N-track Drums

got the chance to play with these a little today. So far it’s a pretty cool little plugin. I’m having some problems with it though. After I downloaded the additional drum kits, I can’t actually get the plugin to play.

Overall though it’s got some cool stuff.

When you turn on the “monitors” button you get vu meters in the main page and compressor page

Built in reverb that can have each drums effect send control it’s own wet/dry mix connected to aux 3

3 channel stereo compressor. you have 3 stereo output groups and 3 aux channels, each output group has it’s own compressor on the main page. controls include threshold, ration, attack, release, and make up gain with meters to see input, reduction, and output

The “voice” editor has some fun features. here’s where you can alter the “instruments” you can load/unload samples, adjust level, pan, and even tune them up/down. You can adjust the fx send, decay (which so far doesn’t seem to do anything), and filter it with frequency and velocity controls. those two are related somehow. It seems like it would be a parametric eq, with freq being obvious and vel being the gain. It doesn’t quite SOUND like it though. with freq and max, vel does nothing. with freq at min, vel changes from lo-fi to hi-fi, anything in between on freq adjusts the span of the sweepable area in vel. There’s some “Low, center, and high” box too with a learn button for each. I think it correlates to midi input, but I can’t test it at the moment.
Each sample has a velocity range, So you can have for example 3 samples and as you move to a higher velocity, it changes from one sample to the next one.

The main page has a menu button (obvious) drums button (loads kits) and steps button (where you make a drum beat)

below that is a velocity and PB range knob. the velocity knob seems to control a range of expansion to compression with dead center being a linear output. the PB range controls from 0 semi to 7 semi, tones I assume, but they don’t seem to affect anything… so I don’t really know. Next to those is the volume/compressor sections (the 3 mentioned before) each knob controlls that busses volume and there are on/off switches as well as a button to open up the compressor properties for each group. Next to that is the output level vu meters which show all 3 groups, and the vu meter on/off button labeled "monitors"

Below that is an array of “pads” that you click on to play the samples. you have room for 24 instruments in this apparently. Each filled one has a square lit up, empty ones are dark, when you click on them sometimes nothing changes visually and sometimes the center of the square becomes dark. I assume it’s supposed to turn dark every time that instrument is triggered. The names of each instrument are below, kick, snare etc… there is also the “e” buttons which opens up the control page for each instrument mentioned earlier. Below that is a button that changes from m to 1-4. I have no idea what it’s for. M would imply mute, but does nothing. The 1-4 do nothing either.

finally at the bottom is 2 drop down lists for Kit and style. kit loads a kit, and style changes a preprogrammed sequence.

on the steps page, where the style list brings up a sequence, there’s plenty of stuff. a page button, which allows the creation of a pattern, up to 8 pages with 4 measures in each. Next to that is a pattern editor where you can load up to 24 patterns to construct a song. there’s a “follow” button too, I assume it changes pages for you as the song progresses

next to that is a button that looks like a note with an arrow. it doesn’t do anything.

below that is an indicator of how many measures are used. and next to that are little lights indicating that a measure has something in it.

below all that starting on the left is a list of all the instruments, with mute, solo, and editor buttons next to the name of the instrument. next to the list is a grid showing hits, with the box being filled vertically with red the higher the velocity of the individual hit. The grid uses black and white lines to indicate measures. On the far right is a volume knob for each instrument.

below all this is a progress bar, lighting up showing the position being played.

An on/off button is there, not sure why. Next to it is “step” with 4 buttons labeled 32 16t 8t and 16. no clue what they’re for.

On the far right in the same row is a “swing” knob. I assume it’s a humanizing function.

at the very bottom again is a kit and style list.

I forgot, there’s a small “reverb” button at the top of the whole thing in the title bar area.

I keep trying to play it, but n-track freezes up and crashes. It uses the LIVE input feature by default with this, so maybe that’s the problem.

I imagine we can make the beats in midi and send it to the vsti as well, which might be easier than the current sequencer for some, and more dificult for others.

Pretty neat little plugin. Hope they get the bugs ironed out, If so, I won’t need my current drum sequency any longer.


oh yeah, I like the visual style of the whole thing. It’d be pretty cool if N-track had a similar skin for it.

That’s a good summary of the plug. Thanks

I’ve not had problems with it crashing but perhaps I’ve not worked it hard enough. So far I’ve only used it to play a midi file or its own patterns - rather than using it in Live mode.

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On the far right in the same row is a “swing” knob. I assume it’s a humanizing function.


“Swing” is a standard facilty on most drums machines. It’s not a humanising function, it moves the hits ahead/behind the beat by a specific amount to allow a “swing” rhythm (a particular “feel” of rhythm) to be played. Think jazz, Big Band “swing”…

Humanising tends to be applying small, random variations to the velocity and timing of the beats to simulate the fact that a drummer can’t, (or doesn’t want to), hit every note with the same consistency.

Thanks again for the Vsti summary.


Mark

My impression of “humanizing” in any case is that it doesn’t - real humans don’t just introduce random inaccuracies, real humans push and pull beats.

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My impression of “humanizing” in any case is that it doesn’t - real humans don’t just introduce random inaccuracies, real humans push and pull beats.


Got to agree with you there Tom. I generally do my “humanising” manually rather than using any algorithm/tool.

all I’ve tried to play is the premade songs. I had it working at first, but when I downloaded extra drum kits it wouldn’t work without crashing. If I turn off the live button I don’t hear anything. I’m sure it’s all just settings on my computer since I haven’t done much with it yet.

To which drum plug-in are you referring? Does nTrack now have a drum plug-in?

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Does nTrack now have a drum plug-in?


Yes. Checkout the “What’s changed” for the new beta build over on the download page. Coupla threads here too.

I can’t seem to find mention of a drum plug-in anywhere on the ntrack website. I checked ‘whats new’ for the latest beta version, and didn’t see it mentioned there. Downloaded latest beta verion. No drum plug-in appears in the plug-in list. Did Flavio decide that it wasn’t ready for prime time and pull it off the webpage? Could one of you guys who downloaded it check to see if you can still find it on the ntrack website?






“Add Channel”–>“Add New Instrument Channel”–>“N Track”–>“N track drums”

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Dang – Mark A, you are good. The bottom line of your note is the key piece of info.

Thanks once again for your help.

Tim

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An on/off button is there, not sure why. Next to it is “step” with 4 buttons labeled 32 16t 8t and 16. no clue what they’re for.


OK I think I figured this part out, sort of…

The “32/16t/8t/16” buttons change the way the beats are interpreted. In each “page” there are 16 slots in four groups of four – basically one measure’s worth of 16th notes. click “16” and it plays those 16 as straight 16th notes. Click “8t” and it plays them in an 8th note triplet feel. “16t” doubles the speed to 16th note triplets. “32” interprets each of the 16 slots in the pattern as a 32nd note.

Now if someone could help me figure out how to arrange the built-in patterns into a song with a beginning, middle and end, this would be the greatest plug in ever…!

I’ll buy a virtual case of virtual beer for the first person to post a tutorial for this thing!

PR :laugh:

Hey You… That’s Great… :
I’ll send anyone a box of Cuban Virtual Cigars to the first n-Tracker that can post a project built around n-Track (Only) … Drums and All…

O.K. Get Smok’in…

Bill…

need help.

1. Can’t figure out how to link letter patterns together in one sequence. What are the different colors for?

2. I’m also having problems getting the drum sequence to actually record to a track. I think it has something to do with the track properties, but I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.