etheoryHi there! New Superior Drummer 3 user here.
I’ve had SD3 for a few days, and am already loving the results.
My goal is to use it to recreate some classic breaks for DnB and Neurofunk (see attached) and then use them as if I was using the original samples, but with more control, and more possibilities.
For that purpose, so far, it’s great. I also understand that for people using it for standard drumming things, my request makes no sense. But hear me out….
What would really help, is a global tuning parameter, something that effectively takes everything, the independent tuning per drum, and all the FX EQ’s and shifts them all by the amount that you set. The reason this would be so useful, is to simulate the effects of cutting to vinyl, sampling, then speeding up the results. I can do this currently using the tuning attribute, but in an existing drumkit with some offsets, I have to manually compute those offsets and it gets more complicated than I would like.
For this to work properly, internally it would need to be turned into a multiplier on all the existing frequencies, so it would take the bottom and top tom tuning up or down by the same amount, to simulate a literal squash of stretch of time. Bonus points if it moves the FX EQ’s up or down by the same amount to ensure they all sound the same at the new pitch also.
This would be immensely useful, and allow me to construct pitched-up kits for electronic music without the need to leave the program, sample, and pitch up outside of it.
Open to all thoughts on this, but theoretically it would be relatively straight-forward to implement.
drumjack52Are you looking to change the pitch or just speedup/slow down things? They’re two different things and if not done right you end up with the chipmunk effect. As to changing the EQ center points you could use automation in your daw. Of course there’s always Autotune.
Jack
aka musicman691 on other forums
Superior Drummer 3.4.1
Area 33 1.0.0
Death and Darkness 1.0.1
PT 2021.6
OSX 10.13.6
3.46 GHz hex core 2012 MacPro 48 gig ram
etheoryI want something that deliberately behaves as if you had frozen to audio and sped it up.
So I want the chipmunk effect in case I need it. This matches well to my use-case of simulating old breaks then sampling them and speeding them up.
A global pitch control would do that.
Automatically adjusting the EQ FX’s would be very important, and DAW automation would involve far too much manual setup, whereas a single global control would be much faster.
JohnHi,
if I understand you correctly, you should be able to just tie all parameters to a Macro Knob, like I have done in the attached screen shot.
BR,
John
John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor
2
Thanked by: Scott Eshleman and etheoryetheoryThanks for your reply John.
But this is a LOT more fiddly work compared to it just always being there built in.
If it was built in I could instantly adjust any kit I load immediately.
If I use a macro I need to manually edit every kit/preset, and since you lock some presets with multifx I can’t edit those effects with a macro knob anyway.
Having it inbuilt would be significantly easier and resolve those issues.
I think it would also be a very popular feature with electronic music artists.
Thanks.
Bear-Faced CowSounds more like you are better off using a pitch effect on the drum bus within a DAW for what you want to do.
jord
etheoryThanks Jord,
But that’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to have to bake out the drumkit to .wav and then pitch shift in the DAW if I can do so within SD3, since if I can do so within SD3 I can tweak things without a large loop.
Such a feature would drastically accelerate my workflow, and from the implementation POV, would be fairly straightforward to do.
drumjack52Thanks Jord,
But that’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to have to bake out the drumkit to .wav and then pitch shift in the DAW if I can do so within SD3, since if I can do so within SD3 I can tweak things without a large loop.
Such a feature would drastically accelerate my workflow, and from the implementation POV, would be fairly straightforward to do.
Not that easy to do especially you’d have to account for every eq that SD3 has and as you should know not every eq works the same. Don’t know what daw you use but if it has a faster than real time function it’d hardly slow you down. You’re going just have to do it the regular old school way.
Jack
aka musicman691 on other forums
Superior Drummer 3.4.1
Area 33 1.0.0
Death and Darkness 1.0.1
PT 2021.6
OSX 10.13.6
3.46 GHz hex core 2012 MacPro 48 gig ram
Bear-Faced CowWho said you would have to bake out any of the drum kits? Everything would still be non-destructive and you would still have plenty of control with Superior Drummer.
jord
etheoryPitching using SD3 would be significantly better quality than a pitch change plugin after SD3.
etheoryI’m a software engineer for the VFX industry and I write 3D rendering software. It would be straight-forward to add a control to pitch all the drums by the same % and adjust all attached FX EQ’s to suit. There would just have to be support from Toontrack to do it. And I just don’t think they understand how incredibly useful such a feature would be. I’m probably yelling at a cloud, but I really think this is worth championing.
