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turning percussive guitar into drum sounds, bought impaktor, should i have bought drambo for this?
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I realised after purchase it's no AUv3, don't know why it never occurred to me to check. I have AB but don't want to jump through multi app setups, and want state saving.
I was inspired after I saw @hypnopad 's video (great by the way, as usual), and realised he was using a thing called drampaktor. Which made me remember Impaktor and that it would probably work for my use case. So I went for that rather than Drambo, for $ reasons.
But would a patch in drambo work well for this? is there a premade thing for that? I know I'd probably find a million other uses for it too...
Comments
Check out cunsp or resonator, both free apps.
@SimonSomeone "Percussive guitar into drum sounds" is very generic and can be answered with a clear "yes".
I've been interested in this general topic for a long time. Impaktor was created by @giku_beepstreet and there are some examples of it in Drambo (also created by @giku_beepstreet).
@rs2000 is working on a patch for a "Simple Trigger to MIDI" if you don't want Drambo to create a pseudo-drum like Impaktor does. If you do there are demos and patches that go that way.
I was working on uses of FAC Envolver to trigger "audio impulses" to MIDI events which it does using
a settable threshold value. So, every MIDI note ends up with the same velocity and what you might want
(as I did) was a mapped velocity that matched the volume of the audio input. So, I worked with Nic at Audeonic and he helped make a script to use the FAC Envolver CC envelope stream and detect the "peak"
value of the audio impulse so it could be matched with the MIDI note event to make a MIDI stream out that followed the rhythm and accents of the "drum tapping" input.
The next level of capability would involve some pitch detection so the MIDI notes could get routed to
Bass Drum for a low note (low E string?) and to a snare for mid-range and high hats for scratches.
Then you could learn to play useful rhythm guitar that triggers something like a drum part. There's
a Boss Pedal that does this I think for solo performers.
Please describe your vision of what you envision for a percussive guitar becoming a drum sound.
Do you have MIDI Guitar 2 that can convert guitar input to MIDI and load any AUv3/IAA app? It's really low
latency and probably would work. You might need a MIDI script to convert note ranges to specific drum types but that's easy to create. MIDI Guitar 2 with all the extras is a lot of money but worth every penny if
you want to amaze the audience while holding a guitar. They will look around for keyboard players with
synths but it would be interesting for them to look for a drum machine.
@SimonSomeone Thanks for the compliment. I actually made up the term “drampaktor”. There are presets in Drambo that are good starting points for an Impaktor type experience. The added benefit of midi control/ layering and scenes that contain different settings that can be changed on the fly so make it worth it. Plus you then have Drambo!
In AUM just run your audio input into Drambo when it’s in the fx slot. Never heard of guitar running into Impaktor type stuff before- just be careful of feedback.
As stated earlier, there are cheaper alternatives. Only you can decide if Drambo is worth it. For me it definitely was. Good luck!
For the resonator part, I like the Objeq AUv3 by Applied Acoustic Systems (AAS)
@McD brings up some good options. A guitar to midi app can guarantee no feedback issues. You might want to try both options and see which works best.
Maybe include the video you're referencing? Probably help folks narrow it down. Maybe this @supadom patch for Drambo? https://patchstorage.com/impaktor-2/
In case you live somewhere where you can't return apps, definitely definitely make a little fun time and play with Impaktor standalone. Might not work particularly well with percussive guitar but it's just a beautiful, musical, inspirational little instrument. Tap the table and enjoy the magic.
I don't think you can trigger the input from AudioBus though. Which is a bummer.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I guess I'd like the audio manipulated in some way rather than triggering midi. But I might be wrong in this because I like what impaktor does, and I guess that's more an audio trigger of a drum synth. So I'm not really after triggering a totally realistic drum kit sample via midi.
Also, no feedback problems as it would electric guitar via interface into AUM hosting Impaktor/Drambo etc...
Do the modules in Drambo do as much as Impaktor? I guess I could stretch to trying it out via AB, but I don't like complicating setups unnecessarily...
Here's a video of the kind of percussive guitar playing I mean. I think in my head I'm imagining the lighter strokes/higher string strokes becoming automagically more like snares or hi-hats, vs the strong strokes being kicks. In that realm anyway. I note that Impaktor has a preset like that.
Oh.. that's a killer.
It wasn't really the sounds he was making, it's more that the penny dropped that he was using a percussive audio sound to trigger something else he called drampaktor (which I understand is his pet name for using drambo this way). I quite like the kind of sounds Impaktor makes. But it seems that's not going to work at all if it can only be triggered by the internal mic.
It seems like Drambo has all these included plus a lot more.
But it's not as straightforward to use as Impaktor.
With modularity comes responsibility: It's completely up to you to build your dream design, based on a few pre-made examples maybe. And that can take some time depending on how much you already know about synthesis.
But it's an AUv3 with audio and MIDI i/o.
