Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[HotDogWater]

I decided to go down a rabbit hole last night. The premise: sample my acoustic drum kit, so that I can use Jamstix' drummers and styles to "play my kit." I've decided to try to document the experience here, and will try to add posts as I go. I hope it doesn't turn out to be some monologue blog-within-a-forum but rather spark some discussion. I'd welcome your questions, answers, comments, advice, and tips. If there's a lot of interest and the experiment is successful, maybe I'll even write up a tutorial or something.

HotDog's Ludwig Kit


Why?
So why do this? It's not because I don't like the kits included in JS. I really do, and I intend to continue using them. But with this, I am anticipating these advantages:

• It would allow me to seamlessly shift back and forth between physically playing the drums for a recording, and having JS compose some parts. Since JS and I would both be playing the same kit, in theory, we could play on the same recording and not have it be noticeable (well, except that JS is a way better drummer than me. ).
  
• If I want to record a drum part with the sound of my kit at a time when I can't make too much noise, this is the ticket.
  
• To the point above, there are times when I can hear a part in my head, but can't figure out how to twist the knobs in JS to attain it. But I can play it. Conversely, there are times when I can hear a part in my head but it's beyond my ability to physically play it.
  
• It would allow me to try my kit with some "new pieces". E.g. what would my kit sound like with a different snare (borrowed from the JS library).
  
• My drum mic setup is not really the best. Someday I hope to have a full/better set of mics and some better room treatments. But for now, I have 2 decent AKG condenser overheads, a SM57 on the snare, and another condenser on the kick. The result is that when I play the kit in full, I can get a pretty good recording, but outside of an independent kick and snare track, the rest ends up in a stereo mix from the overheads. By sampling and having JS play the part, it should allow me to truly isolate all of the different pieces onto their own tracks for independent post-processing.
  
• I'll learn a little more about JS and Battery.
  
• Other unanticipated benefits TBD.
  

The Approach
I decided to use Battery 3 as my "sub-host". I had several choices, but, I got this as part of a Komplete purchase, and it's an expensive piece of software that's been sitting there unused for a few years now. It seems very conducive to this, so I thought I'd try it out. I'm recording the samples using Reaper. It has a nice dynamic split function that allows me to sit and record samples one after another, then automatically chop them up. Also using SWS extensions as a helper to easily save the split up items with a sensible file name.

My plan is to build a couple of kits.

Kit 1: As Mic'd
The idea here is to not move any of the mics. Keep them as they are set up to record live, so that (hopefully) if I switch back and forth between a live recording and JS, there is no real noticeable difference in the sound. Assuming this goes well,

Kit 2: Optimized
The idea here is to move mics and get the best possible close stereo samples using the best available mic for the job.

I decided that for a first run, I'd go with 2-4 samples per "element". E.g. 3 kick drum samples at 3 different velocities. 4 closed hat samples: soft, med 1, med 2, loud. 4-25% open hats Etc.

I really have no clue if this is enough to deliver a good level of realism and would love some input.

First Session
I spent about 2 hours on the first session. I got samples recorded and in place for the kick, snare (center), hihat (closed, 25% open). Got the samples imported into a Battery kit, and got the velocity maps set up.

Created a new JS kit starting with the empty kit, and started adding pieces. (Side note: JS gets a little slow when you add new pieces to an empty kit. I see some windows opening in the task bar, and there's a bit of lag as the menus open. Not sure if this is my system, JS natural behavior for doing this, a bug... Anyway, it's a couple seconds delay. Certainly not unbearable for this type of one-time activity. It's a laptop a few years old running XP. It handles JS just fine otherwise. Anyway...)

Added the elements in my Battery kit to the JS kit (kick, snare center, HH closed, HH 25%) and mapped them via MIDI.

Added the 8th rock style with no drummer and fired it off. HEY! JS is playing my (incomplete) kit!! Add James Stix as the drummer, shortened up the part length, and turned on some transition fills. Neat. James is adding some cool stuff into the mix. Since there's very few pieces now, he's doing his fills on the snare. Twisting the power knob does seem to switch between the various samples I recorded for each piece. So far so good!

An aside: one unanticipated benefit I didn't think about is that Battery really allows me to do some neat processing on the drum samples. For example, it's really easy to shift the sound of my snare down a couple of semi-tones and get a deeper sound from it...

OK, out of time now, will try to post pics/sound samples of Session 1 later.

Again, welcome any discussion!

[Ralph [RZ]]

Very cool! Keep us updated!
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com

[HotDogWater]

For those of you following along at home, here's an update.

Sampling a drum kit is far more tedious than I imagined. For example, just for the hihat, with an average of three velocity layers, I think I had to record about 20 samples total to get all the articulations. But I'm glad I'm doing it. I am learning a ton. And gaining even MORE respect for Ralph & Rayzoon.

As promised, here's a bit more media.

I am all the way up to a 5 piece kit!

Ludwig 23" Kick
Tama Rockstar 14" Snare
Bosphorus 14" 'The Versa' Hihat
Paiste 2002 18" Flat Ride
Zildjan Custom 18" Projection Crash

This is what Battery is shaping up to look like. There's essentially a different cell for each articulation of each piece, and the mapping tab (bottom) contains information on which sample to play at which velocity.


And finally, here's what it sounds like so far. This is my favorite drummer, James Stix (gotta get in a band with that guy) playing the 8th rock style. As much as I hate leaving him tom-less, has to be done for now. It was created with the wizard ("VVCVVC"), with no modifications to any of the sliders or dials. I did automate the power level throughout, as below from 33% up to about 87% on the 2nd chorus. All the samples are raw at this point. Just a limiter on the master bus. I did take a first stab at setting the volumes and pans to suit. Hear the progress thus far on soundcloud

[HotDogWater]

I think the answer to this is no. Is there a way to build a kit that includes both a flat ride and a normal ride that has a bell? After I add one ride the option to add another disappears.

As a workaround, perhaps I could attach the flat ride to an unused splash (for example), and then use the redirection within a song part to redirect ride cymbal to that splash (which in fact contains a flat ride cymbal)? Just thinking out loud. Not sure if the options for redirection include Ride --> Splash X, and not in front of JS right now...

[Ralph [RZ]]

You could redirect Ride->Crash 4.
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com