If you’re one of those fortunate types who bought Native Instruments Kontakt (V3 or above) then you’re in for additional treats!. We’ve included 21 of our custom-built drum-focused KSP script plug-ins to use with Solid Drums. What do they do we hear you ask, well look no further here they are:
But first some common stuff:
All the plug-ins come with our standard key-switching and preset saving facilities. There are 10 preset slots, 5 are filled with stuff we think is useful, and 5 are left for you to fill and use. The key-switches move between these user-defined pre-sets dynamically. Oh and the naming convention: anything starting SD is focused on Solid Drums, drum programming and playing specifically, and CR(Channel Robot) prefixed plugs are of a more general nature.
1. SD Phrase Player
Probably the most sophisticated plug-in here in some ways. SD Phrase player allows you to define 8 different phrases for each instrument (Kick, Snare and Hats). A phrase is one bar of 16th beats and you get to choose the velocity of the instrument played in each 16th. Once the plug-in is running a random “phrase” is selected every bar, from your defined set of 8 for each instrument. Thus you get a randomised set of different phrase played over and over in any combo, so 8 x 8 x 8 possibilities, we make that 512 different combos, multiply that by your 5 user pre-sets and you have 2,560 different beats all available to you….go wild.
Comes in two flavours, standalone; using an internal timing clock (with a single note to start/stop the plug-in playing), and DAW which uses/requires a note from the DAW as a “pulse” – usually every 16th of a bar – thus this version is very closely sync’ed with the DAW tempo and allows you to (lets say) define spaces in the bar(by dropping off some pulses), or playing every 1/8th of a beat (by providing pulses only every 1/8th etc.). There’ll be a video at some point – trust us honest.
2. SD Velocity Table
Drummers hit the drum harder “on the one” right? We all knew that, but they also hit not quite so hard “on the three”, different again on “the two” and “the four”, and all of this varied across each bar. Our DAW of choice doesn’t seem to really “know” this so we are stuck with hand-setting velocities in every bar, which is tedious and time consuming – even if it makes our drum patterns more lively and realistic. SD Velocity Table allows you to set the velocity for each drum (or range of drums) for each 16th of a bar, and allows you to set a “variation amount” to add or remove from the setting for each in-coming note, thus adding further realism. You can optionally over-ride the table values, ignoring them and using the incoming velocity, and just adding/subtracting the Variation Range value.
3. SD Tune Table
So when you hit a drum near the edge its slightly sharp in tuning compared to hitting it right-in-the-middle. Drummers tend not to hit the same drum in exactly the same spot each time, thus we get some variation in tuning. However they tend to “miss-the-middle” roughly the same amount for each drum in the same spot in the pattern they are playing, for example if the drummer is doing some complex flam or roll, and needs to stretch across the kit to make a hit on the “and” before “four” – then they’ll “miss” roughly the same amount each time they have to make this physical stretch. This plug-in lets you vary the tuning of all (or a range) of drums across a bar, and add some variation to that setting for even more realism. So not only re-tuning any hit but re-tuning consistently in a one-bar phrase, so even more like a real drummer….
4. SD Transpose Mixer
OK so this plug allows you to define 4 “zones” (this could be one or more notes) and to define a transpose amount for each zone. You then get to say how much of this new note you want to play (as a percentage of the original in-coming velocity) and how much of the original note(velocity) you want to keep. We use this to mix together the different snares present in a kit (some of our kits have in fact two whole drum kits mapped into them), to get whole new snare sounds, you might want to mix snares with kicks or marcas, or anything really.
5. SD Swoop Table
A slightly odd effect that didn’t seem to fit in the Glitch Kit plug. For a defined range of notes you can set a swoop up, or down amount in each 16th of a bar – this is basically a dynamic real-time tuning change. You can then set a time period that this will happen over. It’s not an often heard effect – possibly for a reason – but its unique and interesting we think. Best tried rather than explained.
6. SD Random Sounder
OK so our kits come with std, tuned up, tuned down, gated and distorted versions of snare hats and kicks (no tuned up kick – wot a naff idea that’d be). This plug allows you to mix them together. The table sets the likelihood of this happening in a bar – so you can control how whacky it gets – and the drop-down lists define the “sounds” to use, so you could set (say) the 5 snare drop-down menus to “normal”, “distorted”, “distorted”, “distorted”, and “normal” again to get only the “distorted” or “normal” variants when likelihood was triggered. More control = more fun.
