The AEROPAD

Wolfgang
Posts: 187
Joined: Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:36 am

The AEROPAD

Post by Wolfgang » Sun Sep 29, 2019 4:28 pm

Recently I was working with some pad exercises from DRUMEO trying to adapt them to Aerodrums, when I had the idea that it may be nice to have a pad sound for working on this. So I took the snare pad of my old YAMAHA SL1 silent drum-kit, a rather noisy pad, sampled it and created an element file for Aerodrums.
YAMAHA SL1 Snare Pad
YAMAHA SL1 Snare Pad
YAMAHA SL1 Snare Pad.jpg (22.65 KiB) Viewed 14013 times
I think the result isn’t bad, has a nice dynamic response and I would like to share it with the Aerodrums community. I don’t ask for anything, but a little thanks if you use it, or even constructive criticism is welcome.

This will not transform your Aerodrums in a practice pad, but at least it will sound like one.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jnt2mcl945sp1ve/AEROPAD.zip/file

Just unzip AEROPAD.zip and put AEROPAD.ele in your elements folder (Aerodrums\data\elements) and AEROPAD.ini in your drumkits folder (Aerodrums\conf\drumkits) and load it in Aerodrums like you do with the other kits.

A good website for finding pad-exercises is snarescience.com, but there are many others.

Like Richard Lee shows in his video about hand-techniques, use a very loose German grip, reversed rebound and fingers when possible when working on rudiments with Aerodrums. Don’t over-stress your wrists.

Have fun.


Richard wrote:I recommend using this with reverb (accessible from the Aerodrums Sound menu) set to at least 15%. The samples seem to tail off very quickly so without any reverb they sound a bit off. But with reverb enabled they sound great!


UPDATE 02/10/2019

Added a photo of the animal
Added comment from Richard
Last edited by Wolfgang on Wed Oct 02, 2019 10:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ringowig
Posts: 104
Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2014 11:54 am

Re: The AEROPAD

Post by Ringowig » Mon Sep 30, 2019 6:17 pm

Thanks Wolfgang..can’t wait to try this out! :)

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

Re: The AEROPAD

Post by Richard » Mon Sep 30, 2019 6:46 pm

Hi Wolfgang,

I just tried your .ele file now. It's really nice and lots of fun! Thanks for sharing it.

I have a couple of small observations:

1. I recommend using this with reverb (accessible from the Aerodrums Sound menu) set to at least 15%. The samples seem to tail off very quickly so without any reverb they sound a bit off. But with reverb enabled they sound great!

2. The loud hits sound really nice but you get a bit of the "machine gun effect" when playing quiet hits with alternating hands. Wolfgang, am I right in thinking that you didn't record separate left and right hits, placed in "l" and "r" folders? If you recorded a sufficient number of samples, one trick you can use to avoid the same sample being triggered for left and right hands is to use "l" and "r" folders but copy every second sample to the "l" folder and the rest to the "r" folder.

condordontsurf
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:59 am

Re: The AEROPAD

Post by condordontsurf » Mon Sep 30, 2019 8:12 pm

Wolfgang, do you have any other sound or sound packs available?

Wolfgang
Posts: 187
Joined: Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:36 am

Re: The AEROPAD

Post by Wolfgang » Wed Oct 02, 2019 10:51 am

@Richard
Richard wrote:Hi Wolfgang,

I just tried your .ele file now. It's really nice and lots of fun! Thanks for sharing it.
Hi Richard, reading those words from one of the inventors of Aerodrums, I’m really feeling honored. Thanks for having looked into this.
Richard wrote:am I right in thinking that you didn't record separate left and right hits, placed in "l" and "r" folders?
Yes, you are. First I was playing alternated hits from very loud to very soft, cut them with Audacity in left and right hand samples and put them in "l" and "r" folders but was disappointed with the dynamics. By testing I found out that I had a much better dynamic response when I putted them in the same folder, but, like you say, with the cost of the "machine gun effect" when playing quiet hits with alternating hands. Apparently I didn't recorded a sufficient number of samples. It’s the first time I’m using a mike for doing a sample for Aerodrums. It even wasn’t a mike, I used just my smartphone put on a chair beside the pad. What do you think about to record each hand separately? Will this work smoothly together after? And do you think it might be better to record this in a big room with some natural reverb?

I understood that you have just used the .ele file? If so, may I ask you for the sensitivity and volume settings you have used?

All in all, there is enough room for getting this better. I need to get me a good mike and a stand for being able to put it closer to the pad. There will be an update in a couple of weeks.
Thanks for your support.


@Condordontsurf
Condordontsurf wrote:Wolfgang, do you have any other sound or sound packs available?
I’ve a lot of now, but nothing available for sharing. Since last year I’m sampling my own VSTIs for having them inside Aerodrumms without the need of a VST host and I am very satisfied with this. Happily this is tolerated by the manufacturers as fair use, but I don’t have the right to share them.

If you are looking for sound-files, I know where you can find 4 GB of them legally, but you need to get your hands dirty. It’s the brain content of an e-drum you can download for free from their website and without any proof that you really own the drum-kit. And I know a free and legal java program which lets you explore all the sounds in there and split them one by one into wave files ready to be imported in Aerodrums. I won’t give the names here in this public forum, because this could be found by search engines or web-spiders. Even if this isn’t illegal, I’m quite sure they won’t like it.

But if you (or someone else) want to know more, just send me a PM.

