SSD 3.5 Operation Manual 1.2

Quick Welcome from Steven Hello to you, the newest member of the Steven Slate Drums family. You have just purchased six years of hard work, dedication, passion, persistence, and determination…all with one goal in mind: to make you the absolute best drum software on the planet. It is my hope that you will soon believe that we achieved this goal. But despite the fact that my name appears on the box, I am far from the only person responsible for the making of this software. Here are just a few of the people who helped make this software possible. Some helped by physically making the software, others helped test and perfect it, and some just inspired me to make it better: Dan Kirk, Alex Simechev, Alex Siegel, Marty Long, Joel Adkins, Jay Baumgardner, The NRG Recording Staff, Scott Reinwand, Jeff Juliano, Andy Sneap and the Sneap forum boys, Joel Adkins, Jerry Lyons, Adrian Ost, Chris Lord Alge, John Shepherd, Nathanael Lew, and all the loyal customers and fans over the years who have made it all worthwhile. It’s because of your encouragement that this product has evolved into the massive monster that accompanies this manual. I hope you make great music with these drums, and I thank you for purchasing, and not pirating this software. Steven Slate

CREDITS: Produced, Recorded, and Mixed by Steven Slate Technical Director and Sample Programming: Daniel Kirk Algorithms, Programming: Alex Simechev Drummers: Jerry Lyons, Adrian Ost, Joel Adkins, Steven Slate Graham Mueller, Terry Capote, Jim Aaarons, Craig McCain

Editors: Joel Adkins, Marty Long, Steven Slate, Nathanael Lew Warehouse Studio Crew: Joel Adkins, Jeff Parton, Sam Rodriguez NRG Recording Engineers: Dave Colvin, Sean Curiel The “Castle” Crew: Joel Adkins, Jeff Parton, Craig “The Mouth” Fellows

Table Of Contents I. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 6  System Requirements.................................................................................................

II. Getting Started ......................................................................................................... 6  SSD 3.5 (Standalone Application).............................................................................. - Setting Up Audio and Midi .................................................................................................

SSD 3.5 (Plug-in) .........................................................................................................

III. Using Steven Slate Drums 3.5 ..........................................................................12  - Selecting a Drum Kit (Multi) Using the LIBRARY Tab ..................................................... - Selecting a Drum Kit (Multi) Using the LIBRARY Tab Cont ............................................ - Replacing a Drum or Cymbal in a MULTI.......................................................................... - Hybrid Sounds .................................................................................................................... - Replacing Toms and Cymbals...........................................................................................

IV.  Drum Instrument Settings and Features ....................................................16  Universal Features of All Instruments....................................................................... - Overhead Mic Settings ....................................................................................................... - Room Selection Drop-Down Meny .................................................................................... - Character Settings .............................................................................................................. - Direct Mics Settings............................................................................................................ - Room Mics Settings............................................................................................................

Using the SSD 3.5 Effects and Envelope Pages for Instruments........................... -

Effects Page..................................................................................................................... Envelope Page.................................................................................................................

Instrument Specific Features .................................................................................... - Kick Drum Instruments ...................................................................................................... - Snare Drum Instruments .................................................................................................... - Tom Instruments................................................................................................................. - Hi Hat Instruments. ............................................................................................................. - Ride Instruments................................................................................................................. - Crash Cymbal Instruments ................................................................................................ - Add-On (X-Slot Splash/China) Instruments...................................................................... - Add-On (X) Rides ................................................................................................................ - Snare Articulation Instruments .........................................................................................

V. Using Overall Features in Kontakt Player and Kontakt 3.5 ....................28  Using the SSD 3.5 Channel Output Mixer............................................................. Using the SSD 3.5 Master Editor (Master Volume) .............................................. Saving Changes to Kits and Instruments ............................................................

VI. Discretely Routing Drum Channels into your DAW .................................34  Pro Tools................................................................................................................. Cubase .................................................................................................................... Logic........................................................................................................................

 

VII. Advanced Settings ..............................................................................................46  Humanizer.................................................................................................................... Instrument Remapping ............................................................................................... Velocity Curve Assignment ........................................................................................ Resetting the Instruments Mixer Settings................................................................. Advanced Midi Remapping ........................................................................................

VIII. V­Drum Set­up and Optimization by Dan Kirk........................................54  Not So Obvious Reasons Your V-Drums May Have Issues with SSD .................... - Drum Head Tuning.............................................................................................................. - Striking Position and Placement of Hits........................................................................... - Suggestion On Where and How to Hit Certain Drum Pads............................................. - Time and Hardware Malfunction........................................................................................ - Not Accurately Monitoring Your Drums ........................................................................... - Suggestion On Where and How to Hit Certain Drum Pads.............................................

Roland TD-20 Set-Up................................................................................................... - Suggested Settings for the Roland TD-20 ........................................................................

