MT Power Drums curiosity

[spantini]

When left-clicking on a key in piano roll you get a different velocity sounding at different points. Far left produces a low velocity and it increases as you move to the right.

Is there a way to make use of this? I can't get it to do anything other than audition velocities.

 

[TalismanRich]

You can record midi from the keys themselves. I loaded MTPDK and recorded this snare by varying the velocity on the key. It didn't record the midi notes from the looks of it, but rather the audio from the plug-in itself. But you can see how the velocity changed as I moved up and down the key. I don't know how valuable this would be as it would be tough to try to play anything that way.
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[TalismanRich]

Turns out that if you record from the virtual keyboard (Alt B), it will record the velocities. I couldn't get the MTPDK keyboard to work but load up the virtual keyboard and it works the same way. When you look at the midi notes, the velocities change.

 

[spantini]

Man. That would be a hell of a way to record a track. I could see maybe using it like a single pad thing tapping out one note/instrument, but a controller keyboard/pad would be a much better solution. I wonder if there's some really good use for it, or is it just some weird, coincidental, unintended capability? Hmmm...

 

[TalismanRich]

I would guess that it's a function of the midi implementation. Midi does react to velocity, so that things like pianos can record soft vs hard. It probably was just a way to preserve the function.

Have you ever used the "Humanize" function in MTPDK? You basically have a random number seed, and you set how much off time or off velocity the hit can vary. So if you put time at 3% and the velocity at 20-25%, then it will randomly vary over that range. I found that randomizing V makes things sound less robotic, without losing the locked in timing. A 5% timing variation helps a touch more.

Put the timing at 30% and you get one REALLY sloppy drummer!

Raw Groove

Humanized Groove

 

[spantini]

I haven't used Humanize yet. I've been manually setting random velocities at the bottom of the screen with each note step entered from the MTPDK keyboard. I'll play around with it and see how I like it - looks good.

Same here with the two keyboards - the MTPDK keys did not record MIDI or Waveform, but the Virtual Keyboard worked fine, even displayed the red MIDI signal on the track fader. Velocities recorded fine with notes. The first run worried me because the notes didn't appear in the piano roll, only in the track, but double-clicking the track item afterward redisplayed the notes in the piano roll.

Your raw and humanized grooves sound the same to my untrained ears. I understand it could just be a matter of how it feels, that's what I strive for without it being obvious.

How did you get MTPDK to record audio using it's keyboard?

 

[TalismanRich]

You just need to listen to the different attacks on things like the snare drum. Sometimes, the sound is just a bit softer. But, it's something that is really easy to play with. Just move the slider, hit the "Use New Seed" and listen to the effect. If you don't like it, just CTRL Z and back up. See if this is easier to pick up. I upped the Vel to 60% and did the same intro back to back.

As for recording the audio, I just put a regular track on, then added MTPDK. I thought it would record the midi notes, but when I actually did the recording, it came out as wave files. Maybe it's whether you set it up as an audio track or a midi track. I can't really say why it did that.

I'm not a drummer, so I'll never even try to do it with a real keyboard. It's either assembling the grooves, or getting a real person to do the drumming. I have thought about just using a couple of mics and then recording by pounding on my knees or a box or something, then using those sounds to trigger midi notes to be played via MTPDK or my SR16. There's always a way to do something if you try hard enough.

 

[spantini]

As for recording the audio, I just put a regular track on, then added MTPDK. I thought it would record the midi notes, but when I actually did the recording, it came out as wave files. Maybe it's whether you set it up as an audio track or a midi track. I can't really say why it did that.

I did try that as a regular track. Nothing was recorded, just a flat line. No audio or MIDI notes. Adding a MIDI item records MIDI notes ok, just can't get the audio waves while recording. It's a puzzler.