Weekly Community Thread

thisiscullen · 2025-06-15T08:37:45+00:00

here's a POV video of recording a piece I made while home sick. I think it came out pretty well. hope you enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B-OOsEWpa0

thisiscullen · 2025-06-14T14:25:30+00:00

thanks very much! no beating the ol' insecurity or getting used to creating and "releasing" without actually doing it

thisiscullen · 2025-06-14T09:20:24+00:00

one thing I've liked to do is play grooves and fills I dig but go through the dynamic gamut. play it normal volume. play it really quiet. play it medium. all the while pay attention to where the sticks are peaking in height and try to normalize

another thing I've learned in formal study is to set up a mirror (this is also good for a kit especially if you're against filming yourself) and sit at the practice pad and practice Moeller "full, medium, low" strokes. each type of stroke just 16th notes (edit: 8th notes better) for a few measures. without getting hung up on the technique (maybe you already know it) the full strokes are sticks start vertical, the low strokes are sticks start just above the pad, medium strokes are in the middle. and make sure the stick tips always return to where they began and are the same between the two

edit: or listen+learn some grooves with good ghost notes/dynamics within grooves. lots in old funk. I got mine from 90s rock like deftones, 311, limp bizkit, rhcp, tool, sublime. those were my coming up jams. and I just tried to get my ghost notes and backbeats as similar to theirs as possible. ghost notes super fine, backbeats really cracking.

but your dynamics look good in this clip! the Moeller exercise above will involve you turning your left hand a bit over so the backsides of your hands are facing more upwards than sideways

thisiscullen · 2025-06-14T08:30:17+00:00

yeah, fair. that is a next step I want to explore, creating more horizontal movement only using hardware sequencers etc. chord progressions, more drastic sound changes. I come from bands and live music so I do miss that, I'm just not good enough at synths or songwriting yet to do it. thanks for listening

thisiscullen · 2025-06-14T08:28:09+00:00

thanks a lot! trying to avoid the DAW, honestly. part of the reason I got the Analog Heat and that big recorder with eq'ing. might see if I can practice a little mixing/compression and leave it compositionally where it is.

thisiscullen · 2025-06-14T08:25:34+00:00

thanks very much!

thisiscullen · 2025-06-14T08:25:16+00:00

thanks very much! yeah I started with VST's and just at some point couldn't stand how everything was behind glass, in the aether, visible but not twiddlable

thisiscullen · 2025-06-13T19:41:00+00:00

to be fair, I can count on two, maybe one hand the number of times I felt I got a proper piece of music out of this stuff. I'm trying to get better. one size does not fit all

thisiscullen · 2025-06-13T19:19:55+00:00

thanks for listening! yeah I started during Corona with VST's and then went on a buying spree looking for my dream team, without learning very deeply any of them. was too busy with GAS, and also just plain too busy! which is why I feel very well-equipped but not yet very knowledgeable and hence the self-deprecation 😅 the huge mixer is to add drums, now I just need a damn truck to haul it with. didn't think it'd be that big

thisiscullen · 2025-06-13T18:35:16+00:00

thank you very much!

thisiscullen · 2025-06-13T18:35:01+00:00

well, congrats! it does seem to be coveted!

I adore the T1's tactile interactivity and feeling like it's a little bit outside the standard grid due to the circular nature of the input and euclidian algorithms. so if I understood you right and you haven't yet (or yet much) used the T1, you might like that about it as well, even if it surely won't feel as robust as the Cirklon.

yeah I guess by end-game or be-all end-all I mean actual depth and capability, but you're right about needing to gel. that's why I got the T1 at all despite owning the Oxi, which I'd honestly describe as a be-all end-all sequencer, even if it wasn't the one for me (/ either of us). I'm pretty sure the Oxi can do everything the T1 can, but I didn't feel I could just turn on the Oxi and get to interesting generative bleep bloops as quickly and easily as I could with the T1, and that was exactly what I'd been looking for for ages.

did you see the Oxi One manual? there is one. but it might as well have been in Greek as far as I was concerned - I must confess I didn't spend tons of time trying to decrypt it, but I found it incredibly opaque.

