MDrummer rhythm editor/generator

[MeldaProduction]

Exactly. Think of the drumset as the actual drummer(s) with instruments and the rhythm as a conductor. The conductor may conduct latin percussion even if there is no actual percussionist, of course nobody will be playing then .

That said it actually doesn't matter if you have there such instruments. They will be silent. But you should load the "Conga" preset of the rhythm generator as goldglob suggested. In fact, in most cases if is enough to use just "load", "essential beat editor" and "generate all" in the rhythm generator .

[goldglob]

... Think of the drumset as the actual drummer(s) with instruments and the rhythm as a conductor...

Great analogy.

[Burzukh_Studios]

Will there ever be a proper manual (you know, like 99 % of the other music softwares currently in the market) ? It is imperative for a behemoth like mdrummer. Maybe you should check out how other major drum softwares do it (for eg : BFD, EZDrummer, Drumasonic and even the holy grail in barbed wire that is Jamstix 3). If your english is not good enough, you could hire someone to do it. It would surely pay you back tenfold. Imagine the number of people who tried the demo and never bought the full version because they were driven away by the missing manual. That's a lot of lost sales.

I tried the demo and while I could do somethings intuitively, a LOT was unclear and simpley baffling. I was about to but it, but just this lack of proper clear documentation stopped me. A quick start guide with clear instructions and screenshots would have sufficed. Videos are secondary to well written/compiled manual.

Im seriously willing to work on a manual as I think the software deserves it. You can pay me in software
Not joking.

[MeldaProduction]

Working on it . And thank you for the offer . I think we will do the first version ourself, but if you'd feel like an expert in the future and would like to contribute, then sure .

[Burzukh_Studios]

Working on it . And thank you for the offer . I think we will do the first version ourself, but if you'd feel like an expert in the future and would like to contribute, then sure .

Best of luck with the manual and the upcoming update
Let me know if you change your mind

[MeldaProduction]

Thanks!

[MeldaProduction]

MDrummer 5 is out!

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=411804

[Burzukh_Studios]

Its an amazing software ! Nothing like it out there.

Everyday when i get home from work, i spend at leats 2 hours just checking out and playing with the demo. Since the manual came out things have been sooo much easier.

But some items are still unclear.

For eg :

My workflow :

1. Define a essential beat in the rhythym generator (including per note parameter tweaking)
2. Select the base rhythms for hi-hat / ride / cymbal behaviour
3. Generate All
4. Got to Song Arranger window and oragnize / tweak as per my requirement
5. Play and be amazed

I can go from an idea to a finished drum track in about 10 - 15 minutes. Jaw-droppingly awesome.

My questions :

- If i want a part with NO hats / rides / cymbals at all how do i get it ? I want the level to dictate everything else (like velocity, adding notes) , all of which i can do, without doing anything at all to cymbals / hats since I do not want any at all ? Do i have to manually edit it in the rhythym generator for each level ?

- if i want a part that starts with rides at the lowest level and then go to for crash cymbals at the higher levels, without ever playing hihats at all how do i do that ? Similarily if I want a part with hihats at lower levels, open hats at mid levels and crashes at higher levels without any ride cymbals how do i get that ? Do i have to manually edit it in the rhythym generator for each level ? Can different parts ahve different base rhythyms (hihast / cymbals) ?

- When I "Generate All" in the Rhythym Generator , how many parts does it generate by default ? How many levels for each part ? Each part is a loop box , right ? So if after generating all, i go to the song arranger and change the level from 0% to 100% how many dictinct rhyhtyms do i have access to ? and what exactly does the index do ? I understand it gives further variety for that particular part. So in total how much variety is there ? for eg. in one generated verse part , if i change the level and the index how many total rhyhtyms do i actually have access to ?

-Can i define the rules for the short and long breaks , like timing, speed, kit pieces to use etc ?

-Since the import o fsamples i disabled in the demo, i cannot test this but im assuming your awesome plugin actually intelligently maps folders and subfolders of WAV samples into complete drumkits with velocity layers based on the naming conventions described. Is my assumption correct ? How intelligent is the mapping, as in will it understand snare_top_1 to snare_top_10 as distinct velcoity layers and map them in equi-distant velcoity intervals where snare_top_1 is the lowest and snare_top_10 is the highest ? How would it handle if I have many sanre_top, snare_bottom and snare_room WAV files for various velcoity layers ? Is there a limit to the number of layers ? How do we handle round robin samples for each velocity layer ? If this is correct and it does this in an accurate manner, then this feature alone may be worth the price.


