Adding inteligent randomness to drum patterns ?

[kara]

When I play live, I have allways a (more or less) groove drum box in one of my slots.
I do add some variations to the groove and put them on the different variations knobs.
This works fine as long as I have the time during the song to switch variations, but sometimes I simply don't have the time due to intensive playing, and hey, I only have 2 hands

I was wondering if there would be a way of adding some inteligent randomness to a drum pattern ? Say swith between a open hihat and close hihat, or adding a snare hit now and then (this should be on the beat of course)

Has this been done allready ?

k

[Roland Kuit]

hi kara,
does this help you out?
the pattern generator can be alterd manualy.
but row B is fed by a logic divided sequencer. changing the pattern over time.

[kara]

Roland,

You are THE man, yes it does what I had in mind.
Now I have to try to understand it...
Could you explain a bit so that I can integrate it in my groove box.

k

[kara]

First step, the trick with open and closed HH, I understood.
Pretty clever !

k

[Roland Kuit]

the pattern generator has 2 inputs. 1 is fed by a 4switch module. p1 is the value of the pattern gen itself in this case. no feed in. the other, p2-p4 are fed by a constant value. you can determine for yourself how much value to put in for other results.
the 2nd input of the pattern generator is fed by the values of the level sequencer. but this sequencer is running slower caused by the logic divider. nothish both signals, clock and reset trigger inputs! the level sequencer values changes every 2nd step(when you want). in this case on the 4th, 8th, 13th and 16th step. the snare is triggered by a compaire to level module. you can change this level manually. it takes the values of the pattern generator and depending how the level is set, produces a trigger. it's possible to, instead of using the switch module, use an other level sequencer but divided by 16, listen to the next pch. the same values as in the switch module are used, but now changing in time. every 4 measure. see next patch.
a lot of this stuff is explained in my workshops programming house/techno I&II.

[iPassenger]

One really simple trick I use quite a lot is:

Top Event Trig Seq out goes into one input of an OR gate and the lower one goes into a clocked random trig module, which in turn feeds the other OR gate input. Now u program your main (basic) pattern into the sequence on the top and the fill or semi random pattern into the sequence below. The out of the OR gate goes into yr drum trigger in or whatever. Now adjust the trig probability on the random trig module to taste. Your basic beat stays throughout but gets the occasional extra beats from the secondary pattern.

Can't patch one as I am at work at the moment.

*Apologies if this already incooportaed into Roland's patch as I haven't checked it yet (as at work)*

It will definately achieve this:

[kara]

Thanks Roland, I understand better now.
It seems that your workshop isn't available anymore on www.koorenhuis.nl or where you talking of something else ?
I would certainly pay for a workshop 'programming the G2', something simular as a country fellow of you does for synths, but then specialized for the modular, http://www.robpapen.com/masterclass-nl.html
oh, and yes, i do speak dutch too

k

[kara]

Just tried this, works perfect for the occasional extra beat
Don't tell anybody, i'm at work allso, but have the demo soft on my pc

Both solutions gave me excelent ideas, thanks guys

[iPassenger]

Aww... wish i could do that at work, mind you i really would never get any work done then, plus I wouldn't be able to stop myself from pulling people over to listen to my stuff and hence severely give the game away.

I have sometimes used that trick to semi randomly trigger the next step in a chord progression and thus remove the monotony from say 3 step chord pattern etc...

[kara]

BTW. I love the Vapor 2008 remix

k

[iPassenger]

Thanks man, always nice to get feedback.

[kcinsu]

Here is a probability sequencer for you guys.

It is pretty self explanatory.

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ProbSeq-Drums.pch2
Description:	A little drum patch I put together to demo the probability sequencers. Open the patch for more instructions.	Download
Filename:	ProbSeq-Drums.pch2
Filesize:	3.27 KB
Downloaded:	1219 Time(s)

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[kcinsu]

Here is a screen shot of the patch in action

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pushforawesome.jpg
Description:
Filesize:	208.41 KB
Viewed:	349 Time(s)
This image has been reduced to fit the page. Click on it to enlarge.

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[kara]

[jamos]

Try using a chaos generator (see patch archives/building blocks) to control a high-hat's decay and volume. You will get the most believable patterns from it, especially when the chaos generator is tuned to sit right on the border of order and chaos (chaordic behavior)

[kcinsu]

this thread has inspired me.

here is my probability machine...

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ProbabilityMachine.pch2
Description:	press the "push for awesome" button to play.	Download
Filename:	ProbabilityMachine.pch2
Filesize:	4.96 KB
Downloaded:	1189 Time(s)

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