Initial SD Feedback

[Per-Anders Edwards]

So I just bought SD and while I’m loving it, I thought now is the best time to give some first impressions feedback and maybe ask a few questions to help me get the most out of it.

First, how do you categorize user Midi?  I have a heap of the stuff I’ve gathered over the years.  As far as I can see it just all gets lumped into some generic area, you can’t tell SD what the original tempo was meant to be, whether it’s a verse or fill section, you can’t tell SD that it’s Rock, Pop, TripHop or anything else.  Am I missing something?  Some way to tag midi files?  Some metadata I should be changing on the files?  This seems like an obvious thing that should be trivial to do as a user, as I’d like to also have my own midi stuff used in the awesome Song Creator.

Second.  Why can’t you simply add a drum while editing the number of hits/velocity for a segment?  It looks like the full drum kit editor, but for some reason doesn’t have this part which means you have to switch back and forth to add a new instrument into the kit.  It’s just a little clunky.

Third.  Multipart drums in that same segment/grid editor.  Is there any way to select the sub-component?  For example if there’s a lot of rim on a snare pattern then you seem to only be able to edit the number of rim-hits, I can’t find a way to simply get more normal snare in there.  What am I missing?

Fourth.  I’ll echo others.  Download and install time was outrageous.  I wouldn’t mind that so much as I can set something to go overnight, but you can’t if it’s broken up into many pieces with separate installers that can only be run after the previous one.  Please offer a single installer which allows you to select components to both install and update and then allows you to set and forget, come back the next day to a fully installed plugin.

Fifth.  Surf – underrepresented.  I realize it all fits into the 60’s Hal Blaine, Al Jackson, Wrecking Crew, Funk Brothers, Swampers (also underrepresented) area, but the 60’s MIDI pack seems to be really way more focussed on jangle pop than Ventures.  Heck I’d like to see some Tommy James inspired beats (mostly Hal on that stuff) too.  This 60’s and 70’s stuff is where the groove is at, you don’t get an Amen Break without Gregory C Coleman, or an Apache break without Jim Gordon and that didn’t happen without the Shadows and Tony Meehan.  This era is why I love drums, so pretty please start representing more of the phenomenal range of drum beats, feels and sounds of the 50’s 60’s and 70’s.  Heck I couldn’t even find classic Bonham beats in the shop libraries, fortunately I have a few from elsewhere, but I needs moar!

Sixth. Why isn’t the Tap to Find extended into a matching a complete simplified beat track?  If it is, how do you do it?   i.e. you tap in some beats here and there on your song via a midi track, maybe at points you want some fills you amp it up more on the rhythm end than accuracy of which drums being used.  Then SD could scan the whole track and lay down what it thinks matches appropriately to that in a more complete/smart song creator.  It’d be like a far more refined or customizable version of the Logic Drummer (which I always have problems controlling if I just want to add a break or something).  Heck if I didn’t already have a full time job I’d knock this out myself as a plugin.

Seventh.  Just wanna reiterate Although it sounds like I’m kvetching so far I’m loving this product.  There are just some things that I’d like to know how to do, some things I think I know but don’t, and some things that hopefully will be improved.

TIA

Topic

[Henrik]

Per-Anders Edwards wrote:

First, how do you categorize user Midi?

You can’t, as you say, add or change any tags for User MIDI. However, you can place the files in folders that can serve as “tags”. For example, if you place some MIDI files in a folder called Rock ‘n’ Roll, you can then text search for Rock ‘n’ Roll and that folder will show up, and the Family column will say Rock ‘n’ Roll. All the user MIDI files can be used with Song Creator, since the song creator does the matches based on rhythms of the MIDI files, rather than tags, etc.

 

Per-Anders Edwards wrote:

Why can’t you simply add a drum while editing the number of hits/velocity for a segment?

It would be useful, however not trivial for us to implement this. One issue is that the area would be cluttered with all options given to the user, thus making it harder to understand. However, I agree that it would be useful to be able to access all tools from the Edit Play Style. I’ll add your request in our feature request list.

 

Per-Anders Edwards wrote:

Multipart drums in that same segment/grid editor.  Is there any way to select the sub-component?

In the Grid Editor, press the small arrow next to the instrument in the left list. This will reveal all articulations, and you can edit their MIDI notes.

 

Per-Anders Edwards wrote:

Download and install time was outrageous… Please offer a single installer…

We are aware of this, and we have it on our todo list. 

Per-Anders Edwards wrote:

Surf – underrepresented

Noted 🙂

 

Per-Anders Edwards wrote:

Why isn’t the Tap to Find extended into a matching a complete simplified beat track?

It’s designed so that you can match a part using Tap2Find, then drag any of the results (or the tapped midi itself) to the Song Creator. There you can drag down individual song parts (results from the Song Creator), or load an entire song, based on a structure.

If you by “matching a complete simplified beat track” mean; “load an entire drum track and replace all midi with other, similar sounding MIDI”, then it’s not done because we don’t have unlimited time and resources to develop products 🙂 We have to make decisions on what to implement, and everything we decide to add means that something else won’t (because of time limits) be added. We have discussed similar ideas as yours, and it is on our feature request list!

 

Per-Anders Edwards wrote:

Just wanna reiterate Although it sounds like I’m kvetching so far I’m loving this product.

Thanks! Input from our users is really important for us, since they guide us into how we should design our future products/updates 🙂

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

• The post has been modified 3 times, last modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Henrik.

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Thanked by: Per-Anders Edwards

[Per-Anders Edwards]

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

 

Re. User MIDI – Thanks.  I didn’t know the folders would be used for the family pane.  That helps a lot, though I’d still love to be able to tag what’s a fill, verse, chorus etc.

 

Re. Adding a drum in.  I’d be totally happy if it just added a default first drum in list when beats were added, just for the extra instrument and midi note lane.

 

Re. Multipart drums.  Ah, cool.  How do I do that in the “Edit Play Style” tab?

 

Re. Tap to Find – Yeah I think sort of that.  I think we’re talking about the same thing.  In my head I envisioned it sort of being a bit like the song creator right now in that you drag in a midi section that you like that matches your “tap to find” beat to get the “family”, but rather than using prebuilt rhyme scheme/stanza/patterns it’d basically assume you would prefer to keep in the same family and then do repeated match/find and fill Tap to Find for the whole rest of the input getting the nearest possible that also matches the family you liked, or alternatively it would try to figure out the pattern from the source midi track and then just work with song creator as now just using this “custom” user pattern.  Could be a fun deep learning project (I still have to find time to play around with that stuff, got about a bazillion ideas, no follow through, like every mudlark).  Anyhow, just throwing that out there, it’s been something I’ve dreamed of having as a “virtual drummer” for yonks now, but I know how hard it is to find time and resources when you’ve got a lot on already.

 

Thanks again.

[Henrik]

Per-Anders Edwards wrote:

Re. Multipart drums.  Ah, cool.  How do I do that in the “Edit Play Style” tab?

Edit Play Style doesn’t have that kind of control of details. You can only increase/decrease the amount of hits, and velocity, of the entire instrument and not individual articulations. The details you can change is to right click an instrument and in Articulations menu entry select what articulation the instrument should play.

However, I’ll take a note of your request that more it would be useful to be able to work on articulations too 🙂

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

1

Thanked by: Per-Anders Edwards

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