Sorry for the long winded many many questions, but this is by far the most intriguing piece of software i have seen in ages.

[MeldaProduction]

Thank you!

Now to the questions:

1) There are several options. I'd recommend simply using 2 rhythms - one with the cymbals, one without. Or you can edit the generated rhythm in the rhythm editor.

2) You can edit the "Base rhythm". Switch to rhythm editor and check the "Base rhythms" directory. It is full of really simple rhythms containing just the cymbals and hihats usually. So you can just design your own. It would take about a minute . Then you will just use your own base rhythm in the generator.

It would be best to do it in rhythm editor directly if you don't plan to do the same thing in the future. Just edit the few beat loops, or even delete those you don't want.

3) For the record, there are no "parts", just loop boxes (just to ensure we understand each other). By using note levels you can have as many "levels" as you want. By using just different loop boxes you have 12 of course. The number of generated ones depends on the advanced settings in rhythm generator. Usually every loopbox defined in base rhythm will cause a loopbox in your rhythm.

Your rhythms can be very different of course, this is just a convenience, which is recommended. But you can easily create a polymorphic rhythm, which just one beat loopbox, which will for example contain several loops, or just one loop with note parameters smartly defined... there are many things you can do...

4) I don't understand the question. Seems like you are talking about shuffle and speed of loops parameters in rhythm generator.

5) That's correct. Of course you may really make such a messy stuff, that it couldn't be understand. But generally you can either use single-layered drums, where MDrummer finds all samples of particular type, fixes their volumes to make them compatible and creates drumsets / components from them. Or you can use multilayered drumsets, where it assumes the drumset (or at least individual drums) are at the same directories and it ignores the indices and rather sorts them by velocity itself and creates layers (no limit).

[Burzukh_Studios]

Thank you soo much for your long answers and support. Im just waiting for my finances to recover (hopefully in a month) and then im buying this lovely software. i really hope the intro offer lasts till then.

Please remember that im using the demo only so some things may not be possible.

Thank you!

Now to the questions:

1) There are several options. I'd recommend simply using 2 rhythms - one with the cymbals, one without. Or you can edit the generated rhythm in the rhythm editor.

Ok i defined a second rhythm (in the essential beat) by selecting and generating something in channel two.

I finally got one by selecting the empty base rhythm in the root. Then when i generated all, it generated the outros, the breaks and outros without any rhythm. So if i select base rhythm = empty, it will not generate any beats ? I dont even know if thats by design or is it a bug. If i select a base rhythm (some hat or cymbal) then it generates all including beats, which i can later edit to clear or change the hat and cymbal work in the rhythm editor manually.

Secondly in the song arranger window , i want a intro from rhythm channel one, first verse from rhythm channel two, break from rhythm channel 1 and so on etc. but i can only layer them. Can i have rhythm channels playing one at a time ? Can i move the blocks around ? And can there be blocks of silence in between the song in any rhythm channel ?

like i want :

rhythm channel 1 : intro - (blank) - chorus - (blank)
rhythm channel 2 : (blank) - verse - (blank) - outro

Is the above possible in the song arranger ?

2) You can edit the "Base rhythm". Switch to rhythm editor and check the "Base rhythms" directory. It is full of really simple rhythms containing just the cymbals and hihats usually. So you can just design your own. It would take about a minute . Then you will just use your own base rhythm in the generator.

do you mean via rhythm editor --> global--> load --> base rhythms -- and then define a user base rhythm. Every time i do this it completely clears the present rhythm channel that i generated and i end up with a base rhythm only. Also since its a demo i cant save it

3) For the record, there are no "parts", just loop boxes (just to ensure we understand each other). By using note levels you can have as many "levels" as you want. By using just different loop boxes you have 12 of course. The number of generated ones depends on the advanced settings in rhythm generator. Usually every loopbox defined in base rhythm will cause a loopbox in your rhythm.

Your rhythms can be very different of course, this is just a convenience, which is recommended. But you can easily create a polymorphic rhythm, which just one beat loopbox, which will for example contain several loops, or just one loop with note parameters smartly defined... there are many things you can do...

