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Instrument Settings

Lesson 12 from: Superior Drummer Master Class

Rikk Currence

Instrument Settings

Lesson 12 from: Superior Drummer Master Class

Rikk Currence

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Lesson Info

12. Instrument Settings

Lesson Info

Instrument Settings

For those of you that are keeping score, it's superior. Drummer Page 1/2 today. Superior Drummer Arrest of the program. Not so much yet. We're getting there, though. Will we have two more components to finish up on this front page before we get into some other things? And I want to point out again, we've spent three hours going over some very basic components that make the experience of working and superior drummer really, really, really susceptible to what you needed to be and very customizable sonically to how you want to hear things. And we haven't left the first page yet again. That was the point of all these little menus. So again, as you'll see as we move on, some of the things we're gonna discuss and go over will present themselves in other manners throughout the program. But having access to all of them from the front page, I think most people are very appreciative. It really means that you can capture your workflow at its optimum and not have to scroll through a lot of things ...

or navigate through a lot of things to get to these Quick is quick moments. So just to recap Right before we left, we were talking about customizing the instruments, and we had talked about the envelope and how we can work with the envelope, protect about to pitch in and humanize features and how these apply to MIDI or live performance. So on and so forth. So the next logical component will want to talk about sound here, and it's the instrument patch. Now, this is a powerful little patch because it gives you access to a lot of things that you probably take for granted. But they're all here in one really convenient place for you. So for instance, again, just so we're all on the same page, we're in the Avatar kit, right? When the Avatar library and we're on the default kit right now, the snare drum is highlighted blue. So it's what selected right? We know that in orderto work with a drum in this particular page, you need to select it before you apply any of this other stuff. Otherwise, you're not really doing anything except fooling yourself, okay, And one of the greatest things that I do One of the mistakes I make on a regular basis is a power user is the default is the kick drum. When you open something new if you don't dislike So you think, OK, you're going to get in in your mind. You know what you're gonna do? I'm gonna and you go on your changing like, why isn't making any noise? You're like, Oh, because I have the kick drum selected and I just did all that stuff to the kick drum. So the reason we're using the snare drum in this instance again is because the snare drum sonically, from an audio standpoint, probably you're gonna hear a lot of the subtlety in a lot of the difference a little bit more. But anything I do can be done to any instrument that can be highlighted. So once again, if it can turn blue and even if it's not there and you turn it on, it could be it affected in this way. Okay, so we're good. Let's go down to the instrument now, as I had mentioned before, we have drum kits. All right. In a kit like we're looking at here is a collection of instruments. Everyone follows me that makes sense, and an instrument is a collection of different articulations that have been recorded so that the instrument can be presented as realistically as possible. Imagine if you were recording, you know, a violin and with violin there's the upstroke that down. So imagine if everything was just up strokes. Well, there is a technique and a style for that, but you wouldn't be able to get a very realistic performance without the full range of motion and sound makes sense. Same thing with drums. I know it seems like all they do is boom whack. But that's not really what happens. Great drummers have this entire nuance of sounds happening throughout the drum kit while they're playing what would even seem to be the most simple groups. So what we have here with the instrument section of this quick menu is an ability to go through your selected instrument and really make some on the fly adjustments to the way things sound. Sonically, What you're doing here is working under the instrument guys, but you're going to be working with different articulations, so I'm gonna show you the menu, and then I want to go through it pretty thoroughly just so that everyone's on the same page, so we have the snare drum selected. So as you can see that says Snare. And it's interesting to just a reminder. The snare drum is selected and everything is corresponding. Accept this because this is universal. But the easy mixer, which will get to next we're going to obviously, says Snare Top right. We have the voice and layer limits as we select different drums. We see different things changing right if there's a change to be had. So I'm gonna set this right now to unlimited like we talked about before. So we get the full range of sound for our snare drum. And here the first thing I want to point out is the quick audition. Really simple. If you start down in this corner of this pad working way up, you hear all the different