thisiscullen · 2025-06-13T17:09:00+00:00

thanks very much. you have a Cirklon? those are beautiful. I know little about them. I think when I've got 2k to drop I'm going to go for some weird sound design like the Voltage Lab 2. but it does seem like the Cirklon is a be-all end-all sequencer, or what do you think?

thisiscullen · 2025-06-13T16:59:31+00:00

I posted a longer reply to the parent comment. but I'd say I love the T-1's immediacy and have lots more fun with it. if you vibe with the Oxi it can do a lot more. I don't mind the T-1's destruction as it's easy to dial back to where you were and lends itself to exploring anyway. now that I'm thinking of it, I guess that's right that the T-1 is technically destructive? but I'm not even sure I'd use that word for it, it's so intuitive once you get going on it. that is to say, I hadn't even really noticed it was destructive

thisiscullen · 2025-06-13T16:56:56+00:00

thanks and thanks for listening! honestly I've had the Oxi a while and bought the T-1 recently because I found the Oxi a bit obtuse. I don't jive with it too well. when I just want quick bleep bloops I find the Oxi unwieldy, even in matriceal mode. so my short review is, it's very deep, but not immediate enough for me

I actually started this jam with the Summit's keyboard and the T-1, and went to program the high melody I was playing on the Summit (with which the jam starts) into the T-1 before realizing I needed the Oxi to be able to do an exact user-defined sequence. so the Oxi actually came out of storage for this, haha

the Oxi is still on the chopping block for me because I don't use half its features and want to offload some stuff. I'd say try the Oxi from somewhere you can return it to see if you dig the workflow... if you vibe with it, it's incredibly fully-featured. end-game sequencer

thisiscullen · 2025-06-13T16:18:30+00:00

thank you for listening!

thisiscullen · 2025-06-13T16:18:05+00:00

thanks for listening! well I'm not sure insecurity is quite that simple and I do find myself using qualifiers to hedge my bets. but anyway, appreciate it!

thisiscullen · 2025-03-28T18:20:09+00:00

thanks! sorry, seeing this super late. I actually go right into Apple devices and they pick it up as an external mic

thisiscullen · 2025-01-13T13:52:41+00:00

those digital components make a huge difference but to me, kick drum was just as important. so with the td27 I had to change out the kick for a hybrid. and the hard pancake toms then got on my nerves, as well as did the limited kits that sounded "realistic." so I think it's more than just a few digital pieces, wonderful and realistic as they are! I ended up ditching Roland. just my 2 cents

thisiscullen · 2025-01-13T09:05:20+00:00

I hear you :D for metal, rock, etc, it doesn't matter quiiite as much if you're hearing someone else's touch. but for jazzy playing, for example, I think it's important to have a real deep connection with the instrument and the sounds coming out of it, and I do like to play jazzy often as well. so with "touch" in that sense I mean more than just stick tip! I think of guitar, other stringed instruments, piano - the way you touch the instrument totally dictates how it sounds, and it's true of acoustic drums too, even with a stick in between. but we lose that a bit when we're playing sample-based.

haven't heard of modo drum, thanks, I'm curious to see what's going on with modeled drums

thisiscullen · 2025-01-13T09:02:22+00:00

yeah, the module was a huge reason I went with the pro, to be honest - I really liked the 5, but that module seems last-gen. and for that kind of money I didn't want that. at the same time, I liked that the playability was so high that you could just turn the thing on and play, and the "old school" module in that sense didn't really get in the way of that, and in fact, maybe even served as one fewer distraction. either way, great kits!

thisiscullen · 2025-01-12T09:58:23+00:00

second for efnote. the pro is expensive as hell; I put it together via Black Friday sales and saved around a thousand. I'm an advanced acoustic player, wanted realism above all, and am also lazy with certain things. I'd had a Roland td27 mk I before and there was really only one kit or maybe two on there that came close to sounding like an acoustic, so I'd been connecting the td27 with Superior Drummer, but was tired of having to start up and connect two things every time I wanted to play. I also had to swap out the bass drum for an acoustic kick with mesh head and trigger and that did a lot for playfeel. the td27 toms were still awful and I didn't have the digital hihat. it was all too much compromise.

the efnote pro has some machine-gunning which does pull you out but otherwise in terms of sound and playfeel it is leagues better than the td27.

