new to ableton and I’ve figured out how to use drum racks and last night discovered the impulse drum machine. i go to “Library”-samples-waveforms and then it has several drum .aif files that i can load onto the 8 drum machine pads. the tutorial i watched on setting up impulse and the drum machine the guy had tons and tons of drums and reccomened not using the ones that come in the ableton library unless just starting off.
my question is how can I expand the files i can load into impulse and where do you guys get them from? Do you make them from other samples? Like taking a one bar drum loop and setting the loop to just the kick then cropping and saving? is this an easy way of doing it or is there something simpler.
i wouldnt have a problem paying 20 or 30 bucks to download a decent drum sample pack but i dont know where to look, theres so many sample pack websites out there loopmasters, looperman, etc.. but i want to make sure im getting the right file and with good quality.
I also have maschine and was wondering if its possible to import my 6gb machine library into ableton to use for impulse as well as drum racks , which im sure is possible but i havent tried yet, might just stick with machine for drums since i know the workflow and its simple then import to ableton and manipulate from there. Any suggestions?
Also whats the benefit of using Impulse as opposed to a Drum rack?
In that situation, I’d just use Maschine. You can send 16 stereo audio streams out of Maschine to Live…it’s extremely straightforward. Plus, then you can record the audio once you’re happy with it and disable Maschine, freeing up some resources.
If you like the Maschine workflow, as long as you’re using the VST plugin (as opposed to the AU) you can get it to output MIDI and use it to drive instruments hosted in Live, meaning you could use its sequencer instead of a piano roll if you like it better.
That’s what I’d do.
And, Drum Racks are probably a better choice than Impulse if you’re into manipulating your samples. You get a separate signal path for each slot and play them with Simpler instances…and Simpler has more controls than the cells in Impulse. Just depends on how much control you want vs. resources/simplicity.
I guess this proves that 2+ year old threads can be useful! Presume the Impulse v Drum Rack answers from above still apply in Live 9?
EDIT: Another question actually… is there an easy way of copying something you’ve put together into Impulse or is it a question of manually recreating it?
Take your impulse track and send the audio to another audio track, arm the new audio track and record what you have in Impulse. Once recorded, turn off impulse, open the recorded audio and you can then do one of the options (the exact name escapes me) to export the drums to MIDI or just convert to MIDI on the transients. (or set warp markers for each pad and use the warp marker method)
you can literally grab a section of an audio clip and drag the clip into impulse and whatever is in the loop brackets will play as a drum hit for that pad.
works well to chop up and sample other music, try it with vocals for extra fun with the stretch control.
for other samples there’s a ton for sale out there, it’s a matter of getting the sounds you like.
if you have the suite there’s a ton of good drum hits included, tweak them yourself if you want it to be “different”.