Aerodrums and Aered forums

The only thing I'm really missing from a real kit (aside from hihat barks that work like acoustic) is a buzz stroke. This has been asked for before. Gestures have been suggested, but I've been playing around with an idea for a buzz stroke element.

If I place a cowbell (because it's a small zone) just below the snare, I find that I naturally hit the cowbell (softly) when I attempt to buzz in mid air.
In my short tests, this seems to work really well. I don't accidentally hit the cowbell often and I do hit the cowbell when I buzz. I don't know if this works for anyone else and I found that the placement is critical.

I doubt that the size of the element matters. It would be nice if it's 'area of influence' could be contained though.

I tested this further and snipped out a chunk of a buzz roll I found online to create a custom element. With only 1 sample it doesn't sound horrible. More samples would be better. I attached it to this post if anyone wants to try it out.

To do this properly, two things are required:

* an image for the screen
* some buzz samples to match the Aerodrums snares.

Richard, If you happen to have recordings with buzz rolls for the Aerodrums snares, I'm happy to prepare the samples. If there are no recordings, could I convince you to make some? I know that's not an insignificant amount of work.

With buzz stroke samples, I can get this going without any other work on your part. Though it would be nice to have this as a 'baked in' element within Aerodrums.

Here's what the custom element looks like:
The cowbell is back to it's usual spot. I also screen recorded a small crappy clip of the buzz stroke in action. It's attached. Hopefully it gets the idea across.

I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for but I had this element lying around that matches the '12in bop snare' element in Aerodrums: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fer1fguvnxt8z ... s.ele?dl=0

Thanks for sharing that, but it's not quite what I want. There's too much attack and I can certainly snip the buzz out of that sample (or perhaps fade in the attack), but with only one sample it's not going to be high quality.

What I'm looking for is a way to emulate a buzz stroke or multiple bounce stroke. This is impossible to do in the air. Unless you have a technique to do it that I don't know about?

Others have found ways to create a playable surface with Aerodrums and get this ability as a result. One gentleman pushed the sytrofoam balls up on the stick so that a mesh pad could be used. Another gentleman put reflective tape on some tama practice tips which allow the tip of the sticks to make contact with any surface. Yet another gentleman wrapped a drum rack with foam and uses the shaft of the stick to hit the foam. I don't know if you can get multiple bounces on that last setup.

Those approaches limit the portability of Aerodrums so I'm looking for another way. Do you have any suggestions?

I've looked around for edrum kit samples and haven't come across any with buzz strokes. They don't need them, since you can just play that on edrum, obviously. I don't have a snare that sounds good enough to record.