How to apply effects to drum groups

Drum Group Effects Application

So that's great! We've got a really nice visual representation of what's going on now. When we're working with drum groups, the way we apply effects is slightly different compared to how we would with an individual track. However, the principles remain the same.

Individual Tracks

On these individual tracks, or sub-tracks, if you like, these represent the various cells within the drum rack. If we want to apply a specific effect to a specific sound, we can do one of two things:

• Option 1: Go into our effects library, choose the effect.

  • For example, if we want to add a little bit of extra compression to our kick drum, I can go down to our glue compressor.
  • Let's say we have a nice preset here, perhaps not, but let's add a little bit of full parallel compression to our kick drum.
  • I can drag that either straight onto the sub track here or the cell, and you'll see it appear at the bottom of the screen.

• Option 2: Open up the global drum rack track.

  • Here, you can select from the various cells either in the expanded view or directly from the drum rack view.
  • As I select each of these, it shows me the devices contained within that particular cell.
  • I could just add the device by dragging it and placing it down here.

Cell Devices

Let me just delete one of those instances. You can see that "Drummers On" exists as a VST within this first cell, while all of the other cells contain this external instrument device.

Using Sends and Returns

In the same way that we can use sends and returns with our main audio and MIDI tracks, we can also do that within a drum rack.

Setting Up Sends and Returns

To set that up, we use the extra little buttons that appear here in the bottom left of the drum rack. So here we have send and return:

• Notice that as I click the return tab, the bottom half of this viewing panel becomes empty and says "drop audio effects here."
• For this simple example, I'll take a reverb and delay, very much like we have in the entire session.

Let's go for something fairly standard:

• Reverb: Off the peg Ableton Reverb
• Delay: Off the peg Ableton Live Ping Pong Delay

As I drag those down here, you'll notice they've appeared alongside our instrument sounds as sub return tracks or sub send tracks.

Applying Effects

Now, it's nice and easy to see what's going on and what's coming through there. As I add them, send effects have appeared within these separate cells, allowing us to send individual sounds to that particular reverb and delay.

Let me give you a quick example. I'll play it and add some reverb and delay to various sounds:

• Added reverb and delay to the snare.
• The same for the closed hi-hat.
• And the same for the ride.

This demonstrates that it's now possible to apply those send effects or return effects to just individual sounds.

Hands-On Control with MIDI

To manipulate these effects, we'll need to get inside Live again. We have to open dialogues and start manipulating parameters.

If we have the "Drummers On" track expanded like this, we maintain the ability to view those individual tracks and control the volume levels.

Introducing a MIDI Controller

We want to perform this a little more freely and hands-on. To do that, we're going to introduce another MIDI controller.

The one I'm going to use is the same that I used in the first set of videos:

Novation Control XL

Let's get that plugged in and start mapping it to some of these effects!