LinuxMusicians

Hey,

is there any plugin like Toontrack EZ Drummer 2 for ardour?
I'm using ardour for recording/producing and qtractor for midi editing.
I have good drum plugins (drumgizmo, avldrumkits) and I found some free drum midi patterns.
Now I need something for convenient usage.
Usually I do record some guitar riffs and want to put some drums on it. It's very annoying to put every single midi drum pattern from the file browser (thunar) to a qtractor midi track, listen to it and then remove it and start again with the next pattern file to find a suitable one.

How is your workflow to find a good drum pattern to recorded (guitar) audio?

You mean real drums? Sounding original?
I like to build those by drumming on my keyboard. Could be a drum pad too.
Drum a rhythm to manually alter it later were needed for a wider rhythm. This as it is impossible to drum on keyboard like on real drums with their sticks bouncing drumheads.

Flat straight beats i do different.

I think some music players support midi files, deadbeef being one of them. I've never tried it but I think it would work for what you need.

Does ardour not play them if you use the import function?

sysrqer wrote:I think some music players support midi files, deadbeef being one of them. I've never tried it but I think it would work for what you need.

Doesn't fit my needs properly. I want the drum pattern to be played to a looped (recorded) guitar riff. So it needs to be synchronzied in timing.

sysrqer wrote:Does ardour not play them if you use the import function?

Yes it does, but its no fun to import hundreds of midi files file by file just to browse for a good one fitting to the guitar riff.

hdr wrote:

sysrqer wrote:Does ardour not play them if you use the import function?

Yes it does, but its no fun to import hundreds of midi files file by file just to browse for a good one fitting to the guitar riff.

I meant that I thought ardour would preview it in the import browser in time. I would be amazed if reaper can't do this but I'm not sure anything in linux can do what you want other than that (assuming ardour doesn't).

hdr wrote: is there any plugin like Toontrack EZ Drummer 2 for ardour?
I'm using ardour for recording/producing and qtractor for midi editing.
I have good drum plugins (drumgizmo, avldrumkits) and I found some free drum midi patterns.
Now I need something for convenient usage.
Usually I do record some guitar riffs and want to put some drums on it. It's very annoying to put every single midi drum pattern from the file browser (thunar) to a qtractor midi track, listen to it and then remove it and start again with the next pattern file to find a suitable one.

Same problem here, but unfortunately no proper solution found. See also threads Easiest and best way to make rock drums and MT-PowerDrumKit Alternative ?

Like i said, build them yourself. Do not throw them away but recycle them with changes for the next song. Eventually build up your own drum pattern pack. In a short while you will have your own drums database which keeps growing in time.
It is really not that hard. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... s+tutorial

zoco wrote:I like to build those by drumming on my keyboard. Could be a drum pad too.
Drum a rhythm to manually alter it later were needed for a wider rhythm. This as it is impossible to drum on keyboard like on real drums with their sticks bouncing drumheads.

Here is an example of such a pattern pack for rock/metal drums build in hydrogen.

zoco wrote:An example i found in about 30 seconds. https://sites.google.com/site/gidbiddle ... -templates

zoco wrote:Like i said, build them yourself.

Yes, I know it is common to in internet discussions that somebody answers to something else than what was asked for. And also in spirit 'you are asking wrong thing. You should be doing X instead of Y.'

Toontrack EZ Drummer 2 or MT PowerDrumKit are popular althou you can make proper beats by yourself. I have tried, I can't. I try to learn composing, playing guitar, recoding, mixing, making videos, photographing and taking videos for background of music. And sometimes contributing to music or video software. So time for learning making proper beats will be later.

tavasti wrote:

zoco wrote:Like i said, build them yourself.

Yes, I know it is common to in internet discussions that somebody answers to something else than what was asked for. And also in spirit 'you are asking wrong thing. You should be doing X instead of Y.'

Excusses if it sounded like that. That was not my intention at all. I was only reminding that this option is still available as within the lasting dilemma's it still is a good one.

sysrqer wrote:I meant that I thought ardour would preview it in the import browser in time. I would be amazed if reaper can't do this but I'm not sure anything in linux can do what you want other than that (assuming ardour doesn't).

You are indeed correct. Ardour is capable of previewing midi and audio files in the import dialog before you have actually imported the file into your project. All you have to do is browse to the folder containing your drum samples, and preview them one by one. No need to import-listen-delete-repeat. I think that functionality is almost exactly what the OP wanted.

See the Ardour manual for more details: http://manual.ardour.org/adding-pre-exi ... rt-dialog/

Thank you guys.
In fact I didn't know this function of ardour. I used to import midi files by drag n drop.
The import function is not really what I was looking for, because it just plays the selected midi file and all the other tracks are stopped - but its very close to what I want.

sysrqer wrote: I would be amazed if reaper can't do this but I'm not sure anything in linux can do what you want other than that (assuming ardour doesn't).

Reaper's media explorer allows this.

hdr wrote:Thank you guys.
In fact I didn't know this function of ardour. I used to import midi files by drag n drop.
The import function is not really what I was looking for, because it just plays the selected midi file and all the other tracks are stopped - but its very close to what I want.

Indeed, I did not know either. That looks like nearly the solution I am looking for, so most likely I won't have intrest to start coding something own.

There are some softwares or hardwares* having an arpeggiator
with both a 'remember what was just played' option,
and 'latch mode' for looping what was just played.
(naming schemes may vary)

With these in action, the arp can trigger whatever kit
or samples or hardware you can connect to it,
or preserve whatever your skills have played.

There are also softwares and samplesets that
map a full keyboard with sampled loops, and these
can be auditioned in various combinations and numbers,
to play unique beats.

Another method is using audacity or similar audio editor
with multiple tracks. While recording, use a pattern you like,
and audition it with the available collections of kits
and record 12 or more bars of each.

In audacity, starting with the last kit, zoom in and drag-select
from a good intro beat, create a new track, and paste the selection.
Repeat this for as many kit sections as you like, not needing
precision regarding the end of each track (...yet...)

Let's say you have 6 tracks, each with unique sound,
starting in unison, and the beats
are mainly layered in uniformity, you can mute various combos
to reduce 'layer clutter', and experiment by offsetting a track or tracks
for syncopation, or between beats, to double or triple or quadruple
the number of sounds, allowing you to slow the master bpm setting,
while keeping things interesting.

Along the way, you can adjust the amplitude of tracks or portions,
for a more natural feel. Also, too many kits include just one sound
that may be horrible for what you need, but the others are great.
Deleting it from a track would misalign everything, so instead,
select the bad sound, and use the amplify option at around -48,
thus silencing the sound, while preserving the rythym.

Now the collection of tracks is ready to be trimmed at
a uniform ending point, so it's loopable. If looping is not needed/wanted,
copy/paste the individual tracks to themselves
multiple times, so the final assemblage is long enough for your situation.
If making a loop, some beats sound, placement or amplitude may need
editing to make the loop smoothe. Pretty easy, all in all,
to make something special from the parts bin.

* I've been using an IK Multimedia UNO analog synth which has
these capabilities, as well as a sequencer, and 80 savable preset slots,
and it's a great fit in the studio, even has an audio input, so guitar amps with
audio line-out, or connected effects unit, or other synths, can be part of
the audio flow.
Cheers