Go Back   Cockos Incorporated Forums > REAPER Forums > Recording Technologies and Techniques

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 01-23-2009, 12:46 PM   #1
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default Drum Sampler Tutorial - Power for free

I have seen lots of posts about drum VSTs, samplers, EZ, AD, BFD etc and questions on how to get started with drum VSTs. I thought maybe it would be good if someone did a tutorial on how to set up a powerful drum sampler with your own kit pieces.

I am no expert on samplers by any means but I did make my own GM drum sampler about a year ago with which I was, and still am very impressed. It will take a bit of effort but I think this is valuable education for me as well, and hopefully we can all get something out of it.

This will be based around Shortcircuit 1.1.2. This sampler has filters and oscillators I haven't even explored yet, because I really only wanted a drum kit to sound like a drum kit, depending on the genre you might want to get in to some that at a later date but for now I would like to introduce you to the concept of high quality multi layered drum sampling on the cheap.


A word of caution here, this tutorial may not be suitable for the total newcomer to digital audio, and it assumes you have a basic grasp of Reaper and you have set up your ins and outs etc. However it's not going to be rocket science either and you can learn in a few pages of text what took me several months of trials and error


You can get a pdf of these instructions here if you wish:
Teds Shortcircuit Tutorial PDF




The first thing you are going to need is Shortcircuit 1.1.2 so go and download it now - here: http://vemberaudio.se/shortcircuit.php



The next thing you are going to need is some drum samples. Sure I could upload a bunch of samples for you do use but for one thing you might not like my taste, and for another it's good to learn how to make your own.
There are lot's of ways to do that, you can record them, there are probably thousands to download if you don't mind searching, and you can cut, paste and edit in your favorite audio editor from audio loops and takes of your choice, but I don't want to get too hung up on that side of things right at this moment, perhaps we can address some of these things a bit later on if need be.

Edit:Smurf has made some links to some great samples in his post here: http://forum.cockos.com/showpost.php...48&postcount=5

So, if you have downloaded Shortcircuit and you have it in your VST folder and Reaper can see it, we are ready to go to work.

Before you do anything with Shortcircuit, if you don't want to be pulling your hair out because you forgot where you put you samples etc you should make a directory on your audio drive specifically for this work, call it Shortcircuit or similar and then make another folder inside that called samples, this will your repository for all of your samples.

Then we shall begin, but now it's tea time

The next part to follow shortly
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 01-29-2009 at 03:41 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-23-2009, 01:47 PM   #2
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default Part two

Right, if you have installed Shortcircuit (from here on I'll call it SC) and you have a few samples we can get busy.

Open SC with the FX button on a Reaper track, record arm the track, and set your midi keyboard or input device, if you don't have a midi keyboard you can use Reaper's virtual keyboard, but you will have to keep selecting with the mouse before you can hear anything.Now you have the track set up you might want to save this as a template to make life a bit easier.

Now first of all you want to configure your samples folder so it's easier to find your samples, just click on the config button, then enter the path of your samples folder. It is very important to check "store samples in project directory" otherwise you will have to search for them. More about this later

In the top left corner is a panel marked 1-16, select midi channel 1 and we will start to build our drum kit.

Now when you press the "Load" button SC should go straight to your samples folder. Hopefully you can find a decent kick drum in there, insert it and you will see it appear in the left hand column and the wave form appears in the top window.

While you are here take note of the boxes below the waveform - "replace sample" "external editor" and then the window which will have "forward" in it, if you leave this when you play a note it will mute the sample as soon as you take your finger off the the key, we want it to continue after we let go so click on here and select "forward shot".

Now what we have to do is take a close look at the Zone Range window. WE are building a GM kit which starts at C1, so that means our Kick drum goes on the C1 key.

We are mostly concerned with the top three rows of options:

Low key: is the lowest key your keyboard will play the note
Root key: is the key which will play the note without any pitch shift
High key: is the highest key on you keyboard that will play the note

Below these three is a very useful function indeed for us:- Learn all

If you have a keyboard connected press the "Learn all" button hit your C1 key and SC will save you fiddling here and enter C1 in all three boxes, which is what we want. The only other thing to do is make sure the MIDI ch is set to 1.

You should now hear your Kick sample played on the C1 key and no other key.





Now before I go any further I need to explain about saving in SC. This is quite complicated but it will be fine once you get the hang of it


You want to right click in the left column and select the option "save channel and samples".
Hopefully it will default to the samples folder you set earlier, if not you should browse to that and save there. Your channel will then be saved as a .scg file and a subfoler of you samples will be created with the name you choose for the channel - I call mine GM Kit.

Now save your project.

