SD and midi sequences

[Slap the drummer]

Uh oh - boring technical stuff to do with superior drummer 
Look away now if you're not interested in making .dsnd files....


Here's something from the manual (which I never really bothered to look at properly before):-

In Toontrack libraries, hits are separated into three categories for velocity mapping purposes: soft hits, gradient hits and hard hits.

The intensity levels for all soft and all hard hits are the same in their respective categories. We've sampled up to 25 soft hits and 25 hard hits on selected instruments. Finally, we've sampled 15 to 25 layers of gradient hits, increasing gradually from soft to hard.

Through a unique system developed by Toontrack Music the sampler automatically maps these hits to the appropriate velocity range. By default all soft hits are mapped between MIDI velocity values 1 to 20 and played in a randomized manner. Hard hits are triggered by a MIDI velocity of 127, again in a randomized manner, so as to make sure no two hits in a sequence is the same. Finally, gradient hits are triggered between velocities 21 and 126.

What catches my eye here is the bit about how mvel=127 (and only 127) is what triggers a hard hit.
So bearing in mind the kind of midi file I guess most of us are using [where only the first hit will =127],
in theory it looks like we might not really be tapping into that pool of hard hits.

Then again, there is this "humanizing" feature:-

<Semi Seq> adds extra randomness for gradient hits. When this option is ON samples are picked from the layer associated with the incoming MIDI as well as neighbouring layers (1 or 2 either side depending on instrument). This allows for low layers population while still retaining adequate variation.

I'm hoping that these "neighbouring" layers include, for example, the layer of hard hits which neighbours
the gradient hits which do apply directly to those midi velocities down from 126 inclusive.

Anybody more enlightened than me care to comment on this?  Am I interpreting correctly?  (I'm not sure
that I really understand some of their terminology).  It seems to be potentially important because on the
whole, when we play a .dsnd, were going to be playing that gradient layer......

[Louis]

Hi Slap,

Probably you know much more about Superior Drummer than I do. I also read that part of the manual and interpret it as you do, but I am not actually 100% sure.

On http://www.shortestpath.se/dsoundtool/manual/sd.html you can find:

"A tip: you might want to set Velocity Control such that in-velocity 124 is mapped to 127 as shown in the picture above. In my experience this results in a little bit more dynamic dsnd sounds. You can experiment what sounds best. "

This was inspired by the part of the manual that you quoted. I think that with this velocity control setting, all midi hits in the file with volume >= 124 will be mapped to samples from the hard-hit pool. If you do not change the velocity control, you will only get 1 hard-hit sample if you use a midi file generated by DSoundTool.

[Jman]

Look away now if you're not interested in making .dsnd files....

What you meant by that statement ..... really should have been, Look away now if you have already built a Gazillion .dsnd files from Superior Drummer....... and you didn't realize you have missed out on a whole bunch of the higher velocity samples when building them ... 

[Jman]

One thing on a lot of the SD snares ..... The highest velocity hits are Rimshots on the Head .... that is one thing I went back and editted out of many of the snares by splitting out the MIDI files and manually extracting the unwanted sounds ..., since if I want a Rimshot .... I want to hit a Rimshot and not get that on the head ... So in those cases it prolly would be good to know just what velocity their Rimshot samles come in at ...

Next time I do any dsnds from SD2 .... I'll definitely remap the velocity to 124 top though ...

[Jman]

On a lighter note though .... it really seems like almost anything you build from SD2.0 comes out sounding pretty darn good.... at least that is how it seems to me .... I've got a lot of dsnds now that I built from the first time I was experimenting .....  even when I had no idea at all what I was doing and they sound real nice....

[Slap the drummer]

On a lighter note though .... it really seems like almost anything you build from SD2.0 comes out sounding pretty darn good.... at least that is how it seems to me .... I've got a lot of dsnds now that I built from the first time I was experimenting .....  even when I had no idea at all what I was doing and they sound real nice....

Gotta say, I feel the same.
In a lot of cases (snares, rides) I don't even like the hard hits - and I tend always to top and tail the
output files anyway!

It's a shame though that so many possible samples are wasted...

[Slap the drummer]

On http://www.shortestpath.se/dsoundtool/manual/sd.html you can find:

"A tip: you might want to set Velocity Control such that in-velocity 124 is mapped to 127 as shown in the picture above. In my experience this results in a little bit more dynamic dsnd sounds. You can experiment what sounds best. "

This was inspired by the part of the manual that you quoted. I think that with this velocity control setting, all midi hits in the file with volume >= 124 will be mapped to samples from the hard-hit pool. If you do not change the velocity control, you will only get 1 hard-hit sample if you use a midi file generated by DSoundTool.

Thanks Louis... I see now...

So following on from this tip from Louis, I did a quick experiment:-
I mapped 60 to 127 and then had a look at the output.
The result was a lot of hits all with exactly the same volume (db).

So in other words, the pool of hard hits can be accessed, but at a price.  Because the incoming
midi velocities are themselves remapped to 127.  I was kind of hoping the hits themselves would
be 'remapped' to the original velocities.

Remapping 124=127 seems like a clever idea.



If anybody wanted more of the hard stuff, here is one way to work round it -

Do a normal export (file A).
Remap 127=50, or anything extreme, and do a second export (file B).

The idea now is to apply a manual fade across file B.  This is very easy in sound forge.  You just
open the file, find the 'fade out' tool on the menu bar, and apply a setting like start=100%
and end=75%.

Then open file A and join it to file B.

The DSoundTool should do the rest 

[digitalDrummer]

here is one way to work round it -

Do a normal export (file A).
Remap 127=50, or anything extreme, and do a second export (file B).

The idea now is to apply a manual fade across file B.  This is very easy in sound forge.  You just
open the file, find the 'fade out' tool on the menu bar, and apply a setting like start=100%
and end=75%.

Then open file A and join it to file B.

The DSoundTool should do the rest 

Hey man, are you explaining how to programme the re-entry of satellite remotely? This stuff iswayyyy too hard. I'll just settle for what I'm getting now.

[Slap the drummer]

Hey man, are you explaining how to programme the re-entry of satellite remotely? This stuff iswayyyy too hard. I'll just settle for what I'm getting now.

Aw shucks....

It's really not hard at all.  It just sounds like it is, and I didn't really describe it that clearly.  It needs
a few screen shots to clarify probably.

But like I say, Louis's method is a great idea.  And will give a bit of variety at the max velocity,
without any effort.