RealiDrums Released! A New Concept in Drum Libraries

[lingyai]

Welcome back, happy for the safe return.

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

[Mike Greene]

I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “articulations.”

When you hit something in a drum kit, where you hit it has quite a lot of effect on the sound, pretty similar to how hard you hit it. For example, hit the bell of a cymbal sounds different from the bow and that sounds different from the edge. (I've mentioned the hi-hat before .) For drums, rim hits sound different from centre hits (and it varies a fair bit between). You also can get rim clicks, where the rim itself is struck - either tapped or with the stick resting on the head - making the drum resonate. Lots of these depend on the style you're playing -- i.e. more articulations means it's easier to use the kit in a wider range of styles effectively.

I understand now what you mean. While RealiDrums does have anywhere from 3 to 7 velocities for each drum (with round robins as well), we didn't go so far as recording various areas of the drum. (Although we do have bell rides to go along with the regular rides.)

There are certainly times where that much detail could be useful, but for me personally, where 90% of my songs just need snares on 2's and 4's, the extra work (and cost) involved wouldn't be worth it. For better or worse, we went in a direction of a wide variety of drums, as opposed to a smaller number of highly detailed drums.

[Mike Greene]

How do you get the midi grooves from kontakt into the sequencer in your daw?

Right under the groove selector is a box that says "Drum MIDI." That's a MIDI file of the drum loop with whatever parameters you have set. Just drag that onto your sequencer track and now your sequencer can play the beat instead of having to use the Play button on the Groove Generator.

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.

The Groove Generator is more about providing MIDI loops, except instead of being stuck with whatever the MIDI loop was, you can fine tune each loop. Make any element of the beat simpler or more complicated, or use ride cymbal instead of hihat, or add crash cymbal or whatever. Once you have the beat how you like it, then drag it to your sequencer track.

Then if you want a different beat for the chorus, adjust the sliders and buttons to taste (which automatically creates a new MIDI file), and drag that MIDI file to the chorus section of your song.

It's basically the same as the MIDI drag and drop loops of any other drum collection, except ours is much more flexible and more like being with a real drummer.

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 Greene]

Double post.

[memyselfandus]

Brilliant

[Aleatoriac]

Those snares sound wonderful... Dammit I have sooooo many drums...

Tempted...

[lingyai]

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.

The Groove Generator is more about providing MIDI loops, except instead of being stuck with whatever the MIDI loop was, you can fine tune each loop. Make any element of the beat simpler or more complicated, or use ride cymbal instead of hihat, or add crash cymbal or whatever. Once you have the beat how you like it, then drag it to your sequencer track.

Then if you want a different beat for the chorus, adjust the sliders and buttons to taste (which automatically creates a new MIDI file), and drag that MIDI file to the chorus section of your song.

It's basically the same as the MIDI drag and drop loops of any other drum collection, except ours is much more flexible and more like being with a real drummer.

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."

Thanks for clarifying, Mike!

[DarkStar]

I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “articulations.”

When you hit something in a drum kit, where you hit it has quite a lot of effect on the sound, pretty similar to how hard you hit it. For example, hit the bell of a cymbal sounds different from the bow and that sounds different from the edge. (I've mentioned the hi-hat before .) For drums, rim hits sound different from centre hits (and it varies a fair bit between). You also can get rim clicks, where the rim itself is struck - either tapped or with the stick resting on the head - making the drum resonate. Lots of these depend on the style you're playing -- i.e. more articulations means it's easier to use the kit in a wider range of styles effectively.

I understand now what you mean. While RealiDrums does have anywhere from 3 to 7 velocities for each drum (with round robins as well), we didn't go so far as recording various areas of the drum. (Although we do have bell rides to go along with the regular rides.)

There are certainly times where that much detail could be useful, but for me personally, where 90% of my songs just need snares on 2's and 4's, the extra work (and cost) involved wouldn't be worth it. For better or worse, we went in a direction of a wide variety of drums, as opposed to a smaller number of highly detailed drums.

Understood. And, yes, pljones explained it well.

[Spitfire31]

I think I understand the ethos of Realidrums and I'm all for it.

Someone made a comparison with Steinberg's Groove Agent 2 which was also about "getting a cool groove going quick" and I used it all the time.

Unfortunately, later OS:es broke it and I got myself the very generous upgrade to Groove Agent 3. I discovered that I had a monster on my hands, requiring deep perusal of the manual just to get an inkling of what was going on.

I'm very happy with Realidrums, now that it's picked up the fallen mantle of GA 2, and then some.

/Joachim

[don1thedon]

Those snares sound wonderful... Dammit I have sooooo many drums...

Tempted...

Yeh, likewise but this is sooo good, well worth adding to your library! Just sayin'...

[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

Best Regards

Roman Empire

[a_Scientist]

if so, i'm not an english speaker so not really (reali?!) into it, sorry. cheers

[Mike Greene]

I think I understand the ethos of Realidrums and I'm all for it.

Someone made a comparison with Steinberg's Groove Agent 2 which was also about "getting a cool groove going quick" and I used it all the time.

Unfortunately, later OS:es broke it and I got myself the very generous upgrade to Groove Agent 3. I discovered that I had a monster on my hands, requiring deep perusal of the manual just to get an inkling of what was going on.

I'm very happy with Realidrums, now that it's picked up the fallen mantle of GA 2, and then some.

/Joachim

This is exactly right. I had Groove Agent way back when it was first released and it was great. For me, "quick and easy" is always my preference.

We tried to adopt the same philosophy for the sounds themselves, which is why we set it up so the user simply scrolls though sounds until he hears what he wants, rather than needing to have a bunch of knowledge about metal or wood shells, or how much bleed from the toms mic should added to the snare. I truly did try to make this like my old rackmount Alesis DM-5/DM-Pro, except we added velocity layers and round robins. (And I'd like to believe, better sounds.)

[Mike Greene]

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 . . .

[Musical Gym]

That will fit in nicely with the two hand manual playing of the drums for laying down spontaneous jams.