If you want to control the timbre of your output sound with the timbre of what your input signal is, Drambo (like Impaktor) is a great way to go. It is a bit of a learning curve but you don’t need to learn everything about it - you can study the Impaktor type presets to get you started. Drambo doesn’t have all the models that Impaktor does but it has enough to get you there. Definitely use AUM. I didn’t have any luck with AB for some odd reason. And use the MFx version of Drambo in the fx slot.
Drambo wizards: when should you use M(idi)FX Drambo and when just FX Drambo.
With audio in and audio out I'm not sure if this requires the MFX instance but I'd expect it might still
work. Is this an AUM issue that it detects MIDI FX features and Audio FX features and lists it twice?
@McD I think the main reason for supporting both types is that some DAWs can only load one of these.
If you don’t use the midi version it won’t show up in the matrix and you can’t midi map a controller to it. Makes no difference with respect to having parameters exposed in the midi control section since Drambo doesn’t expose them either way.
Audio wise it makes no difference. Not sure if midi out is an option though or not - haven’t used that when in the fx slot.
It looks like Objeq might be the next thing to try as a low budget option. I have Chromaphone which I really like, and this is by the same people, with a similar but much simpler principle behind it it seems. There's also a 5 star review from Jordan Rudess on the app store.
If it works well I'll have staved off Drambo for another day!
But that whole midi conversion idea has given me something to think about too, as per this comment...
You make me search for Objeq. I love the app. I will buy it. It's insane how easy (and fun) it's to spend money on the appstore.
Yes, and thanks to @mojozart for the suggestion. I hadn't heard of it before.
Wow, the developper is from Montreal, cool.
Ok, bought it, doesn't really do what I want... It's usable in that it modifies the guitar sound to make i more punchy and lower, like a kick, but not really as good as the stuff i could get with muted strumming of my acoustic into impaktor via the built in mic, though that's not practical from a live perspective.
@hypnopad , I see some drambo patches on patchstorage that are like midi-fied versions of impaktor. Are there factory presets that are built on audio triggering?
@SimonSomeone It comes with only five presets that respond to tapping/ audio input but it’s easy enough to tweak the parameters to come up with more sounds. It basically has two types of modules that work with audio input.
A modal resonator with a dozen physical models (Impaktor has a bit more) to choose from and a waveguide module. You can build your own instrument using layers of those plus other fx modules. So not as many presets as Impaktor but a lot more options. And unlike Impaktor you can use a midi controller to modulate any parameter. I look at it as Impaktor on steroids.
... I look at it as Impaktor on steroids.
cool, thanks
Chromaphone is outstanding and I'm still dreaming of AAS releasing it on iOS one day.
IMHO one of the few physical modeling instruments worth using.
My next best option is Drambo with its physical models for now.
I might try one day how close I can get to Chromaphone with it...
You'll have a hard time extracting more than one trigger signal from this kind of non-tonal strumming, no matter if you're going to use MidiGuitar or Drambo.
Extracting two different levels for triggering two samples might work.
Short melodic hits will be easier to identify, e.g. with different notes triggering different samples.
@SimonSomeone Do you remember the name of the patch in Impaktor that does kick and snare? I would like to see what models/ techniques were used. I normally don’t use the atonal/ drum stuff and mainly use the melodic models. Like I said before you will have some control over timbre (dark/light) with your playing technique. But if you want totally separate kick and snare sounds it might not be possible. I imagine you could layer two modal resonators- one snare like and one kick like and put a high pass filter In front of the snare module and a low pass in front of the kick module. Strumming on your low strings and strumming on your high strings may produce different sounds. Like I said, I never tried this so it may or may not work. Maybe I’ll do my own experimenting and report back.
I have tried a couple of thing and I cannot use the patch. The patch is loaded in Drambo but how I get sound? Looks like a simple question but I struggle with that. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!
This patch is triggered by midi not audio. Instead of sending raw audio you are triggering an impulse type sample with a midi note. The sample is then fed into the resonators.
This provides a much more reliable sound but at the expense of some timbre control on your end. It seems velocity can alter the sounds a bit but not timbre manipulation on your end -bright/dark playing surface does not result in bright/ dark resonances.
So I load Drambo in AUM in Audio with the patch and I load a midi channel where I put a midi sequencer and I send the midi sequencer out to Drambo?
I always load Drambo mFX in an FX slot in AUM with a mix bus as the channel input. This gives me full midi control in and out, the ability to use it as an instrument or an FX, and the ability to sample any other AUM track. No other configuration gives all that.
The only tiny inconvenience is the starting template in the FX slot isn't as helpful for general use, so I always need to create a new project from a suitable template on startup. That's approximately 1.3 seconds of my life I will never, ever, get back.
[edit ... whoops - there is a big downside for now with the mFX version ... no multi out. I think that's coming though. And if I decide I want multi-output now, all I need to do is save the project and then open it in the multi-out version.]
Yep. Just assign your midi channel into the Drambo track via either the matrix view or the midi setup just left of the app icon in your midi track.
You can change sounds by changing tracks in Drambo.