velocity levels and all of the different articulations happen through that system. That's pretty impressive, actually, because when I come to my keyboard controller, each one of those articulations is a different mini note. So all of that information is being transitioned right for the rough because we have one articulation selected right. It's not scrolling through everything simultaneously. We're just showing the the rough, right? So check this out. Your list of articulations is never ending, depending on the drum. So for the snare we have, it's near trigger the swirl, which is a brush component obviously, brushes swirl right, the rough, the role, the flam, the muted, rim only side stick rim shot ej center. So the most common would be the centre right center hit. Everyone knows the center hit so we can listen to the different philosophy layers of the center hit so you can select the articulation within the instrument right here and then. Obviously, if you wanted to go through manually, select a different instrument, you could as well. But we're in the snare. We've got it selected. So we see a couple of things. First of all, we see, in addition to this audition pad which way have a solo in a mute? So we could if we were playing a group, we sold its simple enough right? Or guess what? The mute button does Anyone, anyone? Theo's things worked exactly the way you think they would, But what you have here is an independent volume control for that instrument in its entirety. Within the context of what's being played, so this is not a fact. Anything that will happen later in life in the mixer, this is almost like going in and leaning over the drummer shoulder and saying, Hey, listen, what is your plan? Could you pull back on this near just a little bit so that it's relative to the rest of what's being played in context? Meaning Right now, again, we're working with many because that's kind of our go to for this. This class is working with a mini group when if you had a live any drummer, same thing and his playing presented to you that within the context of his playing, you just want the snare to be a little louder because of the way he balances, You know, a drummer. A great drummer has a natural mixer and e que built in right. They know when the hats or to lay. That's what makes them great Drummers and the microphones are just there to capture that and give that back to you so you can adjust it accordingly. Not everyone's a great drummer and one of the difficult or more difficult challenges for tune track and anyone else that records Drum Midi. The way that we do is that technology has not really caught up on the hardware side as much as technologies caught up on the software side. So as we've discussed, we have all these amazing functions to humanize things and make them better and create these realistic performances But capturing the human component of that The hardware in between the two doesn't always do the best job. So sometimes you have to go in and change things and adjust thing so that it will work with your track so you can change. For instance, the snare drum group will pull back waken make it louder All the engineers out there will say so. Is that again happening in the mixers that mimicking the mixture? No, this will be pre fader. This is all before it gets to the mixer where you have another level of control over it. This is literally simply changing the drummers performance. Now you can edit this articulation Onley meaning you've just raised the volume on this instrument And this articulation Onley When you've clicked that light on, maybe you don't want the edge and the rough stow all be that loud because realistically, no drummer plays at a level where everything is always that loud again, the option is yours to play it across the instrument, so basically it's also going to be relative. For instance, what this does not do is affect the velocity in a way that is unnatural, which is what most people are thinking. So when I raise this fader, I'm not taking something recorded at a velocity of 100 taking it to 1 27 at all. I'm literally just adjusting everything in relation to one another. So the snare comes up in relation to the high hat into relation. Where the kick drum is, it's not, and instant okay, 0 100 Does that make sense? It's very musical. It's very okay. I want to hear more of this because what will happen is once this is louder in the performance, then I will also have another level of control in the mixer. Does everyone follow me? I know that could be a little confusing cause it's a fader, but you're really just focused on the instrument in relation to the performance. So it is all relative. So what? That means is. Let's say that in this particular performance there is a standard snare hit, which is a center hit, and it's at 50. But let's say there's also some ghost notes that are 20. Let's say I just raised that standard center hit 2 52 By turning the knob, the ghost notes will come up in relation to that not equal to won't be everything's of 52. Now it's all relative when you're applying it to the entire instrument. If you apply it only to that articulation than on Lee, the center hit is going to be affected by that, and everything else will stay where it's at. This is incredibly important. I know it's boring as all get out, but the velocity layers in the velocity levels being performed