Drum Instrument for Step Clip?

[TheNefarious]

Dragging works fine for me. Some clips are longer than others, but yeah I can drag them over just fine.

Weird. I use 64-bit plugin with 64-bit Tracktion and dragging and dropping does some weird stuff. It changes the tempo of the track from the place I dropped it to 120 automatically (I have to double click the tempo change to get rid of it and adjust the length of the clip) and it doesn't have the same amount of bars in Tracktion as I would set it up in the plugin (usually the clip gets smaller for some reason, like it's been cut). There might be some other problems, but those are the main ones. Is there a reason for this?

[klangbastler]

i don't really understand what is happening on your side. what are you doing exactly?
what instrument plugin, what kind of clip, what kind of operation exactly.

[TheNefarious]

I'll try my best to explain here, since I don't have the machine currently in front of me. If you still don't know what's going on, I will add pictures later on (tomorrow or the day after) to further show what's happening.

First off, it's the MT-PowerDrumKit. I compose all the grooves and fills correctly and then when I try to drag and drop into the track, there is a prompt in Tracktion, I confirm, and there is a MIDI clip in the track. There are a couple of problems.

1. There is a tempo shift where I put the clip at; when I watch the tempo at the top, it starts with e.g. 166 bpm and it goes like that up until the clip, where it abruptly changes to 120 bpm. I then have to undo that.

2. The clip seems too be not as long as I set it up, like e.g. a groove that I set up to be 8 bars is suddenly 2 bars. Also, it feels like I have to trim it constantly because there are often no notes at all towards the end of the clip. E.g. the first half would have the drum beat, and then the second half of the clip would have literally nothing.

That's all I can think of right now.

[Peter Widdicombe]

When you drop the clip in, Tracktion asks whether to use or ignore the incoming information - i.e. if the, say, 4/4 at 120 bpm from the MT drummer is to be used, or ignore it and place the bars into the existing midi clip using Tracktion's bpm . I normally ignore and use Tracktion/Waveform timing.

Oh, and I don't drop it INTO a MIDI clip, I drop it into blank space within a track; and slide it left/right to where I want it... ?

[TheNefarious]

Well that solves my first problem. I should've tried to read that instead of assuming, or at least experiment so thank you so much for helping me.

For the second problem, I don't drop into the MIDI clip, what I meant is that by dropping, the beat gets imported as a MIDI clip. Here is what I mean. I made a beat in the plugin: intro, 8-bar groove, 4-bar groove (same one), 1-bar groove, fill: 15 bars in total.
I drag and drop it in Tracktion and the second picture shows my problem. It's supposed to go up to the yellow line, but the 4-bar groove is apparently now a 1-bar grove, so it stops short.

P.S. Ignore Track 2, it's just a drum beat made in Sampler and recorded by my computer keyboard. It's muted.

[terrynoakes]

This may or may not help, I've not encountered your problem using MT Drummer, but one possible way round this particular problem, if the grove is the same , is insert 2 x 8 bars, and then shorten the 8 before the fill to 4 bars using the little triangle on the clip, then move the fill clip back to meet 4 bars.
When I build a drum track with MT drummer I add/ drag desired clip into waveform/tracktion directly, rather than build song in mt power.
Hope you get it sorted.

[codec_spurt]

I spent about 8 hours installing Waveform. Then about another 8 hours setting up my VST folders for it. I've got both x64 and x86 set up now. That's a bit of a trick to do as Waveform reads from the same config file, so if you try to do that on one machine with the same login (user) it won't work. I tried it - it just messes with your VST folder paths etc.

Luckily I somewhat (mistakenly) decided to set up two 'users' here on my win7-64 OS. As if not operating as full admin wasn't punishment enough. It's been fun.

So, I installed 64-bit Waveform to one user account, and I installed 32-bit Waveform to the other. Works a charm. I've finally bitten the bullet with getting up to speed with 64-bit. Not because I'm not a dirty hold out. You'll take my 32-bit DAWs and plugins out of my cold dead hands, but I've just got so many DAWs these days, and so many plugins, I just can't keep up. So limiting myself to 64-bit is a good idea.

In fact, I only installed the 32-bit Waveform because of the fact that I've had some serious problems with Drum Plugins in Waveform. Hence me posting in this thread. I tested and the problem persists in both versions.

