bassdriver wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2024 12:02 pm

benadrian wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2024 11:14 am
Volume 2. Hear it here.

I'm sold!!!
fantastic songs, amazing drum sound.
do you do some sort of "humanizing" to your drum programming or do you quantize everything?

Most all is quantized. I'll turn off the grid to really nail some flams on the snare, or if there's are two toms hit at once I make sure they're always just a little off.

The most unusual thing I did on on the end of the song "Chronochasm". Every fourth measure is in 17/16. This is not to be proggy, but to simulate the lag that sometimes happens before a big hit on the 1of the next measure. So, I guess that's humanizing, but it's repeatable, robitic humanizing.

The KB drums plus will randomize samples, randomize levels within certain ranges, and probably some other things. All of this can be controlled. I tend to leave it on for recording, but when generating tracks for live playback I will minimize a lot of the features that exist to make it sound more natural.

benadrian wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 10:26 pm Yeah, the circa 1990 drum machines have that sound of low--ish res samples with effects trying SO hard to sound real, and then just never quite living up. Not long after, drum machines got all faux-analog, and that just isn't the noise rock kinda vibe. I talked about this exact same thing with Justin from Austerity Program.

Agreed. I do derive some perverse pleasure using the ubiquitous and reviled SR-16 but at the end of the day it's all about the sound in the room. Compared to analog units we've tried (real or modelling) or hi-fi modern drum packs, I don't know, they just don't have the visceral presence that the crude romplers do. Even Reason with Alesis samples my bandmate can tell. "Why do the drums sound quiet?" Then I switch to the hardware and all is well. I don't know, but it's a thing.

Doesn't Austerity Program use a DR-550 or something?

benadrian wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 10:26 pm What do you use for Sysex dumps?

I use MIDIOX.

benadrian wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 10:26 pm I've been using the Kurt Ballou drums and man, it sounds SO good. It's so good it totally loses the drum machine mood. It just sounds like a really good recording of a precise drummer.

P.S. To top it all off, I met a super cool guy today who may want to drum with us. Fucking hell. I often think the best way to make something happen is to put a lot of work into doing the exact opposite. For instance, my wife does voiceover. A lot of the time I just leave her VO mic and headphone rig setup. Finally, A week will go by with no activity, so I'll tear don the setup to do something else in my studio. Within a day, se gets an audition or books a job. It's creepy how often this happens.

I listened to the tracks you posted and fucking hell, sounds great. Good luck on the human but the machine works!

ErikG wrote: Sat Jan 20, 2024 3:39 pm Doesn't Austerity Program use a DR-550 or something?

I use MIDIOX.

I listened to the tracks you posted and fucking hell, sounds great. Good luck on the human but the machine works!

Austerity used to use a 550 or 660. They moved to other stuff, but I think still use the 550 or 660 samples. They have a playback device that radio stations use, I think.

I pulled out my old SR-16. Started MidiOX for the first time in like 5 year, and did a backup dump to my computer.
Then I restored from the dump. It worked.
Alright, now time to maybe get a second SR-16 and just give it a shot.

Cheers!

ErikG wrote: Sat Jan 20, 2024 3:39 pm

benadrian wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 10:26 pm Yeah, the circa 1990 drum machines have that sound of low--ish res samples with effects trying SO hard to sound real, and then just never quite living up. Not long after, drum machines got all faux-analog, and that just isn't the noise rock kinda vibe. I talked about this exact same thing with Justin from Austerity Program.

Agreed. I do derive some perverse pleasure using the ubiquitous and reviled SR-16 but at the end of the day it's all about the sound in the room. Compared to analog units we've tried (real or modelling) or hi-fi modern drum packs, I don't know, they just don't have the visceral presence that the crude romplers do. Even Reason with Alesis samples my bandmate can tell. "Why do the drums sound quiet?" Then I switch to the hardware and all is well. I don't know, but it's a thing.

Doesn't Austerity Program use a DR-550 or something?

benadrian wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 10:26 pm What do you use for Sysex dumps?

I use MIDIOX.

benadrian wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 10:26 pm I've been using the Kurt Ballou drums and man, it sounds SO good. It's so good it totally loses the drum machine mood. It just sounds like a really good recording of a precise drummer.

P.S. To top it all off, I met a super cool guy today who may want to drum with us. Fucking hell. I often think the best way to make something happen is to put a lot of work into doing the exact opposite. For instance, my wife does voiceover. A lot of the time I just leave her VO mic and headphone rig setup. Finally, A week will go by with no activity, so I'll tear don the setup to do something else in my studio. Within a day, se gets an audition or books a job. It's creepy how often this happens.

I listened to the tracks you posted and fucking hell, sounds great. Good luck on the human but the machine works!

