Help for rhythm tracking: sync hardware to a drummer’s beat

Really not interested in using a click track, loud monitors blasting the drummer’s ears, or drum triggers and a drum module. Yes I am being arbitrarily difficult. ADHD is fun.

Objective: A human plays a drum kit. The drums trigger gates/envelopes/dynamics, and the overall drum beat provides the tempo/clock. The sequence does not stop if the drummer does not strike a drum, and the tempo is not adjusted when striking a drum again, and the drummer can play fills. Maybe the tempo doesn’t change until after a certain number of strikes. Maybe the tempo can have a target bpm configured, and can then slide around by +/- 1 bpm to allow for humanization.

Simplest example I can imagine is a 16 bar loop at 120 bpm. The synth has trigs on every other step. The drummer strikes the kick drum on steps 1, 5, and 13. The tempo stays at or very near 120 and does not change by the absence of a kick on step 9 and the subsequent kick on 13. The synth is muted on steps without a pulse from the kick (depending on envelope shape), but continues to run.

The inspiration for the idea stems from this video on the 4ms Percussion Interface

Noting that I don’t know what else is configured in the setup from the video, and also that I am still a beginner, at best, with modular/synthesis knowledge. Sequencers and melody are more my jam. In that video, I’m wowed by the chord changes, which I thought were triggered by the cymbal hit, but that doesn’t seem to always be the case. I could see that being based on a harder velocity required to trigger a pulse?

Yes, I have started digging through Modular Grid, but still have a lot to learn. I’ve also been discussing this idea in a thread on Mod Wiggler

Some other options mentioned in that thread:

-Ladik U-035 connected to piezo

-CG Products Peak and Hold

-Korg KP3+ (not sure if the newer Kaoss Replay might be able to do this too, also not sure I want that though, or the KP3)

-Hinton Instruments Gearbox, and its expander

-And just today I came across this Rucci Clock Trigger, though I believe this is almost 10 years old now. Possible my existing gear can do this too.

Testing so far - I am using a Softpop SP2 to receive and process audio

  1. Mic acoustic drums with drum mics (SM57 on snare beta52 on kick), route into Bastl Bestie mixer/saturator, into the audio Input of the Softpop.

Results - The acoustic mics are too muddy and unreliable. I have 4 contact mics shipping within a week or so to go back and test this with acoustic drums further

  1. Send line-level audio from OP-Z drum samples into Softpop.

Results - yeah not too bad, makes me think the contact mics will be great.

Patching: (this is where I’m mostly lost and lack modular/synthesis knowledge to patch with any sense of confidence)

  1. Audio directly into the Sync Input (risks of damage?)

Results seemed to be pretty unreliable, and I don’t want to damage the softpop

  1. Audio signal to Audio input > DYNAMICS OUT to MULT, then split to TRIG IN, SYNC IN

This gets the sequence moving in time with the audio, but pattern changes are difficult because each trig sent by dynamics will advance the sequencer, so if there are more or less than 8 trig signals in an 8-step pattern, the pattern changes are no longer changing in sync with the rest of the song, for example.

  1. Same as 2 except send both DYNAMICS and CLOCK to MULT. The Softpop’s mult is passive and multiple output signals are averaged rather than added, and also Bastl says you can run any patch points to the mult, so I didn’t feel unsafe about testing this.

This seemed more musical and closer to what I want, but it could 100% been a coincidence between the drums, the sequence, the number of gates, the input level, etc etc etc

That’s basically where I’m at now. Some testing has been cool and experimental, but it’s all been unreliable for a live show. I can trigger the envelope with the audio, and I can keep it in time with incoming audio. I’m next hoping I can keep the sequence advancing each step quantized to the relative tempo and not necessarily on each trig. If the Softpop can be patched to achieve this, that’s what I need help with.

If the other options listed at the top would suit me better than the Softpop, I’d love to hear about it. I can’t financially support even a small modular rig, but I can, sadly, sell the SP 2.

Is it simply a matter of writing the drum parts and synth parts with care and intention? As in, either write the synth parts and design a drum beat around the 8 step sequence to make sure the math maths, or vice versa?

Kind of lost from here. Could I have spent the last hour reading about modular synthesis? Yes. Do I want validation for my allegedly unorthodox idea? Also yes.

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It’s quite the other way around of what you’re looking but still wanted share. Might trigger some ideas.

Polyend had this device called Perc years ago, where you can play physical drums with midi

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could be fun to have the drummer play this way, leaving me free to play guitar. that’s a wild thing.

I’m wondering now if Zoia might be an option. I’ve seen some patches that might be applicable, but I’m not sure if this is no different from what I’m already doing with the Softpop. It’s essentially an envelope follower for the audio input.

I’ve never tried it but Ableton Live has a feature that’s supposed to be able to follow tempo from a live source like a drummer, if you’re not opposed to using a laptop. You could then send MIDI sync to your modular.

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Yeah I really wish there was a hardware version.

Mylar Melodies did an interview with James Blake a couple of years back where this was discussed. Basically his live drummer was clocking everything and could push and pull the tempo. Not sure which module but it was definitely mentioned.

