I learned to play on those old technics keyboards with the "beatA/fill in A/Beat B/Fill in B buttons which I could trigger instantly and hanker after the immediacy of it all. Virtual guitarist is the nearest I've come to reliving those "instant" hands-on days....so is there a vsti drummer that works in real-time?

I reckon I could customise Ableton Live, perhaps with the "beats working" CD-ROM which is already divided up into beats and fillins. I also see that "slicey drummer" might do the trick in dr-008, but its all starting to sound complicated (prove me wrong!) Any other suggestions? Ideally I'd like to use a midi footswitch to "play" the drums and fill ins in sync with either ACID4 or SONAR2.

I've also tried syncing my yamaha djx (which has dedicated pattern/fill buttons) to Sonic Synth drums. It works, but the mapping only infrequently produces truly usable patterns.

I don't know what you have in mind since I never worked with the original keyboard you spoke of, however you could try sequencing all the parts in Acid/Sonar first. Then render each loop as a seperate wave file. Next, assign each loop to a seperate note in a softsynth VST sampler (DS-404 is a free one). From here if you're planning on doing something live via MIDI, Acid more or less isn't the best choice for a host. Try using Console stand-alone as a host to a sampler that has all of the drum loops and patterns in a single bank. However you plan on triggering those loops live is up to you.

I hope this helps,

Adrian

Thanks atomic_afro - I'm afraid what you're really saying is that no such vsti device exists ! "band-in-a-box" seems the closest I've come across but its not a "real-time" instrument - you have to programme chords etc.

I've thought about assigning patterns/fill-ins to midi-keys as you suggested, but auto-accompaniement drums have 2 specific features
(i) if you press "fill-in" - it WAITS until a musically sensible time to trigger, typically the start of the next bar
(ii) once "fill in" starts, the ordinary "pattern" stops and then resumes at the end of the fill-in (usually one bar later), so the beat goes on uninteruppted. i.e its sort-of monophonic. Typically a sample-triggered drum loops would kick off the moment you hit the key, rather than waiting for the next bar wouldn't it?

Can you describe what sort of menu settings in a typical sampler might correspond to these sort of ideas? I reckon that Ableton Live has these sort of functions so I intend to try out the demo ( mapping samples in the way that you described ).

Anyway thanks again.

Perhaps what you need is DR-008 plus the MusicLab plug-ins Slicy Drummer and Fill-In Drummer... they're designed for just that sort of thing.

Cakewalk also has a Midi plug-in that comes with Sonar called Session drummer, but again it's not real time. The concept though, is you basically select a style and tempo, and arrange a series of patterns to play along as you record (they're basically a bunch of midi files of drum loops). It's not exactly what you want, but if you're a Sonar user it may be enough to get you by, and is great for when you're feeling a bit too lazy to program a drum track from start, or if you want to steal a drum fill or two.

thanks guys - but like you say, not quite right !

The nearest I've got in the last few weeks of experimentation is loading Ableton live (or the cheaper "remix") with loops+fills which can be triggered live at the start of the next bar by assigning qwerty keys to them. This does the trick, but remix does not have midi sync, so its an expensive way of achieving the goal !

Are you wanting to trigger MIDI or audio loops? Because funnily enough I was playing around with that sort of thing with audio loops last night; via Cyclone triggered from a DJX.

Well I was actually thinking of audio loops (says from the "beats working" CD Rom). But I own a DJX and Sonar, so tell me MORE please !

Load Cyclone as an instrument; load the loops you want to use into Cyclone.
Each pad in Cyclone is triggered by a specific MIDI note, so its just a question of sequencing when you start the loops (or playing them from the keyboard) Doesnt have to be a DJX that just happens to be what I have

Individual loops can be set as trigger-once or to loop. You can also trigger them from the pads within Cyclone .

Cyclone will also load in Acidised loops with each beat mapped to a separate Pad similarish to Phatmatik Pro...

There's a section on using Cyclone in the manual, and a brief intro at http://www.cakewalk.com/Tips/TechTipApril02_2.asp

great! that'll teach me to get to know my gear more won't it! I'll try it when I get home...