Note:
there is some oddness when you reopen the project it does not find the samples first time and SC will put up a window for you to enter the path of your files - in my case Shortcircuit\GM Kit however once you have done this it will remember it next time. so I Suggest you do this now before you forget



The next installment will be about layering different velocities

PS If anyone is following this I wouldn't mind some feedback
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 01-23-2009 at 05:59 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-24-2009, 07:25 AM   #3
MichaJo
Human being with feelings
 
MichaJo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,772
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tedwood View Post
PS If anyone is following this I wouldn't mind some feedback
< quiet but interested reader here

I've got a nice multilayered sample set of a little vintage drumset recorded dry, room and overhead with presets for battery2, halion113, halion3, kontakt151, kontakt2 and reason...
I own none of them. Now i'd like to try to setup shortcircuit.
Shortcuit reads battery3 "kit" format but no battery2 "kt2"
So i'm very interested in your tutorial.
Please go on

One question: is there a reason why you don't use shortcircuit 2?

Michael
MichaJo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-24-2009, 10:32 AM   #4
Smurf
Human being with feelings
 
Smurf's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 2,173
Default

I got you so far, so I will keep an eye on this thread.....top of the bookmarks!
__________________
Yep's First 3 Years in PDF's
HP Z600 w/3GHz 12 Core, 48GB Memory, nVidia Quadro 5800, 240GB SSD OS drive, 3 480GB SSD Sample/Storage drives, 18TB External Storage, Dual 27" Monitors
Smurf is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-24-2009, 10:48 AM   #5
Smurf
Human being with feelings
 
Smurf's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 2,173
Default

As a side note, here is a list of real acoustic drum samples that I have used with good results, and that I listed in the Drum Replacer thread. All are free to use....

Tom Hicks Samples
http://kondratko.com/TomHicks/tom_hicks_samples.html


Tchackpoum - Grab the Lagrosse Set
http://tchackpoum.free.fr/


Michael Kingston Ruffrider & Easyrider
http://www.michaelkingston.fi/kingstondrums/files.html


G&S Custom Work Drum kit Sample Library 1.0
http://www.autodafe.net/dblog/storico.asp?s=Samples

I hope this helps!
__________________
Yep's First 3 Years in PDF's
HP Z600 w/3GHz 12 Core, 48GB Memory, nVidia Quadro 5800, 240GB SSD OS drive, 3 480GB SSD Sample/Storage drives, 18TB External Storage, Dual 27" Monitors

Last edited by Smurf; 01-24-2009 at 10:58 AM. Reason: A bad link
Smurf is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-24-2009, 12:18 PM   #6
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default

Great stuff Smurf, some really great samples there!

Micheal, I don't use Shortcircuit 2 because I got stuck trying to figure out how to do a forward shot - couldn't find the play mode anywhere, It does have some better features but I didn't find it very intuitive
Maybe someone can help with that eh?

Anyhoo! to business.

Layering


You should have been able to open your project with everything working, if not you can reload the channel from the load button. Now we are going to layer the kick drum, for a really good kit in the traditional sense you would want samples of the same drum hit soft through to hard. To keep things simple and to demonstrate other possibilities I am just going to use the same sample in different ways. I will only do two layers, you might not even want different samples and layers for you genre, but this will demonstrate the principals.

Depending on your level of experience you may find this a little confusing, if so I would urge you not to be too hasty and give up, just take your time and go through it methodically and it become quite simple once you get past this stage

You have one kick drum in your channel, now right click on the sample in the channel window (left column) and select the option "clone (same key range)", and you get an identical sample with the same settings as your first. Now look at the Zone Range settings, both your samples are set at 127 max vel, and 0 min vel. This needs changing.

This is how you want them to look

Kick 1: min vel: 0; max vel: 90
Kick 2: min vel: 91; max vel: 127

Note: easy way to enter vel value is to double click, type value - press Enter

Now you can see our first sample will be triggered up to a velocity of 90, thereafter the second sample will be triggered, of course 90 is just an arbitrary figure I chose and a mutli sampled kit might have many more layers, you will surprised at what you can do with just a couple of layers though.

If you followed my simple suggestion and used the same sample we need some tricks to make them sound like one is being hit harder than the other. It's not just a matter of volume, there is eq, pitch and attack involved too, probably all kinds of other stuff like harmonics as well, but I digress.

So with sample one we want softer, duller sort of tone. This work is best done with midi keyboard input because you need to feel the velocities and hear the results, if you don't have midi keys the best alternative is to use a midi item on your track with alternating soft and hard notes and set it to play repeat.

Now make sure you are working on your first sample, hit your C1 key with varying degrees of velocity and it gets louder and that's all, now we are going to change the value in the vel sens, you can experiment but I am going to set mine at -50db instead of the default -30db. You should immediately notice you can get softer hits and better dynamics on your kick drum now, if not make sure you are working on the right sample (easy mistake).