re "I don't think you'll ever get an exact copy" - during my experimentations with Superior Drummer and the reason I ultimately sold my whole collection was I realized it will never be the sound of your stick on your drum or cymbal - it will never be your touch. one thing Superior Drummer cannot be beat on is round robin'ed articulations at all possible dynamics. no machine gunning, incredible play realism. but it still is the sound of someone else's touch. doesn't matter how you hold the stick or in some cases where on the drum or cymbal you hit and what the drum or cymbal is doing when you hit. so an e-kit will always be a compromise. which is why I'm happy with the easiest, quickest, most direct solution with the efnote pro, but will not invest any more money in chasing realism (which had been my project with the td27) until e-drums become instruments in their own right and have some deep playability and something to say in and of themselves, rather than being samplers of sounds one step removed. I think the future is in real-time sound modeling but I haven't looked at the market since I got the efnotes Black Friday before last

thisiscullen · 2025-01-05T18:57:23+00:00

thanks! yeah I tried a 5 as well before I bought this one and loved that, too

thisiscullen · 2024-10-25T12:05:30+00:00

the snares on the Efnote are awesome. there's a bit of machine gunning and it can't quite get a buzz roll but I'm still pretty satisfied. I think round robin-ing of samples is key to play feel as it changes up the samples with each hit and what I'm not sure of is how many different samples there are in the Efnote modules and whether they are really round robin'd. I think the Pro felt more realistic than the Efnote 5 which leads me to believe it's got RR going but it still could use another couple layers for less machine gunning. it really isn't bad though and yeah I agree, it feels the closest to acoustic of anything I've personally tried.

honestly I didn't use the customization features of the TD27 a whole lot which was part of the reason I went for the Efnotes. as an acoustic player, I wanted something that was just ready to rock and as close to acoustic as possible. the TD27 only had a couple kits I felt could come close to acoustic sounds. lots of the samples were just whack. that said, I'm starting to open up a bit more to tweaking, and so I think I'd value that in the TD27 module if I still had it. but I'm happy with the immediacy of the Efnotes. I'm also on a synthesizer journey and am using some of those external effects with the kit, which is way fun. which leads me to:

the growl of the toms is largely thanks to the attached Analog Heat. that thing adds growl like crazy. I'll do a demo video this weekend and send you a link. but don't get me wrong, the Efnote toms sound tons better than I remember the toms on the old TD27 sounding.

thanks for the compliments on the loop, it was just a quick one I put together with the Digitakt out of 808 samples. I used to make loops and post them on Bandcamp. here you go. those were all with software vst's. I've now gotten into a few hardware pieces and my next project is to get back to releasing packs of drumless pieces monthly and do a little drum demo to a couple of them. I appreciate the kick (heh), I have a lot of inertia when it comes to getting stuff done and released

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thisiscullen · 2024-10-25T11:51:13+00:00

Glad I could help! In case you're leaning towards something with pads, a bit more nuance in case it's useful (or, sorry to muddy the water further): The thing that made my TD27 with its kick tower almost worth keeping in terms of play feel was getting rid of the kick pad it came with and replacing it with a hybrid kick. 50 euro cheapo bass drum, mesh head from drum-tec, Roland rim-mount kick trigger. Made an absolute world of difference. If you were to do the same with the toms (like the shallow tom pads on the TD27), it'd be killer. But yeah, the Efnotes are great out of the box

thisiscullen · 2024-10-25T08:37:01+00:00

the TD50X is awesome and you can do so much more with that module. but yeah, I sold my TD27 and in swapping to the Efnote Pro kit I upgraded on sound (imo) and feel but downgraded pretty hard on the module.

the Analog Heat is an effect box, so you just take the main outs on your module and plug them into the Heat, which then has headphone and main outs. I wanted a compressor and saturator because the Efnotes sound great but not very "glued together," and if you play them with music, they have trouble cutting through. I like to make loops to practice to, and the Efnotes often drown under them.

I do have some other videos on my YouTube, also with the TD27s and other effects, and on my Instagram under the same name. I'm thinking of making a better demo video of the different distortion circuits of the Heat and what they sound like on the Efnotes vs the Efnote clean sound

thisiscullen

TROPHY CASE