Sequencing with Ableton’s Drum Rack
The Essential Components
A dance beat is led by a kick drum on every beat. It opens with a “smack”, followed by a deep bass tail. It keeps time, but needs the support of other percussive elements to add a sense of character and energy. These key elements include a snare, clap, tom, hi-hat, ride and crash cymbal. You can explore these elements with the adjacent buttons.
Setting up
1. Loading a Drum Rack
- In Ableton’s left hand column, select “Instruments” to reveal a list of options in the panel to the right.
- Press the arrow immediately to the left of “Drum Rack” to reveal a list of drum kits.
- A classic dance music kit is the 808 or 909 Core Kit. Drag one into a MIDI layer in the main project panel to reveal the Drum Rack at the bottom of the screen.
2. Creating a Clip
- Now your kit is set up, it’s time to tell it what to do by creating a clip.
- Double click an empty slot in the sequence area of your Drum Rack layer to create an empty clip.
- A clip editor should appear at the bottom of the screen.
Sequence Writing
3. The Fundamental Dance Pattern
- Now we’re going to use the clip editor to define when each drum sound is triggered, starting with the kick drum.
- In the clip editor at the bottom of the screen, find a row labelled “Bass drum” (the kick) and double click at column positions 1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 to create the typical 4/4 dance music kick pattern.
- Your pattern should look and sound like this:
- Next, find a HiHat row (you can use an open or closed HiHat) and double click at column positions 1.1.3, 1.2.3, 1.3.3 and 1.4.3 to create the famous “off-beat hats” dance pattern. Your pattern should look something like this:
- Your pattern should look and sound like this:
- Now it’s time to create a sense of rhythm by adding a snares and/or clap on the second and fourth beat.
- Find a row labelled “Snare Drum” or “Hand Clap” and double click at column positions 1.2 and 1.4.
- Your pattern should look and sound something like this:
4. Groove: The Human Element
- Now that you have the foundations of a drum loop, it’s time to add your own personal touch. Rigid drum patterns with precise timings and unchanging levels tend to sound distastefully unnatural. By subtly adjusting the timing and intensity of each drum hit, your beat starts to take on a natural sound. In Ableton, this is known as “Groove”.
- To create your own groove, add some new percussive elements, deliberately placing them off the standard grid lines. At the standard zoom level, you should see 16 columns separated by thin lines, which represent the precise timing that we want to avoid, so zoom in for more granular control.
- Try adding some Toms and extra HiHats slightly late (i.e. to the right of a thin line). This adds a sense of shuffle to your groove.
- To add even more of a human touch, try adjusting the intensity of some of the new elements. In Ableton, this is known as “Velocity”.
- To adjust velocity, click on an instance of a drum hit. Below your sequence, you should see a row of horizontal lines that align with the position of your drums. These lines represent velocity. You can click and drag these up and down to adjust the intensity of each drum hit.
We Hope This Helped
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