Hi all,
I was wondering if anyone had made themselves drumpad kits using drumsynths to turn Push into something like a hardware drum machine?
I'd like to get it to the point where I have a standard kit, but quite a bit of flexibility to edit the sounds using the macro knobs. I saw someone managed something similar using lots of instances of microtonic (which I don't own), anyone got any other suggestions?
Good drumsynth(s) to use with push?
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irrelevance
- Posts: 463
- Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 7:31 pm
Re: Good drumsynth(s) to use with push?
You could use the drum synths in max for live if you own it.
Re: Good drumsynth(s) to use with push?
+1 on the M4L drum synths, very good.
I have got some excellent results using instances of operator in drum racks. If you group each operator instance within a drum rack (nested group??? I don’t know the term for this) you get an additional set of macros that change as you select different drum pads on Push, rather than use the single drum rack macro that will stay static across all pads (8 knobs are not enough) – its especially worth doing this because it makes using the p-locks much more powerful, just a bit of setup involved. You then have a pretty crazy drum synth at your fingertips.
There are some excellent free operator drum synths from Noise is King, you just need to set up your macros to taste and boom, Push is a very cool drum synth. Their site seems to be down ATM, otherwise I would post some links.
But like you I still wonder if there is a more elegant, out of the box solution. Seems like a good opportunity to make something really slick.
I have got some excellent results using instances of operator in drum racks. If you group each operator instance within a drum rack (nested group??? I don’t know the term for this) you get an additional set of macros that change as you select different drum pads on Push, rather than use the single drum rack macro that will stay static across all pads (8 knobs are not enough) – its especially worth doing this because it makes using the p-locks much more powerful, just a bit of setup involved. You then have a pretty crazy drum synth at your fingertips.
There are some excellent free operator drum synths from Noise is King, you just need to set up your macros to taste and boom, Push is a very cool drum synth. Their site seems to be down ATM, otherwise I would post some links.
But like you I still wonder if there is a more elegant, out of the box solution. Seems like a good opportunity to make something really slick.
Re: Good drumsynth(s) to use with push?
You can set up most drum machine plugins to work with a Drum Rack and Push. I have done this for D16 Nepheton and Drumazon, which are excellent 808 and 909 emulations. The way you set it up is as follows:
On the first pad of the Drum Rack, add the plugin itself, making sure it is set to not use the internal sequencer and is set to receive MIDI. If possible, set it up so each drum sound goes to a separate output (for Nepheton, there are more drums than there are outputs so I've had to group some together). Open up the "Chains" view and then the "IO" panel in the Drum Rack, and check the first pad is set to receive C1 and to play C1 (assuming this corresponds to the MIDI note for the first drum you want in your rack). Rename the first pad e.g. to "Bass Drum".
On the next pad, add an External Instrument device, and set "MIDI To" to go to the plugin you just added to the first pad (e.g. "1-Drumazon"). Set the "Audio From" to the output you set for the second drum sound (e.g. "3/4-Drumazon"). In the IO panel, set the "play" note for this drum to the MIDI note corresponding to the second drum sound you want and rename it to e.g. "Snare Drum". You should find that playing this second pad/chain triggers the sound from the plugin instance on the first pad, but with the audio routed through the second chain.
You then continue duplicating these External Instrument chains on to each pad and setting the "play" notes and "audio from" outputs until you have mapped all the drums you want. If you have multiple sounds assigned to the same output, what I do is turn the gain down to zero on all but the first External Instrument, otherwise you get the same sound coming out of multiple chains and it will be too loud. This means that you can only mute this sound from the first pad, but can still trigger the individual sounds from the appropriate pads.
Once you've set all this up, you can drag the Drum Rack to your User Library and save it there for future use. I actually go one step further and set up a group audio tracks to route each audio channel out of the Drum Rack, then set the Drum Rack channel to be "sends only" - this means all the drums are on normal audio tracks so you can do stuff like sends, grouping etc. more easily.
With this set up, you can sequence 3rd party drum plugins using Drum Racks while only needing a single instance of the plugin, with all the usual features like muting pads "useful shortcut I found is: - hold Select + Drum Rack pad, while still holding the pad release the Select button and press Mute to deactivate all steps of the corresponding pad" - this is useful as it mutes the MIDI notes rather than the audio, so works even when you have multiple drums using the same output).
The only slight downside is that the plugin's parameters are only available in the Push device view when you have the first pad highlighted (as the plugin only exists on this first chain), but you can turn "follow" off on the drum rack if you want it to stay locked when you play other drums.
Let me know if you'd like me to share my Nepheton and Drumazon presets, or if you need any clarification, as it does take a while to set up but is well worth it! Obviously this could also be done with Battery, Kontakt, etc...
On the first pad of the Drum Rack, add the plugin itself, making sure it is set to not use the internal sequencer and is set to receive MIDI. If possible, set it up so each drum sound goes to a separate output (for Nepheton, there are more drums than there are outputs so I've had to group some together). Open up the "Chains" view and then the "IO" panel in the Drum Rack, and check the first pad is set to receive C1 and to play C1 (assuming this corresponds to the MIDI note for the first drum you want in your rack). Rename the first pad e.g. to "Bass Drum".
On the next pad, add an External Instrument device, and set "MIDI To" to go to the plugin you just added to the first pad (e.g. "1-Drumazon"). Set the "Audio From" to the output you set for the second drum sound (e.g. "3/4-Drumazon"). In the IO panel, set the "play" note for this drum to the MIDI note corresponding to the second drum sound you want and rename it to e.g. "Snare Drum". You should find that playing this second pad/chain triggers the sound from the plugin instance on the first pad, but with the audio routed through the second chain.
You then continue duplicating these External Instrument chains on to each pad and setting the "play" notes and "audio from" outputs until you have mapped all the drums you want. If you have multiple sounds assigned to the same output, what I do is turn the gain down to zero on all but the first External Instrument, otherwise you get the same sound coming out of multiple chains and it will be too loud. This means that you can only mute this sound from the first pad, but can still trigger the individual sounds from the appropriate pads.
Once you've set all this up, you can drag the Drum Rack to your User Library and save it there for future use. I actually go one step further and set up a group audio tracks to route each audio channel out of the Drum Rack, then set the Drum Rack channel to be "sends only" - this means all the drums are on normal audio tracks so you can do stuff like sends, grouping etc. more easily.
With this set up, you can sequence 3rd party drum plugins using Drum Racks while only needing a single instance of the plugin, with all the usual features like muting pads "useful shortcut I found is: - hold Select + Drum Rack pad, while still holding the pad release the Select button and press Mute to deactivate all steps of the corresponding pad" - this is useful as it mutes the MIDI notes rather than the audio, so works even when you have multiple drums using the same output).
The only slight downside is that the plugin's parameters are only available in the Push device view when you have the first pad highlighted (as the plugin only exists on this first chain), but you can turn "follow" off on the drum rack if you want it to stay locked when you play other drums.
Let me know if you'd like me to share my Nepheton and Drumazon presets, or if you need any clarification, as it does take a while to set up but is well worth it! Obviously this could also be done with Battery, Kontakt, etc...
Ubermap: simple, free bank and parameter remapping for AudioUnit and VST devices for Push and Push 2: http://ubermap.live