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
-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
- 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
- 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)
- Audio directly into the Sync Input (risks of damage?)
Results seemed to be pretty unreliable, and I don’t want to damage the softpop
- 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.
- 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.