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[Damian Blunt]

cropotkin wrote:

I’ve been doing a deep dive into snare brush swirl articulations in Jazz Sessions SDX.

 

I have noticed that the In Trigger and Out Trigger articulations have something like the following behavior, which is somewhat similar, but not totally similar, to FutureHit.

Short to medium duration notes: the swirl begins to sound on the MIDI Note Off. The speed of the swirl is controlled by the length of the note.

Long duration notes: the swirl is the slowest swirl possible, but starts to play some time after MIDI Note Off, depending on the duration of the note.

I was wondering if there is some official documentation of this behavior that I can examine to fully understand everything to do with the swirl capabilities.

For instance, how are the In Trigger and Out Trigger articulations tied to the In Swirl and Out Swirl articulations? Are their any properties that control this behavior?

Kind regards

Graham

Reply To: Understanding In Trigger and Out Trigger articulations in Jazz Sessions SDX version: 3.4.0
Operating system: Windows 11

The In and Out trigger swirls are Future Hit articulations. They were recorded from 40BPM to 300BPM with mostly two complete circles per bar. Each circle is then cut in half to make the In and Out trigger articulation. With the correct MIDI the full swirls are recreated at different tempos within the range they were recorded at and above.

You are correct that MIDI note off triggers the sample and the duration of the associated MIDI note decides which sample is picked from the different tempos. So if you change the tempo in your project the correct samples are picked from the pool.

If you go to tempos under 40 BPM, which would not be supported, there will be a delay after the MIDI note off before the note is triggered. Which is what you would have probably been experiencing with the long duration notes.

The In and Out Swirl articulations are from the same sample pool but are triggered with MIDI note on. Only one predetermined tempo will play but they are useful of you want to program MIDI in the traditional way.

Future Hit Shakers and Tambourines work in a similar way but have different articulations available on one MIDI note

It’s a little difficult to explain but hopefully this makes some sense!

Damian Blunt - Toontrack
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• This post was modified 1 week, 4 days ago by Damian Blunt.

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Thanked by: Brad

[Damian Blunt]

Generally the levels of overhead and ambience microphones are set when sound checking the whole drum kit and are not altered on an instrument by instrument basis throughout the sampling process. The engineer or producer almost always sets the microphones up as they would do in a regular tracking session so the balance should be very natural and consistent with what you would hear on a record.

I just clicked on the edge articulations in State of the Art and Decades SDX’s and compared with the crashes and there is a small variation in level but that would be largely down to the differences in the instruments. In Decades default preset the left hand crash is actually quieter than the ride when comparing like for like articulations.

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[Damian Blunt]

I can understand your frustration regarding brushes but the Jazz EZX was released in 2009 whilst the Jazz Sessions SDX was released in 2024. We continually try to push boundaries with new products whilst maintaining compatibility with legacy products however sometimes this is not possible if we want to advance our sound libraries in terms of natural playback and overall quality of results.

Regarding the included MIDI we like to showcase the capabilities of each sample library. For example the recent Fusion EZX has MIDI that triggers Octobans and the Gong drum, instruments that no other EZX includes, so results with other EZXs will likely be unpredictable. On the other hand the standalone Foundational Fusion MIDI pack that was released a week after the Fusion EZX maintains much broader compatibility and does not trigger these special instruments or articulations.

Despite The Jazz Sessions containing our most detailed sampling of brushes so far the brush MIDI will still largely maintain compatibility with SDX’s released from Superior Drummer 3 onwards.

I am sorry that my answer does not solve your particular problem and some manual remapping will be required but hopefully you can understand why such choices are made. Although there are 127 MIDI notes available to map articulations to they often seem to run out far too quickly and ultimately difficult decisions regarding mapping have to be made.

We always look to improve our user experience and maybe these issues can be resolved in future.

Damian Blunt - Toontrack
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• This post was modified 3 months, 1 week ago by Damian Blunt.

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[Damian Blunt]

You are correct that library default is a more realistic behaviour but a problem that some users experienced was that when hitting the hi-hat pad, especially a moving hi-hat pad, a change in CC value would occur that caused a transmute into the next more closed layer before returning to the former position causing another transmute.

The ‘E-drum optimized’ setting stops this behaviour by disabling the transmuting on pedal movement only when closing the hats. The hi-hats continue to transmute when moving the pedal to a more open position.

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