Steel Drum template

[muses]

Hey folks.

 

I am working on a project where I needed to emulate the sound of someone rolling away on the steel drums.

 

This is pretty solid and works much better with drum pads, rather than keyboard input, but either will work fine.

 

It's all based on delays, so you'll have to have the project running; however, it's not syncing to the project's tempo, as that's not how a performer would play the rolls.

 

I created two instances of the EXS24 steel drum and slightly detuned one from the other, to give it a richer sound. The way the environment object works is that at the end of the chain it alternates note on messages between the two instruments. I found this to be much more stable than using a single instrument, because notes are playing very fast and there's a lot of overlap, which caused all sorts of mayhem.

 

Anyway, feel free to have fun with it, and I hope it's useful for someone else out there. If you have a better way of making this work, I'd love to hear it.

 

Peace to all.

Steel Drums Template Files.zip

Updated 2/11/11

Edited February 11, 2011 by muses

[muses]

Oh, I forgot to mention, make sure the track you select is the one called "Steel Drum", as that's what's connected to the incoming instrument object in the environment.

[muses]

Thanks to Tragibigzanda for some valuable feedback.

 

I have updated the Logic template zip file above to include two channel strip settings, as well as having fixed up the original Logic file so that it should be much more clear what's going on. Apologies if there was any confusion.

 

To use this in a new project, do the following.

 

1. Download the ZIP file above to a local drive and extract its contents.

2. Put the channel strip settings (CST files) in "~/Library/Application Support/Logic/Channel Strip Settings/Instrument"

3. In your project, open the Environment window and import the Steel Drum layer from the Steel Drum Logic file extracted in Step 1 above

4. The Steel Drum Environment layer gets added to your project, but you'll notice that the Instrument channel strips have nothing instantiated on them. Click on the Channel Strip Setting button at the top of each channel strip and load up the "Caribbean Steel Drums - Rolling 1" & "Caribbean Steel Drums - Rolling 2" settings, which should appear at the top of your settings list.

5. Assign the Steel Drum instrument on the Steel Drum layer to a track in the Arrange Page

6. Press play and let the rolling begin

[OH SO L3G1T]

After step 3 is very confusing can you make really noob-ish step-by-step instructions ???

[muses]

1. Download the ZIP file above to a local drive and extract its contents (on a Mac that simply means double-click it).

2. Put the channel strip settings (the .CST files) in "~/Library/Application Support/Logic/Channel Strip Settings/Instrument"

3. In your project, open the Environment window (Command-8)

4. At the top of the Environment window you'll see a local menu. Click on Options > Import Environment > Layer ...

5. In the next dialog box, navigate to where you saved the "Steel Drum.logic" file in Step 1 above and click Open.

6. An Import Layer dialog box appears. In the Layer drop-down menu, select Steel Drum. This will import the Steel Drum Layer to your project.

7. You should now see two Software Instrument channel strips on the layer called (Inst 1 and Inst 2). At the top of the channel strips, there is a button that reads "Setting". Click on Inst 1's Setting button and in the menu that appears, you should see the "Caribbean Steel Drums - Rolling 1" right after the "Delete Channel Strip Setting" function. Make sure you followed Step 2 to the letter, or this won't be the case.

8. Repeat Step 7 for Inst 2, but this time select "Caribbean Steel Drums - Rolling 2"

9. Go to the Arrange Page (Command-1)

10. Create a new External Midi track (Option-Command-N) -- make sure the Open Library is checked, and click Create.

11. After creating it, that track will automatically be selected in the Arrange Page. Also, the Library tab opens in the Media Panel on the right-hand side of the Arrange Page. Click on the Other Object folder, and you should see the Steel Drum object appear on the right-side of the panel.

12. Click on the Steel Drum object (this assigns the object to the selected midi track).

13. Since this works using Delay Line objects, it means that you won't hear the effect unless you're playing your project, so press play (Spacebar) and play away on your midi controller. I prefer drum pads, but anything will do, really.

 

I hope this clarifies it all for you, OSL. Let me know if you need further explanation... I'll be happy to help.

[OH SO L3G1T]

i followed the instructions to a "T" and when i go to change the settings on INST 1 and 2, it says caribbean steel drums not found i re-downloaded the file but no luck. i opened the actual logic file steel drums.logic and it sound like a synth rather than a steel drums:

 

i'm assuming its supposed to sound like this?

[muses]

i followed the instructions to a "T" and when i go to change the settings on INST 1 and 2, it says caribbean steel drums not found i re-downloaded the file but no luck. i opened the actual logic file steel drums.logic and it sound like a synth rather than a steel drums:

This is very strange. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with your installation of Logic.

 

Try this:

1. Open an instance of the EXS24

2. Click in the window at the top where you see three dashes

3. Go to 10 World > 03 Caribbean > Caribbean Steel Drums

 

Do you see that?

 

i'm assuming its supposed to sound like this?

 

Yes, it should, assuming everything works above.

[OH SO L3G1T]

nope the steel drums didn't show up! i think my version of logic is missing some instruments though which might be the problem. Thanks for the help though!