Testing kontakt instrument, sound OK ? ( using Sly & Lasse Drums )

ScootBaloo

Metal Scientist
Jun 17, 2008
402
0
16
Melbourne, Australia
The drum loop below is using kontakt to play the kick and the snare and the rest is played by superior drummer. The kick is Lasse's Alestorm kick and the snare is a blend between Lasse's snare 6 and Sly's Gretsch snare.

My question is, does the kick and snare sound natrual or do they sound too robotic. The reason why I ask is that I am using kontakt instruments that I have created myself and would like to know if my mappings sound natrual or not.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2785995/Drum-Test-1.mp3
 
kick sounds great..... snare could work..... it seems that the HARDEST hit that you are demo'ing the most isn't dynamic enough in it's nuances.... sounds like the exact same sample.... the little rolls and ghost type hits work but i'd like to hear more dynamic SONICALLY on the hardest hits of the SNR...
 
Thank you Sigmund , I agree that the snare sounds a little bit similar in each hit.
I have tested my kontakt instruments on a different midi drum loop that has a more dynamic snare.
This drum test uses my kontakt instruments for the kick and snare , the kick is Lasse's Alestorm and the snare is a blend between Lasse snare 6 and Sly Tama snare.

Does the snare sound robotic or unnatrual or too similar between hits ?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2785995/Drum-Test-2.mp3
 
Have you used all the samples for the snare and let kontakt trigger them randomly?

Wanna post your script?
 
Have you used all the samples for the snare and let kontakt trigger them randomly?

Wanna post your script?

I have used all of the samples for the snare. I am using round robin for most snare hits but a combination of random plus round robin for Sly's drums. I can post all of my scripts but I cant post the .nki files because they contain samples from Lasse and Sly's drum library.
Owners of Lasse and Sly's drum library should receive all of my .nki files because I am sending them back to Lasse and Sly.

I can post my scripts if you want but my scripts are only for adding buttons and dials on the GUI so that parameters can be adjusted.
 
Yeah, one of the problems i got was i couldnt figure out how to route that shit correctly, so it would work with reaper and so on.... everything worked pretty well with logic and i dunno what james used or what issues he got...

Would be interesting to see how u got it all setup....mapping, scripts etc...
 
It´s a hell of a work right? Have u used the auto map function of kontakt? Saves a lot of time....just need to rename all the samples so they get mapped the way u want...
 
It´s a hell of a work right? Have u used the auto map function of kontakt? Saves a lot of time....just need to rename all the samples so they get mapped the way u want...

Yes I agree, its very tedious and fiddly work creating a .nki file.

I am not using the auto mapping function, I am doing it manually and balancing layers and samples by ear according to "perceived loudness".

I don't see why my kontakt instruments wont work in logic and sonar and reaper but now you have me worried because I only tested in Cubase.

I am happy to show other how I did my mappings and scripts but I am not sure how to do it because I cant just post the .nki files on here.
 
u could send me a link....guess lasse´s wouldnt have a problem with that since i got all his samples + i did the former nki´s....
 
btw: have u mapped them SD2.0 like? Mapped the whole Alestorm kid SD2.0 like as far as possible, since lasse got way more and different cymbals..... he wanted it SD2.0 like ....
 
Thanks Vendo, I appreciate the interest. I will PM you a link that contains the kontakt instruments for the Alestorm kick, Lasse Snare 6 and Sly Star Classic snare. Also, Sly made his Star Classic snare available as a free download so it should be OK to post my kontakt instruments for it here :

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2785995/StarClassic-top.nki
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2785995/StarClassic-bottom.nki

I am mapping to midi using the Superior Drummer mapping ( i.e. C1=kick, D1=snare, ... )

How much of Lasse's drum library have you completed already ?
How are they sounding using the auto mapping function ?
Are you making complicated kontakt instruments ( i.e. similar to Slate ) which include room sound ?
I own Lasse's library but I didnt get any .nki files with it, I can I get access to your files ?

My kontakt instruments ( as you will see ) are very simple. I don't try and combine all of the variations of snare 6 into a single kontakt instrument but instead have one instrument for "Close almost raw" and one instrument for "Close processed" and so on. The .nki file I sent you via PM is for "Close plus OH heavily processed".
 
Done all of the instruments ( if i remember right :D ) ... also done the whole Alestorm Kit as SD2.0, but had to leave out some cymbals, because they didnt fit into the mapping. Auto Mapping just allows u to map faster.... no difference in sound there. Just splitted the velocity range into 3 parts and let kontakt trigger randomly ( random hard sample, random soft, random medium....). So if the velocity is set to 126 a hard sample will get triggered, 99 a medium and so on....

Not done stuff like room sound etc, since there isnt. Just routed so you can mix it like regular drum....

A few weeks ago i´ve started do redo some stuff and finished all the kicks if i remeber right...but couldnt find the time to go on since this is really time intense work to do....

Ill restart under mac and see how much i´ve done before.....
 
Just checked and yeah, earlier i´ve done everything.... started to redo some stuff a few weeks ago ( srsly...cant even remember why...) and done all kicks again, the cymbals and alestorm toms.

Gonna have a look at yours now...
 
Just checked and yeah, earlier i´ve done everything.... started to redo some stuff a few weeks ago ( srsly...cant even remember why...) and done all kicks again, the cymbals and alestorm toms.

Gonna have a look at yours now...

Kontakt does that to you, forever tweaking something.

Since you have done everything already there is no benefit in me going the last mile on my efforts. I think I will still do some more of Lasse's library just to get the experience with kontakt. I must get a copy of the .nki files you created, is there a reason why the .nki files are not released with the library ? I dont really care about the .nkm files, I just want the .nki.
 
Lasse only got the nkm of the full Alestorm kit... somehow he didnt care about the rest or i dunno.....
 
I will do the toms and cymbals and also some of the kicks and snares for my own purposes, so I may as well send the results to Lasse just in case some of them are useful.
 
I have finally finished all of the toms and cymbals from Lasse's drum library so I am posting a drum test composed entirely of instruments from Lasse's drum library. The drum clip below is the output of kontakt when it is loaded up with the instruments I created. The instruments are :

- kick : Smackstick kick
- snare : Snare 6
- toms : Alestorm toms
- cymbals : Alestorm Cymbals

In my opinion, the kick, snare and toms are sounding natrual ( not robotic ) in this clip and the cymbals are OK but they sounded more natrual when superior drummer was playing them.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2785995/LSD-Drum_test-6.mp3
 
OK , my last drum test , sorry about having a conversation with myself here !!

This one has kick, snare, cymbals and toms from Lasse Drum Library but not the hi hat because it was the only instrument that I could not get to sound natrual. I guess this clip does not sound as natrual as slate drums or superior drummer but I am happy with the amount of variation in the sound so I think my kontakt instruments must be working OK.

Also, if the drum clips I posted on here are sounding bad then its because I haven't dialed up a good sound, not because the samples are bad.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2785995/Drum-Test-9.mp3