Ableton Forum

I moved to Ableton from FL-Studio over a month ago, I've used FL-Studio for wekk over 5 years but felt it time for a change - Live is amazing in many ways EXCEPT!!! --->

Say for example i make a drum loop in Guru (or Impulse - Any drum machine really)...The midi pattern comes out on the track i select which is all well and good. But say then i want my Kik, Clap and Hat etc all on seperate tracks so i can slowly build up the elements (or break them down) - How can i do this easily?? Its easy in Logic and FL-Studio - you just have seperate patterns, i cannot work out how to do it in Ableton without getting VERY messy? - I hope i have explained this well...

Please help as its turning me off this great program!

I was wondering the exact same thing a few days ago.

I just copy paste the midi notes into a new midi clip then move them around

A little messy... buy hey... who doesn't like a mess.

1. Create a midi track with your instrument. Set the monitor to on and set midi from to "no input".

2. Create a midi track for each part (say: kick, clap, hihat). For each of those tracks set "midi to" to the track with your instrument.

/T

that's horrible!

won't that record all the midi notes?

when you're only trying to get the hihats?

any other methods

Thats the method i was using but its a real messy pain in the ass - seems this is a major drawback of Live! anyone got the remedy?? - i have the poison!

Jaan wrote:that's horrible!

won't that record all the midi notes?

when you're only trying to get the hihats?

any other methods

Errr no. This will enable you to have three different tracks where you can record your different parts into. The track holding the instrument won't be holding any clips at all...

I guess it can be confusing if you think Live is your dishwashing machine and not a DAW. Hehe...

I see what your getting out - and cheers for gettin involved but if you expand on that further - and route the Kick drum (for example) to its own out put (so u can adjust volumes etc) you end up with...1 channel for the drum machine, 1 for the midi of the kik pattern and ANOTHER for the kick volume etc... Just seems a very convoluted method. But if thats the only methid available i suppose it will have to do - I think Ableton should look into this as i find it a serious workflow draw back!

djritchie wrote:Thats the method i was using but its a real messy pain in the ass - seems this is a major drawback of Live! anyone got the remedy?? - i have the poison!

I can't think of a method which is smoother.

And yes, it is a bit annoying. The way I do it is just to have two different tracks of midi going into the instrument. And I just place whatever I like allover the place. It's hell when I return to a track, but in the creative process it's alot of fun. I do add some structure by keeping the kicks and subs in one midi channel and the "rest" in another. Sometimes I add a third with "random noise".

Usually what I do is I mix up a signal coming from an impulse and two channels coming from normal audio tracks. Or else I often forget to use the freedom of both.

What would be awesome is if any of you know photoshop would be

Select Midi Notes, then New Track via Cut or new Clip via copy or something of that sorts.

BLARGH!

I tend to build my patterns on one track to start, then when I have the basic pattern I duplicate that track as many times as needed and then just remove the midi notes from the clips.

So if I make a beat with a kick, snare and hat I would duplicate this track twice so I have 3 tracks. Then on the first one delete all the midi notes for the snare and hat, on the second delete the notes for the kick and hat and the third delete the notes for kick and snare. I then have each thing on its own track.

You don't want to use this method though if you are long way into a track cause you might have shed loads of small clips that you will need to remove notes from. Its fine for when you are starting from scratch and doesn't take as long as my description might suggest.

Check out Chapter 12 of your manual, the section "Tapping Individual Outs From an Instrument" beginning on p. 162

I am confused. Do you have your midi patterns already 'recorded' or you want to do live build ups? I know FL pretty well so I may be able to help but I don't understand what exactly you are trying to accomplish.

That still doesn't answer the question.


You're still getting ALL the notes, not just the hihats.

What I have done so far is just having an instance of drumatic per track, then just clicking in the midi for the hihats, then effects/eq. That way I end up with 5-8 instances of Drumatic. A bit hard on the CPU


Does anyone else have a solution to this?

in fl you can have all kicks, hats, claps etc on seperate patterns so u can for instance, have the drums n claps goin but then add that hats after a bar, or drop out the kiks for 1 bar etc... this doesnt seem to be easily possible in live, i use guru to make my patterns then drag that pattern onto the approprrate track, if i then want to seperate my kick, clap and hat onto seperate tracks it doesnt seem to be easily possible - there is no way i want an instance of guru for each seperate part! just wondered if there was a way of doing this in live - sorry if im not explaining well but it is difficult!

djritchie wrote:in fl you can have all kicks, hats, claps etc on seperate patterns so u can for instance, have the drums n claps goin but then add that hats after a bar, or drop out the kiks for 1 bar etc... this doesnt seem to be easily possible in live, i use guru to make my patterns then drag that pattern onto the approprrate track, if i then want to seperate my kick, clap and hat onto seperate tracks it doesnt seem to be easily possible - there is no way i want an instance of guru for each seperate part! just wondered if there was a way of doing this in live - sorry if im not explaining well but it is difficult!

I have never used Guru so I don't know how that impacts workflow. Now, if you are talking about muting and soloing individual drum sounds Impulse has a mute and solo button for each instrument right on the Impulse panel. You can also route the audio from each instrument on an Impulse channel to separate tracks. So add an audio track, go to Input, select Impulse, then the individual drum you want to route.