Introducing : What BombThatBeat does !

BombThatBeat is a VST-Instrument for the use in VST-Hosts like Emagics Logic, Steinbergs Cubase or the fabulous Fruity Loops. You can play Patterns in real-time created from one Loop. For the better understanding I'll first declare the basic idea behind it.

Lets say you are working on a song with 140 BPM and you like to use a cool 1 bar drumloop, but this was played with 100 BPM. The Wavefile with the drumloop won't fit to your song, it is too long. Now you've got the choice to pitchshift it or to timestretch it. Both method aren't that good in our case. If you pitchshift it, this means simply playing it faster, the tune changes. On timestretch the tune stays the same but the algorithms aren't that good to raise the tempo 40 BPM without any artefacts. Here's a simple illustration.

This is a 1bar Drumloop with 100 BPM

Now the same Drumloop tuned up a few cents so it gets shorter to fit a 140 BPM bar.

As you can see in the Graphics, the beats of the Drumloop are good separated from each other and if you take a closer look, you can imagine, that this is a 1bar drumloop with 16 beats as most used in popular music. So what if we cut it into 16 beats (parts) and place these beats to the right positions in the bar with 140 BPM. As the original beats are too long, they get cutup to fit.

The tune stays as it was and there are no artefacts in the Drumsound but : This is a lot of work and only works on straight played grooves. If the Drummer plays shuffled or laid-back the positions for the beats aren't that clear.

Now you can use BombThatBeat for this and more. Think of playing every beat with its own tune, length, direction or volume. Or change the positions of the beats, maybe an other Snare on the 4+ of the bar.

In our example (I'll call it a pattern) one beat is tuned down. If it was tuned up, it may have been to short to fit. So this means : With slow Drumloops you have the most possibilities. In BombThatBeat you can create up to 32 patterns and each of it can be played by a midinote. If the pattern reaches the end, it starts again and all these exactly with the BPM you chose and not what's given by the drumloop you wan't to use. But what about the original feel of the drumloop (laid-back, shuffle...). With the Groove-functions of BombThatBeat the pattern can be played with the original feel, half the original feel or a complete different feel. Make a straight but laid-back played groove shuffle or just give a on-time drumcomputerbeat a human feel.

FIRST STEPS:

We start with a Drumloop you want to put in a Song with a Tempo of 108.1237. Click with of the left mouse button on the number behind "Speed" and drag the mouse up or down to the right value. Adjust each digit until you have the number 108.1237. You can tie the tempo to the Sequencers tempo by pressing on "PLUG". This changes to "HOST" indicating that the tempo is delivered by the host. So you can follow tempochanges in realtime. Don't use it if you don't need it. This saves CPU-power.

Adjust, by clicking the appropriate value behind " Meass", how many measures (bars) in length the loop consists of. In our case this will be 1 bar.

We want the loop to be in 16 beat sections, so click the 16 behind "Beats".

Next, we want to open a drumloop. This must be a (8,16 or 24 Bit, Mono or Stereo) wave file. To do this, we will click on LoadWave . Browse to the loop that you want. In logic you can also use drag&drop from windows explorer.

The Drumloop is divided now into 16 equal large sections and this is displayed in the outline display (at the top of the window, right below the plugin title). By clicking the outline you can preview each of the beats.

The basic settings of the loop are now in it's original sequence and pitch. The green marks in tune are showing, how hig you can tune the step, without hearing something of the next beat.

THE CREATIVE PART

You have 32 Keys for 32 different Patterns that can be played in realtime from yor Midikeyboard or the sequenzer.

The keyboard on the right has 3 Functions. You chose the pattern on which you like to work, you can prelisten to it and it shows the incomming midinotes.

Select a pattern on which you like to work by clicking the appropriate patternkey for processing . In this case the Pattern on A1. If you click again, you can listen to the pattern you're working on (red light). If the key are green, they indicate incomming midinotes.

If you want to copy a pattern, click "COPY", select the pattern, it is to be copied to and to click "PASTE".

The Pattern is represented now in the large display

This representation depends on the values chosen for "Meass" and "Beats". In our example, 1 bar (Meass) and 16
Beats, means this, the Pattern needs a note that is 1 bar from start to end to be played, and you can use up to
2*16(Beats) positions, following steps mentioned. The bar is thus divided into 32nds.

If you select arrange , you can change through stops of the left mouse button and moving over the display the Beat
played at the respective step position. All the way down will remove that step, hence no beat is played. The same
applies to volume & Tuning. TIP: If you don't want to keep switching windows, you can change the Arrange by holding down the CTRL key, the volume with SHIFT, & the Tuning with ALT. These shortcuts apply to any of these windows.

IMPORTANTLY: Which steps you are handling depend on the adjustment of "JUMP". With 1 each step reacts, with 2 only each 2, starting from the step with which you pressed the mouse button. If "TRICKY" is activated, in combination with the "JUMP" adjustment then all following steps are processed accordingly. The following steps take on the "VOLUME", "TUNING" and "ARRANGE" value.

Under each of the steps, the length of each step is displayed. By clicking with the left mouse button you can cut these at the clicked position. If it is the right mouse button clicked, the step length is set to it's tuninglengh. "TRICKY" also applies here, so watch out.

If you rightclick on a Step, this Step will be played reverse.

If you move the tuning all the way up, it jumps to green mark. This is the tuning where the whole "beat" fits to the step. The position of the mark depends on the length of the beat (could be different for each beat, because you can adjust them in the adjust window), the groove you've chosen (for example on shuffle the first step is longer than the second) and the space behind the step.

