Drum Kits: Problems and Solutions

[QuiRobinez]

I tried it yesterday, and it does work! Now my pa5x has audio drums in it!
I couldn't manage to make a fill - it doesn't work as it should, but it's only the beginning!
Amazing work, amazing tutorial, thank you, Qui Robinez!

thanks, keep in mind this is just a basic introduction, you can do a lot with these loops, for instance, you don't like a snare in your drumloop, just replace it with a different snare from your oneshot sample library. Then every style you are using that drumloop with has the new snare. It's really easy to do.

Another thing you could do is to create your own drumkits, it's extremely easy to use standard Pa5X kits and replace those drum samples you don't like with your own one shot drum kits. As long you replace the pa5x drumhit with a one show drumhit of the same category, then all factory styles will work with your own drum kits. I do this all the time. I have a lot of custom drumkits for different purposes and whenever i want a different sounding drumkit i just select my own kit for that in the style.

Also the samples in the pa5x are really good quality in my opinion, in the pa5x the sound designers have gone an extra mile to modify the drum sounds to their liking in different styles. This is of course very subjective and not everyone will like it, but it's so easy to modify if you want a different sound:
- in the style go to the mixer tab
- select the drum track
- check which inserts are used on that drum track (in most cases there is a stereo compressor on it on the pa5x), disable it to get the original sound
- in the mixer tab on the drum track on the top of the channel you see an icon with a drum, press that one, there you can assign inserts to different drum groups in the drumkit. Sometimes the sound designers are also using that area. And that is a REALLY powerful feature over there. For instance you want a reverb or delay on only the snare drum, it's possible to do it over there. How cool is that!
- and you can also modify the sound of the complete drumkit in the song or style in the menu - track edit - sound edit mode. It's all possible and quite heavy used by the korg sound designers in the factory styles.

You can of course do the same things with your own sampled drumkits.

[BR]

.... you can assign inserts to different drum groups in the drumkit..... For instance you want a reverb or delay on only the snare drum, it's possible to do it over there.....

Is this a new feature in Pa5X comparing to Pa4X?
Is it possible to do the same in Pa4X? that means, assigning an Insert effect, for example, to only the Snare without affecting other drum's elements?

Thanks

[mstodola]

Where do you get your drum samples? Are they .wav or .mp3 or what?

[Nemydom]

I tried it yesterday, and it does work! Now my pa5x has audio drums in it!
I couldn't manage to make a fill - it doesn't work as it should, but it's only the beginning!
Amazing work, amazing tutorial, thank you, Qui Robinez!

thanks, keep in mind this is just a basic introduction, you can do a lot with these loops, for instance, you don't like a snare in your drumloop, just replace it with a different snare from your oneshot sample library. Then every style you are using that drumloop with has the new snare. It's really easy to do.

Another thing you could do is to create your own drumkits, it's extremely easy to use standard Pa5X kits and replace those drum samples you don't like with your own one shot drum kits. As long you replace the pa5x drumhit with a one show drumhit of the same category, then all factory styles will work with your own drum kits. I do this all the time. I have a lot of custom drumkits for different purposes and whenever i want a different sounding drumkit i just select my own kit for that in the style.

Also the samples in the pa5x are really good quality in my opinion, in the pa5x the sound designers have gone an extra mile to modify the drum sounds to their liking in different styles. This is of course very subjective and not everyone will like it, but it's so easy to modify if you want a different sound:
- in the style go to the mixer tab
- select the drum track
- check which inserts are used on that drum track (in most cases there is a stereo compressor on it on the pa5x), disable it to get the original sound
- in the mixer tab on the drum track on the top of the channel you see an icon with a drum, press that one, there you can assign inserts to different drum groups in the drumkit. Sometimes the sound designers are also using that area. And that is a REALLY powerful feature over there. For instance you want a reverb or delay on only the snare drum, it's possible to do it over there. How cool is that!
- and you can also modify the sound of the complete drumkit in the song or style in the menu - track edit - sound edit mode. It's all possible and quite heavy used by the korg sound designers in the factory styles.

You can of course do the same things with your own sampled drumkits.

