Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

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Minerman
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Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by Minerman »

Ok guys,
SD3 has a feature that turns audio into midi, for the purpose of drum replacement...The old Drumtracker program did ok, but it was tedious as fuck, took a lot of time, & didn't work in a daw, meaning you had to do your work, render/export, then open it in the daw to hear the results...

They've updated & integrated that into SD3, & I personally think it's awesome...

This is the first time I've used this, about 15 minutes of fiddling...I took Rami's drum tracks, dropped 'em into SD3 & this is the outcome...Minimal fucking around, I basically let SD3 do it's thing...It even picked up his hi-hat pedal counts between the stops, & assigned the right midi sound...



The only tweaking I did in SD3 is raising the levels of the hi-hat & cymbals...This is basically a stock preset, & is how SD3 sounds out of the box...I'm impressed...

Lemme know what you think...
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vomitHatSteve
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Re: Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by vomitHatSteve »

One of those sounds in the intro sounds like a super-quiet cowbell?

So you started from a stereo drum track or from the entire stereo mix?
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Re: Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by Minerman »

vomitHatSteve wrote: Mon Oct 30, 2017 1:24 pm One of those sounds in the intro sounds like a super-quiet cowbell?

So you started from a stereo drum track or from the entire stereo mix?
Not sure I follow you about the cowbell thing dude...

I used Rami's multi-tracked drums, kick, snare & oh tracks...I basically just threw 'em into Superior 3's tracker thing & it did it's thing...What impressed me is on the oh track it "knew" the different sounds & applied the right articulations...Kick & snare ain't that hard, you can do this with ReaGate in Reaper with a little time/effort, but SD3's tracker is on another level entirely...

I've been messing with it the last few days & I gotta say it's awesome...The drum sounds themselves IMO are a step up from SD2, but the new features are icing on the cake to me, someone finally listened to folks like me on things they'd want/use, it's just killer IMO...
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Re: Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by miroslav »

I bitched at them a couple of years back when I ended up having to buy Slate Trigger.
I was like..."you guys have all these great sample packs and a great player app in SD2, but you're dropping the ball with the Audio-to-MIDI thing."

I'm sure a lot of people were saying the same thing to them...and they saw the light.
When they lost their old Drumtracker app...they were kinda not sure what to do. When I spoke with them, they said that app was actually licensed from a third-party programmer, and that relationship was ending. They also said I could still find some retailers selling it...but it just seemed kinda stupid to put my money/time into a basically dead app...so I got Trigger.
Not saying the Slate stuff is bad...but man, I think it's hard to deny that SD3 raised the bar substantially, and I love that it's ALL in one app.
That's what sucked about Trigger...it had no direct connection to the SSD player/mixer.

I've got several older mixes where the live drums just didn't come out all that good, sound-wise...so I'm most definitely going to be redoing those drum tracks now.
One thing I haven't looked at in any detail yet....how does SD3 Tracker deal with cymbals when they were only captured by the OH mics?
I know that Slate Trigger wasn't all that good with that.
It's not a big deal adding them in by hand once you get the basic MIDI file.
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Re: Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by Minerman »

miroslav wrote: Mon Oct 30, 2017 10:37 pm I bitched at them a couple of years back when I ended up having to buy Slate Trigger.
I was like..."you guys have all these great sample packs and a great player app in SD2, but you're dropping the ball with the Audio-to-MIDI thing."

I'm sure a lot of people were saying the same thing to them...and they saw the light.
When they lost their old Drumtracker app...they were kinda not sure what to do. When I spoke with them, they said that app was actually licensed from a third-party programmer, and that relationship was ending. They also said I could still find some retailers selling it...but it just seemed kinda stupid to put my money/time into a basically dead app...so I got Trigger.
Not saying the Slate stuff is bad...but man, I think it's hard to deny that SD3 raised the bar substantially, and I love that it's ALL in one app.
That's what sucked about Trigger...it had no direct connection to the SSD player/mixer.

I've got several older mixes where the live drums just didn't come out all that good, sound-wise...so I'm most definitely going to be redoing those drum tracks now.
One thing I haven't looked at in any detail yet....how does SD3 Tracker deal with cymbals when they were only captured by the OH mics?
I know that Slate Trigger wasn't all that good with that.
It's not a big deal adding them in by hand once you get the basic MIDI file.
I still have my copy of Drumtracker on my drum sample hard drive...lol...I used it on an ep I mixed for a band from Colorado a few years ago, it turned out ok, but it was a lot of work being a separate program from the daw...It's really cool to be able to have all that shit in one place now, I absolutely love the new features...

Slate stuff is ok, his hardware emulations are better than anything else IMO, just to be honest, his drums never blew me away like everyone else went on about...Never tried his Trigger plugin, read good things, but I've also read a lot of negative things about it...

I'm actually working on something right now that's converting drum audio to midi Miro, & it's a blast man...I imported a separate file/track for the hi-hat & ride cymbal, the crash cymbals are pretty easy...When you're using Tracker, you can omit any hit it "sees", & draw in hits it doesn't...There's all kinds of options for selecting 8th, 1/4, 1/16th, etc notes, & there's an inversion function...Say you have all the hits that fall with the snare, when you get them how you want, just click the inversion thing, & it selects everything except those hits that fall on the snare, it's way cool man...I've barely scratched the surface of what the Tracker is capable of, & I'm just fuckin' impressed...They finally listened & upped their game on this one, I keep finding things I didn't know about every time I use SD3...The rest of the drum sampler companies will copy & follow, but Toontrack has really upped their game man, I'm really impressed...

One tip I can give you for using oh tracks is to render them with some sort of gain plug, so the waveform is bigger/easier to see...It's not terrible, but it does help...It doesn't really matter if it clips or not (to a point I guess), because you'd just be using it to make midi...

Another thing is I'd have separate track for the hi-hat, ride, & crash cymbals...Once you import the oh track into SD3, you can duplicate it, then change what sounds it "looks" for...It's really cool man, it uses eq to analyze whatever you're putting into it, then assigns what it "thinks" is right...So far, it's been pretty accurate, of course the hi-hat has so many articulations you'll have to play with it, but it's not a struggle like other programs I've used like that...Reaper's ReaGate comes to mind, it'll trigger/spit out a single midi note from audio, I've used that before, but the Tracker thing in SD3 is really a step up dude...

I'm sure you'll figure it out, gimme a holler if you get stuck, maybe we can figure it out between the two of us... :minernuggs:
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Re: Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by miroslav »

I've not really had any serious hands-on time with SD3, other than to install everything, get all my SD2 SDX and EZX packs updated, and reconfigure all my file directories now that there a tone more stuff.
I only zipped through the feature sets and did some basic demoing.

It's been a hectic October for me, and November will be no different...but then after November, everything changes for me time-wise, and hopefully for the better...so that's when I'll actually get back to some recording and putting together some drum tracks.

I had SD2 fairly well figured out and wired...so I don't expect SD3 to be a problem...just has some more stuff to add to the pile.
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Re: Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by Minerman »

miroslav wrote: Tue Oct 31, 2017 3:40 am I've not really had any serious hands-on time with SD3, other than to install everything, get all my SD2 SDX and EZX packs updated, and reconfigure all my file directories now that there a tone more stuff.
I only zipped through the feature sets and did some basic demoing.

It's been a hectic October for me, and November will be no different...but then after November, everything changes for me time-wise, and hopefully for the better...so that's when I'll actually get back to some recording and putting together some drum tracks.

I had SD2 fairly well figured out and wired...so I don't expect SD3 to be a problem...just has some more stuff to add to the pile.
I've been trying to spend a little time on it every day, to get used to it...Really i's not that different than SD2 in ways, just more features & things look a bit different...

For the first week or so, it took a while to load, it was scanning my midi packs when I'd open the daw, but after I added 'em to the database, it loads really quick...Even a 9-10GB kit loads way faster than SD ever did on any size kit...

It's been a good month or so for me dude, SD3, finished the ISO cab (which works great btw...way better & quieter than I expected), but that ain't all for me, I've got one "big" thing headed my way, possibly something I didn't even expect too...Not gonna say anything unless the "surprise" actually happens, but I'm excited as hell...

Be sure to share your tips/tricks for SD3 dude, there's a lot of new stuff that could be easily overlooked...I'm actually trying to re-work every song I have going to use only SD3 & make things simpler for me...
So far, I'm super impressed with it, it took years to get here, but damn if it ain't great IMO... :minernuggs:
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Re: Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by WhiskeyJack »

Hey guys, here is one for you to hack up and stuff.



Weather or not it is actually Tommy Ramones actual drums or not remains to be seen but well worth the 6 to 8 bucks.
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Re: Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by vomitHatSteve »

Minerman wrote: Mon Oct 30, 2017 4:10 pm
Not sure I follow you about the cowbell thing dude...
Right at the beginning, during the stops. I think it's a hi-hat, but it's kind of cowbell-esque.
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Re: Superior Drummer 3 Tracker

Post by Minerman »

vomitHatSteve wrote: Wed Nov 01, 2017 11:43 am
Minerman wrote: Mon Oct 30, 2017 4:10 pm
Not sure I follow you about the cowbell thing dude...
Right at the beginning, during the stops. I think it's a hi-hat, but it's kind of cowbell-esque.
I didn't go back & listen dude, but SD3 has a lot of articulations for things (like the hi-hat) SD2 didn't...I love SD3 so far, & have only scratched the surface of it...
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