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Adding X-Drums

Lesson 21 from: Superior Drummer Master Class

Rikk Currence

Adding X-Drums

Lesson 21 from: Superior Drummer Master Class

Rikk Currence

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Lesson Info

21. Adding X-Drums

Lesson Info

Adding X-Drums

everybody's favorite extra ums. Now with extra ums, we have to start here. We have toe crack, our knuckles do a little shimmy. Well, Mac break. Okay, here's the concept behind extra ums and you'll understand in a moment while we had to do all the mapping and midi notes first, cause it's a very big part of extra ums, as I discussed and have been discussing. When we record a library for superior drummer, we go to a studio. We record a complement of drums makes sense, right? All of those drums then become available in the drop down menu for that particular expansion pack. Everybody's with me. So, for instance, just to illuminate. When we went to Avatar Studios to record a superior to a library, we had all these snare drums in that studio, right? They were all there. They were all recorded in that room. They were all recorded under the same circumstances. Therefore, they have a common threat. Does that make sense? Everything was recorded in that place. Now, when we go to another studio, fo...

r instance, bring up one of everybody. Here is the Metal foundry, which was recorded in Atlanta studios on the other side of the ocean in Stockholm. We recorded a bunch of different drums there, and, for instance, we choose the snare. So all of these drums and there's a lot that we did there were recorded there. Now what happens if you see a drum you like? That was recorded in Atlantis, but you'd like to use it in Avatar. Well, there's some fundamental issues you're gonna have there, and we need to address those because that's a big part of what the extra ums are. Ekstrom is basically stand for extra drums. You're adding extra drums to a session, and the reality is in some instances, for instance, in some instances, for instance, you can add a drum from the same session. So, for instance, let's go back. I just said instance, like three times in less than a minute. So, for example, let's go back to Avatar and let's say we have This is our primary snare drum, obviously in the default kit, but we want to bring in another drum that was recorded there. So if we only want one snare drum, obviously the easiest thing to do is just swap it out. Thea other drum you want it there, but maybe we want both drums. So you would create an extra, um, And you would bring that drum that was recorded in the same place into your session? Not really a problem. We're gonna show you how you do that. But what happens if the drum wasn't recorded in your session? What happens if you own the metal foundry and you see the snare drum you fall in love with? And it's amazing, but you want to bring it to the avatar session? Well, there's a couple of fundamental problems. Like I said, not really problems but things to consider Number one. The good news is you can do it, and I'm about to show you how. But there's a couple of things that take into consideration, and one of those the biggest one is very simple. It was not recorded it avatar, so it's not going to interact 100% of the way something that was recorded. It avatar is going to react. That makes sense. And that's just simple physics. You're taking something that was recorded in a different place and bringing it into another place. So there's some tweaking that you have to do to make sure that that works properly. So let's just start with something incredibly basic were in the avatar default kit. Ekstrom is right here. It's the big kind of crazy matrix he looking drum. You'll see that you have the drop down menu right here. We want a new Ekstrom. We're gonna click new Boehm. So the first thing you get is a graphic that comes up. It's gonna freak you out, But I don't want a kick drum. That's fine. You don't have to have a kick drum ticket. Easy, whiner. It's gonna be all right right here. In this dialogue, you'll see that this is going to be called X drum one. Because the first Ekstrom you added simple arithmetic, and right now, underneath it, it's set up to pull the drum you want, Where the drum you want to add from this library? So in this case, superior one. We don't want it from that library. Let's say we want it from the Avatar to drop down menu so we'll go to the avatar. Librarian Will select Avatar. Makes sense, right? The next button is a little complicated. We'll talk about it. A minute. This is called a microphone assignment. We're not going to get there just yet. Right now, we have to select the kind of Ekstrom instrument we want because it's going to change a number of things. We don't want another kick drum. We want a snare drum so we would select snare and voila! The icon changes to whatever instrument we're gonna add. Now, just from a you know, kind of cool and fun standpoint, you have two different ways that you can view this icon you can view. This icon like you see, is a snare. And if you right click it, you can drag it anywhere you want the kit, or if you select this button here, you can view it as sort of a generic Simmons pad. It just is gonna live right here in this particular space. This is not moveable, just stays stationary. So I tell you that so that when you open something like, for instance, you'll see this and I'll show you with easy exes. Many of the things that you open don't have graphics for. We don't have graphics for them. We didn't create a graphic for every single thing that exists. We try and keep it very generic and superior drummer, too. So you'll just see lots and lots of these little pads to represent sounds, But nothing changes when we have a actual graphic Ford. I like to use it, and it also has a drop down menu. So again, now that you've out of the snare from Avatar sneer avatar, you can go in and let's select this five by 10 GMs. Yeah, okay. Or we can select anything. Let's, um I was with me, Okay? You can select the tools because one avatar, if you want to again, that setting would always be there. There are some libraries, as we explain yesterday where we don't