Thank you very much for your comments, QuiRobinez, it's very valuable!

.

[Nemydom]

Where do you get your drum samples? Are they .wav or .mp3 or what?

I use WAV, 16-bit, up to 48 kHz. There are plenty available, if you google search you will find some free. For example, this one: https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2016 ... e-library/

..

[QuiRobinez]

Where do you get your drum samples? Are they .wav or .mp3 or what?

in most cases I bought the drum samples and loops through pluginboutique, loopcloud or vengeance and I also use the drum hits from battery 3.

Another thing I do a lot is creating my own loops. I'm a huge fan of Granular synthesis and the loops I make in my granular synthesizers are processed afterwards by modifying the transients and effect techniques as microshifting with my soundtoys effect rack collection, but these kind of things aren't really keyboard related (although I use those loops in my own styles), these are more production tricks then keyboard knowledge.

But It's all possible and once you are adding these things to your sounds / styles or songs, then it really adds a lot of flavor to your songs.

[mstodola]

Thank you for the information. All the drum machines I've ever used in the past weren't that impressive. But the Oasys with Karma were good. Thank you again.

[Nemydom]

Over the last few months, I've noticed that tweaking the internal drums can yield some improvement. I managed to adjust the volume balance within the drum kits, making the bass drum and snare sound louder, which makes a significant difference! When you apply effects like compression, you don't need to use it as much.

Please note, when I mention 'adjusting the volume balance within the drum kits,' it means I create a clone of a drum kit and adjust the volume there. This is important because although it's also possible to change this balance within the style itself, and it does work, but it's not always effective.

To summarize, a common issue with most kits/styles is that, in nearly all factory styles, the volume of the snare and bass drum is too low. Of course, this is based on my personal taste, so you may not agree.

Unfortunately, it's only a part of the issue.

The other problem is that the snare drums in most kits sound as if they were sampled at a low resolution or something similar. I'm not skilled enough to explain it properly, but their sound is too weak, and not detailed enough, and this applies to almost all kits, both new and old. If someone could help me formulate a better explanation, it would be very helpful.

I would appreciate any comments.

[QuiRobinez]

To summarize, a common issue with most kits/styles is that, in nearly all factory styles, the volume of the snare and bass drum is too low. Of course, this is based on my personal taste, so you may not agree.

Unfortunately, it's only a part of the issue.

The other problem is that the snare drums in most kits sound as if they were sampled at a low resolution or something similar. I'm not skilled enough to explain it properly, but their sound is too weak, and not detailed enough, and this applies to almost all kits, both new and old. If someone could help me formulate a better explanation, it would be very helpful.

It depends on the drumkit, the RR drumkits are using round robin so every hit is a different snare sample, especially the Pop Kit 1 RR there the snare sounds muffled (is a designer choice which you can easily modify yourself in the drumkit editor).

But most kits sound really good to me, especially the AMB kits where you can add the ambience to make the sound fuller for for instance the snare is very powerful.

Also keep in mind that in the styles, lot's of drum designing tricks are introduced. I can imagine that you don't like those tricks. So here is how to check what is happening, let me give an example:

- open the style: Classic Pop - Georgy Pop (it's on page 1)
- go to the insert page of that style for the drumkit
- press play to hear the drums
- on insert 1 you see an active insert, it's a compressor for that specific drum sounds (compressors are really important for tailoring the drum sound to your needs), disable this insert by pressing the on / off button and listen to the difference
- you will notice that the kick, snare and hi-hats will loose a lot of the presense, so you can tailor the kick and snare much more to your liking by setting this to ON and then try the sensitivity and attack and listen to the effect it has on the drums
- then you will notice some decay on the snare, you can tailor this too seperately, on the insert channel you will see an icon with a drum on it on top of the drum lane, press that one
- now you can see which insert effects per drum group ! are assigned for that style (you can do this for styles and songs too). On the snare there is a Gate effect enabled, click on that Icon
- now set the time parameter on that gate screen to 0.1, hear how short the snare is now (so it leaves a lot of room in your mix for other elements)
- now set the time parameter on that gate screen to 10, hear how the snare only has a long decay effect now in the drum track. Set it to 1.8 again (and press the exit button twice to return to your insert FX screen)
- So you can imagine all the things you can, like recreating those 12 or 16 bits drum machines by inserting a bit reduction effect, or add and extra insert effect on the kick (like a distortion or saturator), the sky is the limit

