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Interactive
Drum Kits
Introduction:
This CD ROM contains only drum & percussion hits, no loops,
so these kits would need to be played from a midi controller such
as a keyboard or midi drum pads/triggers. Standard Midi Files (with
our GM section) as well as our own midi file beats can be used for
grooves that have the ultimate editing control in your sequencer
while maintaining individual drum isolation for unlimited external
processing. You may find this a pleasant alternative to the limitations
of working with fixed audio loops. These multi-dynamic alternating
hits have extra groove elements that when reconstructed into live
sounding beats, can be very close to sounding like the real thing.
There are several ways to use this library to suit your acoustic
drum & percussion needs. There are 4 different sections which
serve various purposes.
Interactive Kits
This is the main section of the library in which the most detailed
programming of multiple hits are. These kits are mapped to our own
"SR Interactive Drum Map" for optimal performance. They
are designed to sound like a real acoustic kit in the studio. On
the Akai, you have each drum set up in it's own program (with the
pieces of a kit sharing a common program number). This gives you
the ability to swap individual programs to create custom kit combinations
(use your "cursor program and sample" to select individual
pieces of the kit and set them to the appropriate program number).
On the other formats, these drums are set up as layers within an
overall kit program. For example, the kick will be a layer and the
snare will be a separate layer within the same program etc. This
makes it easy to route the group of samples that make up a snare
for instance out the individual outputs or through internal processing.
Snare Menu Maps
This section is for two main purposes. These "menus" are
chromatic maps of all the snare hits from the sessions in one linear
velocity layer. It is in no particular order and there is no standard
mapping used because the amount of samples from each session is
different. One way these menu maps can be used is by putting it
on a separate midi channel from the kit you are using and triggering
alternate snare hits with you sequencer. This will give you even
more sonic variety and allow you to easily zero in on dynamics not
to mention add in some extra performance elements like flams etc.
The other use for this is for those of you who like to dig in deeper
and do your own custom programming. We though having these extra
hits would be useful for customizing set ups so we put them all
on there in case you feel like doing that sort of thing.
GM Snares
Well, it wasn't our main intention, but we thought it would be nice
to have some of these dynamic snares set up in the general midi
standard for recording and playing of standard midi files and your
own midi sequences. The emphasis in this section is on the snares
which are separated (as programs in the Akai and layers in the other
formats) from a generic GM Kit w/ No Snare program and the GM percussion
map.
GM Percussion & Quick Sets
The percussion is either set up outside of the "SR Interactive
Kit Map" for layering over the desired kit you are working
with. Or, if you prefer to use a GM standard map, you can do so
on a separate midi channel. The "Quick Sets" are kits
mapped more or less to the General Midi standard only we through
in optional ghost and snare roll groove elements (we had to!). These
kits are smaller sized and can all be loaded up into ram for auditioning
several different kits at one time. The are also edited a little
tighter and simplified as full kit layers divided by two velocities
split at a common dynamic point. Unlike the "GM Snares"
section however, the surrounding kits (Kick, Toms, Hats etc.) are
derived from the Interactive Kits section but tailored to a smaller
fast loading size. These are also great for midi file playback and
could come in handy for writing sessions as well.
Interactive Kit Performance Highlights:
With the main "interactive kits" on this library, you
will notice we have a modified drum map we like to use. The reason
we did this is so a performance could be made by having a variety
of drums close to each other on the keys. Our philosophy is that
better drum programming can be done by playing the sounds off each
other. Some of us like to do "live finger drumming". But,
for many of us who haven't spent the time on developing this skill
(now's the time to start! Just kidding) even just having the alternate
hits of a drum next to each other should be helpful to get more
realism out of your programming. For drummers triggering with pads,
once you've set up your map to play to ours (especially if you use
alternating variations per pad like you can on some drum controllers)
it will be worth the effort.
Performance with the Kicks
The key to getting realistic bass drum hits is using dynamics and
a little variety of hits. We have at least one main kick on "C2"
and an alternate on the "B1" below it for variation. These
two often have several velocity layers for dynamic performance.
There may also be a few extra hits below the "B1" (usually
the "G1" and "A1") which either have subtle
nuances of tone or lower dynamics which can be used to add extra
feel to a performance (like a ghost note).When you have four kicks
mapped on four notes, you can also do a realistic run of "double
kick pedal" type performances as well by rolling through them
successively.
Performance with the Snares
The key to getting realistic snare performance is also in how you
use dynamics and variety of hits. But, another contributing factor
depends on how you use the extra feel elements such as ghost notes
(or light snare taps) and snare rolls.
For the snare rolls, we put two adjacent notes ("F#1"
and "G#1") to be the left stick and right stick roll.
Each note has different samples often at several velocity layers.
The idea is that you can go back and forth like you would on a real
snare with your left and right sticks and have incredible roll resolution
and dynamics. (We programmed the envelopes and pitch to respond
as well for even more depth and realism). So, now you don't have
to slow down your sequencer and enter rapid 128th notes to get a
roll out of single hit snares with that phaser sound!!!! Plus, if
you learn to work these rolls into your performance (like as a lead
in on a fill or even as ghosting for extra feel like those funky
drummers did in the 70's) you can get a track that people won't
believe you didn't use an actual drummer.
The rest of the Interactive Snare program usually consists of a
light tap ghost note on "A#1" which can be used to add
extra feel to a beat or snare performance (again, especially for
funky or jazz drumming). A sidestick or an extra rim shot is usually
on "C#2". Then the center snare hit is on "D2",
the rim is on "D#2" and the edge is on "E2".
