New Audio demo posted for Larry Seyer Acoustic Drums

[Larry Seyer]

My assistant Stephen Orsak took some stock and custom Standard MIDI files and pointed them towards one of our GigaStudio machines here at Electric LarryLand...

The result is a new audio demo for the "Larry Seyer Acoustic Drums" library...

Check it out:

http://www.larryseyer.com/lsl/mp3files/ahds.mp3

What you hear is exactly what came out of GigaStudio 3...

He used Logic 5 on a PC sending that MIDI data into a GigaStudio 3 machine loaded with our drum library... thats it... What you hear is what came out of the box.

Enjoy!

Best to all!

Larry Seyer

[toddk]

The hi hats sound weak. DKFH Superior may have the edge in
Cymbals. I've been using BFD kicks and snares with DKFHS
cymbals.

The Seyer lib is very tempting.
Brilliant overall though. I like the previewing system this library
has. Thoughtful design. A bit more playable than many drum libs.
Also, swells are a nice thing to have. Dont see them much for
some reason.

TK

[Theodor]

This is how drums sound ! Good work.

I would like to hear a hard version of the drums suitable for Rock/Metal , all velocities to 127 or close to that

[Bruce A. Richardson]

The hi hats sound weak. DKFH Superior may have the edge in
Cymbals. I've been using BFD kicks and snares with DKFHS
cymbals.

The Seyer lib is very tempting.
Brilliant overall though. I like the previewing system this library
has. Thoughtful design. A bit more playable than many drum libs.
Also, swells are a nice thing to have. Dont see them much for
some reason.

TK

Re: Hi Hats, you would find that this is not an issue, it's just a specifc balance thing with this particular file. I hear what you mean...they're a little buried. But in actuality, the hi-hats are crazy good...when you roll the pitch-wheel, you get different samples from tip to shank hits, and you can definitely put them up front.

Re Swells....I don't believe there are any swells in cymbals at all. I think what you heard was an actual played roll. The round-robin coverage is such that it just makes for really nice cymbal work as played. You don't have to program special swells.

The only samples which are "roll" strokes are the snare drum presses...in the video demo you can see Larry playing those, and how they're programmed to work. Other than that, I don't believe there are any samples in the library except single strokes (and even the presses are actually a single "stroke"). So the library is designed to be "played" as one would play a kit. Even if you're playing on a pad and you actually play presses with the sticks, the results are good, since the alternation kicks in as the key gets repeated. You can't make it machine gun, unless you were to reprogram it to allow that to happen.

What Larry isn't mentioning is that since these were General MIDI files, this is a demo of what the library does with the least specific programming available. The GM kits are not nearly as detailed by necessity as the full-on kits with stick position, etc. You can get nutty with stick positions, which in the case of something that's technically on the edge, gives a nice feeling of "almost out of control" intensity.

It's hard to say enough nice things about this library. I was blown away when I began using it, and still, I am just as happy. People actually comment on how good the drums sound, as in "man, those drums sound great," not "what samples are those?"

[JonFairhurst]

...People actually comment on how good the drums sound, as in "man, those drums sound great," not "what samples are those?"

That says all that there is to say...

-JF

[PaulR]

That's a great drum and cymbal sound to me Larry, Will this be available for Macs and Logic one day? Very real sound to me.

[bye]

Is there a reason why it is so compressed? Perhaps the final gain was too high resulting in all the clipping?

[Yves]

Sounds great Larry!!!

great job!! can't wait to get my hands on your library!

best regards

Yves

[sporter]

I'm still using the demo samples included with G3. They are indeed the most realistic drums ever. They sit perfectly in a mix.

[toddk]

Re: Hi Hats, you would find that this is not an issue, it's just a specifc balance thing with this particular file. I hear what you mean...they're a little buried. But in actuality, the hi-hats are crazy good...when you roll the pitch-wheel, you get different samples from tip to shank hits, and you can definitely put them up front.

Re Swells....I don't believe there are any swells in cymbals at all. I think what you heard was an actual played roll. The round-robin coverage is such that it just makes for really nice cymbal work as played. You don't have to program special swells.

The only samples which are "roll" strokes are the snare drum presses...in the video demo you can see Larry playing those, and how they're programmed to work. Other than that, I don't believe there are any samples in the library except single strokes (and even the presses are actually a single "stroke"). So the library is designed to be "played" as one would play a kit. Even if you're playing on a pad and you actually play presses with the sticks, the results are good, since the alternation kicks in as the key gets repeated. You can't make it machine gun, unless you were to reprogram it to allow that to happen.

What Larry isn't mentioning is that since these were General MIDI files, this is a demo of what the library does with the least specific programming available. The GM kits are not nearly as detailed by necessity as the full-on kits with stick position, etc. You can get nutty with stick positions, which in the case of something that's technically on the edge, gives a nice feeling of "almost out of control" intensity.

It's hard to say enough nice things about this library. I was blown away when I began using it, and still, I am just as happy. People actually comment on how good the drums sound, as in "man, those drums sound great," not "what samples are those?"

