Abe Laboriel Jr Drums – Loops

TomasGF

I started using the Abe Laboriel Jr Drums library, and I love it. But I have a question about using the loops: what is the best way of programming them?

I noticed that if I go precisely to the end of a bar and start precisely at the beginning of the next with the same or another loop, there is a peak in volume (it sounds like two samples are playing simultaneously). I experienced it both in Ableton Live and in UAudio Luna.

What would be the best way of doing it?

And what if I want to slice the loop and use only the first two beats? (I could resample it, but I imagine there are better ways?)

Jack

Hi Tomas,

When it comes to loop points, and splicing things to manipulate what is in the sample, I would always commit to audio in the DAW. This will give you access to each point of the beat to splice, whereas the MIDI note duration wouldn't efficiently do that. This goes for the end, and also the edits mid loop.

When then transitioning, you can use different audio tracks and use room verbs as sends to blend these as one harmonious space with natural feeling decays.

Cheers

J

TomasGF

Thank you, Jack. I thought about it, but as I am a newbie using the loops in a Spitfire product, I thought maybe I was not knowing something or doing it wrong.

I’ll try this approach now.

Cheers,

Tomás

KEYMAN

https://community.spitfireaudio.com/discussion/1609/abe-laboriel-jr-drums-loops

This is not so great. I noticed this also. Committing to audio just to test out varying the loops in time seems like an odd way for a what otherwise is a cool plugin to behave.

TomasGF

I agree. But so far, it's the approach I found.

B_Minor7

Hi there,

the "Abe Laboriel Drums" are my first product which I have purchased here at Spitfire Audio. There is a very good overall presentation available, performed by a gifted MIDI drummer who convinced me that this product might be the right one for me. However, the fact that the included drum loops finally turned out not to be made for any instrument-based MIDI editing, changed my mind completely. To be honest, I'm very disappointed now. But maybe I'm totally wrong and someone may enlighten me a little bit. I'd like to raise two major questions to this product:

DRUM KIT:

There is just one single drum kit available, but this seems to be fair enough from a price perspective. I must really admit that the kit is sounding very neat; after all that was the main trigger for my purchase after also having listened to related sound excerpts presented on Spitfire's homepage. So far so good, but after playing around a little bit with the kit, I started asking myself why there are no options available for tweaking the toms or ride/crash sounds for which the same adjustments should have been provided as for kick, snare or hi-hat. Is there any specific reason why any of these instruments have been excluded from being processed/mixed separately?

DRUM LOOPS:

Aside from the mentioned drum kit instruments, the major part of the provided sound content seems to be focussing on so-called drum loops. While the drum kit is perfectly prepared to be played via MIDI keyboard (or to be controlled via MIDI sequencer), the purpose of the included drum loops is still a mystery to me. Yes, of course I agree that it's nice to have particular keys mapped across the keyboard which you can use to trigger different variations of rhythmic loops, but I was very surpised that the loop content - to be precise, the drum instruments which are played back - turned out not to be MIDI-based at all so that they can't be dragged/dropped directly to the DAW for further modification. Any editing and changing of such loop's MIDI events, e.g. being able to tweak the groove to one's own likings etc., is what would have been expected. These loops (and all their available variants) are actually not even triggering the related multi-sampled drum kit sounds inside the application; instead, these loops are simple stereo audio recordings, independent from the actual drum kit samples; the instruments in the loops even sound different from the actual drum kit samples and provide their own characteristics. Each loop recording covers up to two bars and refers to a very specific tempo; the playback is not velocity-sensitive. Therefore, aside from being unable to change the rhythm of such a loop itself, it's also impossible to change any dynamics for each individual drum instrument inside such a loop. Subsequently, following the nature of audio recordings, the pitch of the loop playback (and all of its audible drum instruments in it) will always sound different, depending on the current tempo which is currently set up in your DAW. To recap, you cannot customize any provided loop to a different tempo without altering the pitch and sound experience of all played-out samples, you cannot edit/change the dynamics of each individual drum instrument within such a loop, and most of all, you cannot change the groove/rhythm itself for each loop. What kind of "inspiration" are you finally talking about, when there is nothing left that could be actually customized, especially from a MIDI drummer's perspective?

Maybe I'm wrong and there are workarounds available, but also the manual doesn't provide any hints. Thanks in advance for your feedback.