[LAU] Voice-to-drums in general and the Trigger LADSPA in particular

Lorenzo Sutton lsutton at libero.it
Thu Sep 22 19:06:53 UTC 2011


Hi Artem,

On 09/22/2011 07:05 PM, Artem Vakhitov wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am in search of a more or less easy way to do voice-to-drums - that
> is, to trigger drum samples (MIDI or otherwise) and control their volume
> (velocity) using my voice recorded from a microphone. Real-time is not
> necessary, and neither is multi-sample capability. The objective is to
> create more lively, groovy drum loops, which I can emulate with my voice.

I'm not sure you can do that with any tool 'out of the box' especially 
the "control their volume" part, as triggers usually have a 'binary' 
(on/off threshold). Of course (but that is probably obvious) being human 
voice monophonic you will have to do "a piece at a time"

>
> I tried using the Trigger LADSPA plugin but so far have not had any
> success with it. The output I get makes no sense to me, and the meaning
> of some parameters like e.g. threshold is unclear due to units chosen.
> Can anyone point me to any HOWTOs on using Trigger or describe the
> workflow in a few words?

I'll give it a try  (although I never used the LADSPA plugin version): A 
trigger is usually quite simple. It "monitors" an input signal, when the 
signal's amplitude goes above the threshold (which you set) it will play 
(trigger) the chosen sample. The hold parameter (usually measured in 
milliseconds) is important because it sets how long the Trigger remains 
inactive (holds) after it triggered this avoids re-triggering the sample 
too quickly especially if the input signal remains above the threshold 
for too long.
Here is an very simple example of what you're probably thinking of:

http://lorenzosu.altervista.org/temp/dump/trigger_test.ogg

Hard panned left is the audio input (in this case it's not my voice but 
me tapping on my crap laptop mic) hard right the triggered sample. You 
can noticed some taps are "missed" this is because they were below 
threshold (too quiet). The hold was at 80 ms (excuse the horrible 
quality of the audio input quickly made on my laptop and it's night here..)

>
> I would also like to know about possible alternatives to Trigger,
> including those for Windows.

Well I made a very simple trigger for PD [1] a while ago (to be used 
mainly with ardour - used for the above example).

Lorenzo

[1] http://lorenzosu.altervista.org/pd/trigger/
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Artem Vakhitov
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