PS.
I’ve made you a Cocktail-Kit. Will see tomorrow if I can attach it to a PM.
Last edited by Wolfgang on Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

condordontsurf
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:59 am

Re: The AEROPAD

Post by condordontsurf » Wed Oct 02, 2019 11:10 pm

That is awesome. I have purchased addictive drums 2 and Steve slate 5. I am not necessarily looking for free stuff, just want the best quality I can get. The drums within Aerodrums seem to have a different level of responsiveness to them than using the midi out. Again, I have dabbled with some of my own samples etc. It can all be kind of cumbersome trying to set up.

I always get sound even if moving the sticks slightly over the drums that is annoying. I think a lot of this type of stuff that we have been talking about lately in this thread and the other one, are why a lot of people probably throw in the towel.

Wolfgang
Posts: 187
Joined: Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:36 am

Re: The AEROPAD

Post by Wolfgang » Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:51 pm

@condordontsurf
Wolfgang wrote:I’ve made you a Cocktail-Kit. Will see tomorrow if I can attach it to a PM.
Doesn’t work, can not attach file to PM. I will upload to MediaFire and send you a message when done. Also I’m thinking about to send you one of my “template” kits where you can put in your own instruments.
condordontsurf wrote:I am using Aerodrums on a Mac mini, so moving drums around is pretty frustrating, at least with the 3d software.
condordontsurf wrote:The drums within Aerodrums seem to have a different level of responsiveness to them than using the midi out. Again, I have dabbled with some of my own samples etc. It can all be kind of cumbersome trying to set up. I always get sound even if moving the sticks slightly over the drums that is annoying. I think a lot of this type of stuff that we have been talking about lately in this thread and the other one, are why a lot of people probably throw in the towel.
Please can you open one or two new topics for this, I have some ideas what to do and I would be glad if I could help you. But, like you said yourself, this problems might concern other people and they would never look for them in this topic. And other people who might be interested by this one here will get upset having to read all this off topic stuff. But don’t hesitate to open new ones!
And thanks for the comment you have made in the other topic, not sure if I really merit this one :-)


@Ringowig
Ringowig wrote:Thanks Wolfgang..can’t wait to try this out!
Hi, did you get the time to play with it?

Ringowig
Posts: 104
Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2014 11:54 am

Re: The AEROPAD

Post by Ringowig » Fri Oct 04, 2019 5:36 pm

No ive been on the road with gigs all week so im hoping to give the Aeropad a good look next week.

Regards

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

Re: The AEROPAD

Post by Richard » Mon Oct 14, 2019 12:36 pm

Sorry for the delay replying. I was away last week.

@Wolfgang

That makes sense. Recording more samples for each hand and treating them separately should improve it a lot. The 12" bop snare element that ships with Aerodrums uses about 50 samples for each hand. I believe you can get away with far less than this but on the other hand it doesn't hurt much to build your element using more samples than necessary - more memory will be required to store the samples but it won't have any effect on runtime performance.

Reverb is a matter of personal preference. I don't think it's necessary to record the samples with a lot of natural reverb to have them sounding good. I think the issue with the element you made is that you could still hear sound (either the pad ringing out or ambient noise) at the end of the samples and bumping up the realtime reverb in Aerodrums would mask this. When processing the Aerodrums samples we always added a short fade out at the end of each one to ensure that there was no audible cut-off. Another option is to add reverb (or other effects) to each of your samples in post before feeding them to Aerodrums. This will give you a lot of control but again is a matter of personal preference.

By the way, I used the AEROPAD.ini file you provided - I was happy with the sensitivity.

Feel free to reach out to me directly if you get around to making another attempt and want to discuss further.

@Condordontsurf

Regarding responsiveness when using MIDI, let me explain why hits are resulting from tiny movements of the sticks...

In Aerodrums we compute the speed that the stick is moving when it hits a drum and we convert this speed to a volume at which the appropriate sample is played back. In MIDI, volumes are represented as a integer number between 0 and 255 where 0 is quietest and 255 is loudest. Unfortunately, in pretty much all of the drum VSTs we have tested, sending a note with a volume of 1 still results in a reasonably audible hit. These are the hits that you're hearing when you move the stick very slightly. In comparison, in Aerodrums, the volume that results from such a hit is barely audible. There is not much we can do about this. The new MIDI 2.0 standard should fix this by allowing volumes to be represented as a number from 0 to 65535 (instead of 0 to 255) but it will likely be some time before VST companies adopt and interpret this volume data correctly.

The workaround for now is to adjust the MIDI settings for your Aerodrums kit by going to Adjust drumsMIDI. In particular, for each drum, you can set a volume threshold below which MIDI notes don't get sent. In other words, you can filter out very soft hits in Aerodrums what would otherwise result in unreasonably audible hits on the VST side. The downside of this is that very subtle hits won't be heard but that is much better than hearing hits when you don't expect them.

I agree that issues like this can be a source of frustration to our users and we should try do a better job communicating ways to overcome them.

Wolfgang
Posts: 187
Joined: Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:36 am

Re: The AEROPAD

Post by Wolfgang » Wed Oct 16, 2019 3:58 pm

@Richard
Thanks for all your valuable information. I will come back to your offer, but just two questions before forgetting, are you applying the fade out on the release part, or the silent part after (hope you understand)? And I would like to understand how Aerodrums decides which sample it uses with a given velocity. The manual says there is some loudness testing of each sample, so do I understand right, that it doesn’t matter in which order the files are present? Aerodrums doesn't care any name or numbering scheme and takes anything it finds in a given folder for analyzing? If it’s really like this it would be much more easy to use a lot of samples for an element file. I was sorting and numbering my samples before importing them in Aerodrums. But how could I control this for triggering another sound like you do with the rim shot in the Bop snare. I really would like to have a crash ride in Aerodrums and anything I was experimenting up to now wasn’t very convincing.

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