Now we will change the pitch a little, set the "coarse tune" to -1.

Next some EQ. In the filter 1 box select either of the EQ options. I chose the parametric and made the following adjustments to give a slightly softer sound, you could also use the graphic EQ or experiement with any of the other options of course:

gain: +6db
freq: 100Hz
BW: 1.6
gain: -6.3
freq: 1.7Hz
BW: 3.1

I also compensated slightly for the overall boost by changing the "amplitude" setting in the "output" box to -2db.

Of course I have no idea whether this will suit your samples but it works a treat with my Gretch Kick sample

That's it for sample 1. Now is a good time to save your channel again as before (right click, save channel+samples)

This is how the sample looks showing the EQ graph -





Sample two.
From now on it starts to get easy, but it also gets fiddly, you will pick up speed surprisingly fast though

This is really just a few simple tweaks, now you know what these do I will just give a simple list.

Makes sure sample two is selected, the vel should already be: min 91 and max 127, so just a few changes in the zone box.

This time I don't touch the vel sens at -30db
I set the coarse tune at 1
I select the graphic EQ this time and carve a little scoop out of the middle and add a little to the top to give me more attack, and I have to adjust the amplitude in the output box by ear until the transition between both samples sounds natural when I hit the C1 key.

Now that's it for the first sample, save it as before and save your project.

Next session we will get stuck into some multi sample snares.
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 01-24-2009 at 02:57 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-24-2009, 05:59 PM   #7
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default

It's interesting how things develop, I started this tutorial with the intention of sharing the little bit of knowledge I have on building your own powerful drum sampler. Since then I downloaded the drum Custom Works drum library Smurf posted and it is a great set of drum samples, actually two kits in as many as twelve velocities, maybe more than you might care to use, then again why not?

I'm just making this post now because I highly recommend you download the bundle if you can, then we would all be singing from the same song book. it's about 181 Mb

http://www.autodafe.net/dblog/storico.asp?s=Samples

If you can't download it by the time this tutorial concludes I think I will try to make a cut down version as a ready made Shortcircuit kit available, it will be with "only" about six layers though - enough for a very nice kit of drums
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 01-24-2009 at 06:02 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-24-2009, 07:34 PM   #8
Smurf
Human being with feelings
 
Smurf's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 2,173
Default

I'm glad you found it useful Tedwood! All 4 kits have very different sounds, great for different tunes & styles.

My goal is to use your great info to create 6 kits to use, these 4, plus I have the full 5 DVD ns7_kit sample library that I am really wanting to use. I have EZD & Addictive drums, but the processed sounds is really not that flexible. I mean, they sounds great for R&R, electric guitar based stuff, but are a little over the top when doing Folksy-Eagles type stuff. This is where Bluenoise "MyDrumset" and SuperDrum FX comes in handy, the raw sounds make it blend great with Acoustic guitars, mando, & bass.

I also have a kit that sounds good, but I don't have a clue where I got it from. The folder has a date of 11-07, but there is no other info (and I always place any & all info I can with every folder!). This is a Sonar kit with Paiste & Zildjian cymbals, but the cool part is that they have Roto Tom Samples! There are an average of 8 layers for the drums and 4 for the cymbals. The Roto Toms are 2 sets, with Black Dot and Clear Heads, plus each set has Close & Room samples......If ANYONE knows where this set came from please let me know! It all came as 1 download, complete.

I really don't want to post them if it is not cool to do so...

Looking forward to some more instruction!
__________________
Yep's First 3 Years in PDF's
HP Z600 w/3GHz 12 Core, 48GB Memory, nVidia Quadro 5800, 240GB SSD OS drive, 3 480GB SSD Sample/Storage drives, 18TB External Storage, Dual 27" Monitors
Smurf is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-25-2009, 03:29 AM   #9
MichaJo
Human being with feelings
 
MichaJo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,772
Default

Thanks Smurf and Ted for the advice. I'm just about to download the GSCW drum library.
Despite i'm highly interested to read on to understand how things work and can be done in shortcircuit (thanks again Ted for posting this tutorial) i just want to mention that there are Battery map files too in "kit" format.
According to the ShortCircuit's specifications regarding the sample/instrument import features "NI battery kits (partial)." i assume that could be useful?
http://www.autodafe.net/Samples/batteryfiles.zip

Additionally i have discovered a tool "translator".
Maybe you guys know it already. But for me it was new.
It's a universal sampler file converter. There's a free version available.
http://www.chickensys.com/products/s...ranslator+Free
It's able to convert to shortcircuit format (*.scg, *.scm).

