Drum Rack Individual Audio Outputs - Yes I've Tried Everything Else
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 5:41 pm
Before you reply and shoot this idea down or recommend one of the many workarounds, read everything below. I spent a lot of time writing this, and about 1,000 times more time researching how to accomplish this end result.
Drum Racks: please Please PLEASE add the ability to send individual drum rack track audio to other audio tracks (in addition to current ability to send them only to the Drum Rack output and the drum rack sends).
Why? Here's why:
I would like to be able to have a single midi clip with all drum parts playing a single drum rack, with various drum parts in that drum rack going to other audio tracks serving as busses. I do electronic music so I might have four different snare sounds in my track's overall drum sound and six or eight hat sounds, clicks etc. Cool. But for live performance I want to be able to mute and solo drum parts without having to stage or sequence different midi clips where these sounds disappear. In other words, I'd like to just have a single midi loop running while parts are solo'd in and out.
Trust me, I've tried every available configuration in Live to do what I want and they're all various degrees of not functional. I explain further below but first, why is this approach so efficient?
Because: I like to have my creative palette set up so all I do is open my template track and everything is set up and mapped right, ready to go at the start of composition. So my midi controller setup stays mapped for drum part mutes and solos, even though individual drum racks and sounds may want to come and go. As my sound and my projects evolve, I want my template to be able to evolve as well, e.g. add and remove drum racks from my main setup as desired, without having to remap midi controllers, re-setup send mappings (for instance snare into space echo, or hats into eq-cutoff). Everything needs to stay on a single midi track because thats the only way to efficiently program new midi parts because you can see the drum sound name in the midi roll. Plus it greatly speeds up workflow of repurposing drum loops from other projects and sources to the current project.
I go into why the current ways Live gives you of doing it don't work here:
1. Split out the drum parts to individual midi/audio tracks: this becomes a PITA when you want to rework the midi clips or repurpose new midi drum clips to the project. You have to switch between 10 to 20 part lanes and piece and part out the MIDI. No Bueno. Basically this is only a good solution when your composition phase is done. Its a terrible solution to have to rely on at the beginning of composition.
2. Use the Drum Rack sends within the rack: No Bueno here because the they are limited to 6 total and even then, I can't group multiple drum rack sounds to go to a single send. To do that I have to:
3. Use Drum Rack Sends to go to project Aux channels: No bueno here because mute and solo won't work correctly (e.g. soloing the kick aux channel would mute out all the tracks instead of just the drum track). Also, why in gods name would I want to have 8 additional Aux track send knobs for EVERY track when I only need them for a drum track?
4. Use a single a drum rack for everything: too limiting, and now when I want to map my mute solo controller using midi CCs to that drum rack, I have to map a huge number of buttons for each drum sound class because I'm using multiple sounds for each drum type.
5. Heck I've even gone to the trouble of setting it up so that I have a single audio track pulling audio from the individual drum rack sounds and using THAT track as a pass through to go to the grouping tracks. This is a real hassle to set up because instead of mapping one thing (drum rack's kick sound audio out to "Kick" group track) I have to do four things....create a dedicated audio track, specify the input as the drum rack, specify the sub-input as the rack's kick part (choosing from a list thats a hundred things long because of all the pre/post/mix options), THEN finally specify the output as the "Kick" group track. This means if I have 50 drum sounds, I need 50 "pass-through" tracks....bummer but computers are strong these days. So hey, I'd do this......except Solo doesn't work right with this config now, because that intermediary track "breaks" Live's intelligent logic of not muting the source of the tracks input sound when the destination track is solo'd. Bummer.
That is why individual drum rack track outputs to any other audio track in the project is the most elegant solution:
This way I can have 3 or 4 of my favorite drum racks come in and out of my template project and all I need to do is map the individual drum part sound audio outputs to go the audio tracks that are already mapped and setup for my controller and effects like "Kicks" "Snares" and so on.
Each of the kicks in the three or four drum racks can then be routed to the Kicks track which is premapped for performance, and each of those drum racks can easily be driven by their own consolidated midi clips.
This is basically how every other part of live works. Audio outputs from every single other thing other than drum racks can be sent pretty much anywhere. That is one of my single most favorite things about Live - its routing flexibility. However, its a real workflow bummer that drum racks don't work this way!!!!
PLEASE HELP ABLETON, YOU'RE MY ONLY HOPE!!!!
