Leevious Hello
Hopefully this is the right forum to ask this question – I just purchased my copy of Metalheads EZX this afternoon, and was anxious to hear the new kits. They sound amazing with the included MIDI, however, when I use the Metalheads kits with the MIDI from Library of the Extreme, the blast beats sound ‘weak’ and many of the snare hits do not come through (this is especially apparent with the gravity blasts). I’ve tried tweaking the levels using the mixer, and this did not make much of a difference, if at all. It would just make the snare hits that did come through louder. I also noticed this with quick double bass passages (some double bass sounded like triplets instead of a steady beat). Is there a way to make the hits sound more consistent?
Any help would be most appreciated, thanks.
MichaelHi,
The only reason that The Library of the Extreme MIDI would sound less powerful than the MetalHeads MIDI is the difference in Velocity between the two performances. EZdrummer and the MetalHeads expansion only play the appropriate sample for the MIDI information that they are fed with. The quickest fix in this instance would be to turn the Velocity knob up in the EZdrummer plugin. This will increase the overall velocity of the MIDI played in EZdrummer. The Velocity knob is located just to the right of the “Open Grooves” button.
As for your other question regarding the “triplets”… this again is in the MIDI performance itself and it would not be caused by EZdrummer or MetalHeads. The only way to change this unfortunately would be to edit the MIDI or use a quantizing function in your DAW.
Michael Sanfilipp - Toontrack
Technical Marketing Coordinator
Leevious Hey Again
Thanks for the quick and informative reply – I did try using the velocity knob with a song I already have mapped out with existing Library of the Extreme and DFH MIDI, and it didn’t change the ‘intensity’ of the hits. I am under the asumption that once you have laid out the MIDI passages, you aren’t able to adjust the intensity using the velocity knob, correct? Other than that, I guess the trick would be to re-do all the drums, and adjust the velocity prior to putting the MIDI into my editing program (Reaper)?
Thanks again, take care!
MichaelCorrect, once you drag and drop the MIDI to Reaper all velocity editing must then be done in Reaper…. (I should have mentioned this earlier). This can easily be done by selecting all of the MIDI events in your track and raising the velocity to the desired level. If every event is selected together the performance will remain intact.
Cheers.
Michael Sanfilipp - Toontrack
Technical Marketing Coordinator
ScottORIGINAL: Leevious
however, when I use the Metalheads kits with the MIDI from Library of the Extreme, the blast beats sound ‘weak’ and many of the snare hits do not come through (this is especially apparent with the gravity blasts).
I’m not a drummer but I’ve recorded enough over the years to offer an opinion.
Is there a way for a real drummer to play a 200BPM ‘blastbeat’ with a super high velocity on the snare? Is it physically possible? Just the short amount of time there is between snare hits would indicate you couldn’t hit the snare that hard at the velocity. Plus, Dirk actually played the grooves with that ‘low’ snare velocity so I would guess that would be the answer.
I would suggest adjusting the snare MIDI in Reaper and also using Multiout to send just the snare channels out into Reaper and applying compression/limiting.
Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor
Leevious Thanks again for the coments guys – I’ll give those a try.
Can’t wait to see what the rest of the month brings…
Leevious Hey Again
For my tastes, using the Metalheads kits with Library of the Extreme MIDI, turning the velocity knob up to around 35-40 seemed to work the best (still able to get dynamic/human sounding playing without it sounding too mechanical). I have about a dozen songs completed using the DFH kit and mostly LOTE MIDI. I loaded a song up in Reaper, switched the DFH kit to the Metalheads kit, and then tried to adjust the velocity controls in Reaper. All it did was make the louder, stronger hits louder, and didn’t really do anything for the lighter, quieter hits. I’m fairly new to this type of editing – I have no idea how to send different drums to different channels in Reaper – I downloaded a guide and still was not able to do it. Any idea where there is a basic tutorial for someone like me… you’ll have to excuse my ignorance on this matter. I’ll keep plugging away at this…
Thanks again!
zazelsodoI am having similar problems. I am using DFH for several things, and when I convert things over to MetalHeads, certain fills sound weak. Like the crash is dull, and the snares are really quiet. I’m using Sonar 8.0, and things sound great 95% of the time, but certain fills lose their power. The velocity on the crashes are at 110 on each one, and they’re barely audible. But right after the fill, the NEXT time the same crash is hit at 108, it dominates the left side of my mix.