Regards

Michael
MichaJo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-25-2009, 04:40 AM   #10
hardplay
Human being with feelings
 
hardplay's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: South
Posts: 1,211
Default

Looks like none of the big ones have any reggae/ska kits,would be nice to have a couple of different kits around

btw thumbs up for this post Tedwood, i appreciate people that share their knowledge with others!!
__________________
Visita l'indice dei miei Tutorial e anche l'indice dei miei Corti
hardplay is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-25-2009, 08:05 AM   #11
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default

Glad you people are tuning in thanks for the advice and links Micheal. I don't know a lot about this stuff myself so I'm learning with you.

Hardplay, having fully customisable kits is my reason for doing this. Depending on your creative style you might just want to make a small electronic kit with no layering. So it is scalable. I will probably end up using it for the more unorthodox percussion sounds myself and it will probably change my creative output.

So now I'll try to explain a good feature we can use. SC does not have to load a whole drum kit in one go, that's handy for us because it gets confusing when you have a hundred samples. What we can do is build a layered snare and then save it as a channel, we could do that with all the pieces and save them as individual drums, I think I will save all the snares which fall on keys C#1 - E1 though, and I will also save all my toms as a channel too (on GM kit there are 6 toms). Then when it comes to loading I can choose kit pieces instead of having to choose a whole kit. you can see the benefits of being able to change your kick drum easily.

So now i am going to show you what I think is the quick easy way to do a multi layered snare, once you know this you can go back and do a proper layered kick drum instead of the cheat one I showed you earlier.

To simplify matters I have attached seven snares from the Custom Works kit for you to use here:

https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/108207/Snare_D1.zip

So put you snare samples in your SC folder open your project,

BTW I have saved a Project template for SC which saves the kit, but I didn't have the same luck with the Track template.



Now click the load button browse to the snare files folder and select all seven of them and open them. You will notice they are in order, I-7 in the stack, the quietest being the first, this is good naming convention

Now you should have all you samples on different keys C1 - F#, play the notes on your midi key board to check they are all present and correct and playing soft to loud. Now is a good time to edit them if you don't think they sound right; that's one of the reasons for having them on different keys, the other one is just coming.

When we did the kick drum we changed the min and max velocities by typing values in, there's a better way than that

click where it says "multi" at the top of your channel and the Zone window opens looking something like this:

Edit: sorry if you don't see images, there seems to problem with shup right now




At the moment they are all full length ie. velocity: 0 - 127.

By dragging the ends with your mouse you want them to look more like this





That's the velocities done but they are still spread across keys so now go back to the other window by clicking on a sample in the left pane, select all the samples by clicking the the top one, hold Shift, click bottom. The sample pane tell you Multiple Zones are selected - any changes we apply will affect all samples, that's very useful to know for other things as well.
Now click the "learn all" button and hit the midi key that will play the snare, and now they should be all on the same key, in this case probably D1.

Nearly done, I just noticed I didn't change play mode to "forward shot", we could have done that at the start and it would have been copied, however if you select all again now the change will affect all samples anyway so nothing lost really.

Great that's your seven layer snare done. Save it as channel + samples - call it Snare_D or something so you know which key it's for


Top tip

For another drum you can kinda use this a template if you want to save youself fiddling with the velocities just by replacing the samples and moving them to another key with the "learn all" function. Unfortunately it's not easy to audition the samples though.

Now you have that done that there is nothing to stop you from doing all the other drums, it's quite fiddly to do full seven layer GM kit with percussion and everything and I don't have much use for the GM standard but it's there if you want it. Personally I think I will use smaller kits, and percussion kits and put each instance on a Reaper track of it's own.

Thanks for all the help with the links and stuff, any questions and other supportive drum sampling sampling stuff. Hey why not upload a loop of you first beat made with SC to encourage others
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 01-25-2009 at 06:34 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-25-2009, 08:59 AM   #12
stratman
Human being with feelings
 
stratman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Exmouth, England
Posts: 2,687
Default

For your viewing statistics, I just thought I'd let you know that I'm tuning in and I've downloaded the samples from the link below.

http://www.autodafe.net/dblog/storico.asp?s=Samples

I'm not sure when I'll get time to put it to good use, but it's interesting stuff.

Pete
stratman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-25-2009, 09:08 AM   #13
the all new rob
Human being with feelings
 
the all new rob's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: east coast of Kansas
Posts: 681
Default

There's a significant workflow improvement available--if you make a multiple sample selection in the media explorer, then drag them all onto one key, SC will take care of all the work. It seems to go by filenames, so the last filenames will be at the top of your velocity stack, and the samples will be equally spaced across the range, however many you pick.