 Steven Slate Drums 3.5 Keyboard Mapping ..........................................................    

I. Introduction Steven Slate Drums 3.5 is an extensive drum instrument library that uses Native Instrument’s Kontakt 3 software sampler as a host. To get Steven Slate Drums 3.5 up and running on your computer you must open the Kontakt 3.5 software sampler as a “Standalone Application” on your computer or run the Kontakt 3.5 software as a “Plug-in” in a (Digital Audio Workstation (DAW for short) such as Apple Logic, Digidesign Protools, Calkwalk Sonar or Steinberg Cubase. System Requirements Mac: OS 10.4.x, G4 2gHz or higher, 2GB RAM - samples must be on at least a 5400 RPM hard drive, eSATA, Firewire 800 recommended PC: Windows XP SP2, 2gHz or higher, 2GB RAM samples must be on at least a 5400 RPM hard drive, eSATA, Firewire 800 recommended

II. GETTING STARTED SSD 3.5 (Standalone Application)

To use the SSD Player live with a midi interface (such as a keyboard or vdrums), you can open the “Standalone” Version of Kontakt 3.5 on your computer. To do this, simply open the Kontakt 3.5/Kontakt Player 3.5 application that was installed on your computer. (PC) During installation, a “Kontakt 3” shortcut was added to you desktop (PC) after installation. If not than you will find the Kontakt 3 or Kontakt Player 3

program located in C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\Kontakt 3, and you can manually make a shortcut and drag it to your desktop. (MAC) You will find the Kontakt 3 application in the “Application” folder found in your user directory Setting Up Audio and Midi

Upon the first time loading of Kontakt 3 on your computer you should be presented with a pop-up box asking you to set-up your midi and audio interface settings. If this pop-up box doesn’t show up then you must do this in the Kontakt 3 Options (Cog wheel button at the top of the Kontakt interface).

You’ll be presented with an options pop-up box with various tabs located on the left side of box. to set up your midi interface and routing (Midi Keyboard, Midi Controller) for use in Kontakt please click on the “MIDI” tab at the bottom left of the Options interface.

Choose the Inputs button (Shown above)

Make sure that whatever midi keyboard or midi controller you are using (Akai MPD32 in this case) is set from “Off” to “Port A”. In this case I’ll click where it says “Off” next to “Akai MPD32” and the following drop down menu will show up

Move your mouse over and click “Port A”

The resulting dialog;

At this point, don’t worry about the Output Midi Options. Next, you will set up your Audio Interface or Audio Card In OPTIONS menu, click on the Audio Tab on the bottom left.

The first option you see is the Driver selection drop down menu.

Here you should see ASIO or DirectSound if your using a PC setup. If your using a MAC Setup you will see CoreAudio. Click the driver that you wish to use. ASIO for PC and CoreAudio for Mac are your best bet here for most setups. The next option you see is the Device selection drop down menu

Here you should highlight and choose which Audio Interface you are using for Audio Output and Audio Recording. In the example above, we have chosen the Duet. It shows that there are a total of 2 inputs and 2 outputs which is correct.

You should see “Running” Next to “Status” in the Audio Options Box. This confirms that it is running correctly.

The next thing to do is select the Sample Rate you wish to use

Click the drop-down menu and you will see a list of sample rates to use

Click on the sample rate that you wish to use. Sometimes you will see this dialog pop-up after you select your sample rate.

Just click Ok and re-start Kontakt and go back to the Kontakt Audio Options. The next option that you can change in Kontakt’s Audio Options is the Latency.

You can move the horizontal slider to the left and right. The farther left that you push the slider, the less overall latency you will get but your system will be pushed harder.

The more right you push the slider, the more overall latency you will get but your system won’t be pushed as hard.

(Hint: It’s a rule of thumb to try and have your system have an overall latency less than 10.0 ms. You’ll want to try and get the lowest latency without hearing computer glitches and audio artifacts on playback. Play with this option until you find a good balance for your set-up. With your midi, audio drivers, and latency, set, you are now ready to load drum kits. (see III Using Steven Slate Drums) SSD 3.5 (Plug-in)

Steven Slate Drums 3.5 should be automatically added to your DAW plugin directory and will be available to be selected and/or inserted into a Software Instrument Track. All audio preferences and Midi preferences should be taken care of by your DAW.

Please consult your DAW software manual to learn how to incorporate virtual instruments. To learn how to discretely route all the outputs from SSD into your DAW, please visit the video tutorial section of the Steven Slate Drums website. This manual will also explain how to discretely route the drum channels into your DAW in

III. Using Steven Slate Drums 3.5 With Kontakt 3 and Steven Slate Drums 3.5 now installed on your computer you should now be able to load a kit and start playing around with the many features SSD 3.5 and Kontakt have to offer. The following describes the use of SSD, both in standalone or inside your DAW. This is what Kontakt 3 User Interface will look like initially.