record a lot of stuff. And if you don't like this at all, you just delete it. Go back to normal. Makes sense. Okay, So follow me on this because I want to make sure everyone's we're that we're gonna close this. We're just gonna come in, and we're gonna just boom. Okay, you've got a session. So we're not saving that. This is how easy it is. Boom. Got a session? OK, the guy tells you what he wants. Okay? We're gonna open it. It's pure drummer to is open. Fantastic. We want the default kit. Congratulations. Can you add a snare drum? It's a kick drum we wanted from Avatar Avatar, Right. We want a snare drum. We'll move this over because we've got space. And let's say we want that five by 10. Simple. Right? Everybody saw how easy that is. Sir, you have a question. So when you add an extra, um, do you have to assign it? Teoh do, sir. And this is where your mapping in your mini knows you're gonna come in quite nicely. So one of the options that you have, which is really simple. You saw how quickly we did that, right? I mean, that's pretty easy. You've got an idea you can go on disappear, Drummer. Pull it up. Executed. Bam! Now, a lot of that was easy because I knew exactly what drum I wanted, and we did like a dry run beforehand. But this is something that I want to encourage everyone to really experiment with, because one of the options and one of the really to me it's the greatest advantage of owning other tune track libraries. Right? And we talked yesterday for literally half a day about how just a few controls on this front page can take one sound and you can go many, many places with it. Then we just showed you mapping in many notes so you can stack. I mean, and now we're not always saying Here's sounds that come with it. But now here's Mawr sounds so to your point, with the mapping, there's a couple of things that you can do right off the bat. Now we've made the decision and I want to clarify this, that we want an additional snare drum. We're not trying to replace this snare drum right here we like. We want a lot of drummers have a side snare and maybe we want a program midi that's reflective of that. So we want an additional snare drum. Maybe you're in a drummer and you've got a pan over here. You want the additional snared way found The snare we want now in this midi drop down are the coolest shortcuts you're ever gonna find. So in this mini drop down menu, you can clear everything. Steal the default. I like the fact that we use the words. Steel. It's so very grand Theft Auto. Steal the current or steal the second position, and I want to make sure you're clear on how these work. So steal the default. Everybody thinks they know what that means, and you're all wrong. Steal. The default means that if I click on this right now, it's going to automatically assign this snare drum to the default position that it occupies in its original library. Let me say that again. It's going to steal the position and occupies in its original library. There's a Catch 22 with this particular drum because I'm adding a snare drum from this library. So in effect, what I would be doing by selecting steel default will be making this the primary snare drum. That's also what I would be doing if I was the click steel current. So this is that rare instance where either one of those would work to make this the primary drum. Does that make sense? Everyone's with me, right? And again. This doesn't seem like that big of a deal with snare drums. But as you get to ride Cymbals and crash Cymbals and Tom's, and depending on how many Toms and what size they are. All of those things matter. If you bring in, for instance, a 14 inch floor Tom into this kit. When you put steel current, it's going to occupy the current. The default excuse me position in occupied where it was recorded may not line up here, and that's gonna be a problem. So any time you're bringing a drum in and you're using these quick midi functions, you want to steal the current position. If you're trying to replace a drum again, we just brought the snare drum in. We want to steal the current position. We wanted to be our primary snare, which we wouldn't need to do because we could just drop down. But again, everyone's with me, right? True. Did we lose anyone? All right, we got a couple questions about symbol chokes, all right, And now that works. But everybody running is simple. Let's let's take a simple choke question. Let's let everyone process this first so extra ums. Important symbol chokes Does many mapping, sir? Yep. So please briefly discuss symbol chokes out of the drone, presets it up automatically. Okay, so there is no automatic symbol. Choke preset based on velocity. Okay, so a simple choke. And if you recall yesterday, we have two different types. Will three different types of preliminary many messages that you can send with a physical controller? And again, they're very simple. Note on you've pushed the note on when you remove your finger Note off on a keyboard. Those are two different messages on an e drum kit. Both those messages sent at the same time because drums don't hit it and then it holds and holding a little you hit it again. So no down note Off. Go. At the same time, the message you're looking for is after touch. Now what's important to understand, ladies and gentlemen, is that not all Elektronik drum pads support after touch sensibility. It is a control function that you can program in mapping, and I'm not going to say that it's incredibly complicated, but it's ultimately going to be a function of the brain communicating with superior, and it's different in every brain. How different many commands will call it the mini command center, right? So let's use Roman if you have a T V 20 a TV 10 a TV 30 that is going to that delineates how after touches handled for any pad and there are some pads were after touches capable or enabled and some pads where it's not. So the first step is making sure that your drums support after touch sensibility. So again you hit the symbol the attack released, Go and then you choke it right. That's a control command that you would program on this page and again you would go in and you could do a couple of different things with many notes. Again, we didn't