Drum-roll please!

OldMegaNerd

New member
[h=2]ok I posted this in "MIDI Mania" so I might be getting spanked for making
a dupe... sorry I didn't even KNOW there WAS an Ableton forum! (I subscribed!)
[/h]
Midi is an entirely new thing for me but exciting!
"Voice" it with a kit and I'm a drummer!

OK I know there HAS to be a way to do this the way I want to;
OK so I use a cheapo MIDI keyboard to do my drums (no push
button pads. Can't do it.) So, what I want to do is set up my
grid so that I can hold a key down and it will add a "drum roll"
by adding repeated hits... has to be, right?

I looked for "staccato" and the "Arpeggio" of course is wrong...
or am I missing something?

I am using Live 9 and the manual for it is something like 697 pages.
I don't have that kind of time left on the planet. Most of those
sections in the manual are BASICS at THAT and I can't find anything.
I feel like I have a "Nomenclature" problem here. It's there, I just
don't know what it's called.

Whatzaaaaap????
 
Not sure about Abbleton, but none of the sequencers I'm aware of has a drum roll feature because they are easier to do with a proper sample. The snag is real drum rolls are not tied to the tempo, so all the piano roll editors struggle because the MIDI timing is tied to tempo, and has a limit in terms of maximum number of notes. If you experiment with putting in the most notes the thing will accept they're not fast enough for a proper roll that changes in timing by the height of the sticks above the skin - a gentle roll will be quiet but incredibly fast (more than MIDI can even do), and then as it gets louder, the hits are further apart. With MIDI being base don note on and note off messages, it just cannot keep up. A real recording of a snare roll is always best. I have never heard any MIDI based system replicate it. On Electronic kits you can do decent rolls, but record that MIDI stream and it's gone. Perhaps you could record a roll on a solid surface, then examine the waveform and count the number of hits. There will far, far more than you think on a proper roll.Paradiddles are much slower, but even they, when played by a good drummer soon blur into a new sound that MIDI can't reproduce.
 
...The snag is real drum rolls are not tied to the tempo, ...MIDI timing is tied to tempo, and has a limit in terms of maximum number of notes. ... (You explain how an actual drum roll is done on drums)... A real recording of a snare roll is always best. I have never heard any MIDI based system replicate it.

I was actually thinking seriously of getting eDrums, but it's not in the cards for right now, because I want champagne quality, but don't even have a (good) beer budget!

What I want more than anything aren't snare rolls, but just some (relatively) slower tom-tom rolls at maybe 4x tempo?
This would just add a little interest, hep build "tempo bridges" to changing drum timing sections...
I don't know if I'm making any sense. I guess maybe I can try "Drawing" them in (Ableton Live9 lets you draw
individual midi notes in by clicking and dragging along a section of the midi tracks grid...

Hmmm. Maybe I answered my own question! I really still did want a way to hold down a key and let
my midi controller add hits into the grid for me. Or the DAW more like. But I don't mean FAST or changing
tempo rolls like a real drummer does You're right; taking an (audio) sample of a slow, even tempo roll
might do what I want. I'll try that.
Thanks!
 
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