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custom drum elements

Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2020 8:20 pm
by condordontsurf
Happy New Year guys. Can we discuss the do's and don'ts of creating (organizing) your own custom drum kits from samples? I would love to see how some people have their directories laid out. I have tried dabbling with this using only 4 samples. Some samples were triggering together with one hit. I have read the manual and the organizing screen within the software. I was able to get the kick drum to only trigger using the "custom (pedal)" option.

I feel like this is a topic within the program that could use more detailed explanation. It would be great if there was a template or something we could work from.

Re: custom drum elements

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2020 6:18 pm
by Richard
Yes, you need to choose the appropriate drum type when creating the element. For kick drums, you can use either 'Kick' or 'Custom (pedal)'. For hi-hats, you can use either 'Hi-hat' or 'Custom (pedal & sticks)'.

In terms of directory layout, here are some examples...

For an element that you play with sticks only, you can either use:

Code: Select all

snare\
  l\
    lh01.wav
    lh02.wav
  r\
    rh01.wav
    rh02.wav
    rh03.wav
where the "l" folder contains samples (however many you want) for the left hand and "r" folder contains samples for the right hand. The sample files can be named however you like.

Or you can use:

Code: Select all

snare\
  sample01.wav
  sample02.wav
  sample03.wav
  sample04.wav
Here the samples are placed directly in the "snare" folder and no distinction is made between left and right hands.

For an element you play with your foot, again you can either use:

Code: Select all

kick\
  a\
    variation_a_01.wav
    variation_a_02.wav
  b\
    variation_b_01.wav
    variation_b_02.wav
where "a" and "b" folders contain two different sets of samples for the kick drum.

Or you can use:

Code: Select all

kick\
  sample01.wav
  sample02.wav
  sample03.wav
For elements you play with your sticks and foot (i.e. hi-hats), each openness level needs to be in a folder starting with "a", e.g.:

Code: Select all

hihat\
  a\
    l\
      lh01.wav
    r\
      rh01.wav
      rh02.wav
  b\
    l\
      lh01.wav
    r\
      rh01.wav
      rh02.wav
  c\
    l\
      lh01.wav
      lh02.wav
      lh02.wav
    r\
      rh01.wav
      rh02.wav
      rh03.wav
  d\
    sample01.wav
  e\
    sample01.wav
    sample02.wav
  ped\
    a\
      variation_a_01.wav
      variation_a_02.wav
      variation_a_03.wav
    b\
      variation_b_01.wav
      variation_b_02.wav
In this example, there are 5 levels of hi-hat openness where the "a" folder contains the most closed samples and the "e" folder contains the most open ones. The "ped" folder is where the samples for the hi-hat pedal go.

I hope that makes sense. Remember - the folder names are important but the .wav files themselves can be named however you like since they are automatically sorted based on volume.

If you have any unexpected behaviour when it comes to creating your own drum elements, feel free to PM me. If you can share the .wav files you are using I can try it myself and give you feedback.

Re: custom drum elements

Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2020 3:19 am
by condordontsurf
Thank you for that great info. Right now I am just dabbling, so I will report back after trying more. I think most of the samples I have don't have various volumes. Is there any chance of you guys releasing new kits? I have spent hundreds on other programs to work with Aerodrums.

Re: custom drum elements

Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2020 5:56 pm
by Richard
We do have a collection of unreleased samples that we have been meaning to release for a quite a while. We just need to get around to processing them and creating Aerodrums elements from them. We were hoping to do it before Christmas but didn't get it to. Hopefully soon...

Re: custom drum elements

Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2020 9:56 pm
by Ringowig
Hi Condordontsurf....hope you are enjoying dabbling with custom samples. After several experiments with midi I have much more enjoyed creating my own custom drum elements.
I basically recorded 10-15 different velocity levels of each kit piece using just a single condenser mic into my Tascam recorder. I then used Cool Edit to trim the samples really tightly, so the triggering is super quick and latency is not an issue.
I organised the samples into their own kit piece folders as Richard described...and assigned them within Aerodrums to their specific functions, I.e ‘kick’, ‘snare’ etc. I’ve not so far gone into recording separate l,r hand samples for example on the snare, as I’ve found things working great anyway without that.
The fact you don’t have to organise the samples in volume order is a great time saver... Aerodrums does it all for you internally, so literally all you have to do is place them all in the right folder and point Aerodrums at them.
I’m hoping to experiment with some soft beater type kit elements next....all good fun! :D

Cheers!

Re: custom drum elements

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 6:46 am
by condordontsurf
Ringowig wrote:
Fri Jan 10, 2020 9:56 pm
Hi Condordontsurf....hope you are enjoying dabbling with custom samples. After several experiments with midi I have much more enjoyed creating my own custom drum elements.
I basically recorded 10-15 different velocity levels of each kit piece using just a single condenser mic into my Tascam recorder. I then used Cool Edit to trim the samples really tightly, so the triggering is super quick and latency is not an issue.
I organised the samples into their own kit piece folders as Richard described...and assigned them within Aerodrums to their specific functions, I.e ‘kick’, ‘snare’ etc. I’ve not so far gone into recording separate l,r hand samples for example on the snare, as I’ve found things working great anyway without that.
The fact you don’t have to organise the samples in volume order is a great time saver... Aerodrums does it all for you internally, so literally all you have to do is place them all in the right folder and point Aerodrums at them.
I’m hoping to experiment with some soft beater type kit elements next....all good fun! :D

Cheers!

Thanks for the response. Right now, it is merely a dabble not even dabbling! I bet you are doing some cool stuff.

Re: custom drum elements

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2020 8:52 pm
by condordontsurf
Richard,


When working with just two drums (in my case a snare and a kick). How do you get the snare to only be in the snare region, instead of being able to snare anywhere else in the field?

Re: custom drum elements

Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2020 10:38 am
by Richard
This isn't possible. The way things currently work, you will always hit a drum (the closest drum) if you make a hitting gesture. There is no setting to prevent hits being triggered if you hit too far from a drum.

Re: custom drum elements

Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2020 6:25 pm
by condordontsurf
I thought that was the case but wanted to make sure.

Re: custom drum elements

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2023 11:02 am
by saih_tam
@Richard

Thanks for all you work. I'm sorry for my bad English.

I received my Aerodrums next week and set it up yesterday. I’ll take the time to get used to the air drumming technique that you describe in your precise video.

I want to create a dununs custom set in Aerodrums sampling my own dununs. It's some African drums you can see here on the right : https://youtu.be/XGS7JFmtXzk.
The sound is a bit bad on this video but we can see that the player is hitting the left drum with 2 techniques : open hit (like on a tom) and "muffled" hit (it is obtained by hitting/sticking the stick to prevent the stroke). We can better hear (but less see) the 2 sounds on this video : https://youtu.be/tGqrwAepzgU.

1- I guess that it is unfortunately impossible to differentiate these 2 types of hit with Aerodrums other than by using a second hit zone as for the cross stick. Am I wrong about that ?

2 - I have struggled to find this thread (I found it finally searching "wav" key word) with your very useful "templates" to create custom drum element. I think you should add these examples in the section https://aerodrums.com/manual/#making-new-drums. What do you think ?

3 - On another subject (feature requests), I think it would be great that we could also place each element of a kit more "precisely" with the mouse rather than with an hit. Would that be feasible ?

Now, i'm struggling to use Aerodrums with Phase Shift (Guitar Hero like software you could see on my real drums charts : https://www.youtube.com/@saih_tam730/videos) hopping I will succeed at that. Maybe I have to create a new thread if needed...