Abelton - Using Drum Racks for Instruments, samples and effects

 In Abelton, Drum Racks are very flexible & super useful.

 

 

When I first started using them I just loaded one shot samples.

 

Then I realised they can hold longer loops as well as containing instruments, MIDI and audio effects.

Above, is a drum rack made up of Abeltons Operator & Analog synths.

It's important to remember, that Drum racks by themselves are not instruments. 

They host other instruments.

When you drop a sample onto a pad, an instance of Simpler (Live's basic sampler) is created.

 

Any instrument plug-in can be used to generate sounds in a Drum Rack. 

It can be a instrument which is native to Abelton like Operator, collision, Electric or Analog, or a third party plug-in.

 

 

 

Abelton even has a built instrument rack made up of various  

instruments which is well worth exploring..

Each rack has macro controls.

You can hide and view this with this button (circled in red)

Macro controls allow you to adjust key parameters within your new drum machine 

To change the range of the control, enter Map mode, and set the min and max values in the Browser area.

 

 The collumn on the left is called the "view collumn".

It holds the corresponding view selectors. 

The actual view selectors available differ depending on whether an Instrument,

Drum or Effect Rack is being used. 

This  button (in yellow) on the left opens/closes the chain list

From here you can set relative levels and pans for individual drum sounds. Selecting any of the channels in the mixer immediately displays the devices in that chain at the bottom of the screen.

 

Press the I:0 button.

This will open another box

Shows the receive & play channels, choke, etc. 

 

Receive is the MIDI note that plays the pad for that chain. 

Play is the note that gets sent to the instrument on the Chain.

C3 is the default setting. This will play back samples at their original pitch. 

If you are using a Synth, you may need to change this.

 

Choke groups allow you to emulate a feature of the old MPC drum machines. 

Choking is when one sample is triggered to cut off another.

This helps to reduce overlapping of sounds and keeps your drums tight.

 

 

Chain Selector.

This is a great feature.

It allows you to automate the pad tirggering.

Here we have several samples dropped into individual chains.

 

Open the chain select editor, then separate the chains into different zones, so that each chain has its own zone.

You can map this to a macro

 

The zones can be quite large, and individual sounds can have overlapping triggers.

 

 

 At the top of each zone/bar there is a small black line which lets you control fades between each zone. Remember, you can record the macro movements. This can be added to a live performance.

 

 click the Show/Hide Chain List button.

This will display the Chain List editing panel.

 

I've set the midi range for each instrument.

Notice the overlaping between each instrument and how you can fade between each one -- the small balck bar above each of the "blue range bars"

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This automation of Abelton Chains can also be activated with MIDI.

You could map them to a MIDI controller or a MIDI clip.

 

To do that, create a MIDI clip, open the clip envelope box then select Device Selector and add breakpoints.

I'll do this in another blog post.

+ Abelton - Instrument chains

 

It's good to keep in mind that drum Racks can also contain up to six return chains of audio effects, with independent send levels for each chain in the main Rack.