If you move the tuning all the way down, it jumps to the tuning where all even the shortest beat is long enough to fit to the songtempo.

You can playback the patterne with a specific feel that i so called "GROOVES". Just chose them in the GROOVE field top-left by click and drag down. By default the groove is set to "original". This is the groove resulting from your marksettings on the wavefile. That means, if you have loaded a shuffled wavefile and have adjusted the marks to be right in front of every beat, the pattern will be a straight played groove. But if you move the strength slider all the way up (all the way down means off), the groove will be played nearly exactly as it was in the Wavefile. You can also load a groovefile.

The "STRENGTH" Slider sets how strong the steps will be shifted.

WHEN THE PATTERN DOES NOT LOOP PROPERLY:

Click on"adjust" (links). The adjust window is shown here.

Under the wave shape representation is a zoom shot horizontal scrollbar. By clicking this, adjust what part of the loop you want to see in the window. Drag the blue bar side to side to scroll forwards and backwards. Drag up and down to zoom in and out.

The numbers represent the starting points of the beats. Shift starting point 1 by clicking the number under the wave
shape, if this is not situated directly before the first signal (in our case usually a Bassdrum). TIP: If you shift the labels with the left mouse button, you will hear the beat behind the label (except with trailer label) and with the right mouse button you will hear the beat before the label (except label 1).

The intermediate labels were distributed evenly between first (1) and last label (E). Even if you want to adjust these,
proceed exactly the same.

You can store your settings by pressing "SAVE MARKS". BTB will save a datafile to the same directory where you've loaded the Wave from. The File is named as your Wavefile but extended with .btb. Each time you load the Wave, BTB uses thes settings. If you don't like that anymore, delete the file or click again on Save Marks to save your actual marksettings.

There's an other Button called "SAVE GROOVE". When you adjust the Marks, BTB recognizes from this, how the drummer had played. You can save the feel of the groove and maybe use it on an other loop. You can load it by chosing "From File" in the Groovesction above. It is recommend that you store the groovefile in the "userGrooves" directory. You can also replace the presetGrooves with your own files. They are located in the presetGrooves Directory. The name is allways the presetname+b+the chosen beat. But 4,8 & 16 = 16, 6 & 9 = 9, 5,10 & 15 = 15, 7 & 14 = 14. For some beat & groove combinations I haven't made a groovefile, because there are no specific rules (laidback for 13 beats ??).

IF THE LOOP CRACKS OR THE VOLUME FLUTTERS:

Adjust the "Step Volume Envelope". Each step of the 32 Pattern is faded in and out with this curve and. If "attack" or "release" is " too short, it can be adjusted. The area is in each case 0.4ms - 10ms. Use the shortest possible time that does not make clicking noises. If you use the right Mousebutton, you adjust both "attack" & "release". The Releasetime starts at the end of a step, so if a step is such long that it reaches the next step, it will crossfade into the next step.

With "Pattern Volume Release" you adjust the fade out time of the entire pattern after the key is released.

STORING PATTERNS:

Storing and recalling patterns is handled through the host software or under Preset. You can Save them by clicking on CLICK HERE TO SAVE. In Logic you can now type in a name or choos an other Preset to override. Press Enter to Store it. In Cubase the file will be saved with the name you've gave them in Cubase owned namefield (top-left). Sorry, but thats because of what Cubase does with keystrokes. You can move the Presetfolder under windows to any location on your harddisc. BTB will ask you where it is and then remember the new location. If you like to delete a preset, you can do this by holding down ALT while clicking on it or under windows directly from the presetfolder.

If you've clicked on FixWave before loading a Preset, You'll only load the patternsettings without the Wavedata. If the Wavedata of a Preset can't be found or you'll load a Preset that have not had a Wave, BTB automatically activates "FIXWAVE". You can load Presets allways with the depending Wave by pressing SHIFT while clicking on the Preset.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE LOOP IS ADJUSTED AND THE EFFECTS IT HAS IF THE SONG & LOOP
ARE THE SAME SPEED .

BombThatBeat uses no Timestretching, in order to adapt the loop to the song tempo, but transposes it accordingly.
By tuning higher, the beat will become shorter. By tuning lower, the beat will become longer. BombThatBeat will still
play each beat at its apropriate time, but retuned.

If a step is retuned neither upward nor downward (12 steps each way) thus Tune = 0, then the loop is played in original tune. If it's tuned to the green mark ( all the way up) it's tuned to the tempo that resultes from the BEAT and STEPLENGTH. STEPLENGTH can be diffrent if you chose a groove and raise the STRENGTH Slider.

Click with the right key on the length setting of the step, and the step gets automatically adjusted to the length of the
beat. With "TRICKY" this can be used to change all following beats also. With "LenghToTune" the length of all beats
is readjusted to its retuned length.

There are some useful guides here. The orange line the retune slider shows where that slice needs to be retuned to
to naturally fit the tempo. If you drag the tempo up and down, you will see these lines all move up and down each
step's axis. When you retune a step, you will notice an orange line moving horizontally along the bottom. This shows
you how long the beat is going to play for due to your new tune settings. This is also indicated by the lengthline is being thin.

AND THE REST :

"Reset All" resets volume, tune & arrange of the currently displayed part. If you are in "Adjust" mode, It recalculates the beat division of the loop .

"Scratch" on the top right does what the name says. Set to the far left turns the effect off. Simply experiment with
different settings. The tuning of the steps also has influence on the effect. TIP: Create typical Pattern, so that the
effect works genuinly.

"Tune steps" sets all steps to 0. Thats the normal tune.