RealiDrums Released! A New Concept in Drum Libraries

[guitarmanchu]

Mike,

As the Groove Generator seems to be the key selling point for a lot of us (you've instantly got a whole market of people who loved GA2 and haven't found a replacement since), I would suggest finding a way to allow people to really automate and record what they do with it.

Here's the use case I want. Let's say I've created a song structure in my DAW of ABABCB. I'll find a set of grooves in RealiDrums for A, B, and C, which I can map to keyswitches to move through the grooves during playback. Then, I'd map each of the complexity sliders to knobs on my external MIDI controllers and record the automation. As the song plays back, I can twist and turn the knobs in real-time to adjust the "performance" of the drummer to follow the dynamics and feel of the song. So, for example, if I want to build up to the chorus, I could slowly twist the complexity of the hats and snare to humanize the dynamics. When I'm happy, I can print the MIDI to save the performance (in case i want to swap out the snare for one in another library, for example).

If you really want a killer app, I'd suggest allowing people to import their own MIDI grooves, and finding an algorithm to intelligently add or remove complexity from the original groove. The results may not be perfect, but given that we're working with mathematical subdivisions, I think one could create a heuristic that would work for most standard beats. I'm a dev myself so PM me if you want me to do the legwork to find if there are any existing algorithms out there.

This would be uber-useful and would probably allow me to throw away virtually all my other drum libs, and I suspect others would feel the same way.

[MadFloyd]

I also would REALLY value a tool that let's me 'playback' my song and then 'tweak' the drums in real-time (recording the midi to a new track for safety) so I can make the drums sound less mechanical by adding additional kicks (via complexity) or other drums as well as fills.

[Roman Empire]

My biggest problem is always to get some original sounding fill-ins. Yes, drum libraries have them but always just a few, and even fewer that fit into my music.
Will Realidrums have a way to always pop up with an inspiring fill-in?
My dream has always been a drum vst that can generate random groovy fill-ins based on some intelligence with regards to what we humans think sound good, so it won´t just fill 16 quarter notes with one floor tom, for instance

We do have a whole bunch of fills (definitely more than just sixteenth notes), with more on the way. I'm going to change the method for how they're accessed, though.

Currently, you select them from the same menu as the main grooves. This works fine, and it's easy to drag-n-drop them to your sequencer, which is how I personally like to work.

But I think I can make it more "playable" by making it so that fills are mapped to keyswitches. Each keyswitch is a different fill, of course. We'll make it so that the user can assign which fills to which keyswitch.

Then, if you hit the keyswitch right before the downbeat, it plays a full 4-beat fill. If you hit the keyswitch right before the second beat, it plays a 3-beat fill (to finish the bar.) If you hit the keyswitch right before the fourth beat, it plays a 1-beat fill. This way, your beat can be grooving along, then fills intelligently play whenever you hit a keyswitch for them.

I think that will be a better way. At least that's the plan . . .

Sounds pretty aweseome all of this indeed, but still it´d be great if some kind of randomization could be possible to have endless fill-in options. Here´s what I was just thinking:
How about a morphing between two existing (with the option to have them randomly chosen) fill-ins, in which you can adjust the complexity of each? Also, an option to edit the outcoming midi pattern so that it´s part of the presets list and adding yet another fill-in designed by the user in cooperation with realidrummer?

Just a suggestion!

Best Regards

Roman Empire

[Mike Greene]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. We'll be looking into all of these. One challenge, though, is that the more new features the Groove Generator has, the more complicated it will be to use. That's not to say that I don't want to add features, it's just that I don't want to get away from the original vision.

GuitarManchu, you're tempting me with the user drum loops idea. It's an enormous challenge, but maybe . . .

[guitarmanchu]

I think my suggestions could be incorporated without changing the workflow at all. It's basically just (a) adding a keyswitch to modulate through the grooves, and (b) read-write automation on the complexity knobs with the ability to output the generated MIDI in real-time to a new track.

[lingyai]

Just to be clear then -- if performances cannot be recorded, this is effectively a live-performance-only instrument, correct? Or am I missing something?

It's definitely not a live-performance-only instrument. I think this is a mistake I made in the video, where I made it appear that the focus of the instrument is in creating DJ-style performances. While it's fun to do that, it's not really what the Groove Generator is about....

Also, I suppose it's not entirely true where I said that you can't record "performances." It is indeed possible to record the MIDI data for performances like what I did in the video, but it would have to be done in sections. (Not in real time.) Each time you change the slider/button positions, drag the MIDI file to your sequencer, then do the same every time you make a change, so you'll have a sequence of MIDI files that are the full "performance."

Mike, along the lines of what I've written earlier, as well as some of the points guitarmanchu made above ... there is a lot to really like in this, but what's keeping me away is the inability to easily record a full performance.