This is the problem: When I use Drumaxx as a plugin on the step clip lane (I've tried converting to midi with no improvement), it works fine and dandy but does NOT recall the sounds on playback. Actually, it does recall the sounds on playback - it just doesn't play them back. The file is loaded but the sounds don't play. This is confused by the fact that if you just use a midi clip with say, a 'C5' note triggering the pattern from Drumaxx, it does play back perfectly, proving that the sounds were loaded (you can see they are loaded because they show up in the preset pane of Drumaxx). They just don't sound if you use the Drumaxx plugin as a sound module.

I have a similar problem with Audio Damage Tattoo, except this time, the preset is not recalled at all - it just defaults to 'default'. At least with Drumaxx it recalls the preset from the right location, even if it does not allow the sounds to play.

So that is two Drum Plugins for a start, that won't work properly in Waveform. Shame, as they work flawlessly otherwise.

Waveform is a work of genius. It has changed in all the right places. I remember using Tracktion v1 about 12 years ago now and going off on one about how great it was. I abandoned it for about 10 years, but now it's back in the game. Incredible piece of software.

I could have just sent a mail to support, but hey, this thread seemed kind of pertinent.

If you have Drumaxx or Tattoo, or any other such plugin (that does patterns as well as being a sound module) then give it a swing. I'll try out some new stuff when I get the time but I'd like to get these sorted first.

Fyi, I tried Drumatic 4 and it works perfectly, but again, it does not have pattern playback. I don't know if this has anything to do with anything at all. Just using it as a drum module for triggered sounds it works perfectly.

I've tried both these plugs (Drumaxx / Tattoo) in both 32 and 64 bit Waveform. I have no other problems at all. The software works like a dream so far on my very old test machine. But damn, if this drum thing isn't annoying as hell. I've got about another two dozen Drum plugs I can try, but you know...

It's all perfectly repeatable behavior. I have made notes as well, so I'll get around to sending them to the devs at some point. I've spent about a whole day on it in fact, figuring it out. Various project files.

It's a shame, because the implementation of this idea is first rate. Loved how you just call up a Drumaxx or a Tattoo and right away the kick is where the kick is supposed to be being triggered from the Step Clip lane. Nice. Not ALL of the sounds correspond perfectly, but Kick, Snare, Hat, Clap seem to work out of the box, across the board with the patches I've tried. That's good enough for me.

To the OP: You can use the included Synth/Sampler: Collective - for drum sounds as it has some very nice drum sounds, but it is slow and a little limited compared to a lean and mean simple drum machine vst like Drumatic or whatever. Drumatic doesn't cost much and is mind-blowingly awesome. You can even get an old version of it for free. Check out Dr. Fusion as well - also free and with hundreds of sounds.

I'd really like to get Drumaxx and Tattoo working with Waveform. Over the next few days, I'm going to try some of my other plugs and see if they have the same fault. I've double checked with my other DAWs that this is not a VST problem, and no, all the sounds play back perfectly. Bit of a bummer that Tattoo saves in Monolithic format and adds about 10-20MB to each file save (as it must be saving samples or whatnot) but yet they are not recalled.

Then again, it may just be my machine and my setup. So if you have Drumaxx or Tattoo, please do a simple beat and see if it recalls properly on re-load.

I've also had a consistent problem with SliceX losing its GUI on reload as well. Works perfectly otherwise. Lots to take in. But the concept is there. Just the details need a bit of working on.

Sorry for kind of hi-jacking the thread OP, but if you are looking for free drum VST's to use with the Step Clip, you won't do better than Drumatic 3 and Dr. Fusion 2. Oh, and don't forget the ADM drum machine bundled with Computer Music (at least it always was last time I looked) - it's pretty much Roland TR-606 based but has some very crunchy and meaty samples built in to it on top.

[TheNefarious]

This may or may not help, I've not encountered your problem using MT Drummer, but one possible way round this particular problem, if the grove is the same , is insert 2 x 8 bars, and then shorten the 8 before the fill to 4 bars using the little triangle on the clip, then move the fill clip back to meet 4 bars.
When I build a drum track with MT drummer I add/ drag desired clip into waveform/tracktion directly, rather than build song in mt power.
Hope you get it sorted.

Ah ok, I think that will do alright. Thank you so much for your help.

Sorry for kind of hi-jacking the thread OP, but if you are looking for free drum VST's to use with the Step Clip, you won't do better than Drumatic 3 and Dr. Fusion 2. Oh, and don't forget the ADM drum machine bundled with Computer Music (at least it always was last time I looked) - it's pretty much Roland TR-606 based but has some very crunchy and meaty samples built in to it on top.

I'm not OP, but I will check them out later definitely.