are what build and make realistic drum tracks. Period. It's the difference between it's sounding like a machine or sounding like a human or having everyone guess, which one is it machine or human? So these are all objective. There is no right or wrong. I know a lot of people are like, Well, what's the best? The best is what sounds best to you always but the option is there for you, and it's important to know the difference between applying it to everything and what happens and the difference to just applying attack. That articulation. So it's also telling you the note d one. So it's saying this center hit is on note D one and we'll go over this again and detailed in while. But it's important that you understand how mapping works and what we're doing right now as using this small keyboard for our maps. So d one would correspond to the D so d right, Right there. D It's CD, right? And it's in the first active off the controller so the active would run, see to be right Then see the next you would start the next out. So this is C one. This is C two. A lot of people get lost because the mapping is a little bit different or, you know they're using e kits. Maybe you have an 88 key controller. That's the easiest is because you started C zero and you go all the way to the end. You can see everything. But as we discussed, maybe you missed it right for the break. If you ever have any questions? That's why, if you have any questions, you click on the question mark, Uh, way have figured out. You can come to Avatar, and you can check the MIDI layout to see where things are, and you'll notice that all of the breakers or what I call like the kind of the breaking points C one C zero are highlighted so you can see what comes after them. It's never a bad idea to print this out, too, so you don't have to open the PdF, you know, But it's all in there and every single again, all the way up to 1 27 You have all sorts of different articulations that are available to you all across the keyboard. So when you have a smaller keyboard like this, just a note. Note to folks that may or may not know this. Most of these keyboards function the same way they'll have a plus or a minus button and above it, it'll say active. They'll normally start at the lowest octave, and you'll need to sort of increase it, so this would normally be maybe C zero. So you be like, Wait a minute How come it's not see one? You just hit the plus button on your keyboard. It'll shift everything to the next octave and again, I know a lot of people know that, but a lot of people don't, and that keeps things very easy from a mapping standpoint. But that's what this particular note number is now. If we were to go into our Settings Page, which we continue to go back to, there is an option to have the MIDI keys as numbers. And if I was to select this instead of it showing me d one, it would show me what key on the keyboard it was as opposed to. I'm not going to do that because and I want to restart and test fate and hope that we blow up. That's just computer work. If you don't have to restart, don't. But number two I respond to the D one d two much more than I do trying to figure out what's 36 or 37 now. A lot of people are different. It's everyone's different. People that are used to working with programming and with keyboards in particular, are much more astute at which way is gonna work better for them. But the option is there for you. It is in the settings page, so you can turn that on or off. So you also have remove and learn. Now these air functions. We're gonna get into a lot tomorrow. But I could remove this entire note right now by simply hitting. Remove. And then by having this selected and hitting learned, I could then just tap any key on the keyboard, and it would learn that that's now where the snare drum is. Makes sense. It will make much more sense tomorrow. I don't want to give a lot away, and I don't want a boggle your mind boggle your mind with it. But the reality is, is this is the the greatest function for the e drummer, right? So his e kit doesn't necessarily map exactly to what he has here. And he wants this Tom over here to be another snare drum. He could simply click on the snare drum here, Hit, learn, Hit that, Tom. And now that snare drum is gonna be there. I mean, it couldn't be any easier. And again, we're gonna talk about that tomorrow as we go into some of the mapping presets and other things, but the same thing works with the keyboard. If you use machine if using any sort of pad controller, you can move any of these notes wherever you want them. And why would you do that? Well, there's a number of reasons you're writing your own mini and you have MAWR things going on that are MIDI or someone else's money has going on. You have a broader keyboard range. You want toe layer sounds. The e Drome component is normally the biggest reason people do it. They have three times as opposed to two or they have. There's there's always the accommodate. The only have two symbols and they want the crash that's over here to be. There's a lot of reasons you could do it, but it's again from the front pages. Easy as all get out. We have this H m e, which we're gonna talk about in a second, which is awesome. Andan we have again just some basic sort of controls. You can see clearly. People always ask how much volume is being added. We like to tell people here, you