7. SD Kick Chooser
For use with our “All The Kicks” instrument, and the “All The Drums Multi”. This plug allows you to define what note (in your DAW) is being used to represent the kick (there’s a learn mode for this). Th plug-in remaps this note to each of the kick sounds in turn, showing you the name of the wav. file along the way. Sounds are arranged in two groups. This allows you to use any of the (standard) kick sounds that comes with Solid Drums without modifying your midi drum file, and to note those sounds you particularly like…..for your own kit designs.
8. SD Snare Chooser
Just like “Kick Chooser” above, but for snares…use with the “All’The Drums” Multi or the “AllThe Snares” instrument.
9. SD Tom Grp Chooser
Again a bit like Snare and Kick chooser, but here we are defining a group of drums that get used together, hi, mid, low and floor toms…
10. SD Hat Chooser
..can you see a pattern here? Yep this time for both types of hat – open and closed – tho’ there are many other types of hat, and several (e.g. half-open, closing etc.) are included here..
11. SD Cymbal Chooser
..and finally cymbals, again to be used with the “allTheCymbals” kit, and the “AllTheDrums” multi.
THE MULTI, THE MULTI!!!
Those paying close attention will have realised that when all these “Chooser” plugins are used in the “AllThe Drums” multi its possible to map incoming kick, snare, hat, tom and cymbal hits to any of their associated sounds in the Solid Drums Library, thus allowing you to create any combination of any sound with any others… This means you can design your own kit on the fly and get any custom kit you want, leading to thousands of potential kits variations!
Now this multi is pretty big as it uses all the “standard” sounds across the whole library, but it also shows you the name of the .wav file for each instrument, so you can use this info. to design and build your own (slimmer) kits.
12. SD Groove Table
Allows you to define a range of hits, and delay them by different amounts in each 16th of a bar, and to vary it every time by a small amount. Humanising as well as “grooving” static midi drum patterns. Endless variations on groove patterns are possible from the classic delaying every other 16th, on into wild “delay only the 3rd, 7th, 11th and last 16th” or anything your imagination can dream up…
13. SD Grace Table
Allows you to define “grace notes” those quiet half-hits real drummers add into their playing at random times, you can set what(note range), when(which 16th’s of the bar), how often(likelihood), velocity and velocity variation, all to add realism to your pre-defined patterns.
14. SD Glitch Kit
Not quite your normal glitch kit, no sounds were included in Solid Drums to “make” the classic glitch drum sounds, this is designed to be used with ANY of the Solid Drum kits, well with any kit really. However a lot can be achieved, in fact quite unique sounds can be achieved, with this plug-in. Modify repeats, velocities and tuning changes all with a likelihood of occurring.
15. SD Flam Table
Allows you to define when flams will occur. The plugin looks for an in-bound hit and adds a flam to it if the likelihood is set to happen. You can vary the flam velocity and its delay.
16. SD Fill Player
Allows you to define 1/2 bar and 1/4 bar fills (8 of each), define where(which note) they’ll be played (it doesn’t have to be on the snare). You define velocity and timing for each fill in the table. You define a trigger-note(learn mode included) and every time the trigger-note is encountered one of the associated 1/2 or 1/4 bar fills gets played. So you get fills on demand, but not always the same bland repeated pattern.
17. SD Drum Switcher
As we’ve said Solid Drums comes with versions of kicks, snares,and hats. this plugin allows you to key-switch your way through these sounds dynamically as your patterns play.
18. SD Drum Spreader
Plays two notes for each in-bound note for a defined range. It pans one left and one right. This is an emulation of an old producers trick to make drums sound “bigger”.
19. SD Drum Panner
For a 10 different zones (each named after a drum) define a note range and where you’d like those notes panned, or muted.
20. CR Remapper
Allows you to remap any midi note to any other, includes a GM->CR and CR->GM presets.
21. CR PanHandler
Panning in-coming notes(in a range), and provides different modes (with associated settings) including “Random” and “Table-based” as well as “auto”
22. CR Muter
Allows you to mute any note individually.
