Cymbal Chokes using Addictive Drums 2 with Aruba

Hello ALL!

I just finished working on my new PC that I build 3 days ago. I’m trying to set up Addictive Drums 2. I FINALLY figured out how to make my hi hat trigger with a pedal (I’m going to try and see if this works for me. If it does I’ll have an “extra” pad to be able to program for “context pad” which means that it will be one of those pads that change depending on the need of the song.

Anyway, when I was using Groove Agent I was able to somehow program the two crashes to choke when a single pedel was down. These are foot switches in the normally open configuration. Just on/off, not varible type of CC controls.

I looked things over in AD2 and noticed that I had the “Cymbal Chokes on Aftertouch” was enabled on all within that list. Correct me if I’m wrong but no pad controller offers Aftertouch. I don’t see it on the Aruba anyway. This feature would be used for an E-Kit that offers these features in the hardware (like a e-hi hat) I’m very familar with Aftertouch because I use it often when it comes to emulating instruments such as Sax, pads, synths ,etc. but in this case using a pad controller I don’t see that option. So my only options that I can see to chock a cymbal is CC controls, foot switch specific control or programming a pad, button or knob to offer a program change. I haven’t gotten anything to work. Well I guess that’s not entirly true. I got it to work about 6 hours ago but I programmed the pedel switch to do a program change to the chocked cymbal 1 patch but it doesn’t work on both cymbal 1 and 2 because the chock feature is on a per cymbal basis. I’m trying to wrap my skull around this but so far I’m having a bit of trouble.

I did noticed that Rob had programmed the cymbal chokes on a nearby button to the cymbal. On the Aruba it’s bit different. Just to see what is recognized as a CC learnable button I clicked on the LEARN button under Cymbal 1 Choke and pressed a bunch of buttons but none worked. It did work on one of many knobs but that’s not going to work.
One thing that is strange. Remember that Cymbal 1 Chock I told you I had working earlier today…well that same cymbal in the list of kit items is now blue when active, unlike the rest that are yellow. Of course in this screenshot only the blue “CYM 1” is active the rest are gray but if I click on any other kit item it will be yellow. I checked the manual and couldn’t find any referrence to this color change but it’s only on cymbal 1. I’ll attach a photo.

I know that Rob doesn’t use pedals and I think most if not all of you don’t either but I wanted to use the pedal because it offers more of a dynamic playing experiance and offer a pad that would normally be used for open hi hat can be used for something else.

Any thoughts guys?
Chris

Don’t know about Aruba but the Maschine units all do have aftertouch. Basically, pressing the pad down after hitting it. There are quire a lot of controller that have this feature actually.

If you’re thinking about choking the cymbals, just remember that any midi note can be assigned to trigger a choke. In Addictive drums I also know you can assign more than one pad to the same note so… any type of device that can output a note (maybe even on the floor) could probably choke te cymbals.

I personally find that I don’t use it that much, but you do need chokes sometimes to play something like the intro to “Eye of the Tiger”

1 Like

Hey Rob,
Really?? I guess I assumed “why would a pad controller need aftertouch?” thought. BTW, do you still have your Arura/Aruba? But in this case of choking cymbals aftertouch seems like it wouldn’t help in this situation…no?

Ok yes I understand that by triggering I’ve tried the Note method of choking and I was successful. This method of course makes the trigger send the note that coorasponds to the note of the cymbal choke itself. This works, but I only have a single foot switch for this particular need but two or three cymbals that need choking. With Groove Agent I managed to use this single foot switch to choke all the cymbals. So far I haven’t found out how to do this. In that case I know that I didn’t assign the pedal to a note but used a CC for that. Had I assigned a note to it, it would have noly worked for one cymbal like I’m running into now.

Rob and the rest of the crew, is it possible in AD2 to output each kit piece to have it’s only midi channel? I’m asking because my method of processing drums in the past is to play the durms in real time. Once I’m happy with the take I then duplicate this single midi drum track into as many tracks as there are kit pieces. Then I labled each one of these tracks the name of the kit piece. Next I go into the midi editor in Cubase and remove everything in those tracks excet for the kit piece that track is for. This give me control over each kit pieice in regards to it’s level in the mix. Then I convert/render each of these finalized midi drum tracks into audio and now I have each kit piece separate in audio form and read for mixing. AD2 however has it’s own kit mixer so this method might be something of past as I don’t think I need to do this anymore.

lol Yes “Eye of the Tiger” for sure but I have a song called “Go” that will need it and I perfected it and proformed it decently when using Groove Agent but I haven’t figured out how to do it yet in AD2. I agree it isn’t used that often and for the 7 or 8 songs that I’m trying to finish on this album I have never needed it but this song is super agressive on piano, drums and bass. This song’s requirements of really great sounding, natural durms (in both sounds and performance) is the very reason why I learned about you Rob and finger drumming.

