Sonic Reality

mle · Post by **mle** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:14 am

I've seen several people claim on this forum that Imap is an improvement over General MIDI drum maps for realtime keyboard playing.

Could someone please elaborate how the modifications lend themselves to realtime playing? I've never played drums in realtime (always used drum pattern editors), and I'd like to get a better understanding of what it's like to play the drums off a keyboard with Imap.

Thanks,

Mark

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:01 am

Sure. First, these are little videos I made with my camera that shoots video for 30 secs at a time (I WILL have a real video coming soon with high quality btw).

http://www.sonicreality.com/squidscorne ... dIMap1.AVI

http://www.sonicreality.com/squidscorne ... dIMap2.AVI

http://www.sonicreality.com/squidscorne ... dIMap3.AVI

I also do it quite a bit in my SampleTank demos on www.sampletank.com The "finger drumming" with IMap. Hmmm. Actually, I have some unused footage of a demonstration I did for Sonik Synth 2 where I explain IMap in detail. Maybe I will dig that one up next week.

But, here's a short explanation for now (I can do better than this though but I am getting tired... oh, no wonder. It IS 1 am!

I didn't even realise). Okay, the short and tired version:

The key to IMap over GM is that you have more articulations of the drums available to you and the main elements of the groove (the hat, kick and snare) are in a particular two hand position. The toms are more logically left to right like most right-handed drummers would play but they are a little harder to reach than GM (a trade off). The biggest factors to getting better drum programming tracks with playing live is the fact that sounds are playing off each other like a real live drummer would. So if you decide at any moment to accent the hi hat a certain way you can play the snare differently right after and it can have much more continuity than if you lay it down one at a time... or you may not come up with as many spontaneous ideas anyway. On top of this there are ghost notes and left and right stick rolls on the snare that when used right can really add to the feel and realism of your track.

Good night and good luck!

Mr. Tunes · Post by **Mr. Tunes** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 2:32 pm

i once fooled some *tough* critics into thinking an imap kit was real. it's a brilliant layout

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 2:34 pm

Mr. Tunes wrote:i once fooled some *tough* critics into thinking an imap kit was real. it's a brilliant layout

Honestly, I've heard many people's tracks programmed with IMap kits and even I would not believe that it wasn't a real live drummer.

mle · Post by **mle** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:26 pm

Sounds like it's worth my time to try to figure out how to play the Imap layout live. So what's the recommended way to do this? In General MIDI, usually the left hand does bass and snare, while the right hand does high-hats (and then it's pretty hard to get the tom toms squeezed in there). So what hand usually does what on an Imap?

Thanks,
Mark

zai · Post by **zai** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:54 pm

It will take some time to get use to if you have been playing general MIDI for a while...as in drumming.

You need to get a complete mapping of each key...then you need to figure out what you want to do...and practice, practice and more practice.

But I have to agree that it does sound a lot better once you get use to playing the new mapping scheme.

Zai

fdmusic · Post by **fdmusic** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 9:28 pm

Well, I challenge anyone to determine if this is real or not. From the opening crash, you will swear "real drummer". (I don't mean to sound like I think a lot of myself, but my skills speak for themselves). I guess this just shows what a bit of practice can do.

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 12:17 am

The hand positions that I think are ideal for IMap are to have on the left hand

thumb: B kick 2 (and also playing A and G as alternate hits of the kick)
pointer finger: A# ghost note of the snare and also G# which is the right snare roll
middle finger: G# or F# when you are alternating pointer and middle for fluid snare rolls (sometimes I even do left and right stick snare rolls with both hand's pointer fingers though when you want fine control)

last two fingers do misc things. Sometimes you can play the lower map of the hi hat but a lot of times I move my pointer finger down to play that alternate hat hit down there which is an alt closed (sometimes bell of the hat) and another Bonham open right next to it. So, often the pointer of low D# and the middle on the C#.

Then on the right hand you put:

thumb on C (the main kick)
pointer on C# to E - which is sidestick, center, rim and edge of the snare
middle on F or F# for the foot or closed hat
4th finger on G or G# mediumn open
pinky on A, A# or B for open hats (and B is a good one to alternate with the low C# below the kit for variation in open Bonham style non-closing hats).

You move your whole hand up to do rides, crashes and tom fills. Not far though. It's easy to integrate the rides and crashes into your beat. The toms are a bit more challenging to do live. If you actually had two manuals of keyboard stack on top of each other (like a B3 does) and had the toms mapped just above the kick/snare/hat then it would REALLY simulate the ergonomics of a drum kit. Think about it. A keyboard is linear but a drum kit is stacked on top of itself. On a real kit the toms are right above the kick and snare. So, IMap really "wants" to be that way but it can't unless you set it up that way. I've been meaning to make a custom set up like that for a while. It would be really cool!

