'beatboxing' in Tracktion

[rockstar_not]

OK,

I saw this idea earlier in the T forum, so tonight I finally tried it out.

I made a rack filter with this signal chain in series:

1. KT drum trigger
http://www.koen.smartelectronix.com/KTDrumTrigger/

Trying to get a simple kick/snare thing going, I set the first filter to a band pass with a high Q, at about 200 Hz center frequency. Then for the snare, Another band pass with a high Q at 5kHz.

2. Drumatic 3 drum machine

3. Bionic Delay

I used a Sennheiser MD-421 mic for my input and just tried a 'boom check, boom check'.

After fiddling around for a bit with the threshold and hysteresis settings, I was able to get a simple 1 and 3 pattern going. But it was kind of finicky, but it sure was cool to hear the drum machine kicking out the kick/snare on top of my audio, which I had also routed to the L/R output of the rack. This would work probably much better with a Cajon for an input.

-Scott

[Lunch Money]

any mp3 demo of results?

[rockstar_not]

any mp3 demo of results?

Greg,

No, I really didn't record the output - but I did save the rack (which I hope saves the various filter presets that I was using - I don't know about this) so I should be able to make an mp3 of the results.

Let me just say that it was not as smooth as I hoped. It was very difficult to get the vocal for the kick drum to not also trigger the bandpass filter that I had set for the snare.

I had to resort to doing kind of a 'ooo' 'sss' for the kick and snare.

Something that almost worked as well:

I held the Sennheiser with my right hand, resting on my right leg - and faked a kick pattern with my right leg, then I slapped out a snare part with my left hand on my left leg. The vibration through my right leg into my right arm into the mic, was nice low frequency dominated content, whereas the slap of my left hand on my left leg did a sufficient job of triggering the snare.

There is some slight delay in the chain - I can't tell if it's related to the settings for the KTDrum Trigger, or from the fact that all of the stuff was in a rack.

I mentioned it was finicky - that means it took me about an hour fiddling around with the filter, threshold and hysteresis settings in KTDrumTrigger to get a fairly reliable trigger on the kick and snare.

How I would improve it in the future:

I might consider doing the following:

Pass the audio first through a parallel bank of parametric EQs each tuned to a specific range, kind of - each of those into a compressor (purpose of these two is to improve the discrimination KT so there are less 'fault' triggers) and each of those into their own version of the rack that I mentioned, were each of those racks would only trigger one midi note each - perhaps with different drum synths.

But if I get some time this weekend, I'll post an mp3 of what I have so far.

-Scott

[ModuLR]

I usually just record some beatboxing, to get some variations and what not.. and then layer a midi clip right over the top to place the notes. It's worked well, but something more interactive like this would be alot more fun. I'm definately gonna give it a try and see how it turns out... very interested in seeing if something decent can be pulled off! schweeet!

[cbit]

I usually just record some beatboxing, to get some variations and what not.. and then layer a midi clip right over the top to place the notes.

i kind of do that too.. but then usually positioning audio clips over the 'guide' recording.. and the guide recording often being a breakbeat smapple

[rockstar_not]

any mp3 demo of results?

Greg,

You asked for it - you got it.

Here is a LINK over to the audioshots forum where I've got a short mp3 and a picture of the rack that I made.

There are more false triggers than I would like. Now I just need that elusive device that converts what I hear in my head to what others can hear. Well, this is a very short step in that direction.

Jules, if you are by any remote chance reading this - thanks again for the curvy lines in the racks.

-Scott

[Lunch Money]

Awesome! Thanks for doing that demo. You may notice the false triggers yourself, and I'm sure if/when I try this out, I will, too; but it's actually MUCH smoother than I was expecting. Cool!

[chardin]

Very cool. Pretty soon you'll have your own TD-20!

[ModuLR]

Okee doke rockstar_not! you are a rockstar for putting us on to this method. I sat and toyed around with it for a while last night... ended up with a rack that looked like this...



I used 3 KTDrumtriggers beacause the freq ranges that trigger within a single instance of KTDrumtrigger seem to overlap a bit too much (resulting in false triggers with my voice). I threw Eqium in front of each instance to give me solid control over the trigger frequencies (I had to cut and boost a lot)... the 5 band Nyquist EQ would be a good alternative I s'pose... I found the T eq too fidly for this. I only used a single trigger channel inside each KT instance, the others channels were disabled.

In any case, I just sat around and just tuned the tiggers to the way I beatbox. I was just shocked by how good the results turned out. This is really going to revolutionize my music making process dramaticly. It's the closest thing to having something read the patterns in my mind. It'll be great for roughing a drum track including the variations! No more midi crap... this is the way for rapid fire brainstorming! and feels much more organic than puching on a few rubber pads. thank you so much! I think I can manage to squeeze out one more sound that's triggerable, thus creating an instant 4 piece kit from beatboxing..

here are the results of my efforts... 4mins of messing around.. only edits were to make it shorter cos I was having hella fun for like 12 minutes. So it's very much realtime. Beatboxin->KTDrumTigger->TSampler with a meanbeat kit.

KTBeatBoxDemo

It's sparked all sorts of ideas.. like midi triggers than switch the audio to differing kits or differently tuned KTDrumtiggers... or better yet specially times delays that trigger fills on the fly... lots of cool ideas... great for sketching! can't thank you enough... I'll be donating to Koen for sure. Wish he could make a single channel version.

[Lunch Money]

Any chance of posting an archive, Mod? Obviously one would need to fine tune the triggers to one's own style, but this would be a great starting point at least.

"I'm out of spit, man." <lol>

Imagine busting this out at some sort of live performance?????? Man, peeps would shit themselves.

Greg

[ModuLR]

I'll put together an arichive from the edit. Gotta cut it way down, cos it was like 12minutes (I was having so much fun before recording that my throat is all raw and irritated now). Also, you'll need Eqium for this one... I'll pack it up tho! w00t!

yeah, at a live show this would be deadly.. probably kinda hard to isolate the mic enough not to get accidently triggered tho... I'd love to try it tho!

[Lunch Money]

Yeah, I never thought of that; however, a uni-directional mic would help at least a little.

[IIRs]

yeah, at a live show this would be deadly.. probably kinda hard to isolate the mic enough not to get accidently triggered tho... I'd love to try it tho!

In Ear Monitors and a 'silent' stage..

Sounds great!!

I might try it myself..

I borrowed a D4 drum module for a while a few years ago.. I gaffa taped two triggers to a bible, and had hours of fun bashing rhythms into it like a pair of bongoes! I might look out for a second hand D4 actually..

[ModuLR]

So here is an archive (340k)...
KTBeatBox Tracktion Archive

requires KT DrumTrigger and Eqium... Also note, that originally I tried to use a single KT instance, but when that didn't work I simply made 2 more copies. That means the kick is tirgger 1, the snare is trigger 2, and the hat is trigger 3.. but they are that way in the seperate instances. when you look at the graphs it'll make more sense.

w00t!

[ModuLR]

if the above link doesn't work try this one instead...
KTBeatBox Tracktion Archive (alt)