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I believe that is discussed on the first page of the modwiggler thread i linked. I may be wrong, and I will go check, but I’ve read about this before. I think it involved MI Yarns?

Edit lol yeah it’s the first post

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Reminds me when I wanted to do pitch tracking with my guitar 30 years ago: the hardware was slow and unreliable. But I got better results by cleaning the signal and isolating some frequencies by using a Wah with high resonance.

In your context, you could EQ seriously and boost resonance to prioritize a frequency band.

Anyway, even with this I had to be very careful while playing if I wanted to achieve my goal.
In your case, the drummer will most likely need to adapt his way of playing as well.
Most rhythm tracking devices are based on 4/4 signature, so going wild with the structure should make things hazardous.
And it would need a few beats to get in sync anyway, the necessary latence will most likely be heard unless the evolution is progressive.

If you really want the drummer to control the beat, having some tap tempo device is maybe the easiest way?

The most used way to synchronized electronic instrument and a drummer is of course the other way around, with a click in the ear giving the drummer the beat for the incoming sequence.

Keywords I would use for the search are “rhythm quantizer” and “rhythm tracking” [edit: “beat tracking” seems to be ore appropriate, as mentioned bellow by @ccr].
I would think it’s easier than pitch tracking, as the frequencies one tries to track are slower, but I might be wrong.

In your shoes, I would try getting something decent with a computer first, maybe with VCV Rack or Pure Data, before going hardware. But if you got the money, I suppose that second hand market on ModularGrid let you try things and resell if it doesn’t work…

Anyway, your quest is interesting, please keep writing the state of your research here!

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The Midronome/Nome should be able to do that, it has a sync input, but it should be a single dedicated drum e.g. basedrum

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I am coming to terms with having to compromise on my idea. And no I’m not in a position right now to get into full-on modular. I’ll play with vcv rack while getting the drums sorted, then I can take a closer look at Zoia as it’s in my price range. That would also give me more options to have my guitar take on this role if needed.

shame there’s no desktop hardware with rhythm quantization.

That said, I might just experiment with the softpop and find something that works for us. I’ll keep the thread updated.

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There might be something, and you need the right keywords to find it :tongue:

But let’s think about this for a minute: if you had to program a device that would give perfect tracking of the rhythm from let’s say 16 bars of a loop then another 16 bars of another loop with different tempo, how would you do this?

Are you savvy enough to program such a thing in Pure Data, VCV Rack (both free), Kontakt or Max (if you already own them)?
Maybe investigating how to do this on the software side (for less or even no money) would let you come up with neat solutions, then reach the same thing with hardware, if you really need to.

The TE TX-6 has beat tracking that you can set to a channel…
My personal reflection is that it works pretty great for syncing the internal Delay.
TX-6 can then send clock from the USB and/or analog clock.

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I think the correct technical term is in fact “beat tracking”, and this appears to be a surprisingly non-trivial endeavor, given the innate human ability of detecting and tapping a beat.

See for example this recent academic paper for an overview and solution: https://transactions.ismir.net/articles/10.5334/tismir.189

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Cool. Hadn’t even thought of looking for papers, nice and interesting touch.

I mean, Push 3 does exist, but afaik - although very much open to correction on this - it doesn’t have the tempo follower functionality that the DAW has.

I’ve tried zoia for tracking acoustic instruments, especially trying to convert bass guitar to midi information, and it does work but I don’t think it’s really at a level that you could rely on it for a performance. But that could just be my patching chops.

Honestly, it might be better to get over any aversion to laptops as it seems like this is going to be the best way of achieving this. I’ve enjoyed some videos Jason Lim from Instruo has done on integrating live drums with modular, it seems like an ongoing project of his that he’s mentioned a few times:

I haven’t really been engaging closely with it beyond the level of “oh, that looks cool”, but according to the YouTube description it looks like he’s using a laptop as a bridge to his modular:

This patch also features use of (version 1) Sensory Percussion sensors and software from Sunhou.se
And the Drumbeam from AFK.

I think this is different from deriving clock from a live drummer in realtime, though, which is obviously pretty complex. Again afaik and open to correction Ableton does a pretty good job of this in a way that can actually work in practice. This guy does a lot around using Max to integrate drums with Live in various ways, his guide might be helpful:

The tx-6 might be worth looking at. Didn’t know about the beat tracking.

I’m not bringing a laptop to shows, so I will need to rethink and readjust my expectations.

The softpop is honestly very musical already with the input dynamics routing to trig and env routing to sync.

I also came across the Red Sound Voyager

https://reverb.com/item/1958942-red-sound-voyager-1-dual-beat-extractor

But need to review the details further.

That paper on beat tracking is fascinating.

It’s encouraging that the manual specifically mentions “live drummer”, but I am really not finding any demos outside of the official TE. You aware of any?

Im not, i can see If i can find the time and make a video for you…

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That would be great. Only if you have time. If possible, could you try a non-quantized beat? Sloppy finger drumming or something like that?

Yeah im thinking I’ll try finger drumming and then have a sequence in the OP-XY being clocked by TX-6

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