I have a screen cap video of this, but I'm not sure how best to post it.

Thanks for the tutorial, Tedwood.
__________________
"Well feeling (emotion) combined with an artist's discipline is the rarest thing in the world."
-- Ursula Nordstrom
the all new rob is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-25-2009, 09:24 AM   #14
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default

Really Rob? I'm amazed I haven't been able to find a way to drag and drop, you are talking about V1.1.2 and not V.2. ? Yeah of course you must be, you see my screen caps.

I going to have another look then,

Edit: Oh yeah, you're right, no harm done then, that should work perfect once the names are in order, so I have changed them
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 01-25-2009 at 06:37 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-25-2009, 09:43 AM   #15
the all new rob
Human being with feelings
 
the all new rob's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: east coast of Kansas
Posts: 681
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tedwood View Post
Hey why not upload a loop of you first beat made with SC to encourage others
This isn't my first, but I think it shows off SC pretty nicely (and the no longer free ns7_kit). I built this drum part out of several loops of playing live (different lengths--some huge), and then played cymbals live over it.

https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/376061/...rcuit-demo.mp3

I couldn't resist adding a couple more instruments, but you get the drums exposed up front.
__________________
"Well feeling (emotion) combined with an artist's discipline is the rarest thing in the world."
-- Ursula Nordstrom

Last edited by the all new rob; 01-25-2009 at 08:56 PM. Reason: re-upped the demo
the all new rob is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 06:54 AM   #16
jakerock
Human being with feelings
 
jakerock's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Brooklyn
Posts: 821
Default

tedwood...
Thanks alot for doing this! SUPER appreciated.

And, heres some more "garage / punkrockish" drumsamples I made...
Single velocity though...

http://www.jakerock.com/DIYAUDIO_JAK...RUMSAMPLES.htm

Thanks Tedwood, Jake
__________________
www.jakerock.com
www.sebadoh.com
jakerock is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 08:43 AM   #17
MichaJo
Human being with feelings
 
MichaJo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,772
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by the all new rob View Post
This isn't my first, but I think it shows off SC pretty nicely (and the no longer free ns7_kit). I built this drum part out of several loops of playing live (different lengths--some huge), and then played cymbals live over it.

https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/376061/...rcuit-demo.mp3

I couldn't resist adding a couple more instruments, but you get the drums exposed up front.
Many greetings from Dave Brubeck
Sounds nice


Michael
MichaJo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 09:42 AM   #18
Smurf
Human being with feelings
 
Smurf's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 2,173
Default

Hey jakerock, I think that the demo sounds fine! I am grabbing them as I type, thanks for sharing!

As a side note, those drums bring back some great memories! I had the 5 piece kit with Ludwig Standard cymbals (14" HH, 18" & 20" crash, 20" Ride)....what a great finish!

PS_I have an iMac sitting on a chair here also...
__________________
Yep's First 3 Years in PDF's
HP Z600 w/3GHz 12 Core, 48GB Memory, nVidia Quadro 5800, 240GB SSD OS drive, 3 480GB SSD Sample/Storage drives, 18TB External Storage, Dual 27" Monitors

Last edited by Smurf; 01-26-2009 at 05:18 PM.
Smurf is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 09:47 AM   #19
Smurf
Human being with feelings
 
Smurf's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 2,173
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by the all new rob View Post
This isn't my first, but I think it shows off SC pretty nicely (and the no longer free ns7_kit). I built this drum part out of several loops of playing live (different lengths--some huge), and then played cymbals live over it.

https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/376061/...rcuit-demo.mp3

I couldn't resist adding a couple more instruments, but you get the drums exposed up front.
That sounds nice! I also have the ns7_kit, both the free one &the full 5 DVD product....nice sounds. Great demo, Thanks for posting it!
__________________
Yep's First 3 Years in PDF's
HP Z600 w/3GHz 12 Core, 48GB Memory, nVidia Quadro 5800, 240GB SSD OS drive, 3 480GB SSD Sample/Storage drives, 18TB External Storage, Dual 27" Monitors
Smurf is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 09:50 AM   #20
BoxOfSnoo
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 998
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaJo View Post
Many greetings from Dave Brubeck
And Toots says hi, too
__________________
Get Dropbox! (Bonus space for both of us with that link)
BoxOfSnoo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 11:43 AM   #21
oldtimer
Human being with feelings
 
oldtimer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 107
Default Sound keeps playing - driving me nuts