Snare runs cause the same problem.
Is there a Drum Map for the new MetalHeads? I have the DFH Drum Map from Groove Monkey, does anyone know if one exists for MetalHeads yet?
Any help you guys could offer would be appreciated. I’ve tried editing the individual velocities, and no luck.
I can upload audio samples if you guys need them…but any assistance you may be able to offer would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
-zaz
zazelsodoAll,
Here is an MP3 that demonstrates my problem. The first section is using DFH EZX. Please note the fill that happens about 3 seconds into the clip. The second portion is using the DW kit from MetalHeads EZX. Please note the fill that happens around 11 seconds.
It’s the same midi used for both. There is no difference, all I did was switch kits in Pro Tools LE 8.3 and record them. Not the difference in the intensity of the fills, same midi, only changed the EZX. I can understand if I switched from DFH to Nashville, or something with a possible different Drum Map…but I would think these two kits have similar drum maps, and everything else lines up pretty well, except for fills.
Please let me know what you think I should be doing to fix this, as I want to use MetalHeads, but currently can’t.
Oh! One last thing…the midi file used was created new using Drag & Drop from EZDrummer…and I had the MetalHeads DW kit selected when I created the midi file…it translates fine over to DFH, but the fills from the other Midi Packs, don’t seem to work, as you’ll hear.
Thanks!
-zaz
PS: The MP3 file is in the zip file, since you can’t upload MP3’s
RogueI am unsure what you mean by ‘similar’ map – the number of layers and how samples are mapped in velocity in MetalHeads are nothing like DFH, a 10+ years product with far fewer samples (per instrument). It would in fact be surprising if it was. Each kit swap is likely to require a certain amount of tweaking of the velocities, that’s just a fact of (programming drums) life I’m afraid…
One way to resolve this matter is to export the MIDI as a whole and add it to your ‘MY MIDIFILES’ folder so it can be affected by the ‘velocity sweep’ control. Ultimately though, it would probably benefit you to look into how to edit MIDI in ProTools so that each section can be refined rather than compress the MIDI dynamics in a global fashion.
Rogue Marechal - Toontrack
Configuration Manager
zazelsodo Rogue,
Thank you for the reply. Let me try to clarify my problem. When I say “Similar map” I mean that the midi note for “Kick L” in DFH is the same Midi Note that will trigger the “Kick L” sample in MetalHeads. I’ve been sequencing drums and working with Midi for over a decade, so I understand the issue with converting midi instruments. IE: Using the Nashville kit which may have a rim shot mapped to the midi note for “Kick L” (For EXAMPLE…I’m not in front of my studio PC, so I can’t actually check the mapping)
Obviously, Metalheads is a more advanced instrument, being that it is built on the shoulders of a decade of innovation.
So here is the problem.
-I open a new project in Sonar
-Insert a new virtual instrument (EZDrummer)
-Load Drumkit from Hell (Death Kit)
-Open the Groove Library
-Sample a groove from the Drumkit from Hell Midi Library
-Drag the groove into my sequencer
-select a fill from the Songwriters Fill Pack and Drag it into the sequencer
-etc, etc, etc…
-It sounds GREAT, punchy, all of the drums are hitting hard.
-Change the drum kit from DFH to MetalHeads (DW Kit)
-Verify that the Midi Note for “Kick L” “Tom 1” “Crash 1” etc…triggers the same drum in MetalHeads..(It does)
– Open the event list, and see that for the 4 measures I just “Sequenced” no midi note has a triggered velocity of less than 94 or more than 117.
