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Sipaliwini wrote:Hello, I'm new here, my name is Yann, I'm Richard's co-inventor on Aerodrums.

Thanks for jumping in. It looks good.

How prone is the detector to generating stray notes, versus erring in the other direction and missing notes? I've found that electronic kits and MIDI guitar converters tend to trigger a lot of unwanted notes and duplicates.

I'm looking forward to reading what bkshepard has to say.

By default Aerodrums generates a fair amount of unwanted hits that are inaudible with our sound rendering, but would pollute a recorded MIDI track.

You can however adjust settings to address this. It is a compromise between ease of working with the MIDI track and having the ability to play very soft notes.

Sipaliwini wrote:By default Aerodrums generates a fair amount of unwanted hits that are inaudible with our sound rendering, but would pollute a recorded MIDI track.

You can however adjust settings to address this. It is a compromise between ease of working with the MIDI track and having the ability to play very soft notes.

Interesting. If you have a means of intelligently "guessing" which notes are errant, perhaps the MIDI notes the app creates for them are a very low velocity. It would be very easy to "un-pollute" a MIDI track by simply selecting all notes below a certain velocity and deleting them.

Sipaliwini wrote:Hello, I'm new here, my name is Yann, I'm Richard's co-inventor on Aerodrums.

Oh... by the way... as owner and admin of this forum, let me say thanks for dropping in and answering questions. Much appreciated.

Hi Yann,

I think that padded crossbar solution looks like a good alternative, especially if the locations of various drums & cymbals could be freely assigned within a range of space.

On the topic of hats & cymbals, this is a weak area for most electronic drum kits because so much subtlety is needed and there is so much range in the ways you can strike them. With hats, the difference between one sound and another is not just the position of the left foot, but also the pressure-over-time. Would be nice to see a more complete demo of the high-hat functions.

stubbsonic wrote:On the topic of hats & cymbals, this is a weak area for most electronic drum kits because so much subtlety is needed and there is so much range in the ways you can strike them. With hats, the difference between one sound and another is not just the position of the left foot, but also the pressure-over-time. Would be nice to see a more complete demo of the high-hat functions.

Take a look at this.

Thanks, Dan. I did see that, and it did show that the high-hat already seems to work better than the electronic drum sets I've ever sat behind.

What I'd like to see is something of a more expanded look at the hat and how it works with Aerodrums-- especially with changes in foot position that occur AFTER the stick stroke.

The snare demo was so stunning, as was the kick drum. Hats are kind of their own little world.

Sorry we don't have an in depth hihat demo.
Currently the only post hand strike processing we do is to fade the corresponding samples out.
In practice, this is almost always followed by a sample of the hihats closing, even if faint, so we haven't felt like anything fancier is necessary.
It is definitely possible to blend between samples at diminishing levels of openness post strike as the pressure changes. If there is a lot of demand, we will look into it.
At NAMM, several drummers complimented us about the hihat feel compared to edrums they had tried.

It may seem like a weird request, but you know how you can have a closed hat, and a really closed hat? It seems like having the ability to set a closed position, then have some "bury it in the carpet" position that tightens the hat more.

Perhaps you could have a sample that is crossfaded when the hat is moving in the closing direction, and another that crossfades when the hat is "in the opening direction". I can imagine it would get tricky to implement.

stubbsonic wrote:I can imagine it would get tricky to implement.

It would get very tricky. You'd need different samples for different amounts of movement and many mulitsamples, because the sound of a hat closing and opening is not very consistent.

It seems to me like it's one of those cases where creating and playing a sampled instrument to this degree gets more complicated and difficult than buying and playing the real thing.

bayswater wrote:
It would get very tricky. You'd need different samples for different amounts of movement and many mulitsamples, because the sound of a hat closing and opening is not very consistent.

It seems to me like it's one of those cases where creating and playing a sampled instrument to this degree gets more complicated and difficult than buying and playing the real thing.

I suppose you could just have however many samples of partially open hats e.g. say, ten (at however many velocities, again, lets say 10). Let's say the pedal position of 0 is open, and 127 is closed. So if the hat is less than 120 closed, then it would just play all ten samples for that particular velocity of hit- the position of the pedal after the hit would just crossfade between the 10 samples. I think that would kind of work. Yea, it would be tricky to implement, but not as bad as all that.

As for your second statement, we can make a grateful differentiation between the complications and difficulty of "CREATING" fake drums to that of just buying and playing. And as far as real vs fake goes, at that price it isn't either/or. Real drums are the staple, and this rig is a fancy way to get work done portably and quietly.

It's no secret that standard electronic drums mostly suck. Or if you want to inch toward ones that suck less, they are thousands of dollars. I saw Prairie Prince playing a cheap electronic drum set with Todd Rundgren, and he was spending having his energy re-tightening things that had fallen apart. The sound was appropriate for this pretty electronic show.

Aerodrums is arguably a bit unconventional-- and we can all agree it would require a bit of a learning curve. And I don't knock the learning curve. Richard proves that it is a legit instrument with that snare demo. And holy smokes for the bread, it seems like a fascinating option.

stubbsonic wrote:[As for your second statement, we can make a grateful differentiation between the complications and difficulty of "CREATING" fake drums to that of just buying and playing. At that price it isn't either/or. Just how you COULD have that rig and get some work done.

I'm just saying that adding more and more sophistication to a synthetic instrument to make it sound and play more and more like a real instrument has diminishing returns. At some point, it's better to stick with the real thing. If the plan it to take advantage of new things the synthetic instrument can do that the real thing can't, then it's a different story.

That is a great META point!!

To think that many of the sounds we are drawn to were initially poor emulations of something else.

In this case, there's a distinction between the resulting sounds, and the way the sounds are triggered. Though fun(ny) to watch, the various wearable-instrument "gloves" & "pants" have not shown the degree of pro results that we've seen with Aerodrum. Even the Leap Motion® which has potential, still looks quite stiff in use. Aerodrum is taking an already established set of movements and interpreting them, rather than making you learn robot moves.

But I disagree about the diminishing returns. If I'm understanding, you suggest that as the sounds gets closer to the real thing, why not just use the real thing. You are only getting closer to something that already is. It is a fair point, I guess. But like Pianoteq, you can have access to expensive pianos, mics, access to halls, etc. all really tweakable and won't take up much space, wake the neighbors, etc.

stubbsonic wrote:If I'm understanding, you suggest that as the sounds gets closer to the real thing, why not just use the real thing.

No, not quite. I'm saying the effort involved in producing a perfect replica of the real thing can increase to the point where it's better to just learn and use the real thing, and I'm suggesting a hi-hat might be one of those things. If you can produce the perfect piano sound with less expense and effort than buying and playing and recording the real thing, then that's great, if that's what you want.

stubbsonic wrote:To think that many of the sounds we are drawn to were initially poor emulations of something else.

Right. For me, the mellotron.

It's funny, I had an electronic drum set at one point. First, I replaced the hat with a real one. Then I replaced the snare drum... then cymbals, then kick, then toms. Had no problem selling the e kit.