Hey Ted I have been following your tutorial on Shortcircuit/drum samples and it's great. Following on from the all new rob post above, I note that selecting ( ie pointing at) an individual sample "plays" it and also if you left click (on the same sample)it will insert a wav copy into your Reaper track. However when I have selected all to perform the drag drop operation (which works fine) the last selected sample just keeps on playing.....I can't find anyway to stop it! Is there any way to prevent 'play sample when selected' Any ideas?
oldtimer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 01:04 PM   #22
the all new rob
Human being with feelings
 
the all new rob's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: east coast of Kansas
Posts: 681
Default

oldtimer, are you talking about selecting a sample in the Reaper media explorer window? There's a mini-transport in that window, and one of the buttons toggles on looping. Or possibly I am not understanding your request.
__________________
"Well feeling (emotion) combined with an artist's discipline is the rarest thing in the world."
-- Ursula Nordstrom
the all new rob is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 01:11 PM   #23
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default

ooh glad to see it's been busy here of late.
OldTimer, you don't want to drag the files or they end up as items on tracks, that's likely to mess our project up, unless you want it for some special reason. When you select multiple items click the "Open" button, then the samples only end up in the SC pane.

Yeah, you can audition samples in the SC's browser when you are replacing them.

Now I'm thinking we should be getting into how SC integrates into Reaper and how we can perform some mixing tricks from Reapers mixer, sadly SC will not build multiple channels so I am thinking hard about routing to audio channels, this might take a little while. Ideally what I would like to do is write our beats in the midi editor and record to separate kick, snare, toms, and overhead group tracks for mixing, then we can mute or delete SC and get the processing power back.

I may need a bit of time for this so be patient my friends.

Now here is a kit I knocked up a bit quick, no layers at all, just the normal GM drum set, whole kit weighs in at about 18 Mb, I'm thinking of making this or something like this available to download as a working VST instrument for noobs, whadda ya think?

https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/108600/SCdrums.mp3
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 01-26-2009 at 01:15 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 03:07 PM   #24
oldtimer
Human being with feelings
 
oldtimer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 107
Default Thats it!

the all new rob

Yes the media explorer window, and you got it in one. I hadn't noticed the Loop button on - is that the default - I dont think I clicked it!


Tedwood

Yes, I have followed your methods for the tutorial, but I was just playing about loading other samples to try them out.
Great idea about download for noobs, but you should also point them to this tutorial and/or rehash the tutorial to include your DrumsForNoobsVST......
a kind of "and this is how you should end up" (ie with a full set) could be alot of work though. Gotta go now and download your latest.
oldtimer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 03:11 PM   #25
MichaJo
Human being with feelings
 
MichaJo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,772
Default

Ted, if you wouldn't have started this tutorial i'd never tried to get this here http://www.kubamajerczyk.com/resteng/samples_en.htm# working.
It's a little set. Has got only two toms.
Now i've downloaded (9,90 Euros) it and after hours of tweaking i've got a first result.
Just to show the sound so far (quick and dirty recorded and bad played via Masterkeyboard):
https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/108663/...ageDrumSet.mp3
And here's an image of it working in Reaper.


It's been very, very tricky....but i think it will be a good one when it is ready.


Michael
MichaJo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-26-2009, 04:20 PM   #26
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default Reaper Power

Ah right, gotcha Oldtimer, dragging samples from the media explorer yeah, I can see this getting easier all the time now.

Hey, way to go Micheal, that's sounding pretty darn good.



Now then Hear this, REAPER'S ROUTING IS AWESOME!

you could not do this with any other DAW I know of, well I never could anyway. ( cautious disclaimer)



This is kinda hard to explain so let's have a go.

Look carefully at the pic and you will see three audio tracks above one midi track. The midi SC track has just a kick stick and ride going on to keep it small. They have been split up and routed to the audio tracks. For those of you that are new to Reapers routing power, I'll explain in brief. Tracks in Reaper have channels, you can have up to 64 channels. So I have used channels 1/2 for the kick 3/4 for the stick, and 5/6 for the ride.

When I rec-armed the three audio tracks and hit record, Reaper recorded the output of the midi track onto three different audio drum tracks simultaneously - now how's that for smart!

I was able to put them into a folder as well so if we build a big kit we can also hide it out of the way when we need to.

Here is the project file for you to deconstruct at your leisure,


https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/108694/Reaper-power.rar

It's not musical at all just to demo the routing, you should be looking specifically at the sample outputs in SC, and at the channel settings on the sends from the midi channel. Note also the master parent send of the midi channel is disabled. Why do we need to do that then?


Full instructions will follow so don't panic if you don't get it
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 01-26-2009 at 06:11 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2009, 02:32 AM   #27
MichaJo
Human being with feelings
 
MichaJo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,772
Default keyboard commands

In the Reference section of SC's help file are Keyboard commands.
But they don't work.
One of them is: "A audition zone. plays the current zone at it's root key"
Is there a way to get them work?