really go over a lot of the presets. But as you come into many nodes like we just showed, for instance, you've got presets for the ride bell split. You want the ride bell on its own pad, not on the same or even on the same. You could add that you've got the side stick rim shot split right. You want to make sure that for one velocity when you hit it, you get the big, powerful rim shop. But if you're doing real quiet, you can use the you know, the the side stick. There's practical curves, velocity controlled hats and X one snare stacking again. X one beaning extra drums. So if you're going to stack to snare drums together, splitting the lead, there's presets. So the creative presets again ghosting the hats and then the hats, the variations with a choking it comes down to the symbol and then applying the decay in the after touch. So a lot of the symbol choking will be done here in the envelope where you actually determine Okay, hit the symbol What happens? And again, we've got these notes here. So right now you've got note on. So all of the things that happen with an actual choked symbol are going to basically be a function of the envelope like we talked about yesterday. But it's very important and Onley for hardware that if you're going to have this choke something that you set this button toe after touch because that's what's gonna choke the symbol. That means that when you do this, it's going to read that after touch message, and it's going to do whatever you've programmed the envelope to do. Does that make sense? That's probably the easiest way to say it's going to be something you're gonna have to play with. You need to make certain again that your hardware supports it. And then, as it's sending the right message, you have a control function said in here, right in your envelope. You select, you know, right. Click your symbol. Make sure that it's on set this in. You can see right here. We already have an after touch symbol sent to the symbol. So in some of these instances, it's done for you soon saying everyone's with me. We haven't forgotten you. We just want to make sure that you understand that it's not always going to be the case. There are gonna be some symbol, some things you add. We're gonna have to do the work and make sure that you've got it dialed into Okay, it's seeing the signal it's seeing This is the after touch. If you have it to note off or note on, it's not gonna work for a choke. It could work for other things, but not a choke that makes sense. Good question. I like it. And it helped our minds break free from extra ums. But now back to extra ums. When we last left our Ekstrom, it was set up here to the side and we know that what we want with this Ekstrom is to add another snare. We don't want to replace the snare we have. We want to add another stair to the kit. So the easiest way to do that will come back in and look at Ekstrom one. Any time you kind of go out of the menu and come back like a horrible screen saver puts up this matrix C like 21 inch just so you know what it would look like in the digital realm. But if you come over here and you just go to extra morn, everything that you just did will be right there. Okay? And remember to if you get tired of looking at the sexual stare, it's confusing. You can just hit generic, and it'll launch itself back up here, and it's the same thing, but I like it in the kid. It makes me feel like I've done something constructive and creative, the easiest thing to do when you want to add a snare drum to a drum set, which is the most common thing, and I want to differentiate when I say add a snare drum to a drum kit. I mean an additional snare drum, not layer to snare drums together. An additional snare drum is simply going to the mini Come in and steal second position. Boom. Now this snare drum is automatically mapped to the second position. Snare drum will requires a second position. That's a great question. It's different for everyone. It's different for every single menu. So again, this is where you would go in and you would say, Oh, here's my mini map. Here's where the second snare drum is right? Makes sense. But if you wanted it to go anywhere else, there's a couple things you could dio. Same thing quick on this drum going instrument. Right? Hit. Learn. I think I have to know it's going to start hitting things, huh? F aids. It's all the way Appear. Um, C eight up there. You don't hear it lying to me. Oh, I'm not always eight yet. Emily. 678 years ago. There's our second position Snare drum. It helps when you actually look at what you're doing and know how to read. English is preferable because that's what most of this is written in. But apparently I just plan on looking at it and hoping it's where I wanted to be. But now you can see we're we're on. We know right now that that's just that center articulation because it's what's highlighted. We could assign all of these other articulations, but we haven't okay, But when you assume the second position snare drum, now you have to snare drums. And if you want to trigger this snare drum from a MIDI performance, you need to make sure that when you're in your piano oral editor, your actual snare note or the dot you're gonna paint for the snare is triggering right here, right? That's how we gonna get that sound. And again, as you've got it highlighted, you can check done everything still there. You can mess with your velocity curve. You could assign all these other articulations. We know that oranges what's there, and it's also assigned the rim shot in the side stick. And the reason it did that automatically is because the second position snare also had those assigned the one we replaced. So how did we not replaced it? That means there would have been another snare another version of the same snare there for the keyboard player down here makes sense. So that's the quick and easy way to add an additional snare drum. That's probably the most common thing you're going to do now. You can do some other things as well, which are pretty cool. So now we've got to snare drums from the same library. Let's add something from another library. How does that work? Well, you go into new Ekstrom. Obviously, we know this particular icons gonna come