I spent a lot of time tonight figuring out how to get the QFG layout working with Ableton. Thought I’d post the details here to help anyone else dealing with this and to help my future self when I inevitably forget all of this. Hope it helps!
Big thanks to Ras for the original 2020 Ableton preset. This is entirely based on that work. I just updated it for my setup. I had no knowledge of MIDI effect rack chains before this so I never would have thought to use them without that original post!
Summary
I’m going to go into a lot of detail because these are the things I wished I had known as both a finger drumming beginner and an Ableton beginner when I started looking into this. If you don’t want those details and are using Ableton Live 12 and a Maschine Mikro Mk3 with the default MIDI note config, here’s a tl;dr:
- Download the QFG Layout MIDI Effects Rack that I’ve created (link at the bottom)
- Drag it into your project
- Tweak the Pitch effect on each chain as needed to re-map the drums to whatever drum rack you are using (optional: save as a new preset for future projects)
- Enjoy!
If you’re using the Session Drums Studio pack or Session Drums Club pack (or if you just get lucky), you may not have to tweak anything at all, so try it out!
This will work fine with any other MIDI controller too, just tweak the key zones and Pitch effects as needed. More details below.
Addictive Drums 2
If you’re fine with just using the Addictive Drums 2 plugin, you don’t need to do any of this. Just map everything using the AD2 Map Window as shown in the QFG lessons, load the plugin into Ableton and everything should work totally fine. This only applies if you want to use built-in drum racks, drum racks from packs, or if you want to apply MIDI effects per pad in Ableton instead of configuring them in AD2 directly.
Ableton Drum Racks
In Ableton, a drum rack is a collection of MIDI notes mapped to drum sounds. The main issue that we need to deal with is that there is no standard layout for drum racks in Ableton. That means that when you play your drum controller, you end up playing whatever drum sound is mapped to the note that your controller is producing, not a particular type of drum like you would want or like you’re used to from AD2.
Some packs use the same layout for all included drum racks, but in general you should expect to re-map the pad layout for every drum rack that you use. This sucks and it should be better, but if you only use a few drum racks or a few packs that have a standard layout, you can do the setup work once (like I just did) and then go happily make some music.
If you’re building your own drum racks in Ableton using samples or whatever, you may not need to use any of this. Just make sure you setup your drum rack with the right drums on each note produced by your controller. The only downside to this is that you’ll need to duplicate your kicks, snares, and side sticks since those all show up multiple times in the QFG layout. That might be enough reason to use the MIDI Effects Rack described below anyway, but I thought I’d mention this in case anyone reading is totally fine with duplicating things.
Notes & Caveats
The setup described here is way simpler and less sophisticated than the original Ableton Drum Effects Rack from Ras. I was having a lot of issues with that rack in my setup because it had a lot of customization that I didn’t want like limiting velocity zones, tweaking velocity curves, etc. Rather than try and change that rack, I decided to just quickly make a much smaller one from scratch and post it here. My effects rack just does the very simple job of mapping one note to another. You can add whatever other effects or tweak other things as you see fit.
I made this in Ableton Live 12 and so unfortunately it won’t work in older versions. Hopefully there are enough details below that you can just recreate it yourself without much issue on older versions.
This is customized to the default MIDI notes that were configured on my Maschine Mikro Mk3. I didn’t want to change those because I already have everything setup in AD2 and I still use that for QFG lessons. You can either re-map your MIDI controller to use this same layout, or you can tweak the key zones and Pitch effects in the MIDI Effects Rack to match your controller (more details below).
Here’s my note layout in Native Instruments Controller Editor:
MIDI Effects Racks
Normally, to re-map MIDI notes to different notes, you would use a MIDI Pitch effect. This allows you to add some number of semitones (half steps) to every MIDI note entering the effect. The problem is that the MIDI Pitch effect applies globally to all incoming notes and we want to be able to customize the mapping/offset for every pad individually.