know, when you're adding more snare drum, more cow bell. So you know when I click on the cow Bell and I wanted jacked all the way up because that's listen to the dynamic level that cow bell. It's funny cause it's a cobbling. You're like, Yeah, I would never use Derek, but the reality is we could have just easily taking the short cut out men like Here's your cow bell and it's one velocity, but it's Oh, no, We went all the way down Quiet cow bell. Maybe you want to play honky tonk Woman and moving a man. He'll advance the night away. Or maybe you're not interested in Cow Bell. It also you go back to snare drum. I'm just saying it's there for you. Interestingly enough, how many articulations air for the cow bell hit? That's the articulation that's available for Cow Bell. You hits the cow bell. I love it. Okay, so again, as you select different drums, it's also kind of cool to go through and see what articulations you have available because there is a difference. So, for instance, again, I always go back to this e drummer because I think a drummers use this program a lot and don't realize how friendly it is that what they want to dio literally four. For instance, a Tom. You've the center of the rim shot and the rim only, and you think to yourself. What difference does that make? It makes a ton of difference because the reality is if you want a situation where you know you're on Lee, playing Tom fills for the sake of Tom fills without nuance. Why wouldn't you just load in effect? The center shot Then, no matter where you hit on the Tom, no matter how fast you're going, it's always that particular articulation. You can do that. You can map things specifically to accommodate your playing style, and that's a big part of this. We don't want to presume that everybody's using it like we are where it's just a two track. Many tune track products go. We want to be able to work with a wide variety of different things, and there are some articulations in some many libraries, for instance, that work well in the program. But maybe don't utilize all those different articulations in a snare drum. Maybe have mawr. Maybe it's but ultimately the fact that you can customize it makes this a very, very cool Go to instrument. Yeah, So good. So far. All right, Now let's talk about my favorite. My favorite knob here. An instrument. M h e m h e. Anyone an idea with this stands for multiple hits. Emulation. Okay, so this is a newer addition to one of the updates. Obviously, we started it superior to point. Oh, right, as I said this morning, were at 2.4 point two. So when we released thinking we're going back two or three years But we released the roots expansion libraries. And if you're not familiar with this expansion library, these STX libraries for superior Drummer there are two. There are routes, sticks and roots, brushes and tools. But it ze rods, mallet. There's all kinds of things. We went into Blackbird Studios in Nashville, Tennessee Very famous studio renowned for its sort of Ah, I want to call it like a a shrine to sound quality. And we recorded these amazing drums there, and the drums were designed to really inspire a lot of jazz and, like, roots see kind of feelings. And one of the things we noticed during the performances of the MIDI for this library was that as someone is playing something with multiple hits, we didn't have a control in place to replicate what really happens to an instrument when that happens. So, for instance, remember earlier we talked about our envelope right, and we talked about how sound generally works in this world. So you have the note on in a drum and the note off with same thing. So it's sting, right? So right there, there's a decay. But that's a result of the sample being released. Its not. If I hold this, it'll just sustain forever. And then Then it decays. It's it's on off, and then the decay is a natural component. So what happens in a multiple hit then is you can very without our tool. So without our two on a normal multiple hit right, you could make a velocity stronger. You can make him lighter, but that's really not all that happens when someone's hitting the same thing. Multiple times. If you've ever watched a drummer or you are a drummer, you know that is you're hitting the symbol, whatever it is, A symbol is the best example So that's why I'm going to use your hitting the symbol it's giving back, right? So as you're hitting, even though you might be hitting with, let's call a consistent force. It's not the same sound coming back at you. And this is one of the challenges of digital technology because, as we mentioned before the program, the software is seeing the note. It's seeing multiple notes in its doing. What happens naturally when it sees multiple notes Attack, attack, attack, attack So it becomes semi realistic. But ultimately, we all know that there is this metal drummers. No, it really, really well, jazz, drummers and metal drummers like the end of spectrum know that when you're writing a symbol, there comes a point in time in the performance where there's a nuance that happens where you know that now, the symbols giving back and you're not hitting its hard, but you're still getting a great sound out of it. Metal bands use this a lot and breakdowns right and jazz drummers when they're doing the right. So we didn't have anything in our software to accommodate that until multiple