drum track editor

[dani]

hey guys, was wanting a little bit of input on a project i'm gonna start soon ish.

i'm gonna try making a drum part editor, specifically for drums, to make realistic sounding drums (given you have the samples).

i'm not satisfied with the MIDI/drum editors in cubase. i'm a computer science student, and i'm able to do something more usable (I think ). i want to make one with features that are more suited for editing drum tracks, such as:

humanize playing - automatic editing of velocities, and timing accuracy (like a setting "drummer skill" 100% being the perfect drummer, decreasing gives less consistent hits, etc)

more powerful editing tools:
- alternate select ( 2,3 or 4 select infact), picking every other (or every 3rd or 4th) hit.

- select as an undo-able event. ever selected something that was a hassle to select, then accidentally click somewhere, forcing you to do all that hassle again? well, i certainly fucking have at least.

- a better behaved velocity editing tool. at least i think the one in cubase can be a bit erratic at times.

other features:
i plan to have a set of samples from a kit, nothing too hi-fi, just to use a preview, maybe in the future (depending on how much of a pain it is), become an actual VST host, to run any VSTi.

i want some peoples opinions on this, as i think you're the sorts of people that'd be likely to use this tool!

any ideas/suggestions? i'd be glad to hear what you think!

 

[VH100R]

go for it! this is the place to be tested...

 

[Machinated]

id love something that translates drum maps, so that any samples can be used and interchanged without much mucking about with the file.

mac version would be excellent too

 

[dani]

i run on a mac, so anything i do will be as cross platform as i can manage

 

[iekobrid]

Please let it have basic Yamaha RX or Roland DR series drum machine-style song programming, where the user can step write, say, a verse pattern, number/name it, then specify how many times it occurs within a song,

instead of having to copy, paste, change mind, go back, delete, copy again, paste again, within a piano roll or drum roll or california roll.

 

[_Protoss_]

...or california roll

Ahhahahahahaha

Nice. Mac user here waiting for that!

 

[2000ContourSVT]

This would be very cool. I don't like using the piano roll editor at all so if you could make something that works a lot better that would be awesome, and I too am running a Mac so I like seeing cross platform support. I'd love to help but I haven't programmed anything in over 2 years, and never really got into GUI programming anyway so I wouldn't be of much use. Good Luck on the project.

 

[dani]

Please let it have basic Yamaha RX or Roland DR series drum machine-style song programming, where the user can step write, say, a verse pattern, number/name it, then specify how many times it occurs within a song,

instead of having to copy, paste, change mind, go back, delete, copy again, paste again, within a piano roll or drum roll or california roll.

ahh, this is something else that i'll look into, i seen this is hydrogen (i think). but yea, thanks for your input!

also nice to know there are a lot of other mac users out there! haha.

thanks,

 

[Erkan]

Really cool idea dude! I don't program drums much, other than for scratch tracks while making songs, and I'm really used to piano rolls so I guess this won't be as beneficial to me as for others but there seems to be some interest in it! Go for it dude, and good luck =)

 

[xFkx]

I suggest you study the ableton live midi piano roll, for me it's near perfection, i only wish it has somekind of humanize button which would offset the notes and velocity values by some random values.

 

[dani]

I suggest you study the ableton live midi piano roll, for me it's near perfection, i only wish it has somekind of humanize button which would offset the notes and velocity values by some random values.

the latter of which is what inspired me to make this

thanks for the input, everyone, i'll get started soon (easter is coming up), and i'll let you know how it goes. chances are a mac version will come out first, but if i can get round to it, i'll bring what i can to windows!
thanks,

 

[Machinated]

chances are a mac version will come out first

top man!

basically, something in between cubases drum editor and logics hyper editor would be great for me - with the ability to adapt the notes to correspond to different samplers.

i really like how in logics hyper editor you perform the note and velocity with one click - maybe something to consider

 

[greyskull]

pro tools has a humanise section on beat detective that works very nicely on MIDI BTW

 

[iekobrid]

Here's a link to the instruction manual for the Yamaha RX-17 my friends and I used all through college. It's mainly the Song Mode editing I miss.


http://www2.yamaha.co.jp/manual/pdf/emi/english/synth/RX17E.pdf

 

[KeithReyn]

Awesome idea!
Dont leave out PC users!

 

[006]

Have you guys not checked out DrumTracker from ToonTrack yet?

It picks up velocities and does a good job using it's standard settings, I haven't had to manually slice notes on anything yet. It also gives you the option to pick which library you will be using the MIDI with (Addictive Drums, BFD 1, BFD 2, EzDrummer - and expansions I think, DFHS, SD2.0) and exports them mapped as the correct notes for each library. It doesn't humanize, as far as I can tell, but if a person played it then it should be... humanized, lol.

It also has some generic samples you can use to preview the selected hits. So far from what you listed you are only adding a couple of new features to what DrumTracker already offers.

~006

 

[Machinated]

Have you guys not checked out DrumTracker from ToonTrack yet?

It picks up velocities and does a good job using it's standard settings, I haven't had to manually slice notes on anything yet. It also gives you the option to pick which library you will be using the MIDI with (Addictive Drums, BFD 1, BFD 2, EzDrummer - and expansions I think, DFHS, SD2.0) and exports them mapped as the correct notes for each library. It doesn't humanize, as far as I can tell, but if a person played it then it should be... humanized, lol.

It also has some generic samples you can use to preview the selected hits. So far from what you listed you are only adding a couple of new features to what DrumTracker already offers.

~006

you see I'd be looking at it for more MIDI creation functions rather than audio->MIDI stuff which i generally dont have to do very often (if ever).

 

[iekobrid]

Yeah, apart from Greyskull mentioning Beat Detective, I wasn't under the impression we were talking about audio>MIDI conversion at all, rather a drum-oriented MIDI composition and playback tool. Could be wrong.

 

[006]

You know, I just realized that as well. Disregard my post, I thought he was talking about an audio editor but he means programming drums. Gotcha.

 

[iekobrid]

Is this project still in the works?