Triggering effects or filters using drums.

Oh dear: I know how to do this very easily in Reason, which may be why I haven't bothered figuring it out in Live.

Question, though: is the kick drum by any chance being triggered by a MIDI signal? (If so, could you maybe just copy/paste a duplicate of the actual MIDI chart, assign it to the filter cutoff you want, and then go through and edit the individual hits to do what they're supposed to?)

(Obviously that's a poor workaround for actually being able to do this, but it might get the job done for now.)

Yeah, it's definitely MIDI for the drum hit.

And I know how to assign MIDI control to the filter cutoff (hell, even automate it by hand if I wanted to)... but I'm not sure how to assign MIDI from Ableton's grid to an effects parameter like cutoff.

Or, right -- I forgot that control parameters like that don't have actual representation on the grid. To clarify something: do you have some kind of envelope already set up for the filter cutoff, and you just want the kick drum to trigger the envelope? Or is this supposed to be something where, like, the amplitude of the kick signal actually controls the cutoff point? I'm a little confused on that. But if it's the former, and you have a MIDI keyboard, then isn't it possible to "train" the parameter to a key, instead of a knob? (The key the drum is on?) I thought they were assignable.

I am mostly talking out of my ass, though -- I'll see if I can play with this when I get home. You might be offended to learn how easy this is in Reason: the drum machine channel each have a gate out, so it's just click-and-drag patching from there to the cutoff input on a synth, the envelope input on a filter, etc. etc. ...

Yeah, Reason definitely has crazy routing flexibility (and ease, apparently), but I am confident that I can find this in Ableton with a little digging.

Having different filter cutoffs isn't important to me. I just want the cutoff to become lower (or whatever, kick into effect) whenever there's a kick drum on the other track.

So some synth pad is playing at a constant until a kick hits at which point the filter clamps down on it, and then releases soon after.

I'm pretty sure you can use the directions for Live near the bottom of this page: http://audiostation.blogspot.com/ and just substitute your filter plug-in for the compressor or something. You should be able to get an idea of the routing at least. What confused me at first was needing a separate audio out for the drums (assuming you want to actually hear the drums and not just trigger with them).

I know basically nothing, so if this isn't at all like what you're asking about I'm sorry.

oh shit and of course I didn't notice until it was too late that the big catch is that your plug-in has to support sidechaining, which I think hardly any of them do (maybe none except for compressors!). oops.

Actually maybe it's not that uncommon for a plug-in to have a midi input that can be used to sidechain. In any case, the instructions for doing it are on pages 166-167 of the Live manual.