Ableton Forum

I'm a noob, forgive me. I'm not sure if I even really know all the proper terminology to ask the question. Sorry if this is a really stupid or asked all the time.


What is the best way to set up a drum rack that works on the push and has the ability to change drum pad sounds easily? I mean, I just want to select the kick pad and scroll through kicks. Or select the snare track and scroll through snares. Is there a way to set this up on the Push?


I've seen youtube videos where they set up samplers with 128 clips and use macros to switch between clips. Can something like this be done but with the push and using the drum rack?

Ok from memory:
Make sure you have a SAMPLER per pad and open up the zone window.
Drag your 128 samples into it, then go to the SEL (selection tab abs right click and choose "distribute sample equally".
Then assign the SEL marker (think it's orange) to a macro and label it "kick" if you dragged kick samples in
Repeat this for 7 more pads.
As you need the macros to do the sample selecting you only get 8 pads with selecting, but I use the other 8 to assign specific samples for my individual projects.
Don't forget to save the drum rack when done!

Hope this is correct, anyone want to add?

Cheers,
Adrien

If you set the rack so that the selected pad's chain is active, you can have the same macro button select samples for every cell.

My drum rack
- has 128s on each cell
-has macro 1 assigned to sample select
- other macros control the ADSR, pitch,volume and loop mode.

Whatever cell is active on the 8x8 grid controls what chain the macros are assigned to

I am somewhat mystified by all the threads on sample selection on Push. Maybe they are trying to do stuff I don't know about

@The Finn that sounds great, how do I set up chains again?

Cheers!

Right at the bottom of the macro control part of the drum rack there is a little arrow called Auto Select. Make sure it is activated.

If it is, then clicking on a drum cell / activating that cell in push will automatically cause all chains linked to that note to become selected in the Chains list.

That also means that Push will control the first sampler in that chain.

So what you do is
You rack a sampler.
You set up the macro controls the way you like it (sample select, ADSR, pitch, whatever).
You save that as your generic drum cell sampler
Then you load up one of these with up to 128 samples. You drop that in one drum cell
Rinse and repeat.

Then, whatever drum cell you select will give you direct control of the corresponding sampler with 128 samples, and your 8 push knobs will control the macros for that cell.

Sick!

well done @ TheFinn,

i did the other way around.

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128s is certainly the way to go. Tom encouraged me to set it up months ago, but only tonight have I started to seriously configure and choose my drum samples. I would advise anyone to spend a long time, a whole day at least, to curate your drum sounds and choose them wisely. I'm busy doing this now, and I can imagine the payoff being well worth it - choosing separate elements of your drumbeats on the fly as it's playing without the need to browse.

I'm leaning towards setting mine up as follows, for use with Push:

Same as Finn described, except I'm gonna map the first and most important eight drumcells' sample selectors to the drumrack's top level macros. This way I can let a loop play and change multiple drum channels all at once - like changing the kickdrum and the snare from one macro area. Sure, you can quickly just select a drumpad/cell to change that particular one's sample, but I wanna have a really fast workflow, and even automation, with having them all in one group. I rarely use more than 8 different drumcells anyway, and if I do, it's miscellaneous drumhits which wouldn't need as much hands-on. I can simply dive one level deeper to change these as well.

Looking forward to having my final rack set up.

Cheers for all the ideas guys, and reminding me about 128s!

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