Kim Lajoie · Post by **Kim Lajoie** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 11:05 am

Personally (coming from a GM background) I use IMap like this:

Left hand: Kicks, ghost snares, left hand snare.

Right hand: Right hand snare, hats, cymbals.

I find this way brings me closest to a live drummer, because I'm doing with my fingers what a drummer does with her/his hands:

Successive snare hits alternate left/right
Right hand snare, hats, and cymbals usually don't play at the same time
Left hand snare can play at the same time as any right-hand stuff
Encourages mindfulness of the interaction between the kick and (left hand) snare

-Kim.

Mr. Tunes · Post by **Mr. Tunes** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 3:23 pm

fdmusic wrote:Well, I challenge anyone to determine if this is real or not. From the opening crash, you will swear "real drummer". .

wow that's the weirdest thing i've heard all week

Mr. Tunes · Post by **Mr. Tunes** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 3:24 pm

Squids wrote:Honestly, I've heard many people's tracks programmed with IMap kits and even I would not believe that it wasn't a real live drummer.

well hands down your the best imap drummer out there. i remember when i got to jam with you and i was on guitar- it felt like i was being backed by a real drummer!

mle · Post by **mle** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 4:31 pm

Interesting. Kim's scheme seems a bit more logical to my own mind (probably from my brief fiddlings with GM maps). But Squids, I'm curious to better understand why you allocate your primary fingers from both hands to kick and snare. What is the value of being able to play kick with either hand?

Can someone explain to me what a "ghost snare" is?

Thanks,

Mark

mle · Post by **mle** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 4:32 pm

Interesting. Kim's scheme seems a bit more logical to my own mind (probably from my brief fiddlings with GM maps). But Squids, I'm curious to better understand why you allocate your primary fingers from both hands to kick and snare. What is the value of being able to play kick with either hand?

Can someone explain to me what a "ghost snare" is?

Thanks,

Mark

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 6:11 pm

Mr. Tunes wrote:
Squids wrote:Honestly, I've heard many people's tracks programmed with IMap kits and even I would not believe that it wasn't a real live drummer.
well hands down your the best imap drummer out there. i remember when i got to jam with you and i was on guitar- it felt like i was being backed by a real drummer!

Actually, thanks but I've seen several people blow me out of the water. Maybe there are some groove things I can do that are special from me but there was a guy at Frankfurt Musik Messe that put me in my place. Also, Larry Ortega can do some pretty wicked stuff. But, thanks anyway.

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 6:20 pm

mle wrote:Interesting. Kim's scheme seems a bit more logical to my own mind (probably from my brief fiddlings with GM maps). But Squids, I'm curious to better understand why you allocate your primary fingers from both hands to kick and snare. What is the value of being able to play kick with either hand?

Can someone explain to me what a "ghost snare" is?

Thanks,

Mark

Yes. First, a ghost snare is a light "tap" of the snare. The lowest dynamics often also have a tap sample too but to have one separate allows you to use it as a groove filler almost like a hihat. So, playing it instead of a hat sometimes adds feel to your track and many drummers use ghost notes for that.

As to why I use two hands for a kick (or anything else) the reason is to control timbral variety. There are 4 kick keys in the IMap and each one has multiple velocity samples switching as well. But, they also each have a different timbre (character to the sound) just like a real drum would sound a little different every time you hit it. Plus, with a different finger or hand on something you can use it to "ghost" as well (which is often what I do with the left hand kick). So, I sort of tap the "B" (or G or A) and then use the right hand on "C" to to accent the kick. The other thing you can do is roll GABC to get double kick rolls. One trick I like to do is a roll from A# to B to C. That's a ghost snare hit and then two kicks. It gives a sort of Bonham shuffle kind of effect.

The idea of the IMap (and also the new IMap coming out that is on the new massive amount of drum products we're about to release) is based on the concept of having more than one hit per most of the drums. The toms have 2-3 per tom, the hats have many articulations and in the new Imap you even have two ride edges, two ride bells and other "two stick" variations. If you think about it, a drummer is alternating the sticks as well as the position of the drums which creates different sublte changes in the sound. So, IMap intelligently puts those extra variations into a consistent scheme. At the time I created it (over 10 years ago!) there wasn't any other scheme besides GM.