Master Class: Rack 'Em Up

May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Len Sasso

CREATIVE USES FOR LIVE'S NEW DRUM RACKS

A STEADY CLIP

Although you can trigger audio clips in Session-view slots directly from a MIDI keyboard, Drum Racks provide an interesting alternative. You can sequence the triggering of Drum Rack pads, whereas you must go through some convoluted MIDI routing to sequence triggering of Session-view slots. You can use Simpler's looping feature instead of warping the clip as you must do to loop its playback in a Session-view slot. On the other hand, you cannot apply real-time quantization to triggering Drum Rack pads as you can when triggering slots. Probably the biggest advantage to using a Drum Rack rather than slots for playing audio clips is that you can control multiple clips with individual effects processing from a single track.

You can drag audio clips directly to Drum Rack pads from the Live browser, Session-view slots, Arrangement-view tracks, or your computer's desktop. If you want the clips to adapt to the song tempo, ensure that warping is set up the way you want it in Live's Record/Warp/Launch preference tab. (If the clips have already been warped and analysis files have been saved, they will retain their warp settings regardless of the preferences.) Because Live sometimes guesses wrong about a clip's length and tempo, it's a good idea to check each clip before inserting it into the Drum Rack. To lock in the tempo in Session view, you need to somehow render the warped clips. You can resample the clips on a different audio track, or freeze them and then either copy the frozen clips to a new audio track or flatten their track (which is destructive).

When dealing with several clips, I prefer to consolidate them on an Arrangement-view track and slice them to a new MIDI track as in the previous example. Although it involves a bit more work, this method lets you use Drum Rack preset templates. Consolidating automatically locks in the song tempo, so you needn't worry about rendering. Before consolidating in Arrangement view, ensure that each clip starts on a bar line, and note which bar lines begin new clips or place a marker at the beginning of each clip for future reference. After consolidation, create a Warp marker at the beginning of each clip (and nowhere else) before slicing to a new MIDI track.

Built-in 0-Vel is a viable preset template, but I prefer a different mapping of the Macro controls. You'll find my template, called “Looper,” in Web Clip 3. I use the top four Macro knobs to control each Simpler's clip-start, clip-length, loop-length, and loop-fade parameters (see Fig. 4). Notice that the Macro 2 and Macro 3 knobs have their range reversed, and that the Macro 3 knob, at its maximum value of 127, also turns looping off.

It helps to keep in mind how a Simpler's Start, Length, and Loop knobs interact. Each is calibrated in percent, but, except for the Start knob, that's a bit deceptive. The Length knob has no effect if its setting is larger than the portion of the clip after the start position. The Loop setting is in proportion to the adjusted length. For instance, if Start is 50 percent, Length is 40 percent, and Loop is 50 percent, then the portion of the clip between 50 and 90 percent plays, and the last half of that portion is the loop.

You can assign MIDI note ranges to control Live's knobs and sliders, and that's very useful here because the settings are equally divided over the note range. If, for example, you assign a range of five notes, they will set the knob to 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100 percent of its value range, respectively. For Start, Length, and Loop, a 5-note range divides the clip into quarters; a 10-note range, into eighths. On a 3-octave keyboard, I use C1 through F#2 to gate Drum Rack pads, and I use G2 through B2, C3 through E3, and F3 through A3 to control the Start, Length, and Loop Macro knobs. Reversing the range of the Length and Loop knobs makes the use of the keys more natural — higher notes always shorten.

Once you've embedded your clips in a Drum Rack, keep in mind the trick from the “Scrambled Beats” section of dragging some Drum Rack pads to new tracks to create separate racks for different kinds of material. For instance, you might want different racks for percussion (usually looping), chord instruments (looping but probably not transposable), and solo instruments (usually not looping but transposable).