hits. Emulation was designed by our software team, so here's the idea. You're hitting something multiple times. Hence the name multiple hits, emulation and what it's going to start to do. It's going to pull the massive transient attack out of those multiple hits. It's not gonna take all of the attack out, but again, we all know that is you're playing something multiple times physics is happening. The play through is happening that the instrument is giving back a little. It's hitting your stick as much as your stick is hitting it. So it sounds much more natural. So you go from, you know, stay where everything is. So he's writing this simple. No one would ever ride the symbol like that. It would just never happen. So let's let's find something with some subtlety to it. I'm gonna look for a groove, and we're gonna turn multiple hits simulation. So what we'll do is we'll move over to the ride and what's really cool about this to just one I'm talking about. The instrument section is one of the biggest complaints or criticisms most people have about a ride Cymbal as I need mawr or less Bell, right? That's their own. And that's the beautiful thing about this particular instrument, you could go in. You can select the bell, and you can crank the bell up and have it on that articulation only, and now the rest of your symbol stays the same. But whenever the drummer goes the bell, it's gonna be more pronounced without having to touch the mixer. Because in our mixer, as you'll see, all of the symbols happen in either room. Mike's or overhead. There is not a ride. Microphone were not just normally, Hannah drums aren't done that way. They can be, but in most instances they're not. So it's nice to be able to go into the instrument. Select the articulation, especially in the case of this. Make it a little bit louder so you don't have to worry about it. It's everybody with me, Drew. Are you with me? Most importantly, we have we have questions. You know what? Let's before we go and find that groove. Let's answer some questions. Sounds good. Any questions here? We're good. All right. What what differences are there between snare trigger and snare control, we'll snare control. And again, those are generally hardware functions or self, so sneer control would be What's the best entrance near trigger is going to be. I think we're down here right in the articulations when we were Yeah, so swirl. Not that you asked. But since these three snare trigger is going to be all of the notes that are triggered, whether it's the keyboard, maybe you want to assign some sort of There is a way that you can assign the mod wheel. If you're doing the keyboard to the snare and then sneer control would be this would be a snare control. I mean, you've got these articulations that ultimately doom or than just make a sound. It's a control. So you could assign snare control to a mod wheel as well. If you wanted to on your keyboard controller, that's gonna be a function of your harbour. But you could do that, and it would ultimately give you, You know, when you did this, not that this you could control that whole dynamic through the snare control. But ultimately you'd select that and you'd be able to adjust all of those things. Here is Well, that makes sense. Yeah. Next got a bunch of questions about midi grooves. Can you bring in midi groups from outside of easy drummer or spirit drummer? Or can you bring easy drama groups into superior Germer? How does all that work? All right, very simple. You guys air smart cause you know, we're headed towards grooves that they know. So you immediately and automatically upon installing any tune truck product. Many wise, whether it's drum mini again because we have piano products to have piano, many that's not gonna be applicable here. If you have superior drummer and you have easy drummer to when you install superior drummer, it's going to find all of your easy drummer MIDI and automatically imported anytime you install a MIDI pack. If you have both programs automatically going to install in the core library so both packs can use it. So any of our many products, once installed properly, will automatically show up the most superior drummer and easy Germer, too. So you never have to worry about that. So, for instance, on the group's page right here, it's got superior libraries all the many that I have there. Then it breaks out to add on packs, which is many that you buy from tune track that's not necessarily linked to another product. Right then you come down here and we've got Easy Player Pro Easy drummer libraries, Easy X libraries, platinum samples, which is third party, many that I have floated on machine and then user libraries where you can bring in your own grooves anyway that you want to. And if you missed it in the 1st 1 it's really simple. You click on the question mark User Midi folder and just drag your many grooves in here and they will show up in that browser. It's very, very simple. So yes, all of those questions and everything else that you're about to ask. Yes, no. Do we have any? Is there anything else? Is there a way to select, uh, that unlimited layer future for your entire kit all at once? Or do you have to do it for each room individually? So the voice limit here right is something that you would set for every drop the unlimited layers right now, when applied, is applied, huh? Set up once your