Michael
MichaJo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2009, 01:21 PM   #28
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default

Routing Groups


In this session we will look at making a multi with "groups" in SC and routing them to separate audio tracks in Reaper.

Open an empty instance of Shortcircuit

Now right click in the list pane and choose "new group", a new group appears with a new "keygroup view" on the right. At the bottom in the "group pane, where it says "new group" you can change the name to "Kick"


Open Reaper's media browser and select a soft and a loud Kick drum, and drag them both onto the "Kick" group, you will see they land on separate adjacent keys, so you can resize the velocities as you like. Click on the Keygroup tab on the right and edit the velocities by dragging the ends of the samples up and down, so your soft one is at the bottom and the loud one is at the top.

Now select both samples by click - Shift - click, SC warns you we have multiple samples selected, good! Now click the "learn all" button in the zone range pane and hit your C1 key on your midi keyboard - (you need to have your track record armed BTW). Now is a good time to change the playmode to "forward shot" otherwise the notes will be cut off when you let go of the key.

If you click on the "Kick" group now you will see them lined up nicely on the same key.

Okay, that is how to make a group, of course most of your groups will have more samples than this. In fact you may have more than one drum in a group; I have my stick, snare, rim and clap in the same group, and my toms are grouped too.

For this exercise we will use a Kick, Snare and Hi-Hat, so now you can go ahead and build another two groups for the snare and the Hat exactly the same way as you did the Kick. You have to save this as a "multi", if you save it as a channel it won't save the groups

Here's one of mine with groups




ROUTING

Now it starts to get really interesting
In the bottom right of the keygroup view is the output pane where you can set volume and pan for the whole group. You also get a choice of outputs. for your Kick, just choose the default 1/2, for the snare choose 3/4, and for the Hi-hat choose 5/6. Make sure the "group mixing" button is enabled or you won't hear it.

That's it for SC, now it's time do some routing in Reaper.

You need three new audio tracks for your drums, name them Kick, Snare and Hat and make sends to each of them from your SC track.

Now to make sure the tracks receive on the right channels, in the SC track "io" window:

Disable the Master/parent send box

Set the number of channels to 6 (in this case, 16 if you are feeling ambitious)

Set the audio channels to 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6 for Kick, Snare and Hat.



Now try it out and see what fun you have mixing with it.


Drum Folder


I think a full kit will need putting in a folder, so this what you need to do to folderize your drums

In the TCP (track control panel) Make sure the sampler is at the bottom, drag it there if neccesary.

Insert a new track above all of the drums and make it a folder track by clicking on the folder icon

Make the sampler the "end " track - by clicking on the folder icon

You will now be able to mix the whole kit and the folder track will be the Master for the drum mix

Happy drum mixing
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 01-27-2009 at 02:17 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2009, 04:25 PM   #29
Smurf
Human being with feelings
 
Smurf's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 2,173
Default

This is great! I have been having a few problems, but will work thru it...what I need to do is quit playing with this and get some work done! LOL

Thanks again for all the hard work you have put into this, it is much appreciated!
__________________
Yep's First 3 Years in PDF's
HP Z600 w/3GHz 12 Core, 48GB Memory, nVidia Quadro 5800, 240GB SSD OS drive, 3 480GB SSD Sample/Storage drives, 18TB External Storage, Dual 27" Monitors
Smurf is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-28-2009, 04:27 PM   #30
stratman
Human being with feelings
 
stratman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Exmouth, England
Posts: 2,687
Default

I just did this clip.

https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/109469/SC-Drums.mp3

OK. it's pretty basic but I can see lots of possibilities here. Multi layer sampling is something I hadn't got to grips with until now. Which is slightly embarrassing to admit.

Following Tedwood’s thread I used SC with the G&S CW-Drum Kit-2 from the link given earlier.
http://www.autodafe.net/dblog/storico.asp?s=Samples

Thanks Smurf for the link.

I only other effects are Kjaerhus Classic Reverb and the Kjaerhus Classic Master Limiter. So everything is free.

Thanks Tedwood. Also, the all new rob's post#13 makes it a breeze to create multilayer samples in SC.

I'm having great fun

Pete

Last edited by stratman; 01-28-2009 at 04:39 PM.
stratman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-29-2009, 03:33 AM   #31
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default

That's nice tight funky beat Pete, drums samples sound top notch

Don't know if you got round to it yet but when you put them into groups and rout them to audio tracks it gets even more fun.
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-29-2009, 01:03 PM   #32
labyrinth
Human being with feelings
 
labyrinth's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Posts: 2,248
Default The tutorial in PDF

Nice job with this Ted.

