Question on trigger samples with drums

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 11:57 am

Hey guys,

Was wondering if any one knows of a decent tutorial I can take a read up on about how to make samples trigger upon and event from input of an instrument such as electric drum kit in Nuendo or Cubase?

Hope you can help, google didn't find much on it, although I don't know the correct term for what I am looking for which could be why.

Thanks for any help given in advance Smile

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 2:30 pm

Hi,
There has to be guides out there for this. I'd say search something like "triggering samples nuendo realtime" or something like that. I assume you'd be using MIDI from the electric drums into the soundcard/software. So I think you would assign each drum to a MIDI track with the "input" on the corresponding channel set to the drum of choice. I don't know how far you've gotten, so you may even need to assign parameters for a generic device for Nuendo to recognize your drums. Info on that can be found in the manual. Next, You want to get something such as Sds72k which is:

"Console for triggering samples in realtime. You can load up to 10 .wav files, mono or stereo, 16-24bits/ 8-96Khz. Each sample has its own and independent stereo out to the mixer of your VST host, so it can be individually processed. There're a total of 8 selectable stereo out busses."

Then insert it into the "VST instruments" chain and assign each midi channel/track's output (in nuendo's mixer section) to an input of the Sds72k. You can select WAV files in each channel as well as mess with the pitch and all of that. It's free, and there are other software's out there that can do this. It's much to complex to explain in a single post, and I do not know your level of familiarity with those hosts, but I hope this helps at least a little bit. Smile

Someone else may be able to give you a link or some advice that isn't as disjointed and confusing as mine. I tend to use a lot of words to say nothing.

Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 4:32 pm

This isn't really something in you do in cubase/nuendo on it's own. You will want to have some additional software (VSTi) to do this.

Like BrianaW said, I'm sure there are some tutorials out there. If you can't find any, check out the following programs: Battery, DFH, BFD. Descriptions of those will give you an idea of how this works. If you do a search here on triggers/drums/MIDI you'll find several very informative posts which will probably answer your questions. I know I've done it a few times before.

That said, here's a quickie:

First you need a drum kit that can transmit MIDI data. Well, you don't NEED it but it makes things easier.

Next you need an audio plug-in like Battery, BFD or DFH that plays drum samples from MIDI data/tracks.

You record the MIDI output from your drum kit to MIDI tracks in Cubase which is set to output the MIDI data to the drum plug-in.

You set up the audio output from the plug-in to be routed to one or more tracks in the recording software. You can route each drum to it's own track if you want.

From there you can mix the drums as if they were recorded from a live kit with microphones.

Done.

Now for the more complex...

The part left out of the explanation above is the drum mapping. Cubase has what are called drum maps. A drum map tells you which MIDI note number corresponds to a particular drum. For example MIDI note number 36 may be set up for a kick drum. So, you would need to set up your electronic kit so that the kick drum sends out MIDI note number 36. You would continue this process for each drum so that your electronic kit is sending the proper MIDI notes for your drum plug-in.

Most electronic drum kits come with their own "brain" which outputs both audio (drum sounds) and MIDI data. If the electronic drum kit doesn't have a "brain" you'll need some sort of device to convert the triggers to MIDI data. Roland makes one as do other companies.

If you don't like the drum sounds that come with the electronic kit you are using you can use different sounds by recording the MIDI data from the drum brain into a sequencer/audio program like Cubase and having that MIDI data trigger different drum samples via a plug-in or VST instrument.

There are many VSTs desgned for just this purpose. A couple ready-made ones are BFD and DFH. They come preset with drum kits and also have drum maps which make it easy to set up your MIDI tracks. If you have your own drum samples that you want to use check out Battery by Native Instruments. It allows you to create drum kits out of your own drum samples and then trigger them.

Another thing I wanted to mention...
For drums, you don't need to have your MIDI data separated out onto individual tracks for each drum in the kit. That can all be on one MIDI track. Some people do keep it separate for different reasons. That's really up to you.

Ramble on.

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 10:33 am

Great infomation guys! I understand what you mean so will give it a try. Thanks!

One question though, is it physically achievable if the input was not midi ? But rather audio? Say i recording my guitar... and on a certain chord that I strum, the plugin hears that chord and plays a synth for example in the background.... I am thinking in my head this is probably not achievable and is almost very impossible to make it detect the chord accurately? But if it can be done do you know how the audio to midi trigger would work.. perhaps a specialist plugin ?

I shall tinker with the midi drum thing Smile

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 10:41 am

There is such a thing, I saw Bill Bailey use one in his stand up Part Troll.
I can't seem to find it using google though.
And I don't think it's just a plugin, I think you need hardware for it so dollars could be a factor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGA_ArKTIEI
At 7m:30s, *want*.
/I highly recommend the entire series.

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 12:49 pm

With drums, MIDI or audio can be used because the transient's of a drum make it easy to detect when one is hit. Drumagog is a program commonly used to trigger drum samples from audio drums rather than MIDI drums.

As for the guitar thing, I don't know of anything that will detect a specific chord and trigger a synth. But if you were using a MIDI guitar you could do something like that. However, as Greener said, it's a hardware thing and although not expensive, it aint cheap either.

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 1:50 pm

Thanks for the replies! Smile

That pedal seems highly accurate for his acoustic... quite remarkable. If only he mentioned the name of the pedal!

Some one has suggested on msn it might be a roland hex pickup.

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 2:58 pm

I don't know what Bill uses but if you have time to experiment, there is a very good piece of software called KTDrum Trigger. I use it for drums but it can be used for any type of instrument. You can use filters to eliminate unwanted frequencies from the source. For example you could trigger a midi note 60 (= c4) if 261.63 Hz (= c4) occures in your source and you tune your filters to respond only to that frequency. I know it would be a lot of programming and fine tuning but it might be worth it. I have never tried to use it this way. The plugin is free!

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 3:04 pm

Is there a mathematical understanding with 60 (= c4) ? How do you guys know what the number represents ?

I shall check that plugin out.. thankyou .

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 3:53 pm

C0 = 16.35 Hz = midi note 12
C1 = 32.70 Hz = midi note 24
and so on...

Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 5:18 pm

Argh i see... thankyou Smile

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