Ableton Forum

A definitle "Must have" new feature in 6 should be the ability to have a drum map like impulse has (drum names instead of piano roll editor) with VST instruments like Battery and BFD. Lets face it, editing drums in live with any other plugin other than impulse is a pain and as good as impulse is, simply doesnt cut it for some tasks when realistic drums are needed with a plugin like BFD.

The drum map should also be routable like the cubase one. What do I mean by routable? For example, in Cubase you can route every different drum in the editor to a different midi output or VST, so for example you can have a bangin Realistic sounding kit in BFD, but route the kick drum to Battery 2 for just the kick, great for making hybrid kits from different VSTI! This lacking in Ableton is what makes me have to go back to Cubase often.

I often use similar techniques to get extra expression out midi. The Midi standard already has the solution in the form of 16 midi channels. Every other sequencer allows you to have multi-channel midi clips, giving you the possibility to route a midi-sequence to many instruments. Selecting midi-channel 1 for notes to BFD and midi-channel 2 for note to Battery would be a simple solution to the problem of routing.

I use this technique in many other ways and find it sorely missing. Using multi-channel VSTis is also a pain. If I want to send the three notes of chord to the first three channels of a multi-channel VSTi I would have to create three different midi clips! Worse still is if I want to trigger different channels in a single melody line - let's say using midi-channel 1 for up-pick, 2 for down-pick and 3 for slides - I'd have to write my melody line across three clips again.

Midi was never a rich language, having been born in 1982, but by excluding one of the five pieces of information describing a note, Ableton have impoverished it further.

Having a routeable drum map would be cool too, but isn't as flexible because the destination of the note is connected to the note's pitch. I do hope Ableton could support both. This would make Live a "must have" for me.

I agree with what's been said already in this topic.

I use BFD alot and I'm really having a hard time using it under Live, unfortunately.

Adding that functionality, will surely increase the productivity and usabilty of Live, so my vote is "yes", please add this feature.

Yes!!! I've been calling for user labeled drum editor with different colors of notes for each drum since edition of Live 4... The only thing that I really feel the lack of in Live. Proggraming my own patterns in BFD or DR-008 or whatever is really pain... Even coolest drumeditor Guru as a VST plugin isn't solution because it supports only samples... So Abletons, Drum editor please! I dont want to buy any other software just for making drum patterns.

A kinda ugly yet somewhat effective way I use to write the BFD drum patterns, is put a note on the first box of each note in the piano roll that maps to a drum of BFD, set it to zero volume, and fold it, so I only get to see the notes I actually will be using.

Kinda lame, but it works better for me.

Let's hope we'll have this by 6 so we can get a clean and nice way to do it

I do it in the same way, but if I have more drums its still confusing if I cannot name it or assign different collor of notes for each drum...

yep tankista, you're right. We still need that particular feature

Lets hope we get it.

Yep, to be able to label the piano roll keys would great.

This feature is a MUST, there is no doubt about it.

I use Reaktor as my primary tool for production in and amongst live and programming drum sequences with the standard Piano Roll is an absolute pain.

This is the one feature that has got me looking for altnerative suites to compose in, other than Cubashit...

Pandamonium wrote:A definitle "Must have" new feature in 6 should be the ability to have a drum map like impulse has (drum names instead of piano roll editor) with VST instruments like Battery and BFD. Lets face it, editing drums in live with any other plugin other than impulse is a pain and as good as impulse is, simply doesnt cut it for some tasks when realistic drums are needed with a plugin like BFD.

The drum map should also be routable like the cubase one. What do I mean by routable? For example, in Cubase you can route every different drum in the editor to a different midi output or VST, so for example you can have a bangin Realistic sounding kit in BFD, but route the kick drum to Battery 2 for just the kick, great for making hybrid kits from different VSTI! This lacking in Ableton is what makes me have to go back to Cubase often.

I completely agree! I have just bought Live 5 recently and I would like to use it all the time. But I also find myself often opening Cubase Sx 2 because it's much easier to make some beats with SX's drum map and my soft samplers than in Live. It should be a drum map where you can just put a dot for each drum trigger rather than just a piano roll where you can label the keys.I really hope to see it in Live 6.

Also I think it would be nice if you could open a seperate window (as an option) when editing midi since it is much easier to work with IMO. I can of course just use SX 2 for this but then I'll be missing all the cool features of Live and especially being able to trigger different midi clips for the drums which is a brilliant feature.

PLEASE VOTE YES IN THE TOP OF THIS THREAD!

So, will we see it finaly in Live 7? So many people still use Fruity Loops for programming drum pattern and than export midi track to Live...

onslaught wrote:Yep, to be able to label the piano roll keys would great.

Thats already possible with a rack.

The request is probably about having it automatically.
But you can do it manually.

goto http://www.thecovertoperators.org/archives/43

The rack contains a subrack called "MIDI Note Namer"

Place that in front of your drum synth of choice.

+1

It's often needed to compress separate drums in the kit differently etc. I vote for these additions (the drum map too).

wow 18 people want it and 0 don't... I think everyone has made their point clear

hoffman2k wrote:

onslaught wrote:Yep, to be able to label the piano roll keys would great.

Thats already possible with a rack.

The request is probably about having it automatically.
But you can do it manually.

goto http://www.thecovertoperators.org/archives/43

The rack contains a subrack called "MIDI Note Namer"

Place that in front of your drum synth of choice.

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