Cymbal Sounds

[sober918]

I'm trying to get a certain crash sound. Lot of pop-rock music has been doing this for a long time, switching from the HH or Ride to using the crash to play quarter notes(or 8ths or whatever)during the louder parts of a song.

When I try to do this on my Vdrums (td-10/not expanded) it sounds too fake. The crash sounds to choppy, while real cymbals tend to blend together.

Is there a way to get this "blended crash" sound on my TD-10?

I heard the TDW-1 has some improved cymbal sounds, but would that remedy the problem?

[puttenvr]

I don't think this is possible.

All samples (drums or cymbals) are recordings of real instruments, once played by a drummer at certain circumstances with a certain force, in a certain mood, with a certain placement of the stick on the cymbal, etc. A sample is a kind of photograph.

Inside a sampler (or drum module) the pitch from such recording can be changed to a certain degree and with Roland's V-editing some frequencies can be added. For a different playing technique (and about this you are talking by playing crash cymbals like that) you need another sample (recording). Some drum modules use multi samples or sample layers for this. This means that several playing techniques or several pitches or several loudness levels are recorded. Nevertheless every drum module still is limited as long as the playing techniques are concerned.

Hence I always say:
"Real cymbals are the best"

All limitations about which I talked are also present at bass drums, snares and tom toms, but you don't hear them there so much. With cymbals (the most musical part from our drumkit) you do.

[dr. kildrum]

I use a sound like that a lot. I actually trigger a couple of Akai samples that I like the best, but there is at least one or two decent crash rides in the TD-10exp that do a decent job of it, especially with a little compression. On most of the kits I use, I have a version of this on the rim of my ride rather than the soft sound for swells (I can add or swap out cymbal swell sounds if/when I want them).

[drumlogic]

I am very familiar with your problem. I have the TD-10exp with the v-cymbals. From what i have heard the tdw-1 exp card will do wonders for your cymbal dynamics and it does have some really good cymbal sounds. I have only found a few good crash sounds in the td-10exp that you can ride on with 1/4 or 8th notes for intensity in a high part of a song anbd they are all tdw-1 exp sounds so maybe you should consider it.

[sober918]

Thanks alot for your advice.

How do you trigger a sample? Use a sampler and assign it to one of the pads via MIDI?

Sorry, it's painfully obvious that I'm a novice.

I like drum (crash) sound on Abandoned Pools' "Mercy Kiss".

[dr. kildrum]

Originally posted by sober918:
...How do you trigger a sample? Use a sampler and assign it to one of the pads via MIDI...

Sorta. Any or all of the pads can trigger samples. Good samplers can accomodate more complex functions like multiple layers and velocity switching. (Velocity switching is multiple versions of a sample that play according to hard you hit the pad. This is much better than one sample played softly to loudly. For instance, if you recorded a full on heavy cymbal crash, playing it back softly would not give you the same result as hitting the cymbal softly. In order to get more realism, if you hit a [cymbal] pad softly, you want to hear what you would expect if you hit a cymbal softly, if you hit it hard...etc.)

All of this is accomplished via midi, much like your module does it, only about 100 times better.

[sober918]

Thanks for the lesson. I didn't realize the importance of the sampler. Never played with one before. What do you recommend for a small price?

[rus]

Originally posted by sober918:
I'm trying to get a certain crash sound...

... Is there a way to get this "blended crash" sound on my TD-10?...

... I heard the TDW-1 has some improved cymbal sounds, but would that remedy the problem?

Hey there.

I had a similar quest and while I no longer use the Roland kit, I did find a crash ride that did the job admirably... Get the expansion... IT'S SO WORTH IT! And the sound you're looking for IS on there... I used it ALL THE TIME.

good luck, rus.
PS Hi everyone.

[dr. kildrum]

Originally posted by sober918:
...What do you recommend for a small price?

Good samplers aren't cheap, and cheap samplers probably won't provide the functionality needed to do a decent job. Akai is about to release new Z series samplers, that are much lower in price then the S6000 model that I have of theirs. These new less expensive models look rather promising but I would wait for a review, and they still are probably not considered by many to be at "a small price".

The ddrum module provides editable replaceable samples (as do others), and because it is designed as a drum interface, handles a lot of the mapping/programming for you. However, it is pretty limited in memory and the sample quality could be better. That said, it may be a reasonable thing to consider if you can't spring for a quality sampler and you priortize samples above other considerations.

Like puttenvr above, I still maintain that there is currently no acceptable alternative to real cymbals for playing subtleties. Real cymbals are just such expressive instruments depending on how they are played that it is still very complex to simulate them with multisamples and an interface.

A strong contemporary sampler is as close as you'll come, but you will likely have to settle for just a couple of cymbal sounds from one cymbal done faithfully, and give up a lot of subtle options. Hi hat control messages are generally a problem for samplers (as are a couple of other things) so don't think you will be selling your module(s) either.

FWIW.