Ripping Yarns - Realistic Rudimental Percussion with Klevgränd OneShot + SWAM Instruments (Video)

AndyHoneybone

Brits around in the 70’s might get the reference - an adventure comedy spin-off from Monty Python. The theme tune for the series was the Fanfare from Façade by William Walton. I’ve used the 30 second piece here to demonstrate the realism that OneShot can bring to ‘rudimental’ snare drum patterns. Until I tried OneShot, attempts to sequence repeating snare drum hits were disappointingly mechanical. The two slots used here for the snare are from the Jazz-Kit extension.

Not using OneShot but I’ve previously created two other arrangements of pieces from Façade using Siri and Moog apps:

Tarantella

Mariner Man

Eccentric you might say …

aufde

That's impressive!

GeoTony

You can’t keep a good Oldham lad down… great work Andy 👍

AndyHoneybone

Thank you @aufde and @GeoTony. It was good to move that track off the unfinished pile. It was also an opportunity to add the new time signature track in Cubasis (5 changes in 30 seconds). Just missed the opportunity to throw ambiente into the mix too.

One tweak was to use a microtuning preset for the alto sax so that the brief unison line with the clarinet properly sounded like the two instruments playing.

Never did get the hang of not sweating the small stuff 😊

PapaBPoppin

What a stellar example of what can be accomplished sound wise these days, slowly closing the gap between physical and algorythmical instruments

A while back I realized all my noodling and beatboxing I was messing with shared one common thread - trying to make the realist sounds electronically and trying to make the most electronic sounds with my mouth

SWAM really set that thought process in motion

And you've done a great job of utilizing OneShot to add a very real element to that snare!

Ive been curious to see what can be accomplished for a smaller style trap kit (like 3pc, but a lot deeper varience on the fewer pieces, faster tighter fills etc)

I can play full kit (finger drumming) well enough, but limiting set, I'm not skilled enough and it just doesn't sound close to real

This shows the potential is there, and it is a personal skill issue 😅

Thanks for sharing!

JanKun

Missed this on release. The snare sounds good indeed. On iOS, before Oneshot, this level of realism was accessible with samplers like Virsyn Audiolayer or the one included in Auria Pro loaded with detailed libraries sampled with decent amount of velocity layers and round robins (I was using Drumdrops libraries but there are other great companies like That Sound for exemple).
I am always a bit more skeptical with SWAM apps when it comes to realism. Each app when played individually can be very fun and rewarding and fool the player during the performance because of their reactiveness and infinite articulation variations, but when compared to their real counterpart, even after deep parameter tweaking in post edit, I always find they end up sounding thin, cold and kind of "toyish" ersatz. EQ, saturation and reverb can help but only to a certain extent. It gets even worst when stacking up different of their instruments.
I had great hope for those on release and bought plenty but personally gave up at least for their initial purpose. for now, too much work for too less reward. They're surprising good as base for sound design though, which is an unexpected use case and why I didn't ask for refund.
Still a company like Modarrt was able to do emulation wonders with Pianoteq, so there is still hope that future iterations of SWAM apps could bring more realism if the company's business sustains.
Have your tried their session strings? I decided to pass on those but still considering buying their room simulator, Ambiente, which seems great.
Cheers Andy, (while sipping some tasty Gewürztraminer, not Muscadet this time😉)

AndyHoneybone

Thanks for your kind words @PapaBPoppin.

I think the urge to create realistic works runs very deep. Real is the yardstick and now we can get close to real without selling the house. Or maybe realism is seen to give a legitimacy to our creations. Whatever, it can be inspiring and a lot of fun.

I’m intending to set up a small electronic drum kit with OneShot as the ‘brain’. I need to downsize my stuff and the shells from my hybrid kit have to go. Not sure that even mesh pads are going to be responsive enough to pick up ghost notes but there again I’m not sure my stick control is going to be good enough to lay them down in the first place!

A good sound makes practising a joy though so I hope you get to build the skills you’re looking for.

AndyHoneybone

Thanks for your detailed thoughts @JanKun. I’ll start with what I made the video to show - that OneShot makes a good pairing with the SWAM instruments. I don’t know that OneShot has any secret sauce over a full featured sampler and a deep sample set but the package is very accessible and just works. True I had to use a buzz roll sample to get the desired sound that should have logically been given by simply triggering fast single snare hits but you use the tools you have.

While the snare sounds good, I’d say the cymbal response / sound still has a way to go.

Moving on to SWAM, it is difficult to talk in general because as you say the instruments are so reactive. I have used them with a breath controller, with a keyboard and from exported MIDI. In each case, the results have been a reflection of the performance so, as with a traditional instrument, what you get out is very much a factor of what you are prepared to put in (and I can understand you drawing a line). Even with exported MIDI as in the ‘Fanfare’ case here, I had to adjust e.g. trumpet note on durations to avoid unwanted slides being introduced.

I’ve had a big band arrangement on hold as disappointingly the initial MIDI export to Cubasis using multiple SWAM instances sounded so much less effective than the stock libraries in StaffPad. I’ve just converted that Cubasis project to use the latest SWAM versions (3.9.1) and Ambiente. Unfortunately, state saving issues are limiting evaluation but initial results are encouraging. The Ambiente system gives warnings if SWAM instrument phase cancellation is likely and hopefully this will make stacking more effective. Audiomodeling are now promoting a MIDI divisi tool (DivisiMate) to allow aggregated SWAM instruments to be played ‘live’ so they must be confident that the instruments will stack. It is an evolving technology.

I haven’t been drawn into the string sections offer (yet). Partly that’s because I don’t have a plan for what I want to be able to create nor in what platform to invest for the longer term. I also have Iconica Sketch untouched. I can’t help feeling that a string section app shouldn’t really be necessary. Typical recording string ensembles might only comprise 12-16 players which should be a possible number of SWAM instances for Cubasis to support and @_ki has a great multi-divisi script for Mozaic that creates unisons when harmonies are not required. The limiting factors for building your own sections seem to be the number of violin models / bodies available to make each SWAM instance unique (8), the workarounds necessary to use multi-channel MIDI and routing in Cubasis and the pain of needing to adjust parameters on multiple plugins (a MIDI mapping opportunity?).

Personally, my Modarrt experience has been mixed. Yes, they are exceptionally responsive keyboard emulations but their Rhodes MK1 is a shadow of the real thing (which I own). However they serve my needs now and hopefully will continue to improve with successive releases.

Now Gewürztraminer, that’s the real thing - so much character it can partner a curry. I do like Alsatian white wines but for sound design it has to be a Brouilly for me (in moderation, of course). Santé.