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.
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