Selecting a Drumkit Using the LIBRARY Tabs

Click the Library Tab on the left browser screen.

This will load the SSD Library Icon. This icon contains two sub tabs labeled “INSTRUMENTS” and “MULTIS”. Think of “instruments” as drum kit pieces like an individual kick, snare, tom, etc. Think of “MULTIS” as full drum kits. In this case the Multis are preset drum kits made by Steven Slate and tested and tweaked by some of the world’s top producers and mixers.

Selecting a Drum-Kit (Multi) To select a drum kit, hit the Multi Sub-Tab, and then select from either the V-drum or Keyboard preset menus. The V-drum presets have now been universalized to work with all Roland V-drum modules. To see the keyboard key map, please visit the appendix section following this manual. This will lay out the keyboard midi notes so you can understand which kit piece is on a certain note. This key map will also load when you hit the INFO button (the little “i” icon next to the MULTIS tab). After the list of drum kits is listed, double click on one to load the kit.

When you first load a kit, the player will always ask you if you want to “replace the multi”. Simply hit “YES”.

Your drum kit multi will now load. Please keep in mind, the first time you load a kit in your session it will take longer then when you load additional kits. This is due to the fact that Kontakt Player will place kit pieces into ram cache, allowing it to load kit pieces faster.

Replacing a Drum or Cymbal in a MULTI Once you load your drum kit, you can customize it by adding or replacing drum pieces “instruments” from the SSD library. To replace a drum piece, first “x” it out by pressing the “x” button in the top right corner of the drum piece. Then go to your SSD library icon and select “INSTRUMENTS”. Navigate to your desired kit piece, and double click it. The new kit piece will replace the previously deleted piece.

Hybrid Sounds The SSD Player in Kontakt allows the user to make hybrid drum sounds by using more then one kit piece, such as using two snares to create a new snare sound. To do this, simply follow the directions above regarding kit piece replacement, but do not “x” out the first kit piece. Instead of the new kit piece appearing in place of the deleted kit piece, it will appear at the bottom of the kit pieces (you may have to scroll down to find it). If you run out of slots in the first page, you can add kit pieces to the 17-32 page by pressing the “17-32” button on the upper right. When using two drum pieces in the same output channel (such as two snares), you may have to attenuate the volume so as to not overload the channel (see Direct Mic Settings to learn how to adjust kit piece volumes).

Replacing Toms and Cymbals When replacing a tom, make sure that you replace it with a corresponding tom number. For instance, you must replace Birch Tom 1 with Maple Tom 1. If you do not do this, you will have a hybrid tom sound, and when the particular tom midi note is triggered, both tom sounds will play. For Cymbals, you will find two different crash slots, A and B. When replacing

an A slot crash, choose from the list of other A slot crashes, and same for B slot crashes.

IV. Drum Instrument Settings and Features Universal Features of All Instruments There are 5 Universal features found on the Main Mixer Page of each Instrument that can be used to alter the sound and playability of these loaded instruments in SSD 3.5. Here’s a rundown of those features. 1. Overhead Mic Settings

Overheads: On Overheads: Off

By clicking on the overhead button, you will add the overhead mic to the close mic, giving the drum a three dimensional air and warmth. All kicks, snares, and toms, and rides have this option. Since the crash, china, hi hat, and splash cymbals only use an overhead mic with no close mic, this option does not change on those instruments. If you desire a very tight and dry sound, you can experiment with turning the overhead to “off” on the drum kit pieces.. Most default preset kits have the overhead buttons “on”. 2. Room Selection Drop-Down Menu

Room: Off

Selecting “Room: Off” will leave only the close mic (and overhead mic if it is engaged) on, and there will be no room ambience on that particular drum. Room: NRG

Selecting “Room: NRG” adds the famous sound of NRG Recording’s studio A room. This room is very three dimensional and has a large sound with medium decay and smooth highs. It is great as is, but can be compressed and eq’d to customize its sound to your mixes. Room: SSD

Selecting “Room: SSD” will add what is known as the “SSD ROOM”. This room is a large concrete warehouse with very reflective walls that producer a bright, shimmery sound that was enhanced via heavy compression and eqing. The result is an extremely rich and deep sound that is somewhat reminiscent of a Lexicon reverb patch that has come to life. This room is particularly great on cymbals and snares. 3. Character Settings

Dynamics Knob

This knob will change how much dynamics the instrument will have. The higher the knob is set, the more you will hear a difference in volume from high-velocity hits to low-velocity hits. The lower the knob is set, you will hear less of a difference in volume from high-velocity hits to low-velocity hits. Think of this knob as an absolutely transparent dynamic compressor. If, for instance, the ghost notes on your snare are coming in too loud, than turn up the knob and those ghost notes will decrease in volume.