“Not that easy to do especially you’d have to account for every eq that SD3 has and as you should know not every eq works the same.” – they literally do all work the same. ALL digital filters are just transfer functions, and those transfer functions can be shifted up and down in frequency using the same technique.
Bear-Faced CowPitching using SD3 would be significantly better quality than a pitch change plugin after SD3.
No… it wouldn’t. It would create a very disjointed mix between the transients and the ambient channels. Doing this within your DAW would be a lot more cohesive.
I’m a software engineer for the VFX industry and I write 3D rendering software.
This is audio, and I’ve been mixing it since the 70’s.
jord
etheory“No… it wouldn’t. It would create a very disjointed mix between the transients and the ambient channels. Doing this within your DAW would be a lot more cohesive.” – obviously you would “pitch shift” all samples, not just the hits. The ambient channels etc. But I’m not referring to pitch shifting, just playing the samples faster, which would simultaneously increase their pitch. I WANT their envelopes to run quicker. I apologize for using the term “pitch shifting” as I think that’s confused things.
“This is audio, and I’ve been mixing it since the 70’s.” – then you know your suggestion makes no sense. I’ve also been developing audio software for over 30 years as a hobby, I know that what I am describing is possible, because I’ve written software myself that can do it. I can even prove it works if you need. To do what you are suggesting with any level of quality you’d need to bake the output to .wav, then pitch shift that up by playing it faster. I don’t want SD3 to pitch shift and keep the timing the same, I just want it to play the samples faster, accepting that the pitch will increase, because that’s exactly the effect I am after. I think we are talking cross-purposes, or I’m not explaining myself properly.
I want to do the equivalent of “speeding up” a drum kit by playing the samples faster, I don’t want to pitch-shift independent of time (which yes, would work in the DAW, but I don’t want to do that, and I’m not talking about that, so sorry if that’s me not communicating what I’m trying to do properly).
I want to perform the equivalent of a “play this sample faster” operation, by simply uniformly playing ALL of the samples faster (like a sampler), and moving all the FX up to suit. The result would be identical to baking the break to .wav, then playing it faster. I WANT the chipmunk effect, since I’m trying to simulate the DnB/Jungle effect of playing a funk break faster. It’d just be a nice feature to be able to do it within a single interface, since then I can tune everything, keeping any existing relative tuning within the SDX.
drumjack52Something like this. I did this by shift selecting all the instruments and shifting them up. But that’s prone to error if you are loading a kit that has relative pitches already. A global control would totally solve that.
- This post was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by etheory.
Would have been nice if you had an example of the original beat before you mucked with it. Playing samples faster or a break beat faster will not do a pitch change if properly done. Play a snare drum roll at 50 bpm and play that same roll at 100 bpm and the pitch will not change. I do it all the time in ProTools. I’d suggest you pay attention to what Jord says – he’s been at this for a longer time than any of us have been and he knows his stuff.
Jack
aka musicman691 on other forums
Superior Drummer 3.4.1
Area 33 1.0.0
Death and Darkness 1.0.1
PT 2021.6
OSX 10.13.6
3.46 GHz hex core 2012 MacPro 48 gig ram
1
Thanked by: Bear-Faced CowBear-Faced CowI was going to say the same for you, Jack. I’m willing to admit that you may have a few years on me. What I do find humorous is that as soon as we speak from experience he seems to pull out his programming credentials as if it’s going to refute everything. This is a matter of using my ears from all the work I’ve done working for various producers in the video industry, and no the fact that I am also a software developer starting with machine language programming since 1984.
There’s a reason various DnB producers (at least the ones I know) use copious amounts of reverb.
jord
1
Thanked by: drumjack52No products in the cart.
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