Ok this seems clear. I experimented and it seems like i have an almost INFINITE amounts of loop variations at my disposal. That is awesome.

4) I don't understand the question. Seems like you are talking about shuffle and speed of loops parameters in rhythm generator.

I mean can i make sure the rhythm generator only generates intros, outros, short and long breaks of a particular type as per my requirement. I see some options including borrowing from various styles.
But if i check "automatic breaks" box and then loop 4 bars of a beat in the song arranger, there are still no breaks as per the defined break interval , which is set at two. Am i doing something wrong ? Shouldnt there be an automatic break every two bars ?

5) That's correct. Of course you may really make such a messy stuff, that it couldn't be understand. But generally you can either use single-layered drums, where MDrummer finds all samples of particular type, fixes their volumes to make them compatible and creates drumsets / components from them. Or you can use multilayered drumsets, where it assumes the drumset (or at least individual drums) are at the same directories and it ignores the indices and rather sorts them by velocity itself and creates layers (no limit).

Since i cant do this in the demo, i'll assume this works great. Can i "tell" mdrummer that WAV files numbered like :

snare_1
snare_2
snare_3
upto snare_16 are velocity samples of the same component (snare) and represent increasing velcoity from 1 to 16. Some software always confuse if the the numbering is 1,2,3,4.....10,11,12 bu putting the 10 , 11 ,12 right after the 1 ...so samples have to named 01,02,03...10,11,12 for them to work correct. But a LOT of sample sets follow the single to double numbering.

Also, will it auto-map the samples quietest to loudest at equal distant velocities automatically ? What of round robin samples at EACH velocity layer ?

Thanks again for taking the time for these clarifications. I must say this is the fastest drum creation software i have used. Leaves its sole competitor (JS3) in the dust as far as speed, stability and ease of creation goes. Basically on all counts.

Only thing that seems to be lacking(at least in the demo) is a really good acoustic kit.

I hope the complete / full version of mdrummer large has at least one deeply sampled (how many velocity layers ?) acoustic drum kit.

[elassi]

Secondly in the song arranger window
like i want :

rhythm channel 1 : intro - (blank) - chorus - (blank)
rhythm channel 2 : (blank) - verse - (blank) - outro

Is the above possible in the song arranger ?

There's no blank (empty space) option but you can insert a part and then "disable" it (see the selector under the channels/tracks in the song window). This way it works like a placeholder for 'empy' or muted sections.

[Burzukh_Studios]

Secondly in the song arranger window
like i want :

rhythm channel 1 : intro - (blank) - chorus - (blank)
rhythm channel 2 : (blank) - verse - (blank) - outro

Is the above possible in the song arranger ?

There's no blank (empty space) option but you can insert a part and then "disable" it (see the selector under the channels/tracks in the song window). This way it works like a placeholder for 'empy' or muted sections.

Thank you ! That works great.

[MeldaProduction]

Thanks ellasi for helping!

Now to the other questions (maybe it could use multiple topics, this is a chaos ).

1) Advanced settings / Fill base rhythm boxes only Second part answered ellasi

2) I meant use rhythm editor to create AND SAVE your own base rhythms. Then use them from rhythm generator.

4) Automatic breaks do NOT apply if you use song structures - this would collide! If you use song structures, then MDrummer assumes you define everything, you tell him exactly what to play. Otherwise it would be hard to say what you want exactly .
And yes, you can generate loop types separately in advanced settings, though I have no idea why would you want that .

5) You cannot have round robin (we use randomizing, round robin is ancient technology... I don't know why it still exists) AND layering at the same time - well you can, but you have to configure it manually. But if you want layering, MDrummer can do it manually and the numbers are irrelevant. MDrummer finds all samples in one directory named "snare" and creates a drum from all of them.

There are lots of factory content in the full version! After all it's 10x bigger than the demo

[Burzukh_Studios]

Thank you for your patience and time with my insistent (and sometime stupid) questions.

Most of what you have said is clear to me now. Im discovering new amazing features everyday.

This is exactly what i envision when someone says an AI virtual drummer.

Hats off to your programming !

I can hardly wait till pay day to finally purchase this behemoth. Really really hope the intro price is still on till then

[MeldaProduction]

Thank you!