I was mistaken, I own a SPX90II, but the advertising comes from the SPX90, resp. from the "ARTIST, ENGINEER, AND PRODUCER APPLICATION'S GUIDEBOOK": "On the song "Open Your Heart, produced by Pat Leonard and Madonna, the drum track was played live to a programmed pattern. Pat and Madonna decided to keep the high-hat because they liked the feel that it added, but they did not want it identified as a "machine". To solve this problem, Pat used the AUTO PAN setting of the SPX90 to keep the sixteenth note RX11 high-hat pattern moving, making it harder to focus on this track." That's just promotion, but using panning, usually MIDI control instead of a noise effect unit, was really one method used to avoid the machine-gun effect (just naming it "machine" in the sense of "drum machine" is an understatement/downplaying of the issue).

On Sat, 4 Oct 2014, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Hiding, but really fixing the problem. It does depend on the effect the musician is trying to produce. In my case, I did mean machine. Machine gun would be something I use to refer to drum rolls :) But in this case, the HH is not straight timed notes. The timing shows quite a lot of variation. It is the sameness of the sound I was refering to. This has taught me how much musicianship the average drummer puts into their playing. I certainly never thought about it when I was playing as the body movements are more subconsious than I thought. It is no wonder drummers choose drums over pads. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

On Sat, 2014-10-04 at 10:19 -0700, Len Ovens wrote: Folks, lets share "workarounds" for sequencer played synth drums. I guess one problem that makes drum rolls sound like a machine gun are sounds without decay/release-time. Snares and toms need to be polyphony and even a short hit, should cause that they're played from the start to the end. IMO the machine-gun issue is much more relevant for the hi-hat, since hi-hat's usually are grouped. Playing the sound of the closed, half-opened and opened hi-hat immediately stop the hi-hat sound used before. This is a very good work around when a open hi-hat is played following a closed hi-hat, but it becomes a PITA if you play rolls on a closed hi-hat.

On Sat, 4 Oct 2014, Ralf Mardorf wrote: The drums/cymbals are unique in music as they are struck repeatedly and have resonance. They also sound very different depending on how they are struck. A drummer does not emphasis a hit only by playing louder, but often also by stick angle, area of skin hit, including the rim in the hit, etc. In the same way a drumer will play softer by playing lighter but also choosing a different part of the skin to hit. It is still the same drum and the resonance remains the same, but the sound changes rather a lot. A second hit on the same drum/cymbal does more than one thing. At the time of the hit the skin is stretched changing the momentary resonance of the old hit. The new hit may not be in time cycle wise with the old hit and so there will be interferance between the new hit and left over of the old. How much of the old hit is masked by the new I haven't really thought about. I think this is much more pronounced in a cymbal hit as they do ring a lot longer. What is the effect of the old hit on the new if the edge is struck on one and not the other, or bell, or any other portion of the cymbal. So just keeping the release going will not give the same souund, the release needs to be modified by the new hit. The high hat is different again, it has even more possibilities. Even a closed HH can be hit in numerous ways and again most drummers will emphasis hits with at least a different stick angle. In all, the release sound is probably less of an issue than having a variety sounds for the same hit. A roll is never played on a drum with both left and right hand hits in the same point on the skin, if played with classic stick possitions the hand mechanics are totally different from hand to hand as well. In a long roll the hits are not left right but rather L L R R... but the first L and the second are not the same either as the first is a hit and the second is a bounce. A good drummer gets the force of the bounce really close to the hit and gets both hands to give the same force really well. But they are still human and interperate the music and feel as they see fit. That is people naturally change the sound of their drum hits to fit their perception of what the music is "saying". The most common use of electronic drums is for the non-drummer. Often using beat patterns or drum parts that are played by KB. I think just adding more drum sounds could make a big difference. A left and a right sound, a first hit, second hit sound. Even just using the second sound every second or third hit with different velocities as well could make a big difference. It is like the DX7. It makes many sounds that are not the same as an acoustic instrument, but many of the sounds do sound like they could be made by some kind of acoustic instrument... just nothing that exists. In the same way it is not important that the drums sound like real drums so much as sounding like something that could be real. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

On Sat, 2014-10-04 at 13:00 -0700, Len Ovens wrote: I'm a non-drummer, but even when playing the drums on a keyboard, one approach is to record hi-hat, kick and snare at the same time and after recording to separate them to different MIDI tracks. I guess most musicians, even non-drummers are able to play quaver and semiquaver on a hi-hat and to play simple bass drum pedal and snare patterns at the same time, so doing the same thing on a keyboard sometimes can improve the groove, which results also in a more natural sound. But why not recording MIDI data played on e-drums by a really good drummer? Test it and compare such MIDI recordings done with an Atari and a PC. IMO another showstopper is even jitter free latency, a clean MIDI setup, keyboard to drum sample player results in a better groove, than playing a PC sound sampler/drum machine. Even without MIDI jitter the audio latency likely disturb the feeling while playing.

On October 5, 2014 12:06:02 AM Len Ovens <len(a)ovenwerks.net> wrote: I'd expect the effect to suffer somewhat on a notebook's internal speakers, yes. The lack of bass could make the HH seem more overbearing than it really is, but I'll check on other speakers myself. I might drop the level a couple of dB. That's a fair comment, and something that's relatively easy to do with SC's generative-music powers. I was going for a more mechanical sound in the drums (it's a sampled 80s drum kit, calling old drum machines to mind), but it may be more listener-friendly to spice up this element. Thanks -- hjh Sent with AquaMail for Android http://www.aqua-mail.com