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Layer Limits

Lesson 4 from: Superior Drummer Master Class

Rikk Currence

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Lesson Info

4. Layer Limits

Next Lesson: Voice Limits

Lesson Info

Layer Limits

So if we were to come over the voice and layer, you'll see that there's a drop down menu. So let's go back, Okay? We're gonna go back to our default kit because that just makes everything easy. Here's a default kit Still working wonderfully, right? Right now. 500 anyone, Megabytes. Simple enough. But if we go into a voice and layer, we see layer limits and then we have this whole other massive set of menu options. That is probably a little daunting, but let's just go to one Limited. Now. When I click Unlimited, I want you to watch the memory and status bar over here in the Left. Ready Unlimited. What just happened? We just went up in memory usage in allocation by selecting a limited. Now let's do this again on Let's go a different way. Let's go eat drums. Oh, we just went down. So what's really happening here? Does anybody know? Should we just move on and pretend that everybody does know this is pretty important because this is going to have an effect on? Everything you do is we're gon...

na set to the default, which is where we were at, so these to work in conjunction, so voice and layer a memory and status are very important. And again, I know it could be a little not confusing but daunting kind of jumping from sending them back. But all of these things, like I said, work together. If you have a system that's resource is aren't as plentiful pay very, very close attention because this is going to be the difference in the way of your software functions. So right now, as I've been mentioning, we've made the decision at tune track. When you open the Avatar kit based on the MIDI, we record the amount of Alaska the layers that air sort of in tune with most of me record. This is the ideal setting for you, and that setting is broken down into two components. So these in the layer limits and this is the voice limit. Now, this is very similar and can also be a little confusing, because I want to make sure that we're we're on the same page or so. The layer limits is a universal control, meaning when you change the layer limits, it's gonna be applied to everything in the kit. That makes sense the voice limit is going to very per instrument. So this is a great place to sort of make sure that we understand what an instrument and what a kit are. Right now we have this default kit open, comprised of many instruments, and this is where samples and many technology. This is where it can get a little confusing. So, for instance, that's a snare drum. I'm going right click on the drum, and that's gonna highlight it. So that makes I've selected that drum. This is an instrument, obviously, in the literal and figurative sense, but that snare drum to get this sound. That snare drum is comprised off many different what we call articulations. So in order to envision that and in order to sort of understand before we get to why we would set these voice and layer limits and articulation is a different technique that a player would use to pull sound out of that drum. And this is where people can get a little confused. So, for instance, the snare as an instrument may contain a center hit where you would hit right in the middle, out closer to the rim, right on the side of there's a bunch of different articulations that a normal player would use to pull sound out of a snare drum. All of those articulation. So instrument articulations makes sense so you can have an instrument. For instance. I have the snare selected, and even though we're jumping ahead you see in the instrument menu, you could drop down and look at all the different articulations that are available. That's a lot. Okay, now, why am I telling you all this? Because as we move through Superior Drummer, it's like the ultimate game of clue, because every single little nuance in every single little articulation instrument, every component of the software can affect every other component. That's the beauty of its customization. And if you go too quickly or you're not really sure what something does, you can inadvertently change one or all of the way that your instruments performing. I don't want to do that. So when I say that when we come back here to to the layer Limits right now, this is what we would call in the default. I believe we went back to default. Yeah, were in default, and right now what we're saying is that the default for this particular preset drum set? Our six soft hits. Four. Grady in tits, someone gets six. Isa go six hard hits, I hope I hear how boring this sounds, but it's the coolest thing in the world. Seriously, I'm Grady and hard, but trust me, this is all gonna make sense when we put it all together. Just stay with me and her people stay with me in her web. So right now in this kit, let's select a groove. I'm just gonna go to Ah, a groove here, right? I'm gonna go to the verse. Let's play group, right? That's what your drummer would do if you call them. So that's what we're gonna dio. And of course, we can initiate that grew from here. So what you're hearing play for a second ultimately is going to be broken down here. So within that particular kits performance, there are six hits that we would consider soft. So there's six different samples that are going to give you any type of soft velocity hit that you're looking at makes sense. So if the drummer's doing something very, very intricate or very articulate, there's gonna be six different samples for the actual engine to pull from. They're gonna make up those sounds simple enough, right? And it's because we have the layer set to six. Now we can change that. Grady Int hits Grady Int is the middle ground between soft and hard, So instead of calling it middle, Grady INTs because it can shift sort of. Either way, right? I mean, it could be sort of soft sort of middle. It's not like there's just one style of middle hit, and that's how everybody plays. When a drummer plays No two sounds really ever the same. So the Grady and hits are going to tell us how many of those sort of middle ground swinging one way or the other hits the lair level as and then can anyone guess what the hard hits are? Anyone all right? So I think you see where we're at so you can actually have these change. So if you go to layer limits now, watch you goto unlimited nothing. You have nothing there. There are no limits, so it's unlimited so it can pull from the entire and thats why this change is here now. That's important because it's not always necessary. So, for instance, let me give you a to two examples where this is very helpful. Number one is the 1st 1 we talked about e drumming most a drum performances. Now there are a lot of people, for instance, that use superior Drummer as their engine for their E kit and a very commonplace for E Kit's church or a lot of local performance these days. And there are a lot of things that are lost in translation, even with a real live drummer. When you mike up a drum set, you play live a lot of things that, in that scenario, don't necessarily know one sitting in the fourth row going man, do you hear those crazy Grady and hits? That's amazing, and nobody is doing that, ever. So when you go to the easy drummer, he's German. When you go to the Eket preset, you'll notice that it's setting the levels here, right? It's saying okay, and what that's doing by setting these levels is changing. This does that make sense? So you've basically just tailored superior drummer toe work for your scenario, because the reality is is that an e drummers, not in