4. Direct Mics Settings

Direct Mic Volume Knob

Changing this knob will result in an increase or decrease in the direct/mic sample’s volume for the given instrument. This includes the overhead if it is engaged. It is independent of the room volume. Direct Mic Panning Knob

Changing this knob allows you to change the placement of an instrument’s direct/mic samples in the stereo field of the entire kit. This includes the overhead if it is engaged.

5. Room Mics Settings

Room Mic Volume Knob

If a room is turned on in a particular drum instrument, changing this knob will amplify or attenuate the level of the room mics. Room Mic Panning Knob

If a room is turned on in a particular instrument, changing this knob allows you to pan the instruments room mics within the stereo field of the entire kit. Playing with this knob can give you very dramatic and unique characteristics of a given instrument. Using the SSD 3.5 Effects and Envelope Pages for Instruments Each Instrument included in Steven Slate Drums 3.5 has an Effects Page and Envelope Page that allow you to adjust different audio characteristics for a given Instruments. You can switch to these different “Pages” by Clicking on the button located on top of an instrument’s picture and selcting “Page: Effects” for Distortion and EQ effects or “Page: Envelope” to adjust envelope settings for room and direct samples.

Effects Page:

Envelope Page:

Each kit piece has a distortion/tube saturation, and equalizer. Switch to the various bands of the equalizer by hitting the “band” button. Make sure the bypass eq button is not activated so that you can hear your eq changes. The envelope section has separate envelopes for the direct mics and room mics. These settings are useful to tame the decay of a long tom, or for special effects like cutting off all snare decay or cymbal decay. Instrument Specific Features Each type of drum instrument in Steven Slate Drums 3.5 has unique feature settings that allow you to enhance certain characteristics that are dependent to that specific instrument type. Kick Drum Instruments

Deep Knob Setting

By Increasing this Knob you can add more low end characteristics of a Kick Instruments. This effect is subtle, but can be useful on some mixes. Snare Drum Instruments

Tune Knob Setting

By Increasing or Decreasing this knob you can subtly change the tune of your snare. Hi-Hat Instruments

Clamp: V-Drum Button Clamp: Regular Button

Switching this button between Clamp: V-Drum and Clamp: Regular allows you to choose how the hi-hat’s clamp function works in Kontakt.

If your using a V-Drum Hi-hat such as the Roland VH-11 or controlling hihat openness and pedal function with an V-Drum Pedal such as the PD-7 or PD-8 you are going to want to use the Clamp: V-Drum setting. If you are using a Keyboard Controller than you will want to use the Clamp: Regular setting although the Clamp: V-Drum setting should also work as well. Play around with this setting to find out which setting you like the most when using a Keyboard Controller. Clamp Knob Setting

Changing this knob will increase or decrease the volume of the overall foot clamp hit over all of its velocities. This is useful when your drum part features a lot of foot clamp hat work and you need to customize its volume. Ride Instruments

Bell Knob Setting

By Changing this knob you can Increase or Decrease the Overall volume of the Ride’s Bell articulation with ease. This setting is dependent on playing

style, just like the hi-hat’s Clamp Knob, and should be changed according to your taste. For the most part you won’t have to change this setting. Crash Cymbal Instruments

True Swells: On True Swells: Off

By turning this feature to “True Swells: On” you’ll notice more natural cymbal swells or builds when using Crash Instruments. Cymbal (A Slot or B Slot) Positions

In a Full Keyboard or V-Drum Kit there are two positions that crash, splash or china cymbals can go; The (A-Slot) position and the (B-Slot) position. A Crash Cymbal, for instance, in the (A-Slot) position always has a (A) following its name. EX:

The (A) Cymbal Slot refers to the left panned Crash Cymbal

This (B) Cymbal Slot refers to the right Crash Cymbal You can have a Splash Instruments or China Instruments take over the (A) slot cymbal position in a kit as long as you select a Splash or China with an (A) at the end of its name:

Or

IMPORTANT: You can only have one (A-Slot) Cymbal and only one (BSlot) Cymbal per Drum-Kit. Please visit the advanced section to learn how to void this restriction. Add-On (X-Slot Splash/China) Instruments

You’ll notice that there are four different suffixes at the end of some of the Splash and China Instruments. These are what we call X-Slot Cymbals. Each different X slot is mapped to a particular midi note. In the case of Splash Cymbal Instruments and China Cymbal Instruments, there are four interchangeable slots to mix and match different variations of Splash/China Cymbals. Here are four of the same splash cymbal in the four different “X-Slot” positions: X-Slot A