Each of these keys have multiple velocity layers as well. So, the
idea is that if you vary it up a bit between the different "areas"
and articulations of the snare drum, you will get a more realistic
snare performance than say the typical same sample over and over
method (the "drum machine" sound). Of course, if you want
to go further into the alternate snare hit variety thing, we've
provided a whole separate "snare map" section with each
sample (including more hits and variations like flams etc) chromatically
mapped for "dropping in" specific snare hits when sequencing
or recording.
Another cool trick we did with the snares is we've added an interactive
"snare rattle bleed" to the kick and toms where it is
appropriate. If you listen to a live drum kit being played, sometimes
a big part of the sound is how the other drums resonate when adjacent
drums are hit. The most prominent effect is the snares rattling
when a kick or tom is played. Some engineers or producers would
want less or more of this effect and mic the kit accordingly. In
the sample world, we have the luxury of turning the snares OFF when
we sample the kick and toms. This makes it possible to have the
cleanest sounding kit in town. But, the cool thing is that we have
the snare rattle bleed as a separate element (controllable via the
mod-wheel...way cool!) so you can add back in the desired amount
of this natural effect. You can even go over the top and have the
noisiest kit in town if you want! Of course, we've also sampled
kicks and toms with the snares on to capture the sound how it would
be in the real world for convenience as well.
Performance with the Hats
The key to getting realistic hi hats is dynamics and variations
of open and closed performances. What we did to increase the realism
of sampled hats is to map more notes to the variations. We start
off with "F" which has the foot (the sound of the hat
pedal). Then, the "F#2" is the main closed hat, "G2,
G#2 and A2" are successively more open and "A#2"
is the open or swish hat used before a closed or foot hat stops
it. (Because of the limitations of some of the samplers ability
to do this effect well with stereo samples, the foot or closed hat
key may or may not have been programmed to "cut off" this
open swish hat. In this case, it would have to have it's duration
played manually. To make it easy to do this, the envelope release
on this key is set up for this effect.
The next key, "B2" is also an open hat but has a release
on it (ala Bonham) so you can play more rock open hat parts.
To add in a little extra performance to the hats (as we love to
do) we also provide a few alternate hats below the kit map down
an octave at "C#1" and "D#1". The "C#1"
usually has an open (w/ release) hat sample for going back and forth
the the other open hat sample to get the variety of the sound of
the successive open hats (again, the goal is to fool the ear into
thinking it's the real thing, so the same hat sample over and over
can reveal itself as a sampler...the drum machine syndrome strikes
again!!!) The "C#1" is usually a alternate closed hat
(sometimes even the hat bell...check out kit B!). If you get good
at using your left and right hand for hat performances, you can
do really quick hi hat parts using these alternatively and also
have that sonic variety working for you as well. Remember you also
have the various velocity layers as well, so there is a lot of depth
to tap into.
Performance with the Toms
Well, for our tastes, we really wanted to redo the whole typical
tom map thing (yes we have a standard GM section too for those stuck
on that method). For one thing we took up the room where toms usually
are mapped by adding in closed to open hi hat variations next to...the
other hats which makes sense. So we put the toms above the hats
and cymbals to give them a bit of breathing room. The other thing
we did was have the first key be the hi tom instead of starting
from the low tom up (like the GM map). The reason we did this is
because if you are going to start a fill (hopefully with the closest
note to the rest of the kit) it will usually start on the hi tom
as opposed to starting from the low. So, that's our philosophy on
that. We offer both anyway.
As with most of these instruments, the key to getting realistic
tom performance is variety of hits and dynamics. What we did was
put 3 variations per tom typically like this: high tom 1 "E3-F#3",
mid tom 2 "G3-A3", floor tom 3 "A#3-C4". If
there is more than 3 toms in a kit, then we might use only two key
variations and still fit the toms into this area "E3-C4".
Often the dynamics go from lower to higher note as well as with
each key's velocity. This is good for adding feel to the tom performances
as well as for successive runs on the same tom. Other programming
elements may have also been added such as velocity to pitch and
amplitude envelope to round off the "in betweens" of dynamic
control. (For instance, the harder a tom is hit the tighter the
attack and the higher the pitch. Even if it is a subtle change,
it can make a difference.)
Performance with the Cymbals
We all know about using separate ride edge and bell samples. We
offer several dynamics of each with the edge hits placed on "D3"
and the bell on "D#3". Although we'd like to have offered
extra variations of these as well, we have to draw the line somewhere.
Rides take up a lot of room in ram so, we put in enough to fool
the ear into thinking it's a real ride in a drum performance. Maybe
for the next volume we will go "ride crazy" but in order
to keep these kits under 32 megs each, we were relatively conservative
on alternate cymbals. The crash cymbals fortunately don't require
much to be convincing (a few hits with several dynamics does the
trick). The crashes are on "C3" and "C#3". We
sometimes include extra cymbals (ride-crashes, chinas, splashes
etc) above the kit on "C#4-E4".
Performance with the Percussion
We also provided extra percussion into the mix (why not?). These
are either mapped outside of the kit, or to be used on a separate
midi channel. For convenience, we have a General Midi percussion
map as well. Some of the percussion instruments have several dynamics
for a little added depth but, please note that this is not an "Interactive
Percussion" library. We are just offering a little standard
percussion to spice up your drum performances as a bonus.
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