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Thread: Musical drumming with MIDI drums and Ableton - How much interest in this?

  1. #1

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    Default Musical drumming with MIDI drums and Ableton - How much interest in this?

    Hi all,
    I'm new to this forum, so greetings! I've been working with MIDI drums and Ableton software for the last few years coming up with ways to use software as a tool to integrate bass playing and melodies into your drum playing. With the capability of Ableton software, you can effectively use the computer as an 'additional band member'. How much interest is there out there in learning this sort of concept? I'm from Melbourne, Australia and i was previously involved in a workshop that focussed on integrating this sort of technology into your playing, but most of the people that turned up were electronic music producers, not many actual instrumental musicians.

    Below is an example of the sort of thing i'm talking about:



    I'm thinking of running a similar workshop in Melbourne and am interested how many drummers are interested in this sort of thing.

    Cheers

    Matty

  2. #2

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    Default Re: Musical drumming with MIDI drums and Ableton - How much interest in this?

    I love it!

    Here's my take... if you break this down in a way that encourages a "newbie" to try it out, who knows how many converts you may get.

    I personally feel this is an untapped niche. I spend a lot of time searching for info on how to best intergrate my drumKat into my acoustic playing. The "help" is sorely lacking IMO.

    P.S. I haven't figured out what Ableton Live would do for me with my current setup, so that alone would be helpful for me. I currently run my drumKat with Battery 3, but I find it too tedious to use on regular bars gigs at the moment. I'm trying it out for an upcoming recording, tho, so I may have to use it live to play the new material if I decide not to use sequencers exclusively.
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  3. #3

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    Default Re: Musical drumming with MIDI drums and Ableton - How much interest in this?

    Thanks for your response Scottie. I started doing this sort of thing using Battery also, and found it equally as tedious. Ableton is a much better platform in my opinion for live triggering and it is a lot more stable, and has better latency than Battery used as a plugin. I would highly recommend giving it a go. It has a plugin called 'drumrack' which is the most useful feature for MIDI drummers. We have managed to setup an entire liveshow using MIDI drums and MIDI bass guitar without any sequencing at all. If you have any questions that would help your set up for live work, i'm happy to help as i've spent quite some years figuring this all out.

    Below is some more stuff i've done with the MIDI drums. The stepping bassline is actually controlled by me via the kick, and the reggae offbeat and organ sounds are also played by me. Using this technology you can start to experiment with triggering synthesizers and other VST instruments. Its a lot of fun!


  4. #4

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    Default Re: Musical drumming with MIDI drums and Ableton - How much interest in this?

    Although I haven't gotten into using MIDI software with my electronic sets as yet, glad to know that I'm not the only one out there sometimes using a Roland Octapad as a 'kit', with a couple of of drum pads and hi-hat, every now and then. Inspiring stuff though.....if I'm ever in Melbourne again and you're doing a workshop, would love to see what you have to say and do, mate. Cheers.
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  5. #5

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    Default Re: Musical drumming with MIDI drums and Ableton - How much interest in this?

    Yeah i like the Octapad kit, its real compact and easy to cart around for shows! I'll make sure i post up workshop details just incase your down in melbs

  6. #6

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    Default Re: Musical drumming with MIDI drums and Ableton - How much interest in this?

    Ratty - w/o getting too detailed... is it a matter of using Ableton to host the Battery kits and then off I go? Or did you ditch the Battery library and go strictly with Ableton's? I'll do some more research on Ableton and likely ask you some questions.

    I love that vid and what you're doing. Great concept and solid execution. Let me know when you're touring the States!
    Scott G
    Follow me on twitter
    My discography sample
    Strange Americans

    Gear:
    Brady
    Gretsch
    Ludwig
    Paiste
    Bosphorus

  7. #7

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    Default Re: Musical drumming with MIDI drums and Ableton - How much interest in this?

    Hey Scottie,
    Ableton has its own Battery style native plugin called 'Drumrack'. It works pretty much the same way, but is better in my opinion. If your battery library is in a supported file format (.aif or .wav, .mp3 etc) you should be able to use the sounds in drumrack, but i doubt you could import custom kit setups. Ableton with drumrack wont offer you much more than Battery if used just as a drum sampler, however what it does offer you is more flexability to be more 'musical'. For example, you can setup step-sequences, where everytime you hit a pad, it changes pitch. You can also setup chords on instruments, and everytime you hit a pad it progresses to the next chord.
    Happy to answer any questions you have.

    We hope to get to the states one day. We actually spent some months trying to setup a tour of the US West Coast earlier this year, but just couldn't firm up enough support to make it happen this year.

    Cheers!

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