custom drum elements

saih_tam
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2023 9:52 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by saih_tam » Tue Apr 18, 2023 4:09 pm


Richard
Posts: 1014
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:45 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by Richard » Wed Apr 19, 2023 11:38 am

Regarding your first question, the way I would do it is to have two separate hit zones next to each other.

Some of the snares in Aerodrums trigger either a normal snare hit or a rimshot hit based on how hard you hit it. That probably doesn't fit your case. Another possibility would to create the drum as a "custom hi-hat" with two openness levels. In this way, it should work to make the hi-hat pedal control which sound is triggered (pedal down → open hit, pedal up → muffled hit). Again, it's probably not what you want though.

Thanks for the suggestion about the manual. We will have a look at how to improve it.

I don't know about Phase Shift but I'm aware of Aerodrums users who have set up Aerodrums for use with Clone Hero. It seems to work well though I have not tried it myself. If you have questions about setting this up I will try to help.

saih_tam
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2023 9:52 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by saih_tam » Wed Apr 19, 2023 3:23 pm

Ok.
I'll try option 1 ("two separate hit zones next to each other") and option 2 ("some of the snares in Aerodrums trigger either a normal snare hit or a rimshot hit based on how hard you hit it").

For option 2, I guess I have to follow your template "for an element that you play with sticks only" and I guess I have to respect the fact that the samples of the weaker "open" hits are no less audible than the samples of the stronger "closed" hits (otherwise they would be mixed into the '.ele').
Do you have any advice for the distribution of the different samples ?
10 "closed" / 20 "open"
20 "closed" / 20 "open"
20 "closed" / 10 "open"
And for the corresponding "snare dunun" settings ?

Richard
Posts: 1014
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:45 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by Richard » Wed Apr 19, 2023 5:30 pm

What you said about option 2 is correct. However if you have success with this approach and you would like the ability for the softer hits to trigger louder samples (and/or the harder hits to trigger quieter samples) then I'd happy to create an .ele file for you using unreleased tools, if you share the samples with me.

The way things work is as follows:
The samples you feed to Aerodrums will be sorted based on volume. Then when a hit is detected the drum stick speed will be used to pick the "closest" sample. There are factors that affect this such as the sensitivity value that you can adjust for each drum in Aerodrums.

For the first test, I suggest trying with 1 closed and 1 open sample only. Aerodrums will trigger those samples with an appropriate volume based on hit speed so it should behave reasonably.

After that you can try add more samples, e.g. 10 closed and 10 open. The important thing is that the 10 open samples need to have (peak) volume lower than the 10 closed samples. But, like I said, I have the ability to work around this constraint if you need.

saih_tam
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2023 9:52 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by saih_tam » Thu Apr 20, 2023 1:50 pm

Euh...

I'm cutting "roughly" all the samples trying to name them following an ascending order of velocity/volume but I am in doubt :
How to manage the beginning of each sample to avoid "stupid" latency ?
Do I have to do it the best I can in my favorite DAW ?
Or does Aerodrums re-cut every sample to avoid any latency due to approximate original audio sample files ?

Richard
Posts: 1014
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:45 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by Richard » Thu Apr 20, 2023 3:47 pm

Aerodrums won't trim silence from the wav files automatically so you'll need to do it yourself.

At some point we were using a free tool called SoX to do this: https://sox.sourceforge.net/

From a Windows command line we could trim the silence from the start and end of a wav file by running:
sox.exe input.wav output.wav reverse silence 1 5 0.01% fade 0.1 reverse

saih_tam
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2023 9:52 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by saih_tam » Fri Apr 21, 2023 2:59 pm

I finally succeed in adapting your command line to my work environment :

Code: Select all

cd C:\Users\saih_tam\Music
C:\"Program Files (x86)"\sox-14-4-2\sox.exe .\Dununba51.wav .\Dununba61.wav reverse silence 1 5 0.01% fade 0.1 reverse
BUT it didn't trim any silence : Dununba51.wav = Dununba61.wav

SoX seems to be powerful but is hard to use.
Why using 'fade' ?
'reverse' is to trim end silence like a start, we need to trim start silence too...

Could you please give me a "correct" command line ?

saih_tam
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2023 9:52 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by saih_tam » Fri Apr 21, 2023 3:51 pm

Forget my previous post. I think I found how to do that properly in Reaper.

Image

Image

Richard
Posts: 1014
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:45 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by Richard » Fri Apr 28, 2023 2:38 pm

I'm sorry for the delay in replying and for wasting your time with sox. You were right, I was mistaken that the command I pasted is what we were using. I'm not sure if sox can actually do what you want.

In our case, we wrote a separate application that would analyze the .wav file and pick out points where it should be trimmed and faded. It would then produce a sox command to do this. It sounds like you've solved the problem anyway but if you still need help let me know and I can share the program we wrote.

saih_tam
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2023 9:52 am

Re: custom drum elements

Post by saih_tam » Thu May 11, 2023 10:05 am

Yep
I'll try option 1 ("two separate hit zones next to each other") and option 2 ("some of the snares in Aerodrums trigger either a normal snare hit or a rimshot hit based on how hard you hit it").
Option 1 works very well and is very easy to implement but changes my playing a bit (zone shift is reasonable).

Option 2 works well too (by adjusting the sensitivity) but much more difficult to implement and I lose some of the nuances (loud open hits).
I think I have to re-sample my dununs in a studio with a better mic than those of my Zoom H4n and with more dynamic and a better normalization to build a "perfect" dunun kit for Aerodrums and share it.

I'll let you know in a few weeks (or months).

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