up and let's say we're gonna add another snare. But what we want to use this snare four is toe. Layer it with the primary snare so that it sounds bigger and fuller, very similar to what we did with the floor. Tom in the last note example. So we would go through and, you know, again the Mawr kits you have, the more options you have. So let's come to metal machine right? And that knows that we're doing, you know, actually, let's go to everyone's favorite metal foundry. Now you'll see that the icons gone, and the only reason the icon is going because you haven't selected an instrument yet, so we'll select an instrument. It will also be a snare, and you will have a drop down list of all of these snares that are available. Okay, so what happens is really simple. Now, there's one step I've left out, but I want to do it for both at the same time. Okay, so right now we've added an additional snare, and we've mapped it. And now we're gonna add another snare and layer it. And for both of these additions, there's one step that we're gonna cover in a moment. I just in case anyone watching me like you left out the bus. I didn't leave out the best part, but I want to show you how different it is because we have an instrument from our library and an instrument that's not from our library. Dig. Can you dig it? Says Cyrus. Okay, so let's pick a drum 12 by 14. Sounds cool. Kind of fuddy not really gonna blend. Well, that Or maybe it will. Let's go with it. Okay, now this drum, this particular drum, I'm going to change to the standard kind of Simmons icon because it's not really it's not its own thing to me. I visually look at these and say when I see this, it's added to another drum as opposed to when I see this and it is its own drum, if that makes sense. So how do we map this guy? Well, let's go to the mapping page. There's our instrument, these or many nodes, right? So right now we've got the center hit and we want it to be blended with that. Very simple. Let's take that center hit and let's join him. Boom! Joined, and you'll see the MIDI node like we just did was created, and you have all the same options again. So you can just go in and you have this X to snare center. Let's say we only want this on 1 25 through 1 27 so weaken, you hear it? It adds a little bit of lower end. Now here's the most important component of all of this, and it's it's own world focus. We've added the drums and we've mapped the drums. However, we haven't completed the most important part of important part of this process, and that's adding the drums to the mixer so we can hear them in our in our production. We're just hearing the samples now we're not hearing anything through the mixture yet doesn't exist. So what we have to do is select a drum. So let's start with the drum from Avatar because this is a heady. This is a heady concept. We have the drone from Avatar, and as you'll recall, it's highlighted. So it's selected. I told you about the microphone assignment button. Step back. So again, all of the drums and avatar were recorded in the same room by the same producer, same engineer and more than likely have a very similar mike set up. So when you click microphone assignment, that's exactly what you're looking at. Now. This is freaking a lot of people out because it's not a very self explanatory page, right? Kyle's looking to me like a stunned sheep. He's like What just happened? We were having so much fun. And now I have an Excel spreadsheet open, and I don't know what to do. This is the microphone assignment page, and this is a crucial page to the success of adding your extra ums. A lot of people don't know how to use this page correctly, or they don't use it completely, and they always kind of create problems for themselves. So let me try and break this down as easily as possible. What you see right here in this column says Mixer Mike's, That makes sense. Right Mixer, Mike's. This is a representation. Every single one of these little grey dots. Dots. One of these these gray boxes represents a channel that currently exists in the mixer on the mixer page is there one? Follow me. So you have kick drum in kicked remount kick drum sub. Those are three different kick drum channels that exist from the avatar recording. Does that make sense there in the mixer right now Because we're in the avatar studio STX What you see here is assigned extra Mike's for avatar. So these air all the mikes that are available, right, the green for the drum, we just added, So follow me because you'll say, Well, wait a minute. They all look the same. Well, of course they look the same. And if you read them, they follow the same right because they were all done at the same place. Does that make sense? So it would make sense, for instance, that if we're gonna add a drum to our drum kit. Try and visualize this. More than likely, the biggest producer of sound for that drum is going to be these three microphones right here. It's gonna be the snare drum top, the snare drum bottom and the snare drum the compressor channel run through a compressor. When you look at this list, first of all, a couple of things, anything that's dark green and this is important Dark green means these channels are the most likely to make the most sense in your current mixer doesn't mean everything's gonna be perfect. It means we've gone through. We've done the math, got the algorithm. Listen everything. Look, if you're gonna add channels to your mixer, what you need to write cause we just added another snare drum. So imagine you go into the studio and the producer says, Hey, listen, I love that snare. I need you to add another snare. More than likely, the engineer is gonna come out OK, He's not gonna trust the snare mic that's on the main stairs going, But we gotta like this one up and let's do it the same way. Will run on top and a bottom running through the compressor, so they're even. That makes sense. Is everybody following my analogy? Because that's what you're doing here. You are now the engineer. This is important because it's a lot of responsibility. Once you become the engineer, everything's after you. If you're drums, sound horrible. Not our fault. We just gave you the tools to be the engineer and you messed it