Drumcomputers definitely have the advantage of playing back dry drum sounds! Most drum plugins also capture the room sound of the location where the drum has been recorded. I’ll definitely render the room mics of the Kurt Ballou plug-in to a separate stereo track, so I can blend them in/out, depending on the room we’re playing.
The bad news is that the KB plug-in uses different midi mapping than the AR 70s drums, means I would have to re-program the drums for 20 songs! Will do 2 songs and then check with the band if the drum actually sounds better in the practice room.

bassdriver wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:06 am The bad news is that the KB plug-in uses different midi mapping than the AR 70s drums, means I would have to re-program the drums for 20 songs! Will do 2 songs and then check with the band if the drum actually sounds better in the practice room.

You can load up other popular midi mappings in KB drums.* I was able to have KB drums play stuff that I did on MT_Power Drums. However, the range of sounds/samples on KB drums is greater than MT or other drum machine plug ins that I've used, so I've had to "manually translate" the midi files in Reaper.

MT-Power drums sounds much more like a classic drum machine ROMpler, but I just don't like the sounds and they can't be swapped.

* I was also able to load up a mapping preset for the super-budget electronic drum kit that I have, and then I could play electro drums with the KB sounds.

bassdriver wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:06 am Drumcomputers definitely have the advantage of playing back dry drum sounds! Most drum plugins also capture the room sound of the location where the drum has been recorded. I’ll definitely render the room mics of the Kurt Ballou plug-in to a separate stereo track, so I can blend them in/out, depending on the room we’re playing.

Yeah. If you think of live PA drums, you hear a LOT of the top of the snare, top of the toms, and inside of the kick. Relatively low cymbals in comparison. That sound can absolutely be dialed into software. I personally wouldn't include room sound because you're playing into a room, and that becomes the room sound (for better or worse).

benadrian wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:41 am

bassdriver wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:06 am The bad news is that the KB plug-in uses different midi mapping than the AR 70s drums, means I would have to re-program the drums for 20 songs! Will do 2 songs and then check with the band if the drum actually sounds better in the practice room.

You can load up other popular midi mappings in KB drums.* I was able to have KB drums play stuff that I did on MT_Power Drums. However, the range of sounds/samples on KB drums is greater than MT or other drum machine plug ins that I've used, so I've had to "manually translate" the midi files in Reaper.

MT-Power drums sounds much more like a classic drum machine ROMpler, but I just don't like the sounds and they can't be swapped.

* I was also able to load up a mapping preset for the super-budget electronic drum kit that I have, and then I could play electro drums with the KB sounds.

yeah, they did a great job adding custom midi mappings for most other plugins, just not the Native AR 70s drums. I ended up making one myself so I can at least listen to some of the songs to compare the drum sound. it will still take a lot of tweaking to get all songs done. I would also rather keep the KB mapping as the included "grooves" will not play back properly with a different mapping.

penningtron wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:46 am

bassdriver wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:06 am Drumcomputers definitely have the advantage of playing back dry drum sounds! Most drum plugins also capture the room sound of the location where the drum has been recorded. I’ll definitely render the room mics of the Kurt Ballou plug-in to a separate stereo track, so I can blend them in/out, depending on the room we’re playing.

Yeah. If you think of live PA drums, you hear a LOT of the top of the snare, top of the toms, and inside of the kick. Relatively low cymbals in comparison. That sound can absolutely be dialed into software. I personally wouldn't include room sound because you're playing into a room, and that becomes the room sound (for better or worse).

that's what I was thinking as well. on the other hand it's possibly much more the drum kit moving air in a room that we hear as the room sound and not so much the drum sound coming out of the PA. If you play back records through a PA you don't necessarily get a "doubled" room sound. but yeah, I've been blending down the room sound of the drum plugins quite a bit. it also helps to have the speakers at practice rather close together as a large stereo sound of the drums just doesn't sound right. I do understand that Austerity Program bring their own speakers just for the drums!

Heather and I have been trying to put together a Live Synth and drum machine rig for about a year. At first it was just a Laptop running NI Maschine with a bunch of controllers and a Rhodes but it was pretty lacking as a VSTi host and the midi editing isn't fantastic. After a bunch of fucking around I am now pushing everything through Reaper. NI Maschine as a VSTi doing only drum duty and hosting Synths on other channels. I also have a Midi pad set up that feeds Slate SSD Drums so I can pound in "real" drum sounds. We do all the loop stuff and midi editing in Reaper. Its been a lot easier cause we both know Reaper pretty well and it Heather hasn't really caught on to the Maschine interface for editing. We run 6 stereo busses out to the PA. 1 for all Percussion stuff, one for all Synth stuff, and one for Aux stuff like Vocoders and effected stuff like Sci Fi movie loops and shizz. Motu Ultralite AVB is the interface. In the "studio". its all run on a Mac Mini tucked under the keyboard strand, but we cold run it all off my laptop if we were ever playing out.

I was trying to avoid pushing through a DAW for a long time and make it more like a hardware performance, but in the end, it's computer music so fuck it... ill use a computer.

Also... I love Zach Dracula. I threatened H that if we ever had a kid I'd name it John Dracula about 10 years ago and I STILL don't have a kid.

I feel silly sometimes using old outdated gear. I bet this might come in handy: