Drum samples and Triggers

[rayc]

A decade or more ago Kim bought me a cheap eDrum kit.
I noodled about with it but the internal samples were pretty shabby and after working out how to record the audio but struggling with the midi I rarely used it.
Recently I discovered a sample trigger thingy - Sitalia - and worked out how to use that to play the real .wav samples I'd acquired a bout 20 years ago from a real Mellotron. That was fun.
I then wondered if I could use that software to trigger BIAB drum samples with the eKit so that I could add matching sounds in a project.
I asked for a little BIAB assistance and discovered that in each RealDrum style folder there's an audio file of drum patterns and at the end of each one are single hits of each part of the kit.
I copied that, split & trimmed it in Reaper, rendered the audio of each part as a sep. file in a folder in the project that matched the drum kit.
From there is was a longish task to link Sitala with a sample for each pad and to then map out which part of the eKit trigger which.
I had success with kick, snare, open & closed high hat as well as one of the cymbals. A cymbal I wanted was triggered by a tom but I could live with that.
All set them...sort of as I then had to work out how to record the results. THAT was a bit of a night mare but Sitala can, once I found it, set up 16 tracks to send to ready to go.
Bloody hell, learning nightmare and I'll forget it before I need it again so I created a Reaper template for it all.
To make life easy for the moment I didn't pull the template into the current project but inserted a mix render of the project into the template.
I then set about recording some cymbal hits to accentuate things that I'd always intended to add.
Now I'll have to sit n listen to work out whether the overdubs fit sonically, (they ought because they are the same sounds the rest of the drum track is made from), in terms of level and in terms of a realistic/achievable human played arrangement.
Here's what it sounds like:

SUGAR DU020123.mp3

CLEARLY too loud in this mix but I wanted them to be heard.
I went to have a squiz...easy enough to edit in Sitala or Reaper but I discovered that the cymbal in question had a low freq warble in it so I threw a high pass on it & that cleaned it up pretty well. till some excess sizzle to be managed.

SUGAR DU020123b.mp3

[rayc]

Listening to this MP3 loudness is an issue as is some awful sizzle on the right side cymbal. I'll be able to trim that in Sitalia I think but if not I'll pull up the file and crop it.
Sitalia allows attack, decay, duration, level etc to be adjusted for each sample so it should be a breeze, though addressing the sample problem at the file level will mean it won't need adjusting in future.

[vomitHatSteve]

I'm not quite sure I follow. So you're using the drum sound signal (not midi) from your e-kit to trigger equivalent one-shots from BIAB?

[Greg_L]

Yeah I don't really follow either. Are you overdubbing cymbal crashes?

[rayc]

Yes, sorry.
I've overdubbed cymbal crashes using a eDrums as to MIDI trigger the samples from the original BIAB drum tracks which I had to find and "harvest". This way, whilst my o'dubs may be in the wrong place or the wrong level they are a sonic match for the drum kit used in BIAB.
Sitala is the software used in between those samples and the kit.

[vomitHatSteve]

Ah. That makes sense.

And that ends up being easier or more artistic than just manually programming in additional overdubs?

[Greg_L]

I'm not seeing the advantage here besides you working out how to get an e-kit to play with BIAB. And since you've gone that far you might as well teach yourself how to play some drums.