Improving precision

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unlink
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2017 3:12 pm

Improving precision

Post by unlink » Mon Jan 15, 2018 4:06 pm

Hi Aerodrums guys! I'm a very happy customer of Aerodrums since some months now and I have some questions for you :-)

1) I'm not really a beginner but I wouldn't say I'm a "good" drummer too, but I feel that sometimes Aerodrums is very very precise with my hits and sometimes it triggers a bit randomly. The last time I experienced this I was playing during the day (while I usually playing at evening/night) and even if I closed the courtain, the overall brightness of the room and of the white wall behind me was certainly higher than usual. There was no direct lightning on the wall, but I was wondering how much a white wall with some lightning in the room could influence the precision of Aerodrums.
2) My drum hit sensitivity right now is "proficient" and I think is good enough, what will I miss if I go back to "beginner" ? And what exactly changes if I go to "expert" ?
3) Is there any technical way (so different from getting good at drumming :-) ) to improve precision in Aerodrums?

Thanks!

Daniele

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

Re: Improving precision

Post by Richard » Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:29 pm

Hi Daniele,

1) The markers on your feet and sticks need to appear brighter than everything else that the camera can see. There shouldn't be a problem if your curtains are closed but it is certainly possible that sunlight hitting a white wall could create regions that are brighter than the markers.

One way to test this is to hide your sticks and foot markers from the camera. If the Aerodrums drumming screen still detects markers (displayed as coloured circles on the screen) or is triggering sounds then there is a problem with lighting.

A better way to test lighting is to run Aerodrums, click the Setup button and then click Next until you're on the screen that displays the colour camera feed. If there is a potential problem with lighting, Aerodrums will display a 'Check lighting' button. Click this and remove your sticks and foot pieces from view of the camera. Aerodrums will now display red blobs to indicate regions of the camera image that are too bright and likely to cause a problem. If you can't tell what the source of these bright regions is, it can help to move one of the Aerodrums drum sticks around in front of the camera until it coincides with the red blob. In this way you should be able to tell what's causing the problem, be it sunlight, the reflection of a bright light in a mirror or some other bright object. You will see in Aerodrums that there is a 'Compensate for bright objects' button. This can be used to tell Aerodrums to ignore the problematic bright regions. Note however that this only makes sense if the red blobs appear close to the periphery of the camera, outside the drumming area where tracking of your sticks matters most.

Let me know if that's not clear and I will explain in more detail.

2) As you move a drumstick around, Aerodrums estimates the speed that the marker at the tip is moving. If you set the hit detection sensitivity on the Latency screen to Beginner it will use a higher speed threshold for deciding whether or not a hit occurred compared to if you set it to Expert. So if you set it to Beginner and make small stick movements, no hits will be triggered. If on the other hand you have had a lot of practice and have good stick control then you may want to set it to Expert so that you can trigger very quiet ghost notes by making subtle stick movements for example. The Proficient setting is a middle ground.

3) I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'precision'. But if you're trying to avoid unintended hits then here are a couple of tips that spring to mind:
a) Take the time to reposition all the drums exactly where you expect them to be rather than using a preset drum kit.
b) Try switching from the Proficient setting to the Beginner setting. This will filter out very quiet ghost notes which will give a cleaner result in most cases.
c) If you notice you're triggering unintended hits when swinging your sticks back very far you can eliminate this by reducing the arc of your swings.
We're working on ideas that will prevent most of these issues in the future.

unlink
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2017 3:12 pm

Re: Improving precision

Post by unlink » Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:02 am

Hi Richard,
regarding the first point: there were no specific bright region, but the overall brightness of the room and the wall was higher than usual, so I was wondering if this could be an issue.
I'll also do some more testing with the drum hit sensitivity.
Thanks for you response!

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

Re: Improving precision

Post by Richard » Tue Jan 16, 2018 11:51 am

That would only be an issue if your wall/background registered as a bright region (red blob) on the 'Check lighting' screen.
It could be that there was no issue when you set it up and started playing but the daylight intensified causing a bright region to appear.
If it happens again I recommend going back to the Check lighting screen to see if a red blob has appeared.
You can also try hiding your sticks and foot pieces completely when in Drumming mode and see if any coloured circles representing markers appear on the screen. If they do, it would mean that Aerodrums thinks it can still see one or more of the markers.

When you were experiencing the problem can you remember if Aerodrums displayed a warning in the middle of the Drumming screen saying that the markers were hard to track? You should always see four markers corresponding to your sticks and feet on the screen. If they occasionally disappear or flicker then there is a problem.

unlink
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2017 3:12 pm

Re: Improving precision

Post by unlink » Tue Jan 16, 2018 2:48 pm

Well, I could have missed the "markers were hard to track" notice because I was too busy drumming.. I'll check it better next time.

Thanks,
Daniele

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