It's been a bit quiet recently, but I thought I would quickly mention I've put a new song demo using Doggiebox drums on my web site: http://www.carlaz.com/music/current.html. Titled, "On the Hill", there are MP3s of both the full track and the drum part only, as well as (of course) the dbsong :) I did it using nskit6 samples, but it's mostly snare/kick/hat/crash and maybe a few toms, so the dbsong could be converted to any kit fairly easily.
I recorded DB straight out of the headphone port on my iBook to 2 tracks on my Roland VS-1680 -- DB's MMC feature were a major help in the early stages of getting the demo sorted, since I kept going back to nudge the drums around :) I ran both guitar and bass through my recently acquired SansAmp GT-2. I didn't spend a lot of time dialing in sounds, but they're OK. On the high gain settings the GT-2 gets a bit noisy (greatly aggravated by proximity to the VS-1680, actually), so I clamped on the noise gate from one of Roland's onboard amp sims. Seemed OK. The vocals are horrible (and the lyrics cheezy) but I've never claimed to be a singer (or poet); good fun though.
For what it's worth, I've been making a new version of an earlier demo I did with DB drums ("Afterburner), and both the old and new dbsongs are on my Web site, too.
I cannot overstate how handy the MMC feature is. Man, you've got to shell out some bucks for most sequencer software that does that. I wouldn't be shy about playing up that and DB's capability for MIDI output when spreading the good word.
In other, kit-bashing news ... I'm continuing to messing around with an nskit7 dbkit, based on Mike Carlyle's. Though the complete sample set is too big to be very practical, I though I would make a dbkit that referenced every sample, and then people could cut it down to the complexity they prefer easily enough. And I'll try to get the MIDI info there, eventually including velocity info. But this is an "occasional lunchtime" project, so it's taking a while :) And I gotta say I'm having real difficulty making icons that look as good as Mike's (color-coded shapes with numbers are very handy for multiple-velocity kits). I sit there staring in Photoshop, trying to capture the look and feel, and the results always turn out ugly! :) Still, gotta keep trying ....
Cheers, Carl
On 20 Oct 2004, at 14:50, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
And I gotta say I'm having real difficulty making icons that look as good as Mike's (color-coded shapes with numbers are very handy for multiple-velocity kits). I sit there staring in Photoshop, trying to capture the look and feel, and the results always turn out ugly!
Actually, I've now noticed that even when I copy some of Mike's icons out of the kit and then re-import them, they look uglier in the interface, even without my having edited them. Ben, what does DB do with images used as icons? Are there any tips in terms of size, etc. that would help DB handle images at its best?
Cheers, Carl
-- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/
On 20 10 2004 at 1:18 pm -0400, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
Actually, I've now noticed that even when I copy some of Mike's icons out of the kit and then re-import them, they look uglier in the interface, even without my having edited them. Ben, what does DB do with images used as icons? Are there any tips in terms of size, etc. that would help DB handle images at its best?
Hey Carl et al.,
First of all, a note to apologize for the silence lately -- I've been swamped with other work over the past week and a bit so I've been a bit slow to respond.
The image-handling code is probably some of the oldest stuff in the source tree, so I'll have to take a look at this, but I know what you're talking about and I agree it needs to be overhauled. I have noticed the same kind of "generational loss" in copying icons myself in the past, but have not as yet spent time trying to track it down. As I recall DB *should* be storing the full source image format (be it PDF or whatever) to facilitate clean copies, but clearly something is awry. Anyway, thanks for bringing this to my attention again, I'll follow up shortly.
Haven't checked out your latest demo yet either, but I shall!
More soon... hopefully a new beta by next week. Hopefully.
-ben
On 27 Oct 2004, at 23:25, Ben Kennedy wrote:
As I recall DB *should* be storing the full source image format (be it PDF or whatever) to facilitate clean copies, but clearly something is awry. Anyway, thanks for bringing this to my attention again, I'll follow up shortly.
Certainly icons I make are looking much better now that I'm making them 18x18 :) I've been making them as PDFs and slinging them in, but haven't checked to see what happens when I pull them out. I'll just check ....
Huh. I dragged one of the drum icons that I made to the desktop, and the format had changed to tiff and the name had changed from whatever I named it to a string based on the type + variant in the kit editor (this latter point is, actually, probably sensible and good). When I opened it in PhotoShop, it was still 18x18, but definitely claiming to be a tiff.
Haven't checked out your latest demo yet either, but I shall!
Well, I've got to find a way to sing so that it doesn't sound really silly! This may turn out to be harder than remembering how to play guitar .... :)
But the drum programming is going well :) I think I put a little reverb on the stereo drums (played out the headphone port of the iBook into two adjacent tracks on the deck), but that's about it.
Cheers, Carl
-- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/