samples at all.

[Syncretia]

Ah. That's a good explanation my calculating friend.

So, a drum rack is a collection of instruments which are designed to play one note each and can be manipulated as separate tracks. That sounds about right.

The manual says this:

"A Drum Rack will be added to the newly created track, containing one chain per
slice. Each chain will be triggered by one of the notes from the clip, and will
contain a Simpler with the corresponding audio slice loaded."

But, still, how can I export out the individual sliced up samples and save my drum rack so that I can use it in other projects?

I also ask this question because I have NI's Battery. I want to take the samples out of that and create drum racks in Ableton.

[Syncretia]

Is there any way to do this?

I'm starting to think that it's not possible.

This is going to drive me nuts. If it can't be done, I'm going to have to find some other piece of software to do my slicing which is really annoying because Ableton has a good working slicer. AArrrrggg.

[mothergarage]

Just drag them to your library folder on the left. Drum racks in the drum racks folder, simpler in the simpler folder.
Or drag the tracks containing the sliced midi and the drumrack to a folder on your harddisk.

[Syncretia]

Thanks. Yeah, you were right. I can drag the drum rack over to the presets on the left. However, I don't know where the samples are saved to. It doesn't seem to save the sliced up pieces, I'm guessing it just stores a pointer back to the original audio file that was sliced up. I don't want to do this. The reason being that the original sample might get deleted or moved. I want to keep all my sliced up kits in the one spot so that I can back them up.

Unfortunately though, I could't work out how to drag the slices in to explorer. When I try to drag one of the cells from Ableton in to Explorer, I just get the round cross cursor.

[Boss Level Music]

Hi,
Thought I'd share what I like to do. Maybe you'll find some of it helpful.
When I make a new drum kit I save it as it's own live set to a folder on my hard drive I call "kits". This way Live will make a new project folder for each new kit I make. You can then use the "collect all and save" function to copy all your audio files to that kits project folder. If you want to add the kit to a set your working on simply use lives folder browser to navigate to the kits project folder and drag the kits midi track over to your current set. It'll load the kit, samples and all, and any clips you may have made also.

As for transferring battery samples to live, it is possible, but quite tedious. I know, I've done it.
If they are multi-sampled drums your going to need an instrument rack for each drum and in that a simpler for each variation of that drum (example: snare soft, snare medium, and snare hard each in their own simpler. Those Simplers in an instrument rack). You'll want to increase the Simplers velocity sensitivity (I start at about 50%) and probably release time (both worth mapping to a macro knob). Then on the instrument rack open the chains and click velocity on the top right above the chains and set to taste using the velocity ranges and crossfades. Once you do that for each drum you can drag the instrument racks to their own cells in a drum rack. There you have it, velocity sensitive multi sample kits. It also works for other instrument samples. These are by no means hard and fast rules so explore and experiment till you find what works for you.

If you have any questions just ask. I'll admit I'm not always the best at explaining clearly.