Drum Roll Please

Step KeyStep Pro
#1

I’m fairly new down the music synthesis rabbit hole. My biggest problem is collecting more gear and watching youtubes instead of experimenting with stuff I already own. (Search for a “Psychological Help” topic renders no results.)

I’ve got my KSP driving a Moog Grandmother, Korg Volca Drum, Monologue, and Microkorg S. So far I’ve managed to avoid incorporating a computer, one of the appeals for me of the KSP.

My question is what are people using to get a good drumroll per step on an individual drum sound? Unless I’m missing some implementation, I’d like to make this a feature request.

On the Volca Drum you accomplish this by applying a “slice” to a step to repeat the sound up to 16 times within the step. I’m inexperienced but gather this is a fairly common feature for rhythm sequencers.

Increasing the time division(?) seems like an inefficient method. Is there a memory consequence to those multiples of unused steps, or should I not worry so much? Also it limits you to factors of that division, making it impossible to have an evenly spaced 5-hit roll on one step and 3-hit roll on another.

The workaround I’m using is to disable quantizing, slow the tempo to minimum, start play/recording, then on the desired step quickly strike the key in rapid succession. Generally a few unintentional key strikes are recorded into adjacent steps so some clean up is required. Enabling quantizing after does not eliminate the recorded roll. This method seems to be OK for a roll of 2-4 strikes but they are not always evenly spaced within the step or from adjacent steps. There’s a lot of trial and error and I’m lucky to approximate my desired result.

Anyone else have a method? Does this seem like a reasonable feature request?

#2

HI @Random_Tox and welcome to The Sound Explorers Forum!

‘good drum roll’ is a rather subjective phrase as it can mean many things to many people.

If you are wanting to emulate the sound and feel of a drummer, then it would be worth you checking out ‘snare drum rudiments’, things such as Paradiddles, Ratamacues, etc
You’ll realise that drummers aren’t the most accurate time keepers compared to a hardware device, and long may that continue as this is one of the things that give them an ‘organic feel’ for want of a better phrase.
The other main important factor is ‘handeness’, i.e. drummers have two hands, well most do, and one hand is generally more powerful and one is often more ‘lazy’.

I used to play drums MANY years ago and have found it incredibly useful in programming drums these days.
Some drummers will play their bass drum slightly ahead of the beat and their snare slightly behind… these people are generally in BIG demand as there aren’t too many about.

Have a look at things like these and try and work them into your programming, you’ll come up with much better, more interesting programming with much more FEEL importantly.

HTH!

Ps,
Please make sure to subscribe to our Newsletter to be the first to know about the latest from Arturia.

#3

Thanks for your reply @matjones , and sorry I didn’t notice and respond sooner. (Guess I need to find the notification setting of this forum.)

Right now I’m less concerned with emulating a musician’s performance (as much as I appreciate the more organic sound), and just trying to learn KSP programing techniques. Now that I’ve googled Pardiddles and Ratamcues, implementing those in the KSP sequencer is as mysterious to me as the simpler “slice” step.

The impression I get is most users just solve this in DAW. For me the appeal of KSP is it can be DAWless. It seems even the primitive and simple drum machines have a slice feature so I’m surprised there is no obvious equivalent onboard the KSP.

1 Like