Tuning Drums to Key of song

[Shaka Rayford]

*Please* Add a way to easily tune Drums to the...

*Please*

Add a way to easily tune Drums to the key of the song you are working on. The drums are almost always out of key. We know that that clash continues to be the major fight to get the drums to sit well in the song mix.

And option to set the key and scale the drums automatically adjusting would be amazing and a FIRST in all drum programs. This should be extremely easy to do. Audio does it. Midi libraries do it, sample libraries do it and this in essence is a sample library so I would think this is possible. This could be added in a immediate update. Life saving!

Just saying

• This topic was modified 6 years ago by Shaka Rayford.

*Please*

Add a way to easily tune Drums to the key of the song you are working on. The drums are almost always out of key. We know that that clash continues to be the major fight to get the drums to sit well in the song mix.

And option to set the key and scale the drums automatically adjusting would be amazing and a FIRST in all drum programs. This should be extremely easy to do. Audio does it. Midi libraries do it, sample libraries do it and this in essence is a sample library so I would think this is possible. This could be added in a immediate update. Life saving!

Just saying

• This topic was modified 6 years ago by Shaka Rayford.

3

Thanked by: MarcoRoth, ohnow and Henrik Ekblom

Topic

[wigglymilk]

Drive Mad

mizarsix wrote:

There is a reason that drum skins are tunable, and why drummers of all genres and skill levels aspire to pitch correct them in the analogue world. If they were merely “percussive”, that wouldn’t be an option. Tuning plugins would not recognize them as melodic otherwise. I’ve also heard enough songs where the way certain drums were tuned affect the overall chord played in that song (Porcupine Tree – Blind House, for one). It makes perfect sense for Toontrack to incorporate a tool to determine the current tuning of surfaces that can be pitched. Unless I am mistaken, the whole point of plugins like SD2/3 is to create as real an experience as possible. It only makes sense, in this digital age, that we can come to that result in a more convenient way…

Yes, I concur. Why not provide them pre-tuned given that SD3 has the capacity to tune them? Most likely because doing so would cost money and time.

[guitarmanweiss]

Would still love this feature to be implemented.

[KFrische]

Agreed.   This is a must have feature and I’m surprised this feature request has been ignored and/or downplayed in value.

The sample library platforms continue to grow in drum sample/groove/etc. offerings and all of them offer this as standard.  In fact, without this feature I will probably start migrating sound dev to sample only drum kit systems like Kontakt 8 and use these with readily available grooves.

Contrary to some opinions, these samples aren’t just EDM type sounds, they are real drum sounds as well.

The target:  Allow full drum kits (all instruments as part of current kit focus) to be tuned to key of song.

Update or become irrelevant is my thinking.

• This post was modified 6 months ago by KFrische.

[ihoypoyh]

ok you tune the drums. To what?

even if you tune the drums, will they be in tune with everything that happens in the song? What if the song is in C and then I modulate to C# ? now the drums will be a minor second out of tune, the harshest dissonance in music is the minor second.

Or should I never modulate from C to C# ? then, I would solve a problem, and create a worse one, that will impose what I can’t do in music.

Which is why Bach ‘well tempered’ his keyboards, i.e. isn’t it tune the drums to a key that sits ‘in the middle’ of all 24 ? In other words, a best average. Unless you have a robot in the daw that instantly tune the drums to everything that happens.

In the end, it’s a musical instrument, created by musicians….it’s not something with NASA specs.

• This post was modified 1 month ago by ihoypoyh.

[ihoypoyh]

let’s say my guitar string is tuned to E. That’s great if the key is E major or minor. But if it’s C minor, it’s going to be out of whack. Or if the keys are Eb major, F minor, F major, Db major, etc etc.

The more sophisticated is the music, such as classical or film sountracks for example, the more variables there are. To have perfectly tuned drums to the ‘song’, would mean the song is incredibly elementary, dull, and boring.

Also, the note E could still harmonize with other, different notes, even though it’s not in tune, for example imperfect consonances such as thirds or sixths, or perfect ones such as octaves, fourths, and fifths.

Also, the same note in a high register will have next to no clashes the higher is the pitch, but the same note in a very low register is packed with tons of harmonics, as the harmonic series shows.

In the end, a single note can be a reference to a zillion things, in music, and the same note can have many roles in different contexts. There have been crazy composers who have put dissonance on same level as consonance, as if there’s no difference between the two. The variables are enormous, and a human mind has no control over all these. Sure, a snare can seem dissonant in a particular song, and it would be nice to have a way to tune it up, I am not saying this would be useless. But it would be more to avoid occasional problems than to thrive in a perfect world.

• This post was modified 1 month ago by ihoypoyh.

[Author]

Replies