Extending drumkits

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rcarvalho
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Extending drumkits

Post by rcarvalho »

Hello!

My name is Rodrigo, I discovered Drumgizmo recently and I think it is awesome! My friends always compliment the timbre of the drum recordings.

My favourite drumkit is DRSKit but sometimes I need some drum pieces it doesn't have, like an splash or a tambourine. Other kits have splashs (like CrocellKit) but I like DRSKit most, and I think no kit have a tambourine... So my questions are:

1) Is it possible to mix pieces from different kits (like using CrocellKit's splashes with DRSKit)?
2) Is it possible to add a soundfont sound to a drumkit (like a tambourine from AVL Drumkits)?
3) If the previous are possible, is it going to sound good?!

Thanks in advance for your attention.

Regards,

Rodrigo
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Michael Willis
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Re: Extending drumkits

Post by Michael Willis »

Probably the easiest thing to try is just make two midi tracks, one with DRSKit, another with CrocellKit. You might have to play with the mixing to make it sound like they go together. If it helps, you could think of it as being like one of those bands that has two percussionists.

If you want to try building your own kit with extra samples, please try using DGEdit, which allows you to make your own DrumGizmo kit.
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deva
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Re: Extending drumkits

Post by deva »

It is possible to integrate one instrument from one drumkit into another.
It is done my modifying the drumkit xml.

Let's assume we want to incorporate the splash cymbal from the CrocellKit into the DRSKit.
First copy the splash instrument folder from the CrocellKit folder to the DRSKit folder.
(Note: CrocellKit is a 48kHz kit and DRSKit is 44k1Hz so the splash will be played as if the samples were also 44k1Hz)
Now edit the DRSKit drumkit XML and add the instrument node corresponding to the one from CrocellKit:

Code: Select all

    <instrument name="SplashL" file="SplashL/SplashL.xml">
      <channelmap in="AmbLeft" out="AmbLeft" main="true"/>
      <channelmap in="AmbRight" out="AmbRight" main="true"/>
      <channelmap in="OHLeft" out="OHLeft" main="true"/>
      <channelmap in="OHRight" out="OHRight" main="true"/>
      <channelmap in="OHCenter" out="OHCenter" main="true"/>
      <channelmap in="Hihat" out="Hihat"/>
      <channelmap in="Ride" out="Ride"/>
      <channelmap in="SnareTop" out="SnareTop"/>
      <channelmap in="SnareBottom" out="SnareBottom"/>
      <channelmap in="Tom1" out="Tom1"/>
      <channelmap in="Tom2" out="Tom2"/>
      <channelmap in="FTom1" out="FTom1"/>
      <channelmap in="FTom2" out="FTom2"/>
      <channelmap in="KDrumInside" out="KDrumInside"/>
      <channelmap in="KDrumOutside" out="KDrumOutside"/>
    </instrument>
The in attributes describe the channel names as they occur inside SplashL/SplashL.xml and these need to be mapped into the corresponding channels of the DRSKit. The outnodes in the above are the drumkit channels of the CrocellKit which do not exist in DRSKit. So they have to be changed - see the DRSKit channel names near the top of the DRSKit drumkit file:

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    <channel name="AmbL"/>
    <channel name="AmbR"/>
    <channel name="Kdrum_back"/>
    <channel name="Kdrum_front"/>
    <channel name="Hihat"/>
    <channel name="OHL"/>
    <channel name="OHR"/>
    <channel name="Ride"/>
    <channel name="Snare_bottom"/>
    <channel name="Snare_top"/>
    <channel name="Tom1"/>
    <channel name="Tom2"/>
    <channel name="Tom3"/>
Since the drumkits have rather different channel layout a bit of creativity is needed here. We can map AmbLeft to AmbL, AmbRight to AmbR and likewise for OHLeft and and OHRight. But OHCenter only exists in CrocellKit so this one we will have to skip.
Tom1 and Tom2 are similarly trivial and we can map FTom1 to Tom3 and again, just ignore FTom2. Both kits have two mics on the (single) kickdrum so they can also be mapped; KDrumInside to Kdrum_front and KDrumOutside to Kdrum_back:

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     <instrument name="SplashL" file="SplashL/SplashL.xml">
      <channelmap in="AmbLeft" out="AmbL" main="true"/>
      <channelmap in="AmbRight" out="AmbR" main="true"/>
      <channelmap in="OHLeft" out="OHL" main="true"/>
      <channelmap in="OHRight" out="OHR" main="true"/>
<!--      <channelmap in="OHCenter" out="OHCenter" main="true"/> -->
      <channelmap in="Hihat" out="Hihat"/>
      <channelmap in="Ride" out="Ride"/>
      <channelmap in="SnareTop" out="Snare_top"/>
      <channelmap in="SnareBottom" out="Snare_bottom"/>
      <channelmap in="Tom1" out="Tom1"/>
      <channelmap in="Tom2" out="Tom2"/>
      <channelmap in="FTom1" out="Tom3"/>
<!--      <channelmap in="FTom2" out="FTom2"/> -->
      <channelmap in="KDrumInside" out="Kdrum_front"/>
      <channelmap in="KDrumOutside" out="Kdrum_back"/>
    </instrument>
With all this in place the newly added instrument only needs to be added to the midimap ("Midmap_full.xml) file so it can be played - note 39 is not yet used:

Code: Select all

        <map note="39" instr="SplashL"/>
and that's it.
rcarvalho
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Re: Extending drumkits

Post by rcarvalho »

Thank you very much, deva and Michael Willis! I'm gonna try deva's solution for the splash and Michael's solution for the tambourine from AVL Drumkits.

Regards!
ivoaudio
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Re: Extending drumkits

Post by ivoaudio »

Thanks, deva, your post opened my mind to the possibility of customizing the drum kits.
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GMaq
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Re: Extending drumkits

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

A quick note... If you want any of the AVL Drumkit tambourine (or other) samples for customizing an existing DG Kit the WAV samples are all available by simply unzipping the SFZ versions found here: http://www.bandshed.net/sounds/sfz/AVL_ ... .1-fix.zip
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