X-Slot B

X-Slot C

X-Slot D

IMPORTANT: You can only have one Cymbal of any type in any one XSlot. So you can’t have Splash 8A (X-A) and China Small (X-A) in the same Instrument

Add-On (X) Ride Instruments

One of the main differences you will see between most V-Drum and Keyboard kits is that the Keyboard kits will always have two rides included in the full kit. On the second ride you find in the kit there should be an “(X)” which gives you the option to use a second ride cymbal. (Please see the key map to reference which notes the various x slot cymbals appear on.) Snare Articulation Instruments

Above you can see the snare articulation instruments. The sidestick is an all purpose side stick sample set that can be used on keyboard, or can be mapped for vdrum (please see mapping sidestick on vdrums). Every snare in a keyboard preset comes with a “Snare Rolls” articulation. This articulation is a real “drag” roll played by a drummer while the drum was being sampled. This articulation makes it very easy to do convincing drags and ghost notes on a keyboard.

V. Using Overall Features in Kontakt Player and Kontakt Player 3.5 Using the SSD 3.5 Channel Output Mixer With Steven Slate Drums 3.5, you not only have the ability to modify and change various controls on each individual kit piece, but you also have the ability to easily mix the final outputs of each drumkit using the OUTPUT MIXER. To open Kontakt’s Channel Output Mixer, press the button located at the top of Kontakt’s Interface that has a picture of three small faders on it. (Second button to the left)

Using the output mixer, you can control the overall levels of each kit piece and room piece. This is especially useful to control the global room ambience volumes (NRG and SSD). Each output fader has four inserts (hit SHOW INSERTS) where you can load one of numerous internal effects such as compressor, limiter, and distortion. Using the SSD 3.5 Master Editor (Master Volume) To change the Overall Volume of the entire kit use the Master Editor knob found in the Master Control section found towards the top of Kontakt’s Multi-Rack Pane. (Shown Below)

To Open the Master Control section (if not open already) please click the fourth button from the left located at the very top of the Kontakt 3.5 Interface that has a metronome and tuning fork pictured on it.

The Master Control Pane also allows you to alter the overall master tuning (or pitch) of all the instruments in the kit by using the “Master Tune” knob.

Saving Your Changes to Kits and Instruments After customizing your own drumkits, it’s important that you save it. Saving Changes to Kits

To save an entire kit, please click on the big button located on the very top of the Main Kontakt 3.5 User Insterface that has the picture of a diskette on it.

This will open up a drop down menu with a few options to scroll through

Move your mouse over and click the “save multi as...” option

A dialog box will pop up simular to this;

The current name of the loaded kit will be displayed and highlighted in the Save As: text field (Absolute Rock Kit.nkm is this case). Do not click save. If you click Save now you will be asked if you want to replace the currently existing multi.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you proceed and click replace, this will replace the default preset that comes stock with SSD. It is important to make a backup of your library folder including the MULTI and INSTRUMENTS folder so that this can never happen. To avoid replacing the default kit, just rename the multi to something else and click save. Saving Changes to Instruments

You can also save individual instrument customizations in a similar fashion. Press the save icon.

This will open up a drop down menu with a few options to scroll through

Move your mouse over and click the “save as...” option

a drop down list will pop-up showing all of the instruments you currently have in the loaded kit. Click on the Instrument in the list you wish to save. (Snare 13A for example shown below)

A dialog box will pop up simular to this;

The current name of the selected Instrument will be displayed and highlighted in the Save As: text field (Snare 13 A.nki is this case). If you click Save now you will be asked if you want to replace the currently existing instrument.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Change the name of the kit piece so that you do not replace the original preset default. The click save.

VI. Discretely Routing Drum Channels into your DAW In many cases, you will want to route individual drum channels discretely into your DAW so that you can take advantage of your DAW’s automation, plugins, and routing. This can be done with all DAWs, but the method in which to do so changes from DAW to DAW. This section will illustrate

how to properly route channels in several of the most popular DAWs. This section will also accompany our new video section at www.stevenslatedrums.com/video.html which will have updated video tutorials showing discrete routing procedures in several DAWs. Discrete Channel Routing – Pro-Tools 8 To start, Load In the Kontakt 3 plug-in Into a Software Instrument track.

After the plug-in loads, select a drumkit from either the Vdrum or Keyboard preset from the Steven Slate Drums 3.5 Library. After your kit loads, by hitting the output mixer button, you will notice 12 channel outputs are now present at the bottom of the Kontakt 3.5 GUI. They are labeled as follows; Kick, Snare, Tom 1, Tom 2, Tom 3, Tom 4, Hi Hat, Rides, Crashes, Splash/Chinas, NRG Room, SSD Room. (Configuration Shown Below) This is the preset output configuration for all available kits in Steven Slate Drums 3.5.