up. Congratulations. Class is over. No, just kidding. It's not that bad. So in orderto arm these new mixer channels, you just simply need to drag them to the orange box that says new. So you're gonna take the snare top, drag it to new Boom. It populates a channel snare bottom boom, populates the channel and then sneer, compressor boom populates is a channel simple enough, right? So now what happens? Well, you can close this and let's start with basics. This is for this Drum comes from the avatar session. We go to the mixer, let's turn off our outputs and let's turn off our buses so that we don't have to, you know, kind of keep scrolling infinitely. Let's go to the end of the mixer because all ex drums are gonna be added at the end of the mixer. And what do we see here? We see X one snare top X one snare bottom X one snare compressor. So all the channels were added just the way we wanted to. And now, sonically, that drum is in your mixer. Very, very cool, right? Simple enough. So what you can then do again. This is where you would start. It's going to line up and be simple. Once again, I want I want to make sure that every understands when you're bringing a drum in from the same library that you're using and your adding or layering drums. The mixture channels lineup obviously very conveniently because they were all recorded in the same place. So what will happen is when you click on the bleed control, you will see that this particular snare is already in its own bleed. Controlling you control how much bleed is coming through, right? Your ex one scenario go down, everything's there. What else is cool as you can come like? Let's go to the overheads so you can go to the overheads. And as we scroll through, you come down and you can see that now your ex one snare. Two of those microphones are actually in the overheads, so that's very cool. Why is that cool? Because that means that you have a natural control now over this drum as an overall component of the drum set. So what's really happening? It's magic. It's amazing. You just took a drum that was not originally recorded with that kit and brought it in to the kit with a proper microphone assignment and tune track. Not that I'm tuned track. We're all to track tuned track figured out a way to make the math work where the drum comes up in your overheads so that it blends naturally with everything else you have going on. Now, will that always be the case? No, because sometimes it just doesn't work. But in this instance, it did work, and you now have control. You can actually sort of look to see where you've got illuminated little buttons. You come straight down and you'll see that you have certain components of the snare to me of the X one snare. How amazing is that? And the X to snare, which is showing a second. That's from a different library. Does everyone follow me, cause that's kind of heavy. So now when you get that drum, if you want to come to the mixer and hit the drum, you can check it in your channel. Over here, you can see that's giving you signal. And the only reason you do that is because right now we obviously have not modified our MIDI to reflect this new note that's over there so we don't have anything triggering it. So if you want to make sure that it works, you can always select the drum. You turn on multiple hits emulation. You know where the drum is located, which articulation you can listen to dynamics. You can do all the things you would normally do. You just added another drum stop there. This is the same process for adding a drum on Ekstrom to an E kit. Keyboards really not a thing, because again you have 88 keys. It's much easier, but you'd hit, learn you'd hit the drum, and that drum would now be anywhere in your kit that you wanted it to be. That drum that articulation, everyone's with me. Has anyone lost important? No problems up shoulder shrug yet, like What's he talking about? OK, so now let's go back to the other drum, because here's where it can get a little confusing. Let's select the second drum X drum to and go to the microphone assignment. Now, this comes from the metal foundry. I just told you this was recorded in a studio 1700 miles away. Wow. Okay, a little bit different doesn't line up so easily. What you have here again are all of the mixer mikes that are currently active in the mixer in your session. What you have here are Mike's that exist for the session, your borrowing from that have this particular drum affected in it. And then here's some unused mikes and what the unused mikes are Are these particular Mike's, for instance, the talks snare trash. This was a microphone that was used at the other session in Stockholm in Atlantis. That wasn't used here in Avatar. So does that mean you can't use it? Kyle, if you had to guess what that mean? You can't use it. You can use it now. What's gonna happen is we don't know. You can use any one of these mikes at any time. The dark green is the suggestion the dark green is Listen, we've checked these ones out, and based on what you're doing, these air probably gonna blend and work the best. So, for instance, snare drum top condenser snare drum top dynamic snare drum bottom, condenser snare drum bottom dynamic. So this particular snare drum, you could add four different mike channels that we are gonna tell you're probably gonna work out pretty well for you to your mixer. So let's take the top condenser and let's take the bottom condenser. Believe the other two. Right? So we'll take that because you don't have to take all of them. You can take whatever you like. You go to the mixer and then we see top condenser bottom condenser. So let's hit play for what's pick committee groove and then hit play. So it's a lot less embarrassing. We could do that. Let's come back to our awesome midtempo. We've heard it a 1,000,000 times. Okay, so now again, just a reminder. We took the drum right here from the metal foundry, layered it with this drum from Avatar and programmed the mapping to respond layering lies that whenever the velocity of 1 26 or 1 27 or hit both snare drums. Trigger anything below 1 26 will just be the primary snare drum, so we can go into the mixer and let's make sure we're getting We are here's snare