unlimited your unlimited so you're good, you can go in and adjust it, and that's what this would do. So Unlimited is the only one that's applicability. Universal So, like if you do large, for instance, it's gonna change from drum the drum, and you would need to go in and adjust that if didn't work. So if we went in to the layer limits and we said OK, we wanted it to be medium well, medium for the floor. Time is going to be different, right? And some instances, symbols are gonna be different. Maybe they won't be different at all. But ultimately it's a general sort of thing, which is why I like to start with Unlimited and work myself with cash to mode because you never know what you're going to need. And that, again is one of the other reasons Toe open superior drummer by itself is because, even though you may be using a ton of resource is you're using less resource is. And if you were opening a doll with all kinds of other stuff going on now, a lot of Dawes on a side note, including pro tools which will see tomorrow, have a function where you can a lot a percentage of your computer's memory to the dog and everything going on in the dog. And if that's the case, and you set up a pretty nice buffer. Generally, you won't have any issues, but ah, lot of people tend to start with superior and standalone mode, work through what this project is. And again we're taking our time and going slow so that everybody understands, and especially if you, if you choose to buy this class this again, is like your video, your operation manual, we want you to be able to come back and see the example. So we're going over everything and mass so that there's value to the people that want to own this right and for the people tuning in. But the reality is, is, once you're used to all of this, you know, you kind of it's like anything else. You will automatically either save presets or have things that really help you to function quickly and get your ideas down. That's why we're sort of walking through all these things, to quote Dr Leo Marvin with baby steps to make certain that there are no hang ups, that there are no questions. So by all means, please keep asking drew all these questions that have had them in a bad question yet except for the ones we're not putting on the air. They're all horrible questions. What's wrong with all of you know? I'm just kidding. We're trying to get to as many as we can, so here we go. The last question we were asked was about grooves, and we're about to show a groove in relation to that, that we could use the multiple hits emulation on. Right? So I've gone into the roots. I'm in my grooves library roots, which is roots like to talk about the expansion pack. Not to be confused with television show or the band We come here Pretty cool, basic jazz stuff. We actually had a jazz question earlier. This is what I was talking about. The roots library. So there's some subtlety here. We can see that this is a symbols. It's kind of a highlight, right? So I'm gonna come back to the Construct page, and I have multiple hits. Emulation turned off the soul of this. Turn this up a little audio guys do, Lord. Okay, here it. Now I'm going to turn multiple hits emulation on, and let's see if this becomes a little smoother. It does big time and their space between these hits were not even really talking about the full on riding of a ride Cymbal. There's something that happens because our programmers are brilliant in the way that the sounds are transferred through one another to one another that give it more of that field. And this was a very important component, especially for the e drummer, because this this will translate to your pad or whatever you're using for your ride Cymbal as you're going pretty cool stuff and again, it seems subtle. I feel like someone should be doing poetry and you take a sip of coffee. So how does that affect the groove? Well, it didn't sound bad without, but you can hear the very subtle difference in the way that the sequence of notes is processed. And that's the beauty of multiple head simulation. Quite honestly, anyone that knows anything about Recording Drum many knows that to have even recorded MIDI at that capacity with that fidelity and those dynamics, that's hard to do from a drumming standpoint. But to add this component of all right, we want the sound to come out and be produced at a level that is consistent with what you would hear when a human being plays. It doesn't always work perfectly and smoothly know again. It's always always subject to the type of midi you put in. So if, for instance, you are using your own midi and your drummers just excited to be alive and he's going full on animal through everything, smashing everything and he doesn't leave you any room for subtlety as you turn that up, there will be a difference. But it may not be the most pleasant difference that you're being dealing with. So again it's trial and error. I see the microphone. I was wondering, How does the multiple hits account for, like the changing angle of the symbols? Does it do anything with that? And also how much does the spacing of like to Cymbal hits short effectively? That's a great question. So the velocity and the actual sample integrity or what we're talking about, So let's let's start with the sample the way the symbol move. So having had the privilege of being an actual drummer that is sampled