- now press the menu button
- click on the tile drum editor
- press the snare icon on the screen
- you will see that the sound designer lowered the decay by -45
- change the decay to 0, it will change the snare sound
- now set the ambience volume to +63
- hear how the snare get a lot thicker in sound
- change the ambience time to +63
- even more pronounced snare now

So the thing is, there are a lot of tricks you can do just in the style, the next step is creating your own drumkits, it's VERY EASY to replace for instance a Kick or Snare in your existing drumkits by uploading a new drum kick or snare of your liking and adding that to an existing drumkit, all the styles will work, but now with your samples.

Hope this helps a little bit.

[Nemydom]

It depends on the drumkit, the RR drumkits are using round robin so every hit is a different snare sample, especially the Pop Kit 1 RR there the snare sounds muffled (is a designer choice which you can easily modify yourself in the drumkit editor).

But most kits sound really good to me, especially the AMB kits where you can add the ambience to make the sound fuller for for instance the snare is very powerful.

Also keep in mind that in the styles, lot's of drum designing tricks are introduced. I can imagine that you don't like those tricks. So here is how to check what is happening, let me give an example:

- open the style: Classic Pop - Georgy Pop (it's on page 1)
- go to the insert page of that style for the drumkit
- press play to hear the drums
- on insert 1 you see an active insert, it's a compressor for that specific drum sounds (compressors are really important for tailoring the drum sound to your needs), disable this insert by pressing the on / off button and listen to the difference
- you will notice that the kick, snare and hi-hats will loose a lot of the presense, so you can tailor the kick and snare much more to your liking by setting this to ON and then try the sensitivity and attack and listen to the effect it has on the drums
- then you will notice some decay on the snare, you can tailor this too seperately, on the insert channel you will see an icon with a drum on it on top of the drum lane, press that one
- now you can see which insert effects per drum group ! are assigned for that style (you can do this for styles and songs too). On the snare there is a Gate effect enabled, click on that Icon
- now set the time parameter on that gate screen to 0.1, hear how short the snare is now (so it leaves a lot of room in your mix for other elements)
- now set the time parameter on that gate screen to 10, hear how the snare only has a long decay effect now in the drum track. Set it to 1.8 again (and press the exit button twice to return to your insert FX screen)
- So you can imagine all the things you can, like recreating those 12 or 16 bits drum machines by inserting a bit reduction effect, or add and extra insert effect on the kick (like a distortion or saturator), the sky is the limit

- now press the menu button
- click on the tile drum editor
- press the snare icon on the screen
- you will see that the sound designer lowered the decay by -45
- change the decay to 0, it will change the snare sound
- now set the ambience volume to +63
- hear how the snare get a lot thicker in sound
- change the ambience time to +63
- even more pronounced snare now

So the thing is, there are a lot of tricks you can do just in the style, the next step is creating your own drumkits, it's VERY EASY to replace for instance a Kick or Snare in your existing drumkits by uploading a new drum kick or snare of your liking and adding that to an existing drumkit, all the styles will work, but now with your samples.

Hope this helps a little bit.

Thank you, QuiRobinez, as always, your input is invaluable!

I once attempted to add a sample to a drum kit, but it was unsuccessful. I successfully loaded a sample into pa5x, but couldn’t locate it from within an existing drum kit. I didn’t spend much time on it because I had the impression that the search function wasn’t working as it should. I gave up, thinking that it might be fixed in future OS updates. Possibly, I just didn’t figure out how to conduct the search properly.

[Nemydom]

Could someone with a solid understanding of the subject help me describe how the drums on this Billie Jean style differ from the original Billie Jean track? I think it's a good example to illustrate the issues with the pa5x drums.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JzcTFPAQ1 ... &start=660" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"></iframe>

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Zi_XLOBDo ... dte9NSFerB" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"></iframe>


P.S. Thanks Woody Piano Shack for a great demo!