drum to with when we added from metal foundry and again you can go in and you can check your bleeds. Okay, your center there and you can see, for instance, if we sold the ambiance both your new snare drums air in there, the one that's blended and the additional snare drum, and you can add those accordingly. Now let's say you wanted to go in. And where's my Ambien model channel? Nothing's really honor armed there. You can go in and even bring those in so X to snare drums. Not gonna work there. It doesn't line up, so we're not giving you a lot of control over. That makes sense, right? But the X one snare works, and why? Because it was recorded at the same studio? Does that make sense and be kind of hard for us to give you the model signal for a drum that we never recorded mono? We could do it, but we we don't know and you could do anything with science and software. But it's just we want this to be musical and sound good, too. That makes sense. So we can actually turn the X one snare on and have that Not that we're gonna hear it cause we don't have many, no triggering it. But ultimately everybody sort of gets the picture you can come into. Um, let's see if we go into the ambient mids you could sell that will take some of these souls off and you can work with again. You could turn the X one sneer on, but we didn't bring an ambient mid mike over. Now what happens if you do this? I told you in this with our mike assignments, the dark green is a suggestion. So we just brought over the top condenser in the bottom condenser and we could blend those rodham anyway, want to and sort of build a number of different, really, really cool kind of layer drums from there. I mean, we could just keep doing this with anything, But what happens if we bring over, like, here, go ambient far? Well, it gets added now it wasn't there, right? I mean, it's it's green. So it's like this could work, but we don't know. And we had a lot of questions yesterday about X drums and phase and all kinds of that kind of stuff, which I'm sure we have now. But let's go to the mixture and see what happens here now that we've added that channel. So you have one solo this you have your ex to sneer and that sometimes it's something you need to keep track of. What X drum your on X one x two. You can go in and you can rename these but the X one x two designation. We'll stay just so that you can kind of keep track of what you're doing. Let's see what happens. So now you have this ambient channel kind of cool. Pull it back. It's just on the snare drum pulled up so that only applied. That's only being applied to that particular drums. That drum now has its own additional ambience. Channel that's been brought in is providing ambience, but it's not ambience from the same room. There's no convolution reverb. There's no IR. There's no software trickery going on to try and blend the two. You're literally hearing two drums recorded in two different places, which can yield an amazing results. Sometimes it can be really frustrating sometimes, but what it is is the option for you to create and do what you want to. There are no rules here. You can bring in all those mikes. If you've got the CPU to process and deal with it, you certainly can do that. And while we're talking about CPU, let's keep an eye on. Are actual memory and status because every time we bring in a new drum, we're bringing in a new sample pool, right? We're bringing in all the things that go with that drum, depending on what articulations that we're using and what articulations were not. So we want to keep an eye on all of these things as well. And quite honestly, you can keep doing this and doing this and doing this and again. We're doing a very basic, very simple, very, very simple layering. But ultimately there's an edge articulation that you could layer somewhere else. There's all sorts of things you can combine. There's no rules. You could put percussion with high hats and drums with electronic drums and shakers with kicked. I mean anything that you want, you can add, and as long as again you have all of these steps in a row. We did. I'm kind of a little out of order just so we could demonstrate how the actual microphone assignment part works. You'll select a drum. You'll handle the microphone assignment while you're here normally, and then you'll make sure the mapping is exactly the way you want it, whether you're layering a midi node, replacing an actual existing sample. So again, for instance, that would work like this Very simply. Let's go, Teoh. Uh, what's at another drum? Ekstrom New. Okay, let's go to Music City USA. Let's pick a snare drum. I like that snare drum. What's go to Mitty? Let's go to steal current and now with my new snare drum. Now what you're hearing is that it's still layered with the extra, but it's my new snare drum sound. Very simple, right? And you can do this on and on and repeatedly and repeatedly again until you run out of ideas, CPU or RAM, and you'll notice we jumped up a little bit here just by adding as well. So again, every single time you do this and then by every time you turn on a new bleed every time you Okay, so what we want to is again Snare drum top bottom. Okay. Got a mic signed? Simple enough questions. There has to be someone that has a question somewhere. We do have some good ones adding extra ums to the STX library. Have to be asked the extra Can I use an e x percussion drum piece? And then you can use any tune track drum expansion media Think the X or easy ex. Let me show you how, um Simple. Same thing. We're in the default kit. Oh, hello. So, Ekstrom new right. Same thing. It's gonna locate every single expansion media you have. You select. Let's see the hip hop, Easy X. And then you would select a look at all the instrument you have available there would blocks who and then you could drop down. Temple blocks, four blocks, microphone assignment, which would be even weirder because there was Carly know, what about recorded it? Avatar. But, hey, this seems like it would work so we could go there, and now you've got your wood blocks. So any expansion media you own from tune track can be added as an extra drum expansion. Media in Spirit Drummer. No problems whatsoever. Awesome. Zach