GR-55 - Playing PCM Drums

Started by Davis, November 23, 2012, 06:53:09 AM

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Davis

The 55 has no midi input so we cannot use a keyboard or pad to trigger the sounds. Which means we have to pluck the drum sounds, or pick em. I have no idea why there is no midi input in this model, but I have to confess I rarely if ever used it in previous gens. But now I am relying on this as my drum machine and ... well, you gotta pick it, Wilson!

So how are you all doing this, to lay down a drum track? I am using the RC300 looper internal drums as a click track, but that gets monotonous real fast. I am not using my PC as a sequencer, because its not conveniant atm. So I would like to be able to lay down a separate track of drum fills, ride cymbals and other kinda things.

I presume most of you are either using a VAS drum kit and a sequencer like Ableton or another one.

But if we are jammin live and I want to do some drum work, any tips? I really am asking, long windedly, how you trigger drum sounds? Technique wise,, pick, finger tips. How do you do flams, rolls, intros etc? Any tips?

Once again TIA.
Davis

keithshapiro

Man I'm new to this forum and have been trying to work drums into my playing all day. I can't wait for this to be answered by cats doing it!
GR-55 * RC-300 * GK-2A * GK-3 * Marshall Plexi 50 (Hand Wired) * Cornford MK50H * Dumble ODS Clone (Ceriatone OTS) * Trainwreck (From Scratch Hand Wired) * DC-30 Matchless Clone (Ceriatone) *
Handful of Electrics, a couple acoustics.

musicman65

With the latency of ANY guitar to midi system, its not well suited to individual percussion sounds...maybe as a freeform sound affect. I too would be interested in hearing how this could be effective.

bd

Davis

#3
They put a ton of percussion kits in the GR55. I wonder why? I think its because they expect us to use a DAW and quantize them. The more I think about it..that must be it.
But for live play, I am gonna mess around for a few days and see if I can compile some techniques.

mbenigni

The GR55 implementation for drum kits is pretty underwhelming - and this is a real bummer considering the GR55, at first glance, looks like a perfect "one-man band" sort of product.  Between the flaws in the drumkit implementation, and the crappy looper, the promise of an all-in-one solution falls a little flat.

The main problem with the drums, of course, lies in tracking inaccuracies.  I've said this over and over again, but I feel that the GR55 needs better filtering in the pitch-to-MIDI conversion.  Ideally, more high-end harmonics should be shaved off of the audio that's passed to the P-M algorithm, and at the very least, the resulting MIDI should filter note values that aren't on the damned fingerboard.  Better still, there should be a per-patch setting capping that note value, so you could limit a given patch to the note range you intend to play.  Then the occasional stray harmonic wouldn't spoil the fun.

The drum kits in particular are further crippled by the fact that none of the PCM deep editing applies to them.  I have no idea why Roland went out of their way to make this so, but they did.  Maybe they foresaw complications with some of the sophisticated LFO/LFA/etc settings applying to multiple samples, fine.  But there is no excuse for the fact that you can't use the octave or pitch transposition to move the selection of samples up and down the fingerboard.  As it is, the samples are fixed in position, and the most important ones hover around the open position where tracking is slow and errant harmonics are rampant.  It's a drag.

I'm still working at it and hoping to develop a technique - meet the GR55 half-way.  But so far I can't find a kit that really feels right, and the frequent ghost notes (flam city) are killing me.

Jim Williams

you can use the alt tune to map the drums a little better and set up a GK set for drums. The looper is ok for making a simple loop but it is difficult to time it exactly. if you intend drums for live use I recommend doing in your DAW and putting them on a USB stick and using the audio player to play your recorded drum loops.
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Everything from modeling to the real deal, my house looks like a music store.

Davis

If Roland had simply allowed an external controller to trigger the drum sounds. ..none of us would be having this discussion.

Can you folks think of a reason that the GR cannot be externally triggered? Why would they do that?

Litesnsirens

The only thing I can think of is that at this price point, they feel like they would be giving you too much if you could use it as a sound module as well.  Maybe they want you to have to buy one of their other devices to use as a sound module.   

As far as the playing the drum sounds I find the higher strings G, B and high E.  So I have created a kit and pitch shifted so that the kick snare and hats are played on the high strings that way they track well enough that I can actually play beats without the latency or the lack of being able to re-trigger the sample hindering the ability to play them.

curteye

Quote from: Davis on November 25, 2012, 07:06:43 PMWhy would they do that?

Aloha guys don't really have an answer to 'Why would they do that' but there is a silver lining.

Because you have to 'play' the GR55 to hear its sounds, it kinda helps to keep your 'chops' up.

IMHO The GR55 'makes' you play.
{'-'}
If yer gear ain't breakin' down, you ain't workin' much.

Davis

I think I will work on some percussion technique. And eyeball a set of pads to trigger :)

mbenigni

Quoteyou can use the alt tune to map the drums a little better

Ah, thanks for that.  I've been using the detune and octave controls in the PCM voice and wondering why that doesn't work.  I'll have a stab at alt. tunings tonight.  Of course, if you're using COSM guitar at the same time, it's a bit awkward; just have to make a point of turning alt tuning off again when you fade to guitar.

musicman65

Quote from: Davis on November 25, 2012, 10:53:05 PM
I think I will work on some percussion technique. And eyeball a set of pads to trigger :)

The GR55 can't be triggered externally. :(


Davis

Hey Musicman...i meant just outright buy a percussion module..but after reading those links I think with a looper that things are..doable!