I’m not sure you remember this but I think the first time we interacted on this forum I was telling you that I was actually going to make a custom palm pad controller. Because I’ve been “drumming” very complex beats with my hands and fingers where the palm of my right hand is the kick drum and all of the other drums are under my fingers. My thieory was, since I’ve been doing this technique for near 30 years it would be a good starting point. So I was looking into custom building this device. But finding the triggers and the pads themselves wasn’t all that easy. It would likely mean that I would have to build this custom piece by reverse engineering the existing pad cotnroller when it comes to the way the triggers and pads interact. Long story made longer, your reviews on all of the pad controllers along with you passion and dedication to finger drumming made me try out your method Rob.

I’ve only been doing this for a short time but wow what a difference. I’ve never in my life tried to look at my situation, seek out the weak points then address the weak points and be blown away how much better things have gotten! The quality and difference between playing on a keyboard and teaching myself to play on a good pad controller combined with the control and great sounds from AD2 (even Groove Agent sounds pretty great…but the UI was terrible) is a game changer. When I hear these drums with the music I’m really blown away how much it DOESN’T sound like somebody fumbling around on a keyboard trying to emulate drums. Nope, this sounds legit with the flow and dynamics of a real drummer. Thanks Rob for the inspiration. Your time, efforts and enthusiasim are contagious and I’m not a “drum guy” but a piano, keyboard guy! Don’t get me wrong, you can do this on a keyboard and at one point I was on my way in the 90’s to becoming pretty good at it but no matter how good you get at it, the pad controller offers a far better method than keys.

I’ve never tried playing with a pedal, but you got me thinking. A pedal as a modifier is an interesting idea. Hold it down and the hihat plays open rather than closed (or vice versa). Use it to choke cymbals. Maybe I’ll try some MIDI scripting :slight_smile:

hey Ben,
I set it up to work the way a mechnical hi-hat pedal works. So when the footswitch is pressed the hi-hat is closed and letting up on the pedal opens the hi-hat. You usually can change the polarity either on the footswitch itself or in the controller’s configuration menu. These pedal are industrail grade castiron foot switches that are made for man lifts or simlar equipment like that.

Each pedal offers a 2 pole NO/NC options. So each pedal could control two seperate items but for this situation that won’t work.
I figured since the controller only offers 16 pads it would be nice to free as many as possible. Since the hi-hat seems like a great place to try this out I started with that. It works great. I’m still getting used to it. The cymbal chokes are a different story.

On Groove Agent in Cubase I managed to set it up with my controller so that one pedal would choke two cymbals when depressed but I can’t seem to get that working like that in AD2.

The Aruba ofers a TRS jack to be able to use two pedals with it. Unfortunitly, depressing the pedals aren’t being translated into a MIDI output. So when I press the Cymbal Choke learn button in AD2 and press the pedal nothing happens. I can program a pedal for a note output in the Aruba and this works but it means that I need two pedal to chock two cymbals rather than a single pedal to trigger all of the cymbal chokes.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this yet but I was just thinking maybe I could buy some midi pedals and trigger the chokes this way instead of trying to use the foot switch controls on the Aruba?? not sure yet.
Thanks Ben
Chris

1 Like

Very interesting. I did some quick experiments with the pedals I have hooked up (loud and soft pedals, plus an expression pedal). They’re not intended for drumming, and I don’t plan to use them that way, but I did get the soft and loud to control the dynamics of the drums (useful because it means I don’t have to be quite as good a player!), and I also tested using the soft pedal to control the hi-hat (pressing the pedal down opens it, which suits my pad-based playing even though it’s not how a real drummer would do it). I’m interested also in choking, but right now I suspect I’d get better value from the pedals on dynamics control, and I have at least one spare pad in my setup that I can use to choke. Or I can always manually add the choking after recording the rest of the part!

I did all this using the Scripter MIDI plugin in Logic Pro, writing a little Javascript code to modify the MIDI being sent to my drum VI. I already use Scripter on the drums to split the different notes across different MIDI channels, so that I can use a mixture of kits, or get separate kit elements out on different tracks, so I already have a script set up to edit.

Thanks for the inspiration on using pedals :slight_smile:

Ben

1 Like

Hey Ben,
That’s great. Whatever works! There are two pedals that I would recommend for you if you’re going to go in that direction and want something better and adjustable in regard to when the switch engauges within the pedal.