has a question, Rick, can you go over what settings make side stick? Sounds the most realistic, adding extra ums or lowering velocities depending on, um, depending on what you want to do. So, for instance, the side stick is a different articulation, so the side stick is right here. Kick drum side six center hit so there's a couple of ways you could do this. Let's start with the most obvious way your A E drummer and you want to be able to decide stick on your room again. I need you to think with me here. Part of that control is going to be completely relevant to the type of hardware you have. So if you have a rubber pad and it's a two zone pad, OK, the center zone could be your center head of your sneer. And then the outer zone, which will have a different mini no number, could be your side stick. That's the easiest way a lot of guys and gals that tour have a sample pad set up right next to their snare drum just for the side stick sample, because it's gonna be a much clearer, much more consistent hit than than having to do it. But there's another way to and mapping that. I just went over briefly in the nodes, presets, many nodes. You can go to a practical and, um, Warnaco drums side stick room shot split where it's basically going to create Amidi. Know that has your rim shot crack and your side stick, and they're gonna vary. They're gonna toggle between different velocity. So when you're playing softer and you can set, that velocity is we showed you in here you're playing, You know, let's say 0 to 50 your side stick, but anything over is going to sound just like a rim shot. So depending on what you want to dio, pardon me. For keyboard players in many programming, it's a It's irrelevant because you'll just have a different note for the different actual articulation. If you're playing my opinion, just just my opinion. It's based on nothing other than my rants and raves is that if you have a dual zone trigger. It's easiest to program independently the rim just for the side stick and the center just for the center hit and not have to share it with the you know, because again, when you share, when you split a pad like you can and it's cool, you're depending on yourself as a player to be consistent in the way you hit. And I'm not saying that you're not good or that you can't do that or that great drummers can't. I'm just saying more often than not in the throes of drumming passion, you may say, OK, now I'm gonna go to do a rim shot. But as you come down, maybe you let up a little bit and it's not strong enough and you get a side stick it, and it's not as impressive. You're like, Oh, that just ruined everything. So, to me, having two very different actual articulations one in each sensor is the best bet for the most realistic. When you try and mitigate it with velocity, you're leaving a lot to you is the player that I don't I don't think you want that burden cool. Carlos has a workflow question when bringing in a new Ekstrom like a high hat from a different library to replace the current high hat. Is there a quick way to automatically replace all the articulations? Or is the learn way that quickest way to do that? New? Let's say Carlos wants his high hat, also from Music City USA hats. Let's say Carlos picks these hats, and the reason he picks them is because clearly, as you can see, they're the only ones Carlos can pick from Music City USA. So, Carlos, I hope you like 14 inch say being a it because that's what you're getting so highlight, right? We know that we're gonna go back here extra month, so we know we want these hats to become these hats, not be added to them, but to replace them. Very simple. You go to your mini right steel current bam thes air. You knew hats so and it also as you steal the midi. You were stealing all of the articulations for that media as well. So as you can see once you click it, it's all the high hat articulations that were for the original hats. Or now your new accents simple enough, right? It couldn't be any easier. Boom. When you're done, nice feature. Yeah. Next. Ah, what if the current library you're stealing has a different note number than the library are importing it to, I think not library, but right. So that would be mitigated by these two. And that's a great question again. So let's use my high hat scenario again. Let me explain. Okay. When you come into the many function, you have two. Incredibly, I don't want to see their confusing what? They're confusing, because sometimes they mean the same thing, and sometimes they don't. So, for instance, you bring in, ah, high hat from a completely different STX. That's what we just did now, generally speaking, because the high hat is a primary instrument in the MIDI mapping sequence, it's going to be very easy for the computer to figure out how I had high and I. But what you don't have to worry about is whether it's going to go to the right place because what you're doing, in essence, when you collect clack, collect clack. When you click steel current, you're telling that whatever this instrument is, I don't care where you came from? You're going to the position that you exist at right here in this STX. So, for instance, you could have a 20 inch floor Tom in one of our metal expansions. Right? But right here, you have in 18 and you're like, that's different. You pulled a 20 in, and you tell it I don't care. I want you to go to the current position of the deepest Florida. It's going to automatically know. Okay, Well, listen, this is where that's map to in this library, so it always is forced to the default of where you're at. Now, that could be really interesting. Like you could turn the snare into would block, or Tamburrino or whatever you want to do. But ultimately, as long as you're using that and then you can also go back and check it. So if you want to do it manually because you feel better, you can do that as well. You can always just go into mapping and grab your articulation. You know, when you when you click on something, clearly you see all these line up here. Okay, play and you could go in and just drag everything and do it manually if that makes you feel better. But I've never had it not grab the right position yet, if that makes any sense.

