Is virtual analog an advertising ploy?

[noiseboyuk]

its just a word, that separates it from "drums".
most people understand that...

I had no clue that anyone here didn't comprehend this until the past couple of days on this thread.

[vurt]

yeah, it's very different to "im a producer, i make beatz!"

we are literally talking about the beat

[donkey tugger]

I do always find it really weird that on a music technology website there's people with such a conservative (small 'c'!) outlook on music, who decry anything new, completely lacking in any self-awareness that the music they espouse as being the 'gold-standard', was no doubt in its time similarly derided by the generation before them.

You couldn't possibly be talking about me, since I'm all about embracing the latest technology. I just think it needs to be used to its fullest potential instead of as a crutch for lazy songwriting.

Using something like MODO DRUM's physically modeled kits to create a drum performance down to which hand is hitting the drum, and where the stick is hitting the skin, embraces the latest technology has to offer far better than arranging the same limited 909 drum sounds in some rudimentary repetitive pattern on loop. People were doing the latter 40 years ago. But they weren't able to do the former without a real drummer before now.

Mostly I see people here talking endlessly about using virtual analog synths to make the same ADSR sounds that people have been making since the 1970s, thinking they're somehow on the cutting edge of a new revolution. The difference is, back then, that's all that bedroom musicians had available. They wished those synths could have sounded like piano and real strings and brass and percussion. Now we actually have the technology to make that a reality through physical modeling. That's actually where music technology is RIGHT NOW. That is the cutting edge. And those are the instruments I'm using and like to discuss, not the same VA synths and boring beatboxes everyone else wants to talk about.

Whoosh...

He's summed it up far better here than I did;

Well you really ought to be mentoring those kids, rather than trying to emulate them on the forum.

Eh?

Well, I seriously thought you were 20 the way you went on about “beats.”

Now I see you must have picked that up from the kids. But instead you should be using your considerable knowledge and experience to correct the naïve ignorance of the youth. Instead you seem to have adopted it.

At least BONES acts his grumpy old age.

My god, how old are you? 137? You do realise almost without fail, all new music, styles, formats are a product of youth and always have been? Personally I don't much like an awful lot of what's coming out in recent years, but it is definitely not the old codgers that are going to come out with any ground-breaking music - we're making the same old shit that was popular back when we were young and abusing our bodies. The likes of Noiseyboy, Bones and me are not in the process of making next year's big thing and hopefully are not coy about that either. It's the know-nothing, naive, ignorant 18-year olds that you slag off that are going to do that. Like it or not, that is how it is. If you don't think that's true then you're deluded. Name me almost any style of music and I'll show you how it was youth that developed it, even going back to classical. Mozart was not an old man. I seriously can't think of any modern music style that wasn't a product of youth.

I'm 57 yrs old and I dislike most of what modern music I hear. That is how it should be. And the 16 yr olds coming up despise my music more than likely, and that is how it should be. In fact - it saddens me more how the youth of today hark back to old styles - that must mean the development of music is going trough the doldrums...but that will change hopefully. And it's not going to change because of us old farts.

[melomood]

Im going to have to disagree a little on that 'how it should be at the age of 57' nonsense
Some of us may be a bit beaten up but not mentally dead yet

[jens]

The idea that calling Beats “Beats” makes you a 20 year old… just wow. Beats were alive and kicking in the 80s for gawd’s sake.

Well, tbh I found that distinction you made a 'lil adolescent (and even somewhat bizarre) too tbh -
it's been forty one years since Simmons released their seminal SDS 5 now. And right from the start it - plus drum-machines and what not - was picked up by drummers (Bill Bruford, Steve Negus and Warren Cann come to mind) to completely blur any imagineable line between "acoustic" and artificial drums (or however you might call each of both far ends of the spectrum) and thus I have zero idea what on earth you could be talking about in regards to this (I am certain it came from your lower backside though ).
And thus I think it's fair to say that you basically asked for it.

I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt though by assuming that you only wanted to stirr some shit and didn't really believe in your wild claims yourself.

But be that as it may be it imo clearly really isn't worthy of any serious argument though - it's just some dudes on a forum arguing over basically nothing ...

[jens]

hope all's well

Yes, thanks - all fine over here (we're with my wife's family in Spain right now) - I hope the same goes for you?

