analogue drum moduels

[David Krupicz]

----- Original Message -----
From: Sam Hargreaves <S.Hargreaves1 at student.derby.ac.uk>
To: <synth-diy at mailhost.bpa.nl>
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 7:16 AM
Subject: analogue drum moduels


> hello synth-diy
> My names Sam i'm a third year student at Derby university
> England. For my third year project i'm researching and hopeing to
> build an analogue drum synth moduel. the research is going well i
>
> i'm first going to concentrate on the snare drum so if any one has
> any idears or opinions they would be greatfully recieved.

I've created some 'analogue' drum sounds using the software synth
Reactor from Native Instruments, and what you need for a good snare
is a noise oscillator, a VCO, a VCA, a VCF and two envelope generators
( Decay - Release type will suffice)

Basically, the percussive 'hit' of the snare is provided by the noise
generator, passed through the filter.  The cutoff frequency of the
filter should start off at the highest frequency (it's a lowpass resonant
filter BTW...) and decay rather quickly.   This is what you use the first
EG for... The resonance of the filter can be adjusted by a pot to get a
suitable tone...

A snare drum also has a 'resonant' component of a particular pitch
(not to be confused with the resonance of a VCF) which is provided by
the VCO.  The pitch of the VCO varies slightly in the same manner as the
cutoff freq of the filter.  (You can use the same EG for both, and trim the
levels with
two independant pots.

Now run both the filtered noise and the VCO through a VCA controlled by the
second envelope generator, and trigger both EG's with the same gate signal,
tweak the knobs until you get an acceptable electronic snare.

It won't sound exactly like a real snare drum, but that's not the point is
it?  Anyway,
it's a lot easier than it sounds, especially if you do it all in software
with Reactor... :)