In Pro-Tools 8, create 11 Aux Input Tracks via the Add Track from the ProTools menu bar, under the “Track” tab. This Pop-Up (Shown Below) box will appear.

After creating the 11 Aux tracks, label the first one Snare, then Tom1, Tom2, Tom3, and so forth. Label the INSTRUMENT channel Kick. Now open up the Kontakt 3 Interface, expand the OUTPUT MIXER, and click the “RESET OUTPUT MAP, and then hit “MAKE DEFAULT”. Then, REMOVE KONTAKT FROM THE INSERT TAB. This is very important. Now, re-insert Kontakt on to the insert of the Instrument channel. Choose any drumkit from the library tab, and then hit “RESET OUTPUT MAP” on the output mixer. Route the INPUT of each Aux track to “Kontakt3” and then choose the appropriate instrument channel, for instance, for the Snare Aux, it will be: Kontakt3/Snare, for Tom1, its Kontakt3/Tom1. Please note, the Kick drum ALWAYS stays in the Instrument Channel.

When you are done manually selecting the inputs on each Aux, it’ll look like the diagram below.

This procedure only needs to be done once, and for every other kit loaded in Pro Tools, simply hitting the RESET button on the output mixer in Kontakt will allow you to route the drums to the Pro Tools channels with ease. Dicrete Channel Output Routing – Cubase 5 To get started, Make sure the “Connect Sends Automatically for each newly created Channel” option box is checked. You can find the option in the Cubase 5 VST Preferences. (Shown Below)

Now, create a new VST Instrument track within your Cubase 5 Project by going to the Devices menu tab, located at the most top of your screen (Shown Below) and choose the “VST Instruments” option from the drop down menu. You can also Push F11 to bring Up the “VST Instruments” Panel.

When The VST Instruments Panel Opens, it will look like this:

Click in the insert area which loads the plugin selection dialog. Select “Kontakt 3” Plug-in from the list.

After the Plug-In Loads, it will ask:

Click the Create Button. Load the VST Instruments Panel (F11). You will see that Kontakt 3 is button. Click on loaded. Immediately to the left of this will be a small this button to produce a window that should look similar to the figures below.

From the Drop down Menu Choose “Activate All Outputs” Now open the Kontakt interface and load a drumkit from either the Keyboard or Vdrums preset. Click on the OUTPUT mixer icon to load the output mixer. Hit the RESET OUTPUT MAP button followed by the red button labeled “Make Default”. Now REMOVE the Kontakt 3 plugin from the Instrument insert, and then replace it, AGAIN, hitting the little Outputs”.

and choosing “Activate All

Now you will see that Cubase has automatically made new output channels labeled Kick, Snare, Tom1, Tom2, etc.

Last, hit the “CONFIG” buttons under each channel in the Kontakt output mixer. This will allow you to route each channel to the Cubase mixer channels. So for instance, route the Kick channel to “kick”, Snare to “snare”, replacing each channels default which will be “kick”.

For the Snare Channel

For the Tom 1 Channel

Etc..

Discrete Channel Routing – Logic 8 - 9

To begin, add a new Software Instrument track into the currently loaded Project.

Insert the Kontakt 3 - Multi-Output (16xStereo) version of the Plugin to the newly created Software Instruments I/O Insert slot. (Shown Below)

Once the plug-in is loaded, load the kit you wish to use into Kontakt via the keyboard or Vdrum presets. Hit the outputs button to load the OUTPUT MIXER. Hit the RESET button. Now take Kontakt OFF of OUTPUT map and then the the instrument insert. Replace it back ON the insert. Load another drumkit.

Now go to Logics Mixer and press the little + button (11 times) on the lower bottom right of the Software Instrument Channel that Kontakt has been inserted.

This will create the 11 auxillary channels that will correspond to the channel outputs from Kontakt..

The Aux channels should already be routed correctly.

The initial Software Instrument track now handles the Kick Channel output from output from Kontakt, (i.e. Kontakt 3 1-2) Each additional Aux track will correspond and control each respective Kontakt channel output. For Instance, the first auxillary (Aux 1) channel you added to your Logic Mixer will now control the snare channel output (Kontakt 3 3-4), the next added auxillary (Aux 2) after that will contol Tom 1’s (Kontakt 3 5-6)Kontakt Output volume, and so on a so forth.

To make things easier, it’s good practice to name the Software Instrument track and attatched auxillary tracks to what Kontakt Channel they control after initial set-up. Your naming should look something like this. (Fig Below);

VII. Advanced Settings And Features Each drum instrument in Steven Slate Drums has various advanced settings to customize the drum’s sound and response. To get to these customizing settings, simply click on the settings button found at the bottom/middle of each instruments user interface mixer. (Shown Below)

Once this Settings button has been selected your Instruments User Interface will change to look like this;

Depending on the type of Instrument your changing the settings for, you will be presented with different options that you can change that is unique for that type of Instrument. Every Instrument Settings User Interface will have; “Humanizer”

Column

and an “Options”

Column

Humanizer The Column of settings will be the same for all Instruments and will look like this;

Advanced AMG (Anti Machine Gun) Setting

Intelligent This setting is a physically modeled mode, and will apply a unique sample selection algorithm that allows the SSD engine to choose the best samples to use, based on prior used samples, in order to produce the most humanized, and natural feel to the drum or cymbal.