(*) This, to me, appears to be an appropriate velocity to be able to hear all the drum hits
-Play the same sequence that previous was loud, punchy, and defined with DFH and it is thin and weak in MetalHeads.
If you listen back to the sample I uploaded, this is the exact step by step I used to create that audio file. I can’t understand why a “Snare” midi note with a velocity of 114 hits VERY hard in DFH but is barely audible in MetalHeads…the same problem occurs with Crash cymbals as well.
Both kits are loaded into the mixer in their “default” settings.
“Audible” may be the wrong word…let me try it this way. The snare sound in the first “Groove” portion of the MetalHeads audio is at a volume that is relative to the kick and hi hat. In the second measure, where the fill starts, the snare drum and crash cymbals get noticably quieter in relation to the other drums, even though their midi note velocities are the same as they are in the DFH portion of the audio. There is no depreciation of the volume or velocity in the DFH section.
I hope this clarifies. I will try anything I can, SHORT of rewriting every drum part I have for my album. The songs are done, I would like to use MetalHeads instead of DFH, and I am willing to do some editing, but editing of the midi files, velocity, etc…doesn’t appear to fix the problem.
Thanks again, and I hope I have clarified things.
-zaz
Leevious Hey Again
Zazelsodo, from what I can tell, to use the Metalheads kit with other MIDI (for me it’s the Library of the Extreme MIDI that I base most of my songs on), you would have to re-do all the drum parts, and adjust the velocity accordingly. I am pretty new to this type of recording, but when I tried to adjust the velocity through my editing program (Reaper), it didn’t really do too much. Adjusting the velocity through EZDrummer seemed to fix the problem for the most part, which obviously won’t help tunes that are already recorded/mapped out. As Michael had previously posted, it can only read what it is ‘fed’, so if the player had used softer hits (in the case of gravity and fast blast beats), that’s all the program will pick up, unless it is adjusted at the source (via EZDrummer). Having said all that, if anyone has any other suggestions other than what has already been posted, I’d love to hear them. The Metalheads kits sound great, it would be amazing to hear how my older songs would sound through those two kits. By the way Zazelsodo, thanks for posting that clip, it’s exactly what I was trying to ‘illustrate’ through text.
RogueORIGINAL: zazelsodo
I am willing to do some editing, but editing of the midi files, velocity, etc…doesn’t appear to fix the problem.
It should at the very least help. If it does not to the extend desirable then that means you simply have a preference for how the DFH is compressed, overall, in which case, routing to separate outputs in your host and adding compression where required, may help.
… again different product, different result – that’s all I can tell you, although it’s only a short version of my previous response.
Rogue Marechal - Toontrack
Configuration Manager
zazelsodo Rogue,
Thank you for your response. I think you’re focusing too much on the DFH compared to the MetalHeads EZX comparison. I was trying to use that as an illustration, and I apologize if I caused any confusion…so I’ll try to restate my concern a different way.
I load EZDrummer and load MetalHeads (DW Kit)…
If I use the groove browser and find a simple 4/4 groove that I like from the DFH Midi files that came with the EZX, and drag it into my sequencer, Metalheads will play it without a problem, and I like how it sounds. The velocity on all of the midi notes are all between 96-114 and everything hits great.
If I then browse to the SongWriters Fill pack, and find a fill I like and drag it to the sequence, with all of the midi notes having a velocity of between 96-114, the Snare sound will totally just DROP out of the snares that are in the fill, but will come back in full force when the “groove” from DFH MIDI comes back into play.
This isn’t a concern about one sound pack verse another…I test software for a living, and this appears to be a bug. The Metalheads EZX appears to work differently between MIDI packs that are sold by Toontrack. Midi from the DFH Midi collection works fine, but some of the fills from the songwriters fillpack lack any punch, even though their midi velocities are all the same between the DFH MIDI and the Fillpack MIDI
To sum it all up…midi grooves from certain midi packs don’t appear to work with the MetalHeads EZX.
I hope this makes more sense.
Thanks!
-zaz
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