2 questions - hihat control, magazine

[guttadaj]

Hello, fellow Cakeys.

Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but since I use SONAR and there are tons of helpful people here, I'll give it a shot...

I'm looking for some level of realism in my hi-hat tracks that I have not been able to find yet. It seems like the hi-hat is closed or open and that you can hit it like that hard or soft. I'm looking for more control than that. Ideally, I'd love to be able to have "hihat openness" be tied to a controller, so I could slowly change the hihat to be less tightly closed as I build into a heavier part. Know what I mean? Anybody know how to do this? I just started playing with Soundfonts, and I am hopeful that maybe this is the ticket, but I'm still exploring and figuring them out.

My second question is a quickie... I currently subscribe to Electronic Musician, but I find that a majority of it is aimed at a more serious/professional audience than me - more pricey gear and more elaborate/complicated set-ups/discussions than a "weekend warrior" home recording amateur like me would be dealing with. Anyone know of a magazine more at the hobbyist level? (Wish there were a Home Recording BBS magazine )

Thanks,
-Jeff

 

[ChorazaiM]

I'm looking for some level of realism in my hi-hat tracks that I have not been able to find yet. It seems like the hi-hat is closed or open and that you can hit it like that hard or soft. I'm looking for more control than that. Ideally, I'd love to be able to have "hihat openness" be tied to a controller, so I could slowly change the hihat to be less tightly closed as I build into a heavier part. Know what I mean? Anybody know how to do this? I just started playing with Soundfonts, and I am hopeful that maybe this is the ticket, but I'm still exploring and figuring them out.

Well, this doesn't directly answer your question about tying in the "openess" to a controller (I've no extrenal controllers, hence never messed with it), what i do in order to get a more realistic drum sound is this : build up a kit of varying samples, all at the same volume but with different approaches, assign each sample to a different range of velocity, and then apply random velocity to the pattern. Now, with this method, you do lose the ability to use velocity as a "build up" (ie: from a soft to hard sound gradually over multiple samples), but what you gain is a relatively realistic sound overall. maybe not the most orthodox approach to drum programming, but a very quick & dirty way to get different samples for the same kit randomly - and the more samples per hit/piece, the more realistic the sound. Drummers don't usually hit the hihat the EXACT same way each and every hit, so this sort of compensates for that. Of course, in today's triggered drum sound world, one's view of "realistic" may be quite different from anothers

 

[AlChuck]

I currently subscribe to Electronic Musician, but I find that a majority of it is aimed at a more serious/professional audience than me - more pricey gear and more elaborate/complicated set-ups/discussions than a "weekend warrior" home recording amateur like me would be dealing with. Anyone know of a magazine more at the hobbyist level?

Sure... check out Home Recording

http://www.homerecordingmag.com/

 

[James Argo]

Sure... check out Home Recording

http://www.homerecordingmag.com/

That's very cool of you, Chuck

BTW, about the hihat, indeed it's one of the hunted sound in MIDI / soundfonts field. You must try multi-layered soundfonts (eg. GoldDrums, BlueJay, etc..). They are the best that I found


Jaymz

 

[guttadaj]

ChorazaiM - Thanks for the response - that sounds like a smooth approach. I don't have a drum kit, so doing my own sampling isn't an option. If there are any good soundfonts out there that take your approach, though, I'd love to hear about them.

AlChuck - Thanks for the link. It was very cool of you, indeed, and looks just like what I'm looking for.

Jaymz - Thanks - I'll check out those soundfonts you mentioned. (BTW, many thanks for your old soundfont instructional post - it really helped me understand how to work with them.)

 

[Paul881]

Battery from NI is a virtual drum synth that you can load up with your own samples and soundfonts etc. It has the option to stop a sound playback when another is activated. IOW, a drummer might activate the HiHat with his foot and then before the sound dies away, activate it again. Or he might hit the HiHat with his drum stick, effectively killing off the previous sound.

 

[ChorazaiM]

ChorazaiM - Thanks for the response - that sounds like a smooth approach. I don't have a drum kit, so doing my own sampling isn't an option. If there are any good soundfonts out there that take your approach, though, I'd love to hear about them.

I use "Drumkit From Hell" (http://drumkit.toontrack.com), but there are quite a lot of multi-layered drum kits out there. Heard good things about the "Blue Jay" kit on soundfound end of things

 

[bamboo]

@ guttadaj:

I think that a good multi-layered multi-velocity soundbank will do what you want to do. You can have as many as 127 samples for each hihat, which is more than enough imho. Problem is, putting many different samples into one bank increases its size, and the requirements for your DAW increase accordingly. Therefore, it all boils down to realism/compting power tradeoff. As for soundfonts - BlueJay Drums from Sonic Implants are very good. I'm not sure how many samples per instrument they have thogh. There are great drumkits in AKAI format that can be converted to soundfonts using CdXtract.

 

[moskus]

My second question is a quickie... I currently subscribe to Electronic Musician, but I find that a majority of it is aimed at a more serious/professional audience than me - more pricey gear and more elaborate/complicated set-ups/discussions than a "weekend warrior" home recording amateur like me would be dealing with. Anyone know of a magazine more at the hobbyist level? (Wish there were a Home Recording BBS magazine )

I subscribe to Computer Music. They don't distribute Home Recording in Norway...