Humanized This will apply a more traditional sample selection algorithm that allows the SSD engine to choose the most random samples to use, based on velocity and sample articulation, when the instrument is played in a series (like a snare fill). You will never hear the same sample consecutively play. Use this setting if the Intelligent setting isn’t suited to your taste.

Round Robin This will have the SSD engine cycle through all of the samples, according to velocity and articualtion, in a preset pattern that eventually repeats. This is the least advanced algorithm and isn’t recommended for natural response.

Velocity Random:

Min Value: This is the velocity value in which the Humanizer will start working. Variance:

This is how strong the humanizer will affect the volume or velocity while it is on.

The Column of settings will change according to instrument but for the most part Includes three main features. Instrument Remapping

The Head remapping menu allows you to customize the note in which certain articulations appear. From the drop down menu, you can change which midi note that you want the instrument and it’s particular articulations to play on the current key map. Just choose which note (or key) from the drop down menu you wish to have play the instrument and It will be automatically remapped to that location on your keyboard or key map. Velocity Curve Assignment

Change this setting to increase or decrease how your instrument plays from it’s lowest velocity to it’s highest velocity. This setting is useful due to the fact that different keyboard and edrum manufacturers have different velocity sensitivity. Use this function to customize the response so that it feels right to your needs.

Reseting the Instruments Mixer Settings

This simply resets all of the settings and options of the entire instrument to “Factory” values. IMPORTANT: This will not reset the settings and options of the whole instrument to the current kit’s default values. This is basically a last resort feature so be careful when using this setting.

Advanced MIDI Remapping

1. Kicks Using mapping options you can easily make Double Kick with two different Kicks. How to make this: 1. Set this for first Kick:

2. Set this for second Kick:

2. Snares Snare mapping options allows you to map Snares articulation. You can turn off and on all Snare articulations and you can map any articulation individually. Some examples… If you are using V-Drums without cross stick support, but you want to use Sidestick, you can map the Sidestick to Snare Rim note. Just set this in Snare mapping options:

And set this settings in Sidestick mapping options:

3. Toms Toms mapping options allows you to turn on and off the main Tom note and map the additional Tom note. So you can use up to 6 different Toms at the same time. For example, you can create 5 Toms kit using New Maple Toms set with these mapping settings for Tom 1:

And Tom 1 from Maple set with these settings:

Also you can create 5 and 6 Toms sets by tuning Toms and mapping them to notes you want.

5. Crashes Crashes mapping options also gives you a great possibilities. Some useful mapping settings… 1. With Crash mapping options you can map the Choke hit to Bow of Crash. If you’ll map the Choke hit to Bow note, you’ll get a very realistic Choke if you’ll make a very easy shot on Bow of Crash. Also you can play full Sampled Choke if you’ll make very hard shots on Bow. How to map the Choke hits to Bow note of the Crash Cymbal:

2. Also if you need more Cymbals you can map Crashes to Toms notes, like this:

5. Ride There some useful mapping options in Ride. For instance, if you are TD-3 user, you can map the Ride Edge to Crash Bow:

VIII. V-Drum Set-Up and Optimization by Dan Kirk Steven Slate Drums 3.5 provides V-Drum users with the enjoyable experience of playing the SSD drum kits via their Roland V-drums. The new 3.5 V-drum preset drum kits have been optimized to work with all Roland v-drum brains and pads. Most users will find that all of the drum kits sound and play great right out of the box. With that said, it’s impossible to have the perfect default v-drum response that will please everyone. There are many reasons for this including the obvious examples of personal preference, sensitivity levels, or threshold levels. However there happen to be a large amount of “not so obvious examples” that will cause problems for both a 500-dollar V-Drum kit and 5000-dollar V-Drum kit alike. In the following paragraph these “not so obvious examples” will be explained and how to fix the problems associated with them.

