By c-real
Wed Nov 06, 2019 12:18 pm
Hello,
Yesterday, I made my first drum program. In fact, the idea was to be able to play guitar on real drums. To achieve this, I thought that I could "convert" the kits of Studio Drummer and Abbey Road 60's Drummer (two Kontakt expansions I own) to MPC drum programs.
Let me describe you my entire process so that you can help me to improve this or just to learn from this if you're novice.
1) I wrote the entire factory Kontakt mapping of an Abbey Road drum kit into an Excel sheet. For example: F3 = Tom 2 Rimshot, A#3 = Hihat Open Pedal, E5 = Tom 2 Center L, etc.
2) I wrote the default MIDI mapping of an MPC drum kit into an Excel Sheet. For example: Pad A3 = F#1, Pad B14 = D4, Pad C8 = G#3, etc. By the way, you can download it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rxJUS ... ZsAdN54Y7E
3) In Reaper, I created a MIDI item for each note with four layers of velocity (30, 60, 90, 120) and rename the items accordingly to the note reference (C2, F#3, etc.). I was carefull about the fact that each note should be separated equally with each other (x---x---x---x--- and not x-------x--x---x-).
4) I listen to the ones that were too long to fit the length of the MIDI item (sometimes a long cymbal was cut before its natural fade because the MIDI item was too short) and stretch the MIDI items accordingly.
5) I bounced all the MIDI items with an online rendering (I noticed that an offline rendering was not so reliable). Now, each MIDI item becomes an audio clip containing a specific percussion instrument with a specific articulation, played four times, one after the other.
6) I imported all the audio clips into an empty MPC project.
7) Go to the sample editing mode. For each sample, choose the slice setting set to BPM, with 4 beats in 1/4. That way, each sample is perfectly cut into 4 equal parts (or slices).
Active the "all pads setting" and set your velocity layers to 0-36, 37-66, 67-96, 97-127, and the pad polyphony to 3.
9) For each pad, import the right sample following the MIDI mapping written in point 2) The problem is that you have to assign four times the same sample per pad (this is really a shame).
10) Enable the "all pads setting" and assign the first layer to the slice 1, the second layer to the slice 2, etc.
11) Assign the same colour pad to the same percussion instrument following the mappings of points 1) & 2)
12) Assign the same mute group for all the charleys (you can now easily find them thanks to the colour).
13) Test your program with MIDI clips provided by Abbey Road 60's Drummer, and mix your levels and pans accordingly. Put an AIR compressor to the program.
13) Save your program!
I took me 5 hours. It's very long. But I noticed that it took me less than an hour to convert the second kit of the Abbey Road soundbank.
I don't know if my process could be optimized. A good thing would be to have the following function via the sample editing mode: "convert four first slices of the current sample to pad layers". But it does not seem to exist.
What do you recommand to this kind of process? What are your ways of doing? Maybe do I have to use the MPC software or directly sampling via the MPC?
Any feedback or suggestion are welcome.
Thanks,
Cyril.
Yesterday, I made my first drum program. In fact, the idea was to be able to play guitar on real drums. To achieve this, I thought that I could "convert" the kits of Studio Drummer and Abbey Road 60's Drummer (two Kontakt expansions I own) to MPC drum programs.
Let me describe you my entire process so that you can help me to improve this or just to learn from this if you're novice.
1) I wrote the entire factory Kontakt mapping of an Abbey Road drum kit into an Excel sheet. For example: F3 = Tom 2 Rimshot, A#3 = Hihat Open Pedal, E5 = Tom 2 Center L, etc.
2) I wrote the default MIDI mapping of an MPC drum kit into an Excel Sheet. For example: Pad A3 = F#1, Pad B14 = D4, Pad C8 = G#3, etc. By the way, you can download it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rxJUS ... ZsAdN54Y7E
3) In Reaper, I created a MIDI item for each note with four layers of velocity (30, 60, 90, 120) and rename the items accordingly to the note reference (C2, F#3, etc.). I was carefull about the fact that each note should be separated equally with each other (x---x---x---x--- and not x-------x--x---x-).
4) I listen to the ones that were too long to fit the length of the MIDI item (sometimes a long cymbal was cut before its natural fade because the MIDI item was too short) and stretch the MIDI items accordingly.
5) I bounced all the MIDI items with an online rendering (I noticed that an offline rendering was not so reliable). Now, each MIDI item becomes an audio clip containing a specific percussion instrument with a specific articulation, played four times, one after the other.
6) I imported all the audio clips into an empty MPC project.
7) Go to the sample editing mode. For each sample, choose the slice setting set to BPM, with 4 beats in 1/4. That way, each sample is perfectly cut into 4 equal parts (or slices).
Active the "all pads setting" and set your velocity layers to 0-36, 37-66, 67-96, 97-127, and the pad polyphony to 3.9) For each pad, import the right sample following the MIDI mapping written in point 2) The problem is that you have to assign four times the same sample per pad (this is really a shame).
10) Enable the "all pads setting" and assign the first layer to the slice 1, the second layer to the slice 2, etc.
11) Assign the same colour pad to the same percussion instrument following the mappings of points 1) & 2)
12) Assign the same mute group for all the charleys (you can now easily find them thanks to the colour).
13) Test your program with MIDI clips provided by Abbey Road 60's Drummer, and mix your levels and pans accordingly. Put an AIR compressor to the program.
13) Save your program!
I took me 5 hours. It's very long. But I noticed that it took me less than an hour to convert the second kit of the Abbey Road soundbank.
I don't know if my process could be optimized. A good thing would be to have the following function via the sample editing mode: "convert four first slices of the current sample to pad layers". But it does not seem to exist.
What do you recommand to this kind of process? What are your ways of doing? Maybe do I have to use the MPC software or directly sampling via the MPC?
Any feedback or suggestion are welcome.
Thanks,
Cyril.