for tune track, I'm very intimate with the process, and ultimately what we're dealing with is the natural reaction of the symbol to the velocity Larrier playing at. And what I mean by that is when you crash the symbol hard as you know, the symbol moves that is captured in all the microphone movement and everything that you do it. It's all there. When you hit lightly, maybe it moves a little bit. All of that is captured within the velocity range that it's appropriate to. So, for instance, when we sample or when a good anybody samples, you're not sampling patterns. That's it's hard to believe that you're not, but you're sampling one note at a time, which is why, when we do a sampling session and we have a drummer, they normally never want to play the drums again when they're done, because we're literally going note by note to anticipate not only what should happen right, and that's also relative. So, for instance, this is why great drummers and producers air so important the process to your point and to the point I'm trying to make about how it's gonna be different from library to library. Ah, jazz drummer will sit down with his ride Cymbal with no felt and no wing that on and just play it so that it moves freely. That's gonna sample and translate way differently than the metal guy who's got the Aquarian spring run on it. It's coming back. There's nothing we can do about the decision that producer in the artist make. We can only capture the instrument and its full, so we try to do the best job we can as a company of letting you know what to expect. That's why the roots again, we think the roots of music, jazz and R and B and very open, natural, warm sounding drums. And those many performances reflect that. So again, it's a point worth noting. You could say that was awesome. And then you could go to a metal groove where the ride Cymbal doing something. It could be a completely different thing because he's playing on a stand that's three inches thick, welded to the ground with change on that, and it's like, Okay, all of that stuff matters, And that's why all of these options are so important because you need to be able to adjust everything toe work to your capacity. And as far as the velocities go, as far as you know, the spacing. Also the drummer. I give you a perfect example and tune. Track tuned tracking. Is that what I would call it like Trekkies? Trekkers to track ins. If you happen to own a number of our MIDI or a number of our expansion packs, you need to go through and listen. Drummer, Drummer. So you can always see who the drummer is up top, and I always encourage everyone. When you buy a tune track product, you see, the drummer is go online and look him up. And this instance Morgan Agron. Phenomenal drummer, I'm sure just butchered his last name. Swedish. But it is a very open flowy, and there's a reason we used him for jazz stuff because that's he excels at it. Now you come down to the monster mini pack, Peter Freelander completely different drummer. He's gonna have a different feel, a different everything is gonna be different about the way he approaches. We use drummers that are appropriate for the music we're trying to capture. So in the grooves when we get finished, many perfect example that maybe you can relate to last Tuesday. Yeah, last Tuesday. No, October 6th was that last Tuesday I'm sure it was. Why not? We released a mini packed by very, very famous session drummer Kenny Aronoff, who's known for playing on, like, basically anything that was recorded from like 1982 Till now. Kenya have had something to do with somehow were convinced. But as a player he is a very specific groove I've and feel, and he plays things. A very specific way to take his MIDI and listen to is just someone else playing the exact same groove in a different context. All of that space, all of those notes, you know, the groove happens in the air, the space between the notes. We don't fix that stuff. So when our guys and admit he all they're trying to do is really, quite honestly accommodate for the shortcomings of whatever E kit were using to perform it on. You know, there's a lot of things that happened when you're playing on an E kit that you really can't control from a hardware standpoint. So when we say we added the mini, that's the editing were doing. But you can look at our midi. You pull it up in your piano roll editor in a Daw. It's not all to the grid. There are some guys that play that there are some guys that are machines, and there are some guys that are loose and flowing, and that's sort of the beauty of what we do. So that velocity again is gonna vary from pack to pack, which is why we have so money controls to try and help you. You know, you heard a groove, and you're like, I love that feel Now I just need a different sort of performance and you get to that performance like, Ah, crap, it's a totally different feel. That's what would happen if you hired another drummer, right? So we have some tools that we're going to show you when we get to grooves, where you can kind of take a groove and make it more than needs to be. But in this particular environment in Superior Drummer, there is no way there's no timeline. Again, there's no sequence, or there is no way toe to take a pattern and move back and forth with time. We're gonna showing your daughter. You could do that and we showed you with the envelope