Topic by Jake Johnson

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  • Jake Johnson
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Topic: Image-line has released a physically modelled drum kit vsti\au

Currently priced as "what you want to pay if higher than 9 euros."
There's a demo version. (EDIT: I first said that the ride cymbal was bad, but once I played with the tension and the phase, it got much better.)

The default drum set doesn't sound that great, but if you click on Load and choose one of the acoustic sets, it sounds more serious. With a patch loaded, click on the name of the instrument\Load to put a different snare, say, into the same drum set while the drum seq keeps playing.

[EDIT: There was a problem for Logic users, but according to user posts on KVR, it's been cleared up. The demo\instrument should load fine now. )

A few modelling controls (membrane material, tension, etc) for each instrument. The kits have default patterns attached to them, but you can of course create your own. Takes up little space, compared to drum samples (but much more than PianoTeq), loads fast, has a drum seq, etc. Hard not to like:

http://www.image-line.com/documents/drumaxx.html

A vst or au or FL instrument.
No way to control the beat rate on the vsti. Use your host sequencer's tempo\beat rate for that.
Doesn't seem to have any kind of randomization control.

I can imagine a clav on top of some of these beats. You can load this and PianoTeq on a notebook and be using under 600 megs of RAM. Might work on a netbook...?

EDIT: Seems to have some acoustic instruments that sound better in some of the presets and some that sound better than others. The snare is better in one, the tom better in another, etc. Have to mix and match to pull something together.

And put some reverb on this. Very different animal.

Last edited by Jake Johnson (04-03-2010 02:13)

Reply by Jake Johnson

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  • Jake Johnson
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Re: Image-line has released a physically modelled drum kit vsti\au

I apologize for this side-trip into physically modelled drums. (May I pass this topic off as a physical modelling topic?)

A brief take with FEW changes in two patterns, changing the drums and one pattern slightly, and just using the drums, to expose the sound. Obviously, some sounds are better than others. Bass drum and snare hits are often good.  I still haven't explored the many, many snares, highhats, etc, or all of the mods. Hard to work with the cymbals in general. Small changes = big effects. Mine aren't great. Done in MuLab using its internal MuVerb set to Small Room with a few adjustments. Again, I'm just letting the patterns play to expose the sound. Nothing fancy here. The second pattern is better.

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...anoTeq.mp3

I was wrong, in a way, about the absence of randomization--there is slight automatic randomization by default, and you can modulate several physically modelled elements (drum head material, tension, etc) on each instrument in each kit by velocity, and then set the velocity of each hit with tiny, tiny sliders beside each hit on the drum pattern bar, which can have 64 hits for each instrument before the pattern repeats. Lots of room for variation.

At first, I thought that the instrument couldn't record to midi--it doesn't record each note in a normal way to midi. But as things turn out, the program is actually very sophisticated with midi: each drum pattern can be triggered by a midi note, so you just insert that note as a long, continuous note for the pattern to play as long as you want, or alternate between patterns by inserting different key presses. Very clean, since it lets you cut and paste patterns in the sequencer easily. (But the key names seem off--according to the program, I can play C5 to start one of the patterns, but middle C actually triggers it. But you can change the trigger keys.)

Most of the patterns appear to be in 4/4. Not hard to change the pattern length to a multiple of 3 or anything else and change the hits around.

Sorry. Long post for a some rock drum patterns. I don't know much about what's already been done with physically modelled drums. There may be better sounds out, etc. For me, though, this opens up some windows.

Last edited by Jake Johnson (03-03-2010 18:46)