Orginally I had a really nice dual pedal unit. This pdeal unit is, as usual made for power equipment such as man lifts and manufacturing equipment so it really is built to last. I added a TRS jack to the rear of the pedel housing and six 1/2" #8 sheet metal screws that can be adjusted to work as little spikes to stop the pedal housing from sliding on carpet but can be retracted to use on bear floor. I used with my pad controller but found the travel of the pedal before trigger was too much. More on this later. I ended up using this dual pedal on my stage piano but again the pedel travel was too long before the switch would engage. However I opened it up and found that there is a fair amount of adjustment to the switches within the pedal housing. I now have it perfect when it comes to the engaugment point and actually could have used it with the pad controller. Oh and one pedal is for sustain (damper) and the other is for “Soft” or Sostenuto. It worked out well. However I found that if I wanted a pedal for the hi-hat AND cymbal choke I kind of needed these pedals to be separate, one for each foot. So I swapped it out for the Clipper cast iron pedals instead.

Ok here is my question to you Ben. I just noticed that when playing back a drum track I just recorded using my new setup that during playback the hi-hat is alway open!! CRAP. This is a problem. When I was using this same method with Groove Agent I didn’t run into this. I’m not sure if it’s the method I’m using to trigger the open hi-hat or something else but I bet you don’t have this problemw ith your setup because you have your hi-hat open when you press the pedal not let up on it…right?

Hi Chris

Thanks for the link. I might give those a try, though right now I’m getting pretty short on MIDI inputs in my little space here!

I did a bit more work on using loud and soft pedals to affect the velocities sent to the drum instrument, and it works better than I thought it would. With neither the loud or soft pedals down, the velocities from the Mikro pad controller are scaled so that a velocity 127 hit on the Mikro results in a velocity 96 note sent to the drums. If I hold down the loud pedal, the scaling is 1:1 (so 127 on the pad means 127 to the drums). If I hold down the soft pedal, the scaling is 50%, so 127 on the pad is 64 to the drums. And that has a really nice effect on playing - blipping the loud pedal on a fill or just before the end of a bar gives a great little lift to the drums, like a real drummer digging in to add some emphasis. And the soft pedal lets me lean right back and bring it all down, without the risk of a random loud hit from my sloppy playing :slight_smile:

The reason I don’t think I’d have an issue like your always-open hi-hat is because I built the whole drum setup I’m using, and I can code it to work any way I like, using a MIDI processing script in Logic Pro to alter the incoming MIDI data to suit the drum instruments. So there’s nothing fixed about the way I was using the pedal to control the open hi-hat - I just coded it that way because I know it’s easier for me, mentally, to associate pressing a pedal with opening the hihat. Then again, I’m not trying to play the drums “properly”!

Cheers
Ben

1 Like

Cool! It seems like it’s working well for you. Oh, regarding your statement about running short on MIDI inputs. Those pedals would be an analog simple switch input. So they just close a switch not send MIDI. Although if they are connected to a MIDI device like a keyboard or a pad controller through the foot switch input they will likley have the capabiltiy of transmitting midi indirectly through the instrument it’s plugged into to.

I wish I knew how to customize the midi like you’re doing. It’s been like three weeks and I still don’t have the cymbal chokes working on the pedal. However Nektar (makes of the the Aruba pad controller) is now looking into trying to set this up in AD2 with the Aruba. Hopefully they will get a way to make this work the way I was hoping for.

Ben I’m not sure if it would help you but I use a MOTU MIDI Express 128. I have a lot of external MIDI gear so this is my “MIDI Patchbay”. I’ll never run out of MIDI inputs. In fact I actual avoid using USB for MIDI because there is already way too much using USB as it’s way too common. I’m out of USB ports on my computer even with a USB hub. I’m going to add a powered 8 port commercial grade USB hub very soon for this reason. I actually would like my Aruba to be plugged into the MOTO Express 128 instead of using the USB but if I did that I would then have to run a separate power supply and cable to power up the Aruba where as the USB not only powers it but also allows for it’s MIDI connection as well. Not really ideal but I have bigger problems right now to be concerned with.

I’m using Cubase not Logic but I would think Cubase offers a similar way or coding MIDI?? Maybe?
So how are you doing this custom coding for MIDI?
C

I was just “talking” with Patrik from XLN Audio and explained my problem to him. He said take a look at this software as it can translate different protocols into MIDI. Bome MIDI Translator Pro – Bome Software

He said he hasn’t used it personally but it seem like it might do the trick. I already use MacroWorks with X-Keys for macro keycommand translation and it works great. I really don’t want to add yet another piece of software so I’ve asked the guys as X-Keys (PI Engineering) if their software might help. I figured, I already use their software everyday so I want to see if it will work for my purposes.