how you couldn't make the snare. Maybe just a tad bit later. Again. That's just audio, though. That's not the MIDI but in easy drummer to There's a whole set of song writing tools in the song writing track that can help you adapt and change the actual groove in real time. And that's why earlier we have the question. How would I link my easy Germer to To Superior? Because one is really for writing? And this one is really for like I have two weeks. I want to just find one snare drum sound. Let's go. You know, it's it's for that guy that really wants to get in there and be minute about it. So yes, anyone else So we heard what the instrument section could do. So before we move on, gang, just recap. Select the instruments like the articulation. It's going to give you a bunch of information. You can apply multiple hits emulation to any drum you want, and you're gonna get varying results again. And all of that is going to be linked to your voice and layer limits. Remember it So all of these things again, we know now we know why we spent so much time on memory and why we spent so much time on customizing your sample pool. Because if you have limits set, you may not even realize that you are, for lack of a better term, limiting your ability to get the most out of the drum set. But we're going to show you again when it's all said and done how once you've perfected your groove, you're ready, you're in your dog. You can also then go back in and tweak everything so that it's taking up the least CPU the least. Ram, giving you the best sound, the best performance. Go and commit to it. So three cap just very briefly, not very exponentially. We're on page one severely drummer to, and there are a lot of functions and features here that are gonna help you dial in the perfect drum sound. We have been working, and I think it goes. It's worth repeating we're working with many right now are preferred way of explaining these things is with pre recorded many performances. But all of these things are applicable to whether or not you want to be a keyboard guy. That programs or whether you have an e kit and as is, we keep going, we're going to see that there are some other functions and features that allow you to basically work even more specifically, believe it or not. Okay, so we feel good. All right. Recap, envelope, pitch, humanized an instrument. All of these things are applied individually. We always want to make certain that we have whatever instrument we want selected. Now you can always again select everything. Everything's blue. Pretty simple, right? And the way I did that was I just hit command. And then I right clicked everything. So if you want everything to be universal, you can create a universal pre set. It's kind of a backwards. It's not gonna ever automatically presume anything is universal. It's always gonna presume it's individual. So again, just something to think about when you're trying to make things, you can apply universal envelope, you can change the pitch is all these things you can do. The only thing you're gonna need to do is if you want to do something. Universe Italy, you have to come in here and select each, you know it's not gonna apply Everything one is from the instrument section is still just for the instruments. You could totally do that too, but I wouldn't recommend it. It's only for the hardest core of professionals. Okay, I know. Alright, Master volume. We've done voicing layer limits. So Master Volume, does anyone have any idea what master volume does anyone? Is there anyone that can raise their hand and tell me Master Volume? How does that work? Good. It's a good group. It's a really good group. It's exactly what you think it is. So it's worth noting when you're in solo. Obviously you can see me equipping here. Your master volume could be controlled here, can also be controlled here, can be controlled here. And you say Rick, why so many options again, As we showed you earlier in solo, you could have more than one tune track product open, and each product would then create its own channel. So basically all the products could be mixed at different volumes. Right? So the reality is Rick. Why would you do that? Well, a lot of people could open easy drummer to while superior is open. Follow me on this because it's all hypothetical. But it's an easy drummer to You could pull a groove down that's based on one of our Latin percussion or percussion libraries. That's just playing a percussion groove over and over again. While you're E kit is triggering superior Drummer makes sense, so you basically could accompany yourself. You could be doing a number of things you could be playing to a piano groove and easy keys. There's a lot of things you could do. I mean beat station, which is another program we have, which is very cool, where you can bring in outside loops and wave forms. I mean, there's a number of kind of performance oriented things you can do in the solo environment other than just open one program at a time. So that's why those things air there as just a reminder again. This is our tempo for all our grooves. When you have this open in a Daw, it's going to clock to your master tempo. So clearly none of these things were necessary. But when you're by yourself, you've got all this going on

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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