Not So Obvious Reasons Your V-Drums May Have Issues with SSD Drum Head Tuning If you don’t use V-Drums with mesh heads you can skip this section but for the users who use electronic drum pads with mesh heads you will want to make sure to read on. Unfortunately one of the main advantages of using mesh head V-Drums is also responsible for a large amount of problems associated with V-Drum playability issues. The advantage mentioned above is the ability to tune mesh heads. If you have been is the nasty situation where you can’t seem to get a certain v-drum pad to respond like it should even after a large amount of time is spent going back and fourth between sensitivity, threshold and other settings with no effective result being produced in the end, one of the most likely reasons behind this problem is that your V-Drum is tuned incorrectly. Head Is Too Loose

When the tension over the head of a v-drum is displaced, the ability for the internal drum sensor to respond to hits accurately is dramatically hindered. If the head is too loose you run into the problem of actually hitting the delicate sensor to hard which can cause miss-triggers, unrealistic trigger response and most detrimental of all, your sensor being permanently damaged. It’s hard to know when this happens so when the sensor does become damaged a lot of time may be wasted troubleshooting other possible reasons to the drum pads malfunction until your head eventually explodes. You also run the risk of ripping your mess head. So it’s a good idea test how easy it is to push the sensor down through middle of the mesh head. The sensor should always barely be touching the head at all time and is normal.

Head Is Too Tight

Alternatively, you can tune a head so tight that the sensor isn’t even being triggered when hitting the drum. This happens mostly new drum pads or pads with new heads on them more than. The reason this happens can be hopefully explained with this horrible analogy: Striking Position and Placement of Hits A common issue that affects the playability and output response of the VDrums for some people, is that the position in which they hit a certain drum or cymbal pad is incorrect. This is not to imply that they are playing drums incorrectly, but rather that they are missing sensors found in certain areas of a drum pad or accidentally hitting sensors they didn’t know were there. Following is a list of suggestions with regard to this problem

Suggestion On Where and How to Hit Certain Drum Pads. Roland PD-100/105/120/125

Some of these Snare/Tom Pads have the Rim-Shot sensor location on only one side of the drum and can only trigger accurate Rim-Shots when played on this side. To fully utilize the rim-shot you may have to have your vdrum rotated differently than you or your snare stand is used too. Your logo on the head may not be going the correct direction but at least you’ll be hitting those rim-shots correctly. Certain Cymbal Pads That Have a Bell Sensor

Some Ride and Crash V-Drum Pads have the bell sensor located only in a particular area of the bell, usually directly facing you, which could be a

problem for some people whose playing style or Cymbal placement has them hitting the far right, far left or even the back. One thing to remember is that for the most part, the sensor is usually found directly across the cymbal from the Roland Logo. This goes for Crash Cymbal Sensors. In general try to make it a habit of reading the manuals that are associated with your V-Drum pads. This could save you hours and hours of time troubleshooting problems as well as open your eyes to certain features of the pads you were not currently aware of. Time and Hardware Malfunction Like all things, over time v-drums and certain parts within them where out and won’t work as well as they should or stop working all together. The cones or padding that are found over the sensors in most v-drums are very delicate and will over time be grinded down due to the constant beatings as well unseen environmental factors. Fortunately this padding can be easily replaced yourself and is fairly cheap (20 dollars or so from Roland). Mesh-heads also wear out and stretch over time and need to be replaced. Once these things have been replaced on your old V-Drums, they should play like the day you purchased them.

Not Accurately Monitoring Your Drums The last thing to mention is monitoring. How you hear the sounds produced while performing with your V-Drums is very important and is often forgot. V-Drum produced sounds whether through SSD 3.0 tend to be monitored at much quieter volume than a standard acoustic drum kit. Because of this, some people that are used acoustic drums and then switch to V-Drums tend play much harder than they need to.

The mind expects loud noises and when it doesn’t get them when playing V-Drums, the mind unconsciously tries to compensate by telling your body that you must play harder to achieve the volume levels normally expected. This is mainly a bad habit to have because it could mess up your technique if not careful and also because of the extra force exerted, your V-Drum hardware takes more abuse than it normally should. Just being aware of this problem should help keep it from happening and for most users, will never become a problem Roland TD-20 Set-Up To make set-up a snap we suggest you do a “Reset to Factory Settings” on your TD-20. The following Suggestions are what we found to be the quickest and easiest way to maximize the V-Drum Playability using Steven Slate Drums 3.0. If you enter the settings below and are still not getting the feel you want, we suggest that before you go into the drum-brain settings, that you instead browse the “Not So Obvious Reasons Your V-Drums May Sound and Play Like Crap”. Remember these are just suggestions. Suggested Settings for the Roland TD-20 GLOBAL SETTINGS

SETUP - GLOBAL (F2) - Local Control (OFF) SETUP - CTRL (F3) - HH Note# Border (80) HI-HAT SETTINGS

TRIGGER - ADVANCE (F5) - HH Retrig - (10)

- Mask Time - (8) TRIGGER - BASIC (F2) - Threshold - (12) TRIGGER - HI-HAT (F3) - Foot Splash Sens (-10) - Noise Cancel (2)

FOR TD-9 VDRUM BRAINS, set hi hat to “EXTERNAL”.