[LAU] [LAD] Drums - EDrums - Hydrogen

[Len Ovens]

On Sun, 23 Mar 2014, Sebastian Moors wrote:

> Aurélien Leblond wrote:
>> EDrums & Cymbal choke
>> 
>> I believe edrums are using aftertouch for that (to confirm) - sample
>> could simply be muted?
>> 
> No idea.. Never inspected the midi stream of my edrum when using chokes.
> I think sending a "virtual" note-off could be better then to mute it (then 
> you don't
> have the trouble to unmute it afterwards).

Wow, that opens a whole can of worms... (in my mind anyway). I am 
thinking the whole keyboard to play struck instruments fails to some 
extent, not just in drums, but anything normally played with mallets like 
vibes or steel drums.

The keyboard is the best controller for piano or organ/synth type sounds 
because they all have a note off event. Because they do, a second playing 
of the same note will always find a note that has some time in the past 
found a note off.

This is not the case with a struck instrument, though I am sure most synth 
patches that try to emulate a struck instrument effectively ignore the 
note off (or set the note off envelope to the same as if the note stays 
on). I would think on a polyphonic synth hitting the same note again would 
give a mix of the first note event still fading out plus the same note new 
event playing the same thing. So it might sound like the player hit a 
second cymbal sounding exactly the same as the first rather the same 
cymbal where hitting it a second time would stop or at least modify the 
sound of the first strike.

Maybe keyboards (or synths) already take care of this, but what should 
happen is that one of them should generate a note off followed by the new 
note on information. In the case of a cymbal, this would be very hard to 
emulate, because a crash followed by a ride hit would not completely stop 
the crash sound, just change it. It may take several ride hits (which on a 
real set might each sound different in their own right) before the crash 
sound is not a signifcant part of the sound.

Of course making a short span of keyboard (range of notes really) 
monophonic may work for some of this. If only cymbal sounds from the same 
cymbal are in that range. This would make a high hat work for example, 
because in a monophonic keyboard the last note is always cut off by the 
new one. The problem is you have to effectively have a span of keys for 
each drum...

Well just some thoughts. While I have a few keyboards, I am not a player, 
I can do some string pads here and there :)  I have also played drums, but 
it has been years since I have had a live set to play and I have not taken 
the time to think about why the cheap set of pads I have sound so bad... I 
just expect that since they are cheap.

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net