[vurt]

hope all's well

Yes, thanks - all fine over here (we're with my wife's family in Spain right now) - I hope the same goes for you?

aye, not too bad could do without it being excessively hot, but then im living in england and have irish blood, me and sun were never going to be friends

[jens]

Yeah, it's really super hot ATM - even for us it's a bit much right now - and it's a pretty safe bet that we don't have much in the way of Irish ancestors.

[vurt]

[noiseboyuk]

I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt though by assuming that you only wanted to stirr some shit and didn't really believe in your wild claims yourself.

I do appear to have drifted into some Twilight Zone.

Acoustic Drums are drums, played by a drummer. If you want your drums to sound like they're played by a drummer, you need a drum kit and a drummer. Or - a virtual one, that can do all those subtleties of resonances, rattly snares, multi-mics in a good sounding space and be playable by a human with two hands. It'll have human idiosyncrasies - variations in timing and velocities, hitting the drum heads differently from one beat to the next.

Beats can be drum machines, loops, samples, whatever. None of it has to remotely sound real, you can quantize the shit out of it or make crazy timings. Create new loops by manipulating old ones - do wild patterns in a grid editor, sparsely use industrial sounds, whatever. Whatever sounds good and suits the song.

These are two different processes that use two different techniques (and if virtual, usually different plugins). There are as alike as a violin and a piano - they both have strings after all. If you load up kick snare and hat samples into Battery and try and make it sound like a real drummer playing a real groove for 3 minutes, it'll probably be rubbish. You need BFD, Toontrack or one of those to do that job properly.

PS - The Simmons SDS - sure. To this day electronic kits are fantastic for electronic musicians who play live (hey, that's what The Human League do these days). Watching someone press START on a drum machine or DAW isn't anything like having a real drummer anchor the stage with a live band. Of course you can use them to record too, if it makes you feel better you can have them as a special case. Doesn't make the distinction between the two primary kinds of rhythm any less.

[jens]

These are two different processes that use two different techniques (and if virtual, usually different plugins). There are as alike as a violin and a piano - they both have strings after all. If you load up kick snare and hat samples into Battery and try and make it sound like a real drummer playing a real groove for 3 minutes, it'll probably be rubbish. You need BFD, Toontrack or one of those to do that job properly.

No, they are clearly totally and absolutely not - but at least it's clear now that you really believe this and as such I am with Jamcat (at least to some degree) in regards to calling you out for it.

If you use "beats" as a synonym for drums/percussion/whatever else is far more of a rhythmical than a melodic element in music that's fine - but if you use it to make a highly artificial, conceited and outright imagined distinction between it and "drums" you deserve a proper flogging each and every time that dirty words leaves your adolescent mouth.

[noiseboyuk]

If you use "beats" as a synonym for drums/percussion/whatever else is far more of a rhythmical than a melodic element in music that's fine - but if you use it to make a highly artificial, conceited and outright imagined distinction between it and "drums" you deserve a proper flogging each and every time that dirty words leaves your adolescent mouth.

Adolescent at 55! And I’ve been an RTS Award Music Jury Chair! I’ve done better in this life than I’ve thought.

Thanks!

[jens]

That is obviously something that isn't nearly as age-related as one would assume(&hope) it was.

You're welcome!

[noiseboyuk]

It's been quite the education this wildly roaming thread. On the one hand, much of KVR is obsessed by the minutiae of indescribably tiny differences between one analog emulated EQ and another, or one version of SEM and another.

On the other hand, there also seem to be other people who do not understand what a drum kit is, and why emulating that is a different animal from using electronic drums, loops and samples (or, yes, beats for short). They seem to not understand why different tools exist to do these jobs, and why the workflow and outcome is so different.

I often talk about people obsessing over the last 1%, the indefinable and usually fictitious "glue" that holds a mix together, what differences their dogs might detect if they edit at 192khz, all the while the song itself, arrangement and the mix is a load of old cack. Fundamentally not understanding rhythm appears to be a good case in point.

Honesty now. Hands up - is there anyone out there actually using something like Battery or an old workstation to try and sound like an actual human drummer playing a real drum kit?

(EDIT - I don't mean if you cannot afford a proper virtual drummer, I mean if you think it sounds just fine doing it that way?)

[donkey tugger]

Honesty now. Hands up - is there anyone out there actually using something like Battery or an old workstation to try and sound like an actual human drummer playing a real drum kit?

I absolutely agree with your general point, but Battery is probably not the best example. With decent samples, and a bit of programming nous (in terms of modulation of pitch and eq, multi out processing etc) you can get decent results. You still need the raw material though - one shots ain't really cutting it no matter what trickery you pull.