N-Track Drums Video Tutorial

n-Track Studio Discussion Forum
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Creating and Sequencing Patterns

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It seems that the first print-style N-Track Drums was well received, and I’ve been promising to update it. This time I went for video format, which I’m hoping will cut the learning curve down from hours to minutes.

N-Track Drums Tutorial Part 1 - 27.6 Mb 10m:25s (click the grey Download link at the top)
Creating and Sequencing Pattens

I’m considering making a few more videos covering making the drums sound more real and musical, and also hitting on some advanced features like importing and layering new sounds, using multiple output channels, etc. So if you find this useful please send me some encouragment (words not $). It does take time and effort to put these together so I’d be inclined to make more if I know people are getting something from them :)

Also, I’m having lots of trouble finding somewhere free to host this, so if you have any suggestions…

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Wow… this is way cool.
You saved me a boat load of reading and brain cramping. Way to go!!
More info would surely bring you close to PC recording sainthood.

What about Youtube and such???

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Hey stratboy, thanks for the kind words :)

I checked out Youtube, good idea - there is a 10 min time limit, and I’m not sure it handles frame sizes larger than 320x240. I’m afraid going that small might make some of the already small text too distorted to read. I’ll do some experimenting with it though - I do like the way the videos load fast and on demand.

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Hey HetdogWater,

I am looking to import my pre-existing drum MIDI files into n-track and route them to n-drums, but the results are not very pleasing. Do you have plans to address that?

I am currently using a sfz soundfount program and it works pretty good, but I am looking for something even better.

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Hi lbra73,

Unfortunately I don’t think this is possible, unless you manually enter the beats from the MIDI files into N-track drum patterns. The VST just doesn’t seem to have been designed to do that.

Just curious - what limitation are you hitting using SFZ? Are you not able to find a good sounding soundfont? Or do you want to be able to edit the patterns using the N-track Drums editor? What would make the way you’re doing it now even better?

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(HotDogWater @ Jul. 11 2007,09:47)
QUOTE
Hi lbra73,

Unfortunately I don't think this is possible, unless you manually enter the beats from the MIDI files into N-track drum patterns. The VST just doesn't seem to have been designed to do that.

Just curious - what limitation are you hitting using SFZ? Are you not able to find a good sounding soundfont? Or do you want to be able to edit the patterns using the N-track Drums editor? What would make the way you're doing it now even better?

sfz is working really nicely, but my limitation is that I have not found a soundfont that sounds quite as good as real drums LOL. When people listen to my songs, they sometimes say 'is that a drum machine'?
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OK, now I understand better. I’m not sure that N-track Drums is really going to help you there anyway. It can take an awful lot of work to make a drum machine sound, well, not like a machine. Assuming you have a good quality soundfont or sample set, and there are some out there, there are other things that make it sound like a machine. For example, drum machines hit the drum at exactly the right time every time, whereas a real drummer might be fractional seconds off. Similarly, a real drummer isn’t going to hit the drum equally as hard every time, whereas a drum machine will unless you spend hours programming subtle differences from measure to measure.

In my experience, Jamstix comes pretty darn close to approximating a real drummer, and it does a nice job of making those subtle timing and velocity quirks easy and quick to implement. I use it a lot but i also like the control that N-track drums gives.

On the bright side, real drums can also sound terrible if you don’t get them miced up and mixed right. Virtual drums make that easy! So there are tradeoffs…

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hey Hotdogwater,

I parked it here for now

http://tanto.uncool.org/~alexp/piney/Ntrack_Drum_Tutorial_Part_1.wmv

if the DLs are not too crazy we can keep it there.

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Awesome, thank you, I tried to edit the original post post Ikonboard doesn’t seem to want to let me… Your site has faster D/L than the free one I parked it on.

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hey can the app record each drum to a single track or does it always just put out the stereo pair?

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There are a total of 6 ouptuts available, 3 stereo (referred to like Output 1+2, Output 3+4, Output 5+6), and 3 mono (Aux 1, Aux 2, Aux 3 - no correlation to n-track’s aux channels). You can send sounds to different outputs by clicking on the “e” button next to the sound in either the drums or step view, and then choose where to route it at the bottom right.

This won’t actually create a “track” but it will create a new instrument channel. You can see it happening on the master mixer, make sure you right click in an empty spot in the master mixerand select “show instruments” if you don’t see it. N-track drums only appears on the first stereo output but if you route some drums to other channels and play back a sequence, you can watch the meters light up on different “instrument” channel strips (they’ll just be labeled like ‘Synth 2’ for example.)

The advantage here is that you can add effects to each ‘synth’ / channel or send it to one of n-track’s aux channels. That way you can, for example add some reverb to the kick and snare without doing it to the cymbals, or compress just certain instruments.

This is an area I might cover with another tutorial - not sure if it’s necessary or if this is straightforward. Open to suggestions.

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Whew… download’s taking a long time…only clocking 5.17kb/sec, on my WiFi… reminds me of when I had dial-up. lol

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Yikes! Did you try both links? I put it up on a free file storage server (first post) and then stratboy was kind enough to post it on his site too (a little further down). From my ISP, stratboy’s link was considerably faster.

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Got it off of Stratboy’s page…

I think it may have just been locked up yesterday.

Thanks for sacrificing the time to help us all out.

BTW… I too think that the Acoustic Live kit rocks! It’s my “house” drummer.


All the best,
Iplan

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LOL, you’re welcome. I didn’t mean to make it sound like it was a chore. I enjoyed creating it, and actually discovered a ton about how to (and how not to) make a video tutorial in the process. I’ve learned a ton from the folks on this forum so it’s nice to be at a point where I can start giving something back.

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HotDog,

That’s really great work your doing there.

Many thanks due from a lot of people I’m sure,

Cheers,
Ian

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I’m using 4.21

which piano roll keys are for n-track drums?

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Thanks Bruffie :)

Dastinka - I’m not sure I understand the question for sure. N-track drums should respond to the same control messages regardless of which version of N-track you’re using. Are you finding differently? Maybe it’s another version of N-track drums? I’m showing v1.5.00 for the plug-in.

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Hey HotDogWater, thanks for the video but I have a little problem. I did the same as you did in the video but when you come to the point where you just click on “Play” and N-Track plays what you told N-Track Drums to play, my N-Track just plays the first beat of the kickdrum and stops after that. It´s at 01:42 in the video.
I´m using N-Track 5.0.2

Bye :)