SCENIC TOUR

Drum Racks provide a great way to turn a collection of Session-view Scenes into a real-time instrument. Each chain in the resulting Drum Rack holds another Drum Rack whose chains, in turn, hold audio clips rendered from the tracks in one Scene. Triggering a main Drum Rack's chain triggers a rendered Scene. You retain control of each Scene's mix, but as with the loops in the previous example, the tempo is locked in. You can even nest playable instruments in the main Drum Rack to create a band in a box.

First, create some Scenes that work well together — alternative bass, drum, and rhythm-guitar Scenes of the same length that follow the same chord changes, for instance (see Fig. 5). I often use this technique with Follow Actions on several Scene tracks to capture the Follow Actions in a new Scene. Don't overlook Live's new External Instrument, which lets you use standalone virtual instruments (if your system is set up for that) and ReWire devices such as Propellerhead Reason in your Scenes.

For each Scene track, create a new audio track and route the original track's output to it. Record-enable all the new audio tracks and ensure that their clip Slots have Clip Record buttons. Trigger each Scene and dub one pass (including any Follow Actions) to new audio clips.

Once you've recorded the dubs and saved them in the project's Samples folder, create a new MIDI track with an empty Drum Rack. Hold the Command key (Ctrl in Windows), select the clips that belong to the first Scene, and drag them to a Drum Rack's C1 pad (see Fig. 6). That pad will be relabeled Multi, its chain will contain a nested Drum Rack with a separate chain for each clip, and each of those chains will be assigned to note C1. Repeat that process, dragging the clips from the other Scenes to different pads, and you'll have each of the original Scenes triggered by a Drum Rack pad.

You can do a number of things with the main Drum Rack to make it more playable. As mentioned earlier, you can add a Note Length MIDI plug-in before each of the nested racks and set its Length knob (in Time mode) to the length of the Scene to convert triggers to gates. In order to switch between trigger and gate mode for all Scenes, map each Note Length plug-in's Device On button to a Macro knob of the main rack.

I like to map each of the nested Scene's chain-volume controls to Macro knobs of the main rack. To do that, you first need to map them to the Macro knobs of the nested racks, then map those Macro knobs to Macro knobs of the main rack. At the same time, you can create an overall volume knob by mapping each of the main rack's chain-volume controls to the same Macro knob. If you insert send effects (reverb, for instance) in the main rack, you might want to map all the send-level controls to a Macro knob as well.

AFTER HOURS

You can make your Scene-playing Drum Racks self-contained instruments by adding one or more chains of virtual instruments — for example, a lead sound to play along with rhythm-section Scenes. To keep Scene triggering and playing out of each other's way, use an Instrument Rack for the virtual instrument, and use the instrument chain's key zone to avoid overlaps. If you install more than one virtual instrument chain, use the Instrument Rack's chain selector to switch instruments. To cover different instrument ranges with a small keyboard, insert a Pitch MIDI effect before the Instrument Rack.

Of course, you're not limited to triggering the dubbed Scenes manually. You can use MIDI clips to trigger them, and if you use a separate clip to trigger each Scene, you can use Follow Actions to sequence them — something you cannot do with Scenes directly in Live. Furthermore, you can use clip automation to control mixing and other parameters in the Drum and Instrument Racks.

Only clips on the Drum Rack track have envelopes for Drum Rack parameters. If you want to separate clip automation from Scene triggering, put the clips with the automation on the Drum Rack track and put the clips with the triggering notes on another MIDI track whose output is routed to the Drum Rack. Clip automation is especially effective for soloing Scene tracks and controlling the sends to dense effects such as Grain Delay and Beat Repeat that are best when used sparingly (see Web Clip 4).

Drum Racks open up a whole range of new sequencing and live-performance possibilities. Getting a Drum Rack to do what you want, especially when you're nesting Instrument and Drum Racks inside each other and using their Macro controls, can take some planning. But it's well worth the time invested, and the process gets faster as you become more familiar with Drum Racks.

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Len Sasso is an associate editor of EM. For an earful, visit his Web site at swiftkick.com.

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