If you've read this far, and are thinking "dude, you should just do "X" and you're problem is solved!" then by all means throw out the suggestion, it will be much appreciated.
Drum Racks: please Please PLEASE add the ability to send individual drum rack track audio to other audio tracks (in addition to current ability to send them only to the Drum Rack output and the drum rack sends).
Why? Here's why:
I would like to be able to have a single midi clip with all drum parts playing a single drum rack, with various drum parts in that drum rack going to other audio tracks serving as busses. I do electronic music so I might have four different snare sounds in my track's overall drum sound and six or eight hat sounds, clicks etc. Cool. But for live performance I want to be able to mute and solo drum parts without having to stage or sequence different midi clips where these sounds disappear. In other words, I'd like to just have a single midi loop running while parts are solo'd in and out.
Trust me, I've tried every available configuration in Live to do what I want and they're all various degrees of not functional. I explain further below but first, why is this approach so efficient?
Because: I like to have my creative palette set up so all I do is open my template track and everything is set up and mapped right, ready to go at the start of composition. So my midi controller setup stays mapped for drum part mutes and solos, even though individual drum racks and sounds may want to come and go. As my sound and my projects evolve, I want my template to be able to evolve as well, e.g. add and remove drum racks from my main setup as desired, without having to remap midi controllers, re-setup send mappings (for instance snare into space echo, or hats into eq-cutoff). Everything needs to stay on a single midi track because thats the only way to efficiently program new midi parts because you can see the drum sound name in the midi roll. Plus it greatly speeds up workflow of repurposing drum loops from other projects and sources to the current project.
I go into why the current ways Live gives you of doing it don't work here:
1. Split out the drum parts to individual midi/audio tracks: this becomes a PITA when you want to rework the midi clips or repurpose new midi drum clips to the project. You have to switch between 10 to 20 part lanes and piece and part out the MIDI. No Bueno. Basically this is only a good solution when your composition phase is done. Its a terrible solution to have to rely on at the beginning of composition.
2. Use the Drum Rack sends within the rack: No Bueno here because the they are limited to 6 total and even then, I can't group multiple drum rack sounds to go to a single send. To do that I have to:
3. Use Drum Rack Sends to go to project Aux channels: No bueno here because mute and solo won't work correctly (e.g. soloing the kick aux channel would mute out all the tracks instead of just the drum track). Also, why in gods name would I want to have 8 additional Aux track send knobs for EVERY track when I only need them for a drum track?
4. Use a single a drum rack for everything: too limiting, and now when I want to map my mute solo controller using midi CCs to that drum rack, I have to map a huge number of buttons for each drum sound class because I'm using multiple sounds for each drum type.
5. Heck I've even gone to the trouble of setting it up so that I have a single audio track pulling audio from the individual drum rack sounds and using THAT track as a pass through to go to the grouping tracks. This is a real hassle to set up because instead of mapping one thing (drum rack's kick sound audio out to "Kick" group track) I have to do four things....create a dedicated audio track, specify the input as the drum rack, specify the sub-input as the rack's kick part (choosing from a list thats a hundred things long because of all the pre/post/mix options), THEN finally specify the output as the "Kick" group track. This means if I have 50 drum sounds, I need 50 "pass-through" tracks....bummer but computers are strong these days. So hey, I'd do this......except Solo doesn't work right with this config now, because that intermediary track "breaks" Live's intelligent logic of not muting the source of the tracks input sound when the destination track is solo'd. Bummer.
That is why individual drum rack track outputs to any other audio track in the project is the most elegant solution:
This way I can have 3 or 4 of my favorite drum racks come in and out of my template project and all I need to do is map the individual drum part sound audio outputs to go the audio tracks that are already mapped and setup for my controller and effects like "Kicks" "Snares" and so on.
Each of the kicks in the three or four drum racks can then be routed to the Kicks track which is premapped for performance, and each of those drum racks can easily be driven by their own consolidated midi clips.
This is basically how every other part of live works. Audio outputs from every single other thing other than drum racks can be sent pretty much anywhere. That is one of my single most favorite things about Live - its routing flexibility. However, its a real workflow bummer that drum racks don't work this way!!!!
PLEASE HELP ABLETON, YOU'RE MY ONLY HOPE!!!!
If you've read this far, and are thinking "dude, you should just do "X" and you're problem is solved!" then by all means throw out the suggestion, it will be much appreciated.