The sliders and buttons are there to be played with throughout the performance, right? That's what caught my eye in your video, and is a lot of what makes this so appealing. I could see getting a real buzz going performing this way. And not just one change per song section; within sections, I could see tweaking to provide variations as well. In short within one song, I could imagine a whole lot of tweaking goin' on.

But ... having to stop and export midi at every parameter change if you want to record? Complete buzzkill. Then arranging all the midi clips, hoping you remember which was what, and when in the track it occurred? We're now into sub-zero buzz territory. Like seeing your mother-in-law naked or something.

As you mention in your video, this was designed to eliminate the tedium of your drag and drop, loop-based competitors. Well, with this stop-start requirement, that tedium sneaks right back in through a different door, if I understand correctly.

Please take a look at the video for the "Euclidian Beats" instrument in Soniccouture's new Imogen Heaps' Box of Tricks library. You can use it with a nice little built-in cocktail drum kit. That kit is no match for all the variety Realidrums gives you. But, to me at least, it makes up for that with a feature, whereby you press record before the performance starts, then press play, tweak the drumkit controls to your heart's content, and when you're done, toggle off record, and boom, you get a full-length midi clip of everything you've just done.

If you had something like that -- or could enable Kontakt to send the midi performance to the "outside world" i.e. another track for printing -- yeah, I'd be all over Realidrums.

I have no idea whether many others share this view. But I for one can't take the plunge (even as a happy owner of some of your other stuff) unless recording is made dead-simple, so we can just concentrate on playing.

[Burzukh_Studios]

I also would REALLY value a tool that let's me 'playback' my song and then 'tweak' the drums in real-time (recording the midi to a new track for safety) so I can make the drums sound less mechanical by adding additional kicks (via complexity) or other drums as well as fills.

Its called Mdrummer.

[Burzukh_Studios]

Though I have not bought anything from Mike, his software (and the videos) are top notch, and truly hold their own against the competition. Another winner for sure.....

[Mike Greene]

I think my suggestions could be incorporated without changing the workflow at all. It's basically just (a) adding a keyswitch to modulate through the grooves, and (b) read-write automation on the complexity knobs with the ability to output the generated MIDI in real-time to a new track.

a) We'll probably add a keyswitch (or at least a button) to cycle through fills, and possibly grooves as well.
b) This is possible now. Sliders (and even buttons) can each be controlled by a MIDI CC, so those moves can be printed to a sequencer track.

[Mike Greene]

Mike, along the lines of what I've written earlier, as well as some of the points guitarmanchu made above ... there is a lot to really like in this, but what's keeping me away is the inability to easily record a full performance.

The sliders and buttons are there to be played with throughout the performance, right? . . .

Well . . . actually, no. My original intent was that these would make it much easier than than the old way to find and tweak a beat, then you'd have the beat/loop you want for your verse, drag it to the verse sections of your sequence, then tweak again to create the chorus beat, drag to your sequence, maybe drop in a couple fills, then you're done. For me personally, that's how I always do my songs. One 2-bar loop for the verse, maybe a second loop for the chorus, a few fills and crashes, and that's it for the drums.

The whole idea of making "performances" never really occurred to me. In hindsight, of course, I guess that's what the introductory two minutes of the video does, so I can see why people might get that impression. But my intent there was to just show how quickly you can choose/tweak sounds and how easy it is to radically change the beats.

It seems that a whole lot of people do seem to like the idea of making performances, though, so I'm going to look into that. I'll take a look at Soniccouture's "Euclidean Beats." There might be some ideas there I can steal, errr, I mean borrow.

[BERFAB]

Though I have not bought anything from Mike, his software (and the videos) are top notch, and truly hold their own against the competition. Another winner for sure.....

I went over to his website to check out the drummer and was really taken with the vocal instruments. The ability to put speech into backing vocals is intriguing. And, apparently, on sale.

[pljones]

There might be some ideas there I can steal, errr, I mean borrow.

I think it's "re-interpret", you're looking for

[bigcat1969]

At the risk of derailing from drums, yes Blue is absolutely amazing and has had several free updates. Mr. Greene will be mentioned as an innovator in future history books about digital music.

[BERFAB]

At the risk of derailing from drums, yes Blue is absolutely amazing and has had several free updates. Mr. Greene will be mentioned as an innovator in future history books about digital music.

Good enough for me!

I'm in.

Cheers
-B

[lingyai]

At the risk of derailing from drums, yes Blue is absolutely amazing and has had several free updates. Mr. Greene will be mentioned as an innovator in future history books about digital music.

+1

Important to note -- Mike does do great stuff -- The Ladies (another vocal library) is also first rate, as is Realibanjo (if you like nice banjos). I'm just being a bit fussy about Realidrums because in this case, I think the idea is almost there, just not quite.

Mike, no theft would be involved. Only shared inspiration!