PD FX

is is simple.. you can not play drums on a gr-55. it aint worth the hassle. ok, maybe a very, very simple beat.
buy a korg nanopad or the like, use your laptop. works like a charme..
here I glued a drum prothese on a GR-55 guitar, connected to EZ drums on my laptop.





Davis

#15
Fun video...Keith Moon on your guitar!

Yeh the more I read about it the more convinced I am that for drumming I should get a dedicated module. Theres a whole drum kit you can get for 500 or less thats got a small profile. I would dissect the kit and just use the ride, kick and maybe another pad per pass. Then you integrate it with the GR 55 live and here is how that could work.

I saw a great guitar player on youtube who used a kick drum along with his electric and vocals. Adding an electronic kick and or hat alone, like the old one man band, might be a super fun way to let the kick keep rhythm while you drummed on the 55. That frees up all those notes for snare. I think one could assign the high hat to a snare sound, then bass and snare are covered. Its not just the sequencing issue, its how to use the drums live that I am after. We just dont have enough fingers to maintain kick snare, hat and then flourishes. So one could loop off the GR55 itself with the kick and snare, then work a combination of sticks on the free pad for a percussion solo, or jump back to the GR. The GR can be used to trigger effects instead of tying it up with holding a beat. Of course one can get much of this with a drum machine, and that can work as a click track. This pushes percussion to real time for GR55 and is the route I intend to go. One needent take a whole drum kit out, the two pedals are small and so is the sound module with an out to the PA.
A third pad could be brought in.


mbenigni

Guitarpolson, that's a really cool clip.  Makes me all the more sad that the GR55 won't accept Note on/off from MIDI In, though.  :(

PD FX

Quote from: mbenigni on November 27, 2012, 09:44:04 AM
Guitarpolson, that's a really cool clip.  Makes me all the more sad that the GR55 won't accept Note on/off from MIDI In, though.  :(
thanks!.. Yes, no midi in on GR-55 is a shame.. but I guess they found it way to complicated: the GR-55 features 2 PCM channels with different "midi" settings, pitchbend/no pitchbend, legato/non legato.. They'd have to restrict the midi output/input to fullscore Pitchbended/legato, and re-interpret it when it comes back as midi in.. It wouldn't be that difficult to program on the GR-55.
Maybe the fullscore midi signal would not be as fullfeatured  as the internal signal though.. but since the GR-55 hasnt got aftertouch or the like I doubt that.. Knowing Roland by now a little, the "midi in" and "local off" will never be made available as an update.

Elantric

More info on GR-55 playing PCM Drums here:

GR-55 - Patch Challenge: Drum Circle
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=14792.0

DreamTheory

I use GR-55 in my DAW like this:

First: play guitar to metronome. I follow the guitar accents to get the song's cadence. We are guitarists after all.

Then: record kick-snare, then hi hat (open and closed), then toms, then crashes.

Picking or plucking (the kick drum likes thumb nuance) off the fretboard helps give me a real time feeling, and I actually perform each track all the way through, so I can add variations. I admit that I could just as easily finger drum on a keyboard, with no mistriggers, but once I dug into the parameters and read the advice on this page, I got things set up to work pretty well, and now I am used to it. Plus it is fun to say it was done on guitar. And I like the sound of the GR-55 drums for most music.

Then I go back in and slice edit as needed to weed out the bad hits and nudge things to line up. It was painstaking the first two times, then I just got good at it, and it really is fun and not so hard. I promise if you try it, you won't die. It is less time consuming than bringing in a session drummer or learning to play drums.

Just pay attention to what real drummers do when you are out hearing live music. You cannot mimic all those fast rolls, but "ghost hits" (if applicable) are do-able and they are what make a drum part really groove. Use the DAW to make them low volume if your picking technique fails.

I find that the miscellaneous percussion sounds trigger very well. The congas are really accurate- probably that is because they are on the lighter gauge strings- see above about re-mapping. So all those shakers and wood blocks and stuff work great for me, and sound more crisp and defined than my real shakers.

In the context of a typical song, you do not think that much about the drum track, unless it is an annoying machine without variations.

Of COURSE a real drummer is always better.

Here is an example of something I drummed on GR-55 using this method. By the way the water and bird sounds in the middle are GR-55 tones, and the water and bird sounds at the beginning and end are real field recordings. The pianist is a real pianist (playing a synthesizer piano). The acoustic guitar is real. The recorder flute and strings are PCM GR-55, and the bass is GR-55 model. I think when you blend real and fake, the fake-ness is masked. Oh dear, this is a song about nature- forgive the hypocrisy. And I should probably say I actually did not write it- the piano player wrote it wen we were kids and I made this for him as a gift.

I always quote Jerry Garcia who said that playing live is like rowing a boat on the ocean and recording in the studio is like building a ship in a bottle. I totally agree.
electric: Epiphone Dot semihollow body, acoustic: mahogany jumbo, recording: Cubase Artist 11 or Tascam DP008

Klaus

Quote from: Jim Williams on November 25, 2012, 09:26:52 AM
you can use the alt tune to map the drums a little better and set up a GK set for drums. The looper is ok for making a simple loop but it is difficult to time it exactly. if you intend drums for live use I recommend doing in your DAW and putting them on a USB stick and using the audio player to play your recorded drum loops.

Hi Jim

It looks like I can't find a way to do this, can you explain it a little more or even better do you have a pach you will share.

I have read about people putting the most used drums like Snare, Kick drum & Hi-hat on the High Strings for better tracking, is that what you are talking about also?

Cheers

imerkat

Quote from: Elantric on October 23, 2014, 09:13:05 AM


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