Ratings and Reviews

Shayne Sheldon
 

I am very pleased with this course. It was originally presented as a free live stream and is the first CreativeLive course that I have taken in. I am so impressed, that I have purchased it. If you are a current Toontrack Superior Drummer 2 user (or are thinking of buying SD 2) and are looking for a guided way to learning this software, this course is one of the best learning methods I have ever come across. I doesn't matter what your experience level is with Superior Drummer-- there is something here for beginners, intermediate, and advanced. Though I would recommend having a working knowledge of MIDI, audio and computers. Absolute beginners to using software instruments and creating music in their computer might find the information in this course a bit overwhelming. Instructor Rikk Currence takes you thoroughly through basic to advanced concepts showing the true depth of this virtual instrument program. Rikk takes you through the program settings and options; creating custom virtual drum kits; settings for MIDI controllers and E-Drum kits; using the SD 2.0 as a stand alone virtual instrument, as well runninf it as a plug-in in a Digital Audio Workstation (D.A.W.) like Avid's Pro Tools. So much more is covered in this course, that I can't fully begin to share it all in this review. The knowledge I gained from this CreativeLive two day course has given me extra insight, increasing my functionality with Superior Drummer 2. Two thumbs up for this Master Class-- I can't recommend it enough to all Superior Drummer 2 users Thanks to Rikk Currence and CreativeLive for a superior course on Toontrack's Superior Drummer 2.

Ian Stephenson
 

Great course, the tutor kept it entertaining and held our interest whilst still getting over a huge wealth of detail for all levels of user. recommended :-)

Marcus
 

Killer class! Well worth purchasing. Each lesson is effectively thorough, as well as comfortably paced. And Rikk’s sense of humor makes the learning process all the more enjoyable.

Student Work

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