Ableton Forum

Hi there,

I am trying to create a setup which makes slicing multiple drum loops directly into 128's more seamless, but I seem to get stuck, and before I resort to M4L, wanted to check here.

Basically, 128's are done by having a single drumrack with each drum cell hosting an instrument rack containing up to 128 chains with different samples that can be selected using the chain selector control (mapped to macros on the outer drumrack). The problem is that this works fine for the traditional way of selecting a bunch of individual sample files and dropping them into the inner instrument rack.

If I slice a drumloop though, it always creates a drum rack which doesn't have chain selector. The workaround here is to put a pitch device (as chain selector) in front and group both devices into an instrument rack, so far so good.

Once you try though to drop this instrument rack into the outer drumrack, Live recognizes that there is a nested drumrack inside the instrument rack, and directly maps all the cells in the outer drum rack to the cells in the drum rack therefore bypassing the nesting. So rather than sending C3 to drum cell 1 and on to instrument rack 1 as well as C#3 to drum cell 2 and on to instrument rack 2, all the different notes go to instrument rack 1.

Next idea was to NOT drop the 128's instrument into the drum rack but leave it on a different track while routing the midi from the central track with the drum rack per cell to the different tracks. But there seems to be no way to route midi from a drum cell to a different track, only routing externally (external instrument) is possible. Haven't tried that yet, so the other final option seems to be to have "send"/"receive" M4L devices in the drumcells/tracks respectively. which I will try tonight.

hope the problem is clear, and there is a native way to do that. I actually don't mind the fact that the central drumrack and the individual 128's sit on different tracks as this aligns quite nicely with the slicing workflow which creates a different track per sliced loop anyway.

thx Nick

That was a lot to take in and it's late. But why not slice your loops into clips, select all clips and drop them into Sampler. Go the to the Sel tab, hit distribute equally and boom 128s.
Then you can still drop the Sampler first into an isntrument rack, assign the chain selector to a Macro and then drop that on a drum pad. Do that 8 times and assign the DrumRacks 8 Macros to the InstrumentRack Macros with the Sampler Chain Selector and you can all control them from 8 encoders.

TomViolenz wrote:That was a lot to take in and it's late. But why not slice your loops into clips, select all clips and drop them into Sampler. Go the to the Sel tab, hit distribute equally and boom 128s.
Then you can still drop the Sampler first into an isntrument rack, assign the chain selector to a Macro and then drop that on a drum pad. Do that 8 times and assign the DrumRacks 8 Macros to the InstrumentRack Macros with the Sampler Chain Selector and you can all control them from 8 encoders.

But how do I slice loops into clips in the most seamless and efficient way ? Assume, I have multiple loops with found sounds, and I need to slice each of the loops into up to 128 slices/clips. Can this be done in an automated fashion ? I am only aware of "slice to midi", and that doesn't give me individual clips, does it ? Of course, if I did have a nice track with 128 individual clips, I wouldn't have the problem in the first place as I could drag them all into an instrument rack, and the instrument rack into a drum rack. Unfortunately, I don't have individual clips.

Having said that, my case here wouldn't be the default scenario for 128's as normally you want to have one 128's for kick, one for snare etc. Slicing a drum loop would put all of the different drum hits into a single 128. But I guess, if doing glitch, idm stuff, this could be helpful.

any idea ?

EDIT: sorry, accidently logged in with a different account, and can't delete the post.

hmmm.... slice to single sampler?

might be simpler after all, to have a custom drum rack populated with send devices while dropping receive devices into all of the "slice to midi" tracks.

In this case, even the "chain selector" stuff can be abstracted by putting pitch devices into every drum cell and mapping those to the macro knobs.

The only manual thing left would be the mapping between the send and the receive device.

- 'Slice to single Sampler'
- open Zone Edit area and select all slices
- right-click > Crop Samples

now you have each slice as a separate audio file.

monohusche wrote:Hi there,

I am trying to create a setup which makes slicing multiple drum loops directly into 128's more seamless, but I seem to get stuck, and before I resort to M4L, wanted to check here.

Basically, 128's are done by having a single drumrack with each drum cell hosting an instrument rack containing up to 128 chains with different samples that can be selected using the chain selector control (mapped to macros on the outer drumrack). The problem is that this works fine for the traditional way of selecting a bunch of individual sample files and dropping them into the inner instrument rack.

If I slice a drumloop though, it always creates a drum rack which doesn't have chain selector. The workaround here is to put a pitch device (as chain selector) in front and group both devices into an instrument rack, so far so good.

Once you try though to drop this instrument rack into the outer drumrack, Live recognizes that there is a nested drumrack inside the instrument rack, and directly maps all the cells in the outer drum rack to the cells in the drum rack therefore bypassing the nesting. So rather than sending C3 to drum cell 1 and on to instrument rack 1 as well as C#3 to drum cell 2 and on to instrument rack 2, all the different notes go to instrument rack 1.

Next idea was to NOT drop the 128's instrument into the drum rack but leave it on a different track while routing the midi from the central track with the drum rack per cell to the different tracks. But there seems to be no way to route midi from a drum cell to a different track, only routing externally (external instrument) is possible. Haven't tried that yet, so the other final option seems to be to have "send"/"receive" M4L devices in the drumcells/tracks respectively. which I will try tonight.

hope the problem is clear, and there is a native way to do that. I actually don't mind the fact that the central drumrack and the individual 128's sit on different tracks as this aligns quite nicely with the slicing workflow which creates a different track per sliced loop anyway.

thx Nick

Sounds like your in it pretty deep. Mind if I ask why you're building it out? Maybe there is a easier/better way.


KEAMO

So you can't build a MIDI Effect Rack with 128 chains w. Pitch effects and put it in front of the Drum Rack? (i.e. use that chain selector to send different notes of course). You're saying that screws up if you want the whole lot in another cell?

Can something be done w. a Sampler slice preset?

Quick test suggests using MIDI Effect Rack *might* work. You don't need an Inst Rack. It is showing all the samplers in the outer rack cells though so mebbe that still the same isssue.