This is where Ras brilliantly applied the concept of a “MIDI Effect Rack” in Ableton. A MIDI Effect Rack is a collection of MIDI effects wrapped together into a single unit. Each rack has a set of customizable “chains” that all have separate MIDI effects from one another. Each chain has a “key zone” and a “velocity zone” to filter which incoming notes and velocities should be sent to it. Usually, these are used to apply multiple groups of effects to each incoming MIDI note in parallel. We can use them to customize the mapping/offset for every pad individually.
All we have to do is create a separate chain for each pad in the QFG layout. Then, we can use key zones to only activate each chain for a single note based on the notes configured on our MIDI controller. Once we add a separate Pitch effect to each chain, we can now re-map every pad individually!
Optional: you can also add any other MIDI effects (e.g. Velocity, etc.) to each chain to customize each individual pad further. The original effect rack from Ras had all kinds of customizations including custom velocity zones that made it so that certain pads wouldn’t activate if you hit them too hard. That rack also had custom Velocity effects on each pad to change how they reacted to your hits. Feel free to add that back or use Ras’ rack if you prefer that. I wanted a cleaner starting point that is just a simple rack with only Pitch effects for re-mapping each key, so that’s what I’ve produced here.
Tips & Tricks
This section is a bunch of tips & tricks for using Ableton. If you already know all of this, feel free to skip or skim this section.
MIDI Effect Rack UI: There are a bunch of tiny show/hide buttons on the left side of the MIDI Effect Rack. Make sure you toggle them if you’re not seeing the chains or the Pitch effects. The chain list contains a list of rows, each named after a pad in the QFG layout. It is only visible if the “Show/Hide Chain List” button on the left side of the MIDI Effect Rack is active. The icon looks like a bullet list. The Pitch effects are only visible if the “Show/Hide Devices” button just above the chain list button is active. Only the Pitch effect for the active chain is shown. Click through each chain to see all the different Pitch effects. Once you’ve mapped everything once, I recommend hiding the Devices so you don’t accidentally change the Pitch of a pad (also avoids cluttering the UI).
Custom Key Zones: If you are using a different MIDI controller or have a different note layout on your Mikro Mk3, you’ll want to click the Key button above the chain list to customize which keys apply to each drum chain. Note that any changes to the incoming key will effect the Pitch effect so you’ll have to update all of the effect values as well.
Pitch Effect: If you end up creating this from scratch or if you need to re-map everything anyway because of the controller you’re using, I’ve found that it is way easier to set the Pitch effect semitones value approximately, than try to calculate the exact offset. For example, if your controller is producing C#-1, you should add a few octaves (12 st per octave) and then tap the pad on your controller to see which drum sound is being produced. Ableton should highlight the note being played in the drum rack UI. You can then do a more fine adjustment on the Pitch effect to get to the correct drum. This was way faster for me than trying to accurately calculate the exact interval between things like C#-1 and G1.
Auto Select: To make this process faster, the chain list also has an “Auto Select” button (arrow button above the chain list) that automatically selects the chain for whatever pad you’re hitting. You can use this to test the key zones and also to quickly set the Pitch effect for each of your pads.
Save Icon: The MIDI Effects Rack has a Save icon (floppy disk) at the top right corner. Use that to save the MIDI Effects Rack as a .adg file that you can reuse in other projects. I highly recommend backing up this file using some cloud service so if your computer dies you won’t have to go through this setup again.
Conclusion
And that’s it! You should have a relatively simple and straightforward MIDI Effect Rack that you can tweak to whatever drum rack or controller you’re using.
I’m definitely not active enough in this forum to provide Ableton support for anyone running into issues with this, but hopefully others here can help out as well! 
Happy music making!
QFG Layout MIDI Effects Rack
Download: https://questforgroove.com/wp-content/uploads/drumpresets/QFG-Layout-Mapper-Session-Drums.zip
Original Ableton setup post with more details:
