Velosity of a snare roll in PRV from quiet to loud ?

Hi all

Normaly I do all my own drum takes and I use the velosity I have played at

A friend of mine asked me to work on a drum track for him that has a long snare roll in it its ment to be a build up and I am going to try and make it go from quiet then gradualy right up to 127

Whats the best way to do this ?

I know I would grab the selected hits open midi fx and velocity controls but after that I am lost about doing this

I know I could manualy right click on each hit and then do every hit one louder than the next but there must be an easyer way and I am sure you will all know

The other way I thought I could do was just bounce it to wave and put in a volume envelope but I would like to learn to do it in PRV aswell for future reference :)

I am still learning a lot about PRV and midi and Sonar 8.5 so any help is great!

Thanks guys

Norrie

You can do it in the PRV and do it using Process>Scale Velocity.

In the PRV all you have to do is use the Draw Tool (the pencil) to "draw" the velocities. Click and drag the tool horizontally like you are crossing a t. The tool will either cut off the velocity or increase it. The top of the velocity line for each note will go to wherever the Draw tool passed.

You have the most amount of control over the velocities this way.

You can also select the notes you want to change and go to Process>Scale Velocity and use Percentages. using a low Begin number and a high End number will give you a volume swell.

You can also NOT use percentages and get a more linear volume change.

Be aware that changing the velocities of many instruments, including drums, will change the SOUND of the instrument. Many soft synths are designed to mimic the sound of live playing. A drum sounds different when it is hit hard than it does when it is hit soft.

It is good to know how to change volumes in Midi AND audio because sometimes you want it to sound different and sometimes you want it to sound the same... just at different volumes.

Bristol_Jonesey


Good points there Chappel, as you've stated, there's more than one way to accomplish this task.

Another way to look at it is, are you trying to emulate what a real drummer would do when creating a fast roll?

In this case, you might get a more natural result by accenting each downbeat (or any other major sub-division) so it's a bit louder than the preceding hits.

Does that make sense?

In other words, if you look at the velocity lane, you'll get a steadily increasing ramp up of hits, but at regular intervals, one hit in each measure will "stick out" from the rest.

It's too early here.

Need coffee.

I agree that it's all about dynamics and accents. Here is a screencap of a group of 32nd notes (snare drum) and how I would edit them to sound more "musical". I thought I could post a short audio file of this clip as an attachment but I don't see how.

Hey guys thanks for the replys :)

Hey Jonesey Ive just had my coffee so am ready to take all this in :)

I can do it no problem with envelopes etc just thought I wold benifit from learnign to do it in Midi aswell.

I am useing Superior drummer for the drum sounds on this one I think that the Percentages Chappel talked about is exactly what I am looking for

Its soft hits building up in to hard hits I will work on it that way and then and then pencil in accents on the downbeat some better feel to it :)

I will let you know how I get on

Thanks again guys

Norrie

You can and should use volume and velocity envelopes to do this.

Should shmould!...  I've looked all over and I can't find a volume control on my snare drum anywhere.

All of the above methods apply, Chappel's velocity scaling method being a good method as if you've played the part your dynamics and timing will be there just scaled as a crescendo.

Slug's method of having a seperate lane for ghosted/quiet notes gives loads of flexibility and virtually unlimited velocity levels too.  The point is to get the midi/performance as right as you can BEFORE you commit to audio at which point of course you can then further process the results.

Also use whatever articulations are available in your drum sampler app. for example if you have left and right hand hits use them in the same way as you'd play it.  The example here is a roll so da da on one lane and ma ma on the other, this helps reduce machine gunning which even the best samplers are still prone to despite efforts at minimizing this effect.

Although I don't personally use any of them prefering to setup my own sounds the top line drumplers such as BFD, Superior all do a fine job of minimizing machine gunning but you can play a part too by paying attention to this kind of detail.  Here I'm using note lanes 38 and 40 to get at the left and right hits but check your drumplers manual as they might live somewhere else on your setup.

Here's an example using all the good midi knowledge alluded to in the above posts.  I'm using a different sequencer here for purely for clearer illustration purposes but this was all prepared in Sonar's PRV.  Note the example shows the snare only one with the crescendo on one lane and one split over left and right articulations on separate lanes.

Hopefully you'll notice a reduction in machine gunning on the second example even at 240bpm but don't blink you'll miss it!



Here's the audio, top example plays first followed by the bottom one.  No volume envelopes were used or harmed in presenting this example.  It's all velocity dynamics. OK I know I'm behind the beat there but I put that down to latency...

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=9997585