Transcript for the video "How I Made My Drumkit, Part9"

Note: this page includes very few pictures, watch the video for the complete story!

Hi my name is Marcel and I would like to share with you how I made my electronic drumkit and how you could be making your own electronic drum kit. This is part 9 of a 10 part series and in this video I would like to show you the software I wrote for my netbook, that is the control center of my electronic drumkit.

Why this netbook? I use this netbook for five reasons. First of all I use it for playing audio, while practising. Second, I use it to record audio. Sometimes for myself, sometimes I record grooves for composers. Third, I use my netbook to select sounds on my drum modules. Fourth, I keep notes on the songs that I play in my band, so I do not need to make notes on paper. And last but not least, with my netbook I can create chains of songs, so that during repetition and gigs I do not need to touch any button. Call me lazy, but I’m a succer for efficieny...

I do all these things with my netbook, with a single program. Being a computer programmer, I wrote this program myself. In the previous video I showed you how I incorporated the netbook in my drumkit and how everything is connected. In this video I just want to show you how it works, showing you parts of the screen.

All around the screen, you can see controls that are placed in boxes, called groups. On the top of the screen, you can see a few controls that are not in a group. They show the current and next song. On the left side of the screen you see a group where songs can be selected. The four groups that you see in the middle, show settings for the current song. I will explain the function of these groups one by one.

The Audio group contains an audio player. For each song I play in my band, I collect the original audio file and possibly an audio file of a live performance. With our band, we regularly record rehearsals and gigs as well.

I collect all these files on the local harddisk of this netbook. When I select a new song, all available audio is filtered, and the combobox will only show audio for the current song. So whether at home or during rehearsal, I can play audio versions for that song, in a second. I also added a function that enables me to listen to or practise a difficult drum break or fill, by repeating a fragment of an audio file. For instance the current song Power by Mothers Finest has such a break, let me play a part of it to show you...

The metronome group contains settings for a metronome. The metronome signal is actually a repeated MIDI note on message. I can start, stop and re-align the metronome by pressing the spacebar on the netbook, or by hitting a drumpad. The metronome can play quarters, but also eighths or triplets on two separate pitches and velocities. It can also flash on the screen, or it can do both. When I activate the Short function, the metronome will stop playing when I start playing. That is convenient when you only want a few clicks before you start the song. But the thing that makes this metronome special, is that I can program it to follow me.

You can see four numeric values for the tempo. The first is the tempo of the original song. The second is the tempo that the band has found to be the best tempo to play this song. Sometimes a song just feels better if we play it a bit faster or slower than the original. In the third and fourth box I can set a maximum and a minimum BPM. That sets the boundaries for the metronome, in case it is set to be flexible.

The flexibility of the metronome is determined by the slider. When the slider is set completely to the left, it will click in the tempo that has been set in the second box. it won't change the tempo, no matter how fast I play. When it is set completely to the right, the metronome will follow the tempo I play, as long as I stay between the minimum and maximum tempo. When I set the slider to a position somewhere in the middle, the metronome will run in a tempo between the tempo in the second box and the tempo that I play in. So the intention is to ‘lure’ me back into the tempo the band has decided to play the song in.

I am still working on perfecting this metronome and learning the best settings for specific songs. If you want to know more, let me know and I will make a separate video on it in the future.

Now in the top right corner, you see the Sounds group. That group needs some introduction. All drummodules have different memories, that each hold different sounds. Depending on the brand of the drummodule, these memories are called patches, or drum sets, or drum kits. I will try to use the term drum set for memory slots, and the term drum kit when I mean my physical drum kit. At the moment, I do not actually select individual sounds through this software. I could do that, but I want to be able to play a gig even when my netbook crashes. So I prefer to program the drum sets on my drum module, and use the netbook to sends MIDI program change messages. So each time I select a new song, a specific drum set is loaded.

The graphic in the Sounds group shows the layout of my drum kit. It shows which sounds are on which pads. So when I select a new song, this graphic reminds me what sound is where. So I do not need to test the pads before I start playing the song. Also, I can assign extra functions to any of my pads. For instance, I can hit a pad to jump to the next song, or to change the drum set, or I can change the tempo of the metronome, etcetera. The software checks all incoming MIDI messages and when it receives a note on message from a pad for which a special function is assigned, it will act accordingly.

The Song group contains notes or hints for the song, to help me remember how to play it. Usually, I enter text to indicate the order of parts of the song like verse, chorus, bridge, solo, etcetera. Also, I enter which musician in the band needs to start the song (because that is not always the drummer) and how the song should end.

So now back to the left side, to the Select group. I can select songs in different ways. To select a specific song, I can do that by typing a number, or by typing the first few characters of the song title or the artist. So just as an example, let me load one of my favorites of Sass Jordan. When I type “sa” I see three songs, after typing a second “s” I see two. When I press the Down key it selects the first item and after pressing Enter it loads the song I wanted. As you can see on the screen the tempo is... 90 bpm en the drum set is number... 4.

I just selected a specific song, but I mostly work with setlists. Here on the left you can see a listbox with a series of numbers. That is the current setlist. For each gig I create a list containing all songs the band wants to play, in the order we planned them. One way to create a list is through the menu. I I select this menu item, the program will open a new form, in which I can edit or create a setlist. Our band however, usually creates setlists in an online spreadsheet document. So whenever a new setlist is made there, I copy the cells from that spreadsheet and I paste that into a text file. This program can open that textfile and I have the new setlist in my netbook for the upcoming gig, within seconds.

When I have opened a setlist, I can proceed to the next song by pressing the Down key or by hitting a control pad that has been assigned to the function of selecting the next song. That does not mean I can only play songs in this exact order. Of course I can always select any individual song, at all times, by typing a few characters like I showed in the example of the song by Sass Jordan. Also when I need to play a song that is not in my netbook, I can just select the most appropriate drumset (either a pop kit or a rock kit or something else) by pressing one of three function keys.

So those are the basic functions of this program. How does it work in the real world? During study at home, I open a list that contains the songs I want to practise. I select the AutoAudio box on the left and I press start to start the first audio file. Let mer skip a bit. When after a few minutes that first audio file is finished playing, the second song is loaded automatically. So it works just like any other Media Player, in which you can add songs to a list. However, everything is updated automatically. So during practise I can play along with the original music, with the drumsets I like, with my personal notes on the screen, without ever touching my netbook or my drum modules.

How does it work during live performances? Well during gigs I do not play audio files, so I de-activate the AutoAudio checkbox. Instead I activate the AutoMetro checkbox. During a gig the tempo of the metronome and the sounds of the drumkit change with each song, but the netbook cannot select the next song automatically. So after I finish each song, I have to let the netbook know I want to switch to the next song in the list. I can do that by pressing the Down key, or I can hit a control pad that has the next song function assigned to it.

So in this video I showed you my software. Currently it is not for sale, but that might change if enough people would like to buy it. A you can see it runs on Windows7. At the time I am filming this, Windows 8 is just released. I would like to replace the netbook with a tablet in the future, in which case I would still play on my drummodules. But it could also be that I will choose to work with a single laptop, playing all my sounds from the laptop instead of using drum modules. I am not sure yet.

In the videos part 1 to 9 I have showed you almost all of the parts of my electronic drumkit. What remains for the last part is the podium, which is also the flightcase. I will show you how I made it and how fast I can setup my drumkit. Want to find out how fast I can set it up? Check out the last video of this series!

Click here for the transcript of the next video in this series