their dog. They have their laptop up on stage. Maybe it's got a small memory footprint. Maybe it's a laptop they've inherited or the old laptop that they just wanted to use, Right? So this is accommodating all that action. So what it's saying is you're not really likely in the e drum scenario to go over needing six soft hits guy that thinks he's, you know, Jeff Bacarro on the EQ. It's not gonna happen. So we've done that math for you can always change that. But given our experience in the in the field, this is where we've set things. Is everyone following me? OK, so in the same thing here, if you have someone you again you're working on Midi whenever I'm working with are midi. I always going limited because our midi is recorded by riel drummers on kits, and every drummer has a different dynamic range. Every drummer plays differently and we don't we don't fix that. That's how they play, is how it goes out. And since every drummer is different, you could apply layer limit that could alter the way the Midi is dynamically, and I wouldn't want to do that so By taking those limits off, you've now exposed yourself to the full gamut. Right now. Again, it doesn't seem like a very it's not like, really awesome, right? No one's like, Oh, cool graphics drop down menu. But when you think about the impact it has on what you're doing, how you're working, the performance, everything else. It's a pretty big deal, especially when you're working with again older hardware. Or, if you were to have superior open as just a part of your process if you're open and a dog and you have 14 other audio tracks, another virtual instrument, maybe a keyboard, and you have all this going on thes things start toe really matter how much memory using So knowing the type of work you're going to do and what you want to do is very, very cool, because Superior can accommodate that on every level. And again, as you're going to see, there's some other really cool features that even take these two and combine them show anyone lost is anyone could drew Is anyone? Yeah, yeah, tunes wants to know and great user named tunes in quotes. Can you have Rick clarified the total unloaded memory allocation. Absolutely. Just go back over. That total is what we're it should say. We think so. It's like, but it's not because we didn't know how to spell that total is sort of what we're estimating based on what's being loaded. We're saying it should take this loaded is literally the This is what actually loaded into your system. So this is This is the finality of it right here. So, for instance, we were looking for 779 but it loaded 7 88 We were off by 10. But there's no way we can do that little emoji or sound effect, which would be even cooler if it looked like wear off. But so this is sort of this is where it should be. So if, for instance, again if the total of 7 and that's what we're estimating and you end up loading like 1200 there might be a problem. So it's more of an indicator than anything. And the terminology is a carry over from superior one. We just didn't change it, so I mean literally, this is what it should be expecting. Loaded, quite honestly, is what you really need to focus on that's That's what's in your ram right now. Tunes. Thank you. Do layer levels come into play when using the drums and Leighton. See? Yes, Well, Layton C can be adjusted, and we'll show you that again. Great question. With ee drums in the layer limits. It's really more about two things. There's a missing component, and not to get too off track in this conversation with the drums. And that's the hardware interface you're using to get to Superior Drummer. Most E kits and by most E kids will talk about you. Sort of. The Big Two manufacturers we have rolling in Yamaha have all sorts of internal controls in their hardware brain to allow you to work with. Ultimately the trigger level, the masking. Everything else the Layton see as a function of superior drummer isn't really an issue. If you can click the drum and here in real time with everything else, obviously you can go in here and adjust your latent see settings. Right now, we're set a 10 24 because we're not recording anything were playing back, so we want everything to be right there, but you can go in and adjust that here if you want to. Um, the hardware that you're using is ultimately going to be capable of sending certain messages. And depending on that hardware, which I can't speak intelligently about because we don't have all the variances here, it's different from piece to piece. Obviously, I think it goes without saying. As horrible as it sounds, the more expensive with a nicer your actual unit is generally the more features and functions that can help you control that on the playing side or there. What this will do when you adjust these to the E drumming is this is going to accommodate a couple things on not to get too far ahead. But when you use the hardware piece, it's funny because I say not to get too far ahead. And I'm like, Let's just get far ahead when you use the hardware piece and this will come up again. There are basically three command controls that every hardware piece has, and they process them differently. There is a note on note on note off. So it's That's how you remember. That's how I remember it because I just love the karate kid. It seemed like the thing to do. And then there's after touch and those things are processed by a keyboard midi controller differently than their process by an e drum controller. The easiest way to remember these things, and I have the controls it up. Um, note on So the note goes on. That's note on right. Note off. Nothing happens with a drum on a keyboard when you would hit. If, let's say we're using a synth sound, right? So no told ING notes, holding those holding I let up. The note decays. Does that make sense that that's that's easy to follow, right in the drum realm within the e drum realm? When you do this, that's all it's supposed to do. So it's literally the MIDI information for a drums is sending note on and note off information at the same time after touch, which is the third thing would be the equivalent of what would happen once those things are done and the drummer actually touches or wants to mute something so all of those things are controllable and we're gonna show you how to control those. But what we're doing when we go, the layer limits the reason explained, that is, we're accommodating all of that. So we're saying OK and e drums. We know that you don't hit the kick drum, it doesn't sustain forever, and then you take your foot off. We're saying we can lower this memory usage here because more than likely, your hardware is only gonna be able to give you four velocity layers anyway right on your heart, because that's gonna be controlled by how many layers air on your control or not the software. So we're just cutting this down for you. And then again, if you happen to have a controller like the two box control Or maybe you're using some high tech gizmo you created at home, you have the option to change that, but it will respond to your changes. So that's really important to know that this is just where we found in the market with, you know, we experiment with all kinds of e kids. This is this is where generally tends to stand from a dynamic range. It doesn't affect the quality of the sounds. It doesn't affect anything other than Okay, you have all of these drum samples, but unfortunately, based on our experience. Your brain is only gonna give you for velocity layers. So we're gonna give you four to save memory. Make sense, does that? Yeah, We good.

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.

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