Hi Bruce,
I've been reading your GS3/kontakt posts. Very insightful. Im
learning alot. :)

If those mallet cymbal swells were played, then WOW and Double WOW.
Now i might have to snag the Seyer stuff. :)

As i said, i think anybody would have to admit, the layout is outstanding.

TK

[Alan Russell]

LArry,

The cymbals sound great to my ears. How was this assembled?..It wasn't done in real time - right?

Alan Russell

[A_Sapp]

Of course it wasn't done in real-time. :) If it was, the guy playing the drums has wayyyy too much time on his three hands.

Drums sound great Larry - sounds like it'd be perfect for jazz drumming, which seems to be missing these days.

[clonewar]

Hi Bruce,
I've been reading your GS3/kontakt posts. Very insightful. Im
learning alot. :)

If those mallet cymbal swells were played, then WOW and Double WOW.
Now i might have to snag the Seyer stuff. :)

As i said, i think anybody would have to admit, the layout is outstanding.

TK

If I remember correctly Larry plays the cymbal swells in real time in the video.

[Alan Russell]

Of course it wasn't done in real-time. :) If it was, the guy playing the drums has wayyyy too much time on his three hands.

Drums sound great Larry - sounds like it'd be perfect for jazz drumming, which seems to be missing these days.

Just being funny guy!

regards..

A.R.

[Larry Seyer]

That's a great drum and cymbal sound to me Larry, Will this be available for Macs and Logic one day? Very real sound to me.


Thanks for all of the positives! It's great to hear/read about them!

I'll try to answer all of the questions and comments in this post...

The Hi-Hats were probably mixed a tad to low for the audio demo ( http://www.larryseyer.com/lsl/mp3files/ahds.mp3 ) ... I'll post another version of the audio demo in the next few days that has the hats mixed a little louder...

As far as a 'harder' rock sounding kit... they're in the library... we probably need to add a section to the demo that has a more rockin' kit... Again, next time I post something, I'll add a demo of something suitable to demonstrate that.

I probably hit the MP3 encoder a tad too hard which could be why the audio demo sounds compressed... When I redo it for the things mentioned above, I'll lower the level a bit.

As far as Cymbal rolls... All of the cymbal rolls that you hear on both the audio demo and the video demo were done using mallet strikers on the included cymbals... that's it. You hit a couple of cymbal keys back and forth and you get a cymbal roll... just like I showed on the video demo ( http://www.larryseyer.com/lsl/lsdv1.wmv ).

"Was the demo played in real time?" No... There was a computer running Logic 5 that sent out MIDI data to one of our GigaStudio machines... An audio file was recorded from the GigaStudio machine's output...

The midi files used in Logic were some stock 'off the shelf' stuff along with some custom programmed stuff that Stephen did.

All of the 'sticks hitting the rim' sounds and the other misc 'mis-hits' are in the drum library and are assigned to keys easily accessable to the end user... You can either hit a key for those sounds, or hit a drum and move the MOD wheel to move the stick to that playing position (i.e. the rim). Nothing special was done to get the drum kits to sound real other than play the midi file into the computer that was running GigaStudio and the drum library and recording the GS3 output.

As far as making the drum library available for Mac and Logic... (I love Logic BTW) it's not gonna happen... sorry.. This is a GigaStudio 3.x only product. Please see http://www.larryseyer.com/lsl/why.php for a more detailed explanation as to why.

Best to all!

Larry Seyer

[Robert Kooijman]

Hi Larry,

congrats with this great library!
The demo sure sounds impressive.

While I respect your decision to keep it GS3 only, not everyone might share your motivations for doing so.

"But having them all INTEGRATED into one environment and saved as a complete usable/playable instrument can only be done in GigaStudio 3.x."

You can do something similar e.g. using SX3, Halion3 and various plugins by simply saving the project. For me, this works faster and more intuitive that having to deal with a standalone or rewired GS3. Editing and tweaking is so much easier this way. I'm not convinced of any substantial audible advantages using GS3 that outweigh its problematic handling...

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Hi Larry,

congrats with this great library!
The demo sure sounds impressive.

While I respect your decision to keep it GS3 only, not everyone might share your motivations for doing so.

"But having them all INTEGRATED into one environment and saved as a complete usable/playable instrument can only be done in GigaStudio 3.x."

You can do something similar e.g. using SX3, Halion3 and various plugins by simply saving the project. For me, this works faster and more intuitive that having to deal with a standalone or rewired GS3. Editing and tweaking is so much easier this way. I'm not convinced of any substantial audible advantages using GS3 that outweigh its problematic handling...

The only sampler which would allow as easy an integration with this library is Kontakt 2, and that was only a recent development. And I am not even sure that Kontakt 2 is set up exactly the way that's needed for this particular case...I will know more when my copy arrives later in the week.

You essentially wouldn't have this library if it were shipped "in the raw." It is the use of the GS3 toolset that makes it what it is. Larry's drum library is pretty much the definitive "demo" for GS3.

[FV]

This is great Larry. Your drum kit and SAM's True Strike are the only libs that are making me want to upgrade to GS3.

FV