Since it is a pain going back and forth from my DAW PC to the Net PC I made this PDF version to download of your AWESOME tutorial. It's unedited, so mistakes are on you man (not implying anything). https://stash.reaper.fm/v/2313/Shortc...r%20REAPER.pdf

DOWNLOAD PDF Version
__________________
www.res-ref.com | Resonant Reflections
iMac 3.2 GHz (i5 4570)/16GB RAM | OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) | Interface: Focusrite 18i6

Last edited by labyrinth; 01-29-2009 at 01:07 PM.
labyrinth is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-29-2009, 02:03 PM   #33
stratman
Human being with feelings
 
stratman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Exmouth, England
Posts: 2,687
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tedwood View Post
Don't know if you got round to it yet but when you put them into groups and rout them to audio tracks it gets even more fun.
Yes I did route them to separate audio tracks.



Then I routed the individual tracks to a separate reverb track to allow me to vary the reverb on each kit piece.

Pete
stratman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-29-2009, 03:33 PM   #34
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default

Nice job with the PDF LAb, I'll put a link in the first post for that.



I don't know if this tutorial is finished yet, if there is any more to add I might do a condensed version and add it to the tips & tricks sticky or something like that.
__________________
The grass is greener where it rains
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-01-2009, 05:49 AM   #35
stratman
Human being with feelings
 
stratman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Exmouth, England
Posts: 2,687
Default

This is possibly stating the ‘bleeding obvious’ but I hadn’t realised until today that Shortcircuit can also host soundfont files at the same time as wave files. Apologies if this is already obvious to everyone else.

Also, in Shortcircuit, you can set things up on separate midi channels and set up multi-outputs. As far as I’m aware you can’t set up multi-outputs for soundfonts with the sfz player.

Here’s a silly example of something I just did with a mixture of multi layer wave files and soundfonts. It’s all hosted in a single instance of Shortcircuit.
https://stash.reaper.fm/oldsb/110925/SC-Multi.mp3

Midi channel 1 = Drums (wave files as given in my earlier example post #30)
Kick output: 1-2
Snare output: 3-4
HiHats output: 5-6
Toms output: 7-8
Cymbals output: 9-10

Midi channel 2
NS J Bass soundfont output: 11-12

Midi channel 3
Rock organ from the Fluid R3 soundfont: output 13-14

Midi channel 4
DSK Saxotopia soundfont: output 15-16




For it to work you have put a tick against ‘Allow feedback in routing’ in the project settings.

Pete

Last edited by stratman; 02-01-2009 at 05:54 AM.
stratman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-01-2009, 09:25 AM   #36
merdave
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 708
Default

I didn't realize that it could do soundfonts plus the output routings. This means I can get get rid of some other FX and just use this one.

Thanks for the tip. And thanks for the great tutorial. Now I think that I finally understand shortcircuit!

Dave

PS Putting this info. together with input from two nanoPads (a "nanoBoard" - 24 pads total - the right nanoPad is placed upside down on the right next to the other one).

Last edited by merdave; 02-01-2009 at 10:02 AM.
merdave is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-01-2009, 12:07 PM   #37
Tedwood
Human being with feelings
 
Tedwood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: South Coast UK
Posts: 14,303
Default

hehe, I knew this thread wasn't finished, that's a good example Pete. That sax is pretty alright for a soundfont - cool

There's more

If you are feeling ambitious here's something else to try your creative skills with:

Slicing

choose from the playmodes





You can map it with "learn all", multiply your fun to be with a single file, far as I know though it will only do forward playmode, so notes get cut off when you release keys, although I would think you can get "forward shots" if you follow the context menu advice above and map to zones.

Yeah I bet you could play some incredibly brilliant guitar parts with this without breaking a sweat or making any mistakes

__________________
The grass is greener where it rains

Last edited by Tedwood; 02-01-2009 at 02:10 PM.
Tedwood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-01-2009, 07:28 PM   #38
elmcity
Human being with feelings
 
elmcity's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 52
Default

thx 4this fam!!
elmcity is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-01-2009, 09:56 PM   #39
TeeBlack
Human being with feelings
 
TeeBlack's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: NY
Posts: 71
Default

anyone have any luck with shortcircuit 2 in reaper?
TeeBlack is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-02-2009, 12:33 AM   #40
carbon
Human being with feelings
 
carbon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Eesti
Posts: 2,716
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by TeeBlack View Post
anyone have any luck with shortcircuit 2 in reaper?
I've managed to run it, but my understanding is that SC1 is more complete than SC2, as the development stopped prematurely.

I remember vaguely that something crucial was missing - it was either velocity layer crossfades or keyrange crossfades or both...
__________________
projektorn

Last edited by carbon; 02-02-2009 at 12:35 AM.
carbon is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 01:34 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.