runagate_erratic2_sound_design_tutorial_draft_version.pdf

sound design tutorial

for de la mancha's erratic²

First things first: erratic² is a drum sampler instrument plug-in in VST format

with randomization powers. Unlike the first version of erratic there is no step

sequencer. There are 15 drum pads each of which can load up to 6 layers of

samples. It has the ability to randomize velocity, pan position, hit probability and

"repeat" on a per-pad basis as well as velocity modulation for pitch, volume

envelope, lowpass filter cutoff, lowpass envelope, swing, chance-of-repeat and

repeat feedback.

If it is not obvious what you can do with these powers that is what this

tutorial is for. To get you up and running building your own randomization-

enabled drum kit presets as quickly as possible. This is not intended to be a user

manual, has not been vetted by the author of the plug-in (my evil ally de la

Mancha) and any errors are the responsibility of myself only. I'll try to do away

with technical jargon for this tutorial and write it down to the level of a beginner

whenever possible.

part 1 - erratic² quick start guide

Let's start with something simple. On the upper right of the GUI (graphical

user interface, pronounced "gooey" unfortunately, means the image of the plug-

in) is the "gain" control slider.

This controls the overall volume output of the plug-in, whereas each drum

pad has it's own individual volume control. This way you can compensate for

having loud of soft samples in the drum kit you're creating. For instance when I

made the "runa 3am fried kit" the samples I was using for kick drums were much

softer than the other samples, so I just turned all the other ones down and

cranked the "gain" control.

Here's a pair of very important controls that seem innocuous at first on the

middle of the top of the GUI:

Because erratic² loads your samples into your computer's RAM sometimes it

needs to be flushed out to hear the samples you just loaded. If you're hearing the

previously loaded samples instead of the ones you've added, simply hit the

"reload" button. Whether this is necessary depends on what host software you're

using.

The "all" button is very important. Each drum pad strip of controls has a

mute and a solo button. If you solo a drum pad to, for instance, hear it while

you're editing it's controls you'll need to hit "all" to hear all the drum pads again.

If you seem to mysteriously hear only one drum layer, just hit that "all" button.

To the left of those controls are these buttons:

If your PC is bogging down from too many processes running at once and

having huge samples loaded, try using these to tone it down. erratic² can load

stereo .wav files and plays stereo files by default. If you hit the "mono" button,

which turns it blue, then the files play in mono thus halving the power needed to

play them. The "quality" drop-down box can also help free up computer power,

though I use it aesthetically - the lower you set the quality, the more the drums

sound bitcrushed. This setting does appear to get saved in a preset so you can

use it as an extra special effect.

OK, let's load some samples already. Every drum pad has this strip of

controls:

The number on the left is the number of the drum pad. There are 15 pads.

Each pad can load 6 layers. We'll get to that shortly. When you click on the

number it allows you to edit the all those controls on the right side of the GUI for

that pad. That's really important. If you start twiddling the knobs on the right

make sure you've got the drum pad number selected that you intend to edit.

The next control is labeled "midi" and denotes what midi note will trigger

this particular drum pad. It can be dragged up and down like a slider. If you don't

know what midi note number is represented by a particular key just hit the key

you want to assign this drum pad to and conveniently it'll show up in the lower left

of the GUI:

Next comes the "layer selection" buttons. They are labeled 1 through 6.

When selected the button turns blue. The appropriate layer must be selected for

you to load the sample you want in that layer. I'll return to that in a second. But

make sure to have the right layer selected when you go to load a sample. Luckily

the name of the sample loaded appears to the right of these controls in a blue

font when you select a layer. If there's no word, there's no sample in that slot.

Underneath the "layer selection" buttons are three labeled "vel", "cyc" and

"rnd" which stand for velocity, cycle and random, respectively. When the

"velocity" button is highlighted hitting a drum pad will play the sample loaded into

the layers in order of how hard you're hitting the key or drum pad (or sequencer

or whatever) from left to right. That is 6 represents hardest hit, 1 represents

lowest velocity. So load your samples into the layers with that in mind. These

layers will come into play once again utilizing some cool tricks with the velocity

and randomization effects.

The "cyc" or cycle, when selected, causes the samples loaded into the

active layers to play in order, cycling around in a, well, circle. This can be used for

cool effects such as using non-percussive sounds, making sure all the sounds get

played regardless of the velocity they're played at. Also, uneven numbers of

samples make for a nice contrary rhythmic effect. You could for instance use 6

small variations on a percussion sample and play them in "cyc" mode and it'd

introduce a natural sounding variation to your player.

The "rnd" or random mode is much the same, except it plays the number of

selected layers at random, in no particular order. Also very good for natural

variation, or for strange chaotic effects. Depends on what you've got loaded in

there.

To the right of the layer selection buttons is a box labeled "layers" with a

number beneath it. The number can be dragged up and down like a slider. It

represents the number of layers that the drum pad will play, counting from the

lowest: e.g. if "3" layers are selected, then the samples in layer slots 1, 2 and 3

will play and the rest will remain silent. If you load a bunch of samples into each

layer and forget to drag the "layers" control number upwards the pad will just

keep playing the first sample loaded only.

Next is the "load" control. Click this to load the sample you'd like in the

selected layer. It opens a window that lets you navigate around in Window's

browser to find the samples you want to load. Very important: the presets

remember where you loaded the samples from, so if you move the samples later

or change the folder's name the plug-in won't know about it! Thus it's a good idea

to copy whatever sample folder you're going to use into the VST folder where

you've put erratic² so they'll always be where you expect them. erratic² does not

have the ability to audition samples from this browser! You've got to listen to

them some other way or do like I do, load some samples in, select cycle mode,

and hit the trigger arrow to hear what you've got.

Just below the "load" control are two buttons labeled "n" and "r" which stand

for "normalized" and "reverse." The reverse button, when toggled, makes all the

samples play in reverse. A good control to latch to a hardware midi button when

playing live. The normalization control normalizes all the samples in that drum

pad strip. Basically that means that they get turned up to their highest peak's

maximum volume without clipping. In velocity mode erratic² applies a volume

attenuation to the layers such that 1 is quietest and 6 is loudest so turning off the

normalization could "make them quieter still" so says the user manual.

The rightmost controls on each drum strip are the name of the loaded

sample for the selected layer and a little readout that tells you how long the

loaded sample is. This is useful for when you edit the volume envelope and

lowpass filter envelope controls.

Beneath the sample name is a little arrow facing rightward. This is the

"trigger" for the drum strip. This plays at maximum velocity, so it'll play whatever

sample layer is the highest currently selected in velocity mode, so if you've got

"4" selected on the "layers" control, you're going to hear the sample loaded in

layer 4 when you hit the trigger. To audition the samples I have loaded I turn on

the "cyc" mode temporarily to make sure I'm hearing all the samples to make sure

I've got them in the right order.

Next on the drum pad are the last four controls. "Cut" and "by" are "choke

groups" which in sampler parlance means that if you select one drum pad to "cut"

group a (there's 4 groups possible, a, b, c & d, which you can select by dragging

up and down on the dash to the right of the "cut" or "by" label) and another layer

to be cut "by" a then every time the first drum pad plays it'll "choke" the second

layer, causing it to fall silent. This is typically done to make a closed hi-hat

sample choke an open hi-hat sample. I say typically because you can use this

functionality for all sorts of interesting effects, especially when you've loaded a

bunch of long samples instead of short drum hits.

Finally on the far right of the drum pad are the "s" and "r" controls which

represent solo and mute, respectively. The solo button makes it so that only the

soloed drum pad is heard, muting all others. The mute button, conversely,

silences the drum pad. Simple. But remember the "all" button at the top, hit it

when you want to hear the entire kit again.

Oh, yeah, now we're getting to the fun stuff. Every time you select a drum

pad it changes the available controls on the right side of the GUI to allow you to

edit the extra controls for just that pad. Before you start changing all your edited

controls look to the left and make sure you've got the right drum pad selected.

It's the number that's lit up. Plus, you can see the name of the sample loaded in

the selected layer so you can navigate the large amount of samples more easily.

Top left: "velocity" knob. Velocity does not mean volume in the midi world,

but how hard the key is being struck or whatever's analogous. Underneath the

knob is a "rnd" control. You can make the velocity per hit up to 100% random!

Next to the right: pan. Controls where the sound comes from in the stereo

field. Underneath another "rnd" control. I don't quite understand how erratic²

knows when a new layer is triggered, but this control not only determines

randomly where the sound originates in the stereo field, but changes it when a

new layer is triggered if the "repeat" effect is active... makes for some

wonderfully chaotic bouncing around!

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