How Sainte Vie uses Battery to shape rhythm across cultural sounds

Sainte Vie’s latest single, Unconditional, lands ahead of his upcoming album Pablo, a project dedicated to his late father and built around themes of memory, loss, and persistence. The track moves with control – layers of synth and percussion that shift gradually, creating tension without forcing it. It’s emotional without leaning on sentiment, and clear in its intention.

Under the hood, the workflow stays lean.

Battery 4 plays a key role, not just in building rhythm, but in shaping how individual samples sit together across cultural and tonal boundaries. Sainte Vie’s process is less about stacking layers and more about getting granular – trimming hits, pitching percussion, dialing in transients.

Rhythm appears early, but it’s refined through iteration. He starts at the keyboard, moves into kick and bass, then lets the groove develop from there.

In this interview, Sainte Vie breaks down his Battery workflow, how he blends percussive ideas from different musical traditions, and what keeps him moving fast without getting stuck in the process.

Jump to these sections:

• How reverb contributes to the atmosphere
• The role of reverb on pads and textures
• Reverb on lead elements vs percussion
• Using reverb for movement in a track
• Preventing reverb from dominating the mix
• Reverb as a compliment, not a competitor

If you’ve been trying to clean up your drum workflow or blend more diverse percussion sources without making it complicated, this one’s worth a read.

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When you’re starting a track like Unconditional, where does rhythm show up in the creative process – first layer, or something you build around later?

Every element inside a track has rhythm, including the non-percussive elements. Consequently, rhythm is involved in every step of the composition process.

Now, I usually always start a track by composing the melody on a keyboard. Once I have a melody I genuinely like, I add a kick to it and write the bass line as I feel like the bass can really amplify the feeling of the lead melody.

Once I have those two elements ready, I start writing the drums, developing the arrangement of the track and adding some support melodies.

Pro tip from Sainte Vie: Take short breaks during long studio sessions.

You’ve lived in Mexico, France, New York, and now Miami – how do you think those environments have shaped your sense of groove?

I’m grateful to have been exposed to a wide range of music genres throughout my life. Those places have naturally had a huge impact in the way I compose, feel, perceive, discover and connect with music.

Those places have deeply inspired me.

I’ve always liked to mix grooves from different musical genres when I’m composing music (for example: blending a salsa groove with a techno groove, or maybe just using a salsa shaker on top of a hard techno kick).

I’m also super inspired by artists that blend a lot of musical genres in their music (for example: Nicolas Jaar, Ricardo Villalobos).

Living in different countries throughout your life definitely widens your sense of groove.

That said, the magic about our current world is you don’t have to actually live in all those different countries to learn about different music genres, you just gotta be curious enough to do your research (for example: using the internet, music books, record stores, etc…)

Pro tip from Sainte Vie: Try blending samples from multiple music genres.

What makes Battery feel like the right tool when you’re dealing with percussion from different cultural sources?

What I love about Battery is how accurately and extensively you can edit the percussive samples. This accuracy is particularly helpful when blending percussive samples from different music genres.

You can really fine-tune every sample to your needs without having to leave Battery and use any external tools. You can edit the samples in a way that they work perfectly together, even if they’re from entirely different musical genres.

As I said, all without having to leave Battery.

Pro tip from Sainte Vie: Use the sample trim tool with the volume envelope inside Battery to use different parts of a sample.

How are you organizing your hits inside Battery – are you grouping by tone, region, or just what plays well together?

I actually only use Battery in the studio, I don’t play live with it.

The way I organize it in the studio is that I have a Battery kit saved with my favorite snares, a separate kit saved with my favorite kicks, a separate kit saved with my favorite high hats, and a separate kit saved with my favorite claps, etc.

If you look at my Ableton sessions, you will find the drum group has multiple channels, each channel using its Battery plug-in playing only one specific element (snare, kick, high hat, etc)

Pro tip from Sainte Vie: Many percussive elements are tonal and getting the pitches right can create ‘alignment’ in a mix.

When a groove feels too tight or too clean, how do you use Battery to rough it up again?

There’s a bunch of tools I love to use, some of my favorite ones are:

• The engine stretch tool
• The sample length tool
• The tune tool
• The humanize tool

Pro tip from Sainte Vie: Automate the decay on the volume envelope tool to make the sample’s length vary throughout the track and make it more dynamic.

If you could only use one sampler for rhythm moving forward, what would you miss most if you didn’t have Battery?

The sample length tool.

I really love how much you can zoom in and how accurately you can trim the samples to your needs. Additionally, the sample grid is super intuitive and easy to organize your samples.

Pro tip from Sainte Vie: Transpose your kick one or two octaves up when tuning it. The pitch will become way easier to hear. Once you’ve found the right pitch, transpose it back by octaves to its original frequency range.

Start using impactful drum programming in your music

Appreciate Sainte Vie breaking down how a tool like Battery fits into a process that’s personal, fast, and detailed without being overworked. It’s not about maxing out features or layering endlessly – it’s about using the right tool to keep ideas moving.

Whether he’s blending percussion from different genres or reshaping a groove with just a few tweaks, the focus stays on control and flexibility.

What stands out is how refined the workflow has become – knowing when to commit to audio, how to organize samples by function, and what parameters actually matter when something feels off. It’s the kind of setup that lets ideas evolve without getting stuck in the details. And it’s a reminder that clean production doesn’t have to mean rigid or clinical.

With the right balance of instinct and editing, you can maintain a tight structure while still allowing room for emotional expression.

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