Subject: RAINDRMS.mid and RAINDRMS.syx files
Author: Fred Katz (FredKatz@aol.com)
Date: April 30, 1995

This is my contribution to Greg's Rainyday collaborative JV80 
project.  Since my main instrument is drums, I decided to see if 
I could come up with an interesting drum track.  Beyond the many 
technical issues involved with uploading, downloading, and 
converting different files, the challenge of long-distance 
collaboration made this project quite fun.  

My Concept:
Because I couldn't call upon Greg to get his input whenever I came 
up with something, I tried to stay close to his stated wish that 
the drums "really flow". I also wanted to clearly articulate the 
entrance and development of his musical ideas, without getting in 
the way. The requirement that the drums not get in the way is 
especially critical, for the contributors who follows us will need 
space for their own musical ideas. Hopefully, there is enough 
support here for them to play off of. Finally, the drums had to 
GROOVE.  

Files:
RAINDRMS.mid: the Standard MIDI file containing my added-to 
RAINYDAY sequence
RAINDRMS.syx: the JV-80 Temporary/All Sys-Ex file with 
performance, patch, and rhythm data
RAINDRMS.txt: this documentation (what you're reading now).

Sequencer Set-Up:
Track  1/ Channel  1: ChorusGuitar
Track  2/ Channel  2: Lily Pad (Cute name, Greg. And nice 
sound,too)
Track 10/ Channel 10: JV-80 Preset A drumkit
Note: I took Greg's advice, and chose to throw out the starting 
point drumkit and maracas tracks, and created a drum part from 
scratch.


JV-80 Setup:
The RAINDRMS.syx, when loaded into your synth, will fill your JV 
edit buffer (the TEMPORARY area) with the correct Patch, 
Performance, and Rhythm data to play the RAINYDAY sequence.  Just 
make sure Receive Sys-Ex is set to ON, and the Device ID (the Unit 
Number) is set to 17. On the JV-80 both settings can be accessed 
as the 4th page down under the MIDI menu; you must be in Play mode 
(not Edit) to access this menu.

For documentation, here are the drums used:

                    MIDI  TVA
DRUM SAMPLE         NOTE  LEVEL
Verb Kick...........D5....122
Cross Stick 1.......C#2...127
Piccolo Sn..........B3....127
Power Tom Hi........C3....127
Power Tom Hi........B2....127
Power Tom Hi........A2....105
Power Tom Lo........G2....127
Power Tom Lo........F2....114
Ride Bell 1.........F3....111
Crash...............C#3...127
Closed Hat 1........F#2...127
Open Hat 1..........A#2...103
REV SN 1............A5....127

Other than TVA levels, these are the stock JV80 drumkit sounds.  
Following in the sprit of Greg's ChorusGuitar patch, no effects 
(chorus/reverb) are used.  The drums should sound fine as they 
are.  Actually, I should amend that somewhat.  IMHO, the cymbal 
samples on the JV80 are are about the trashiest sounding I've ever 
heard.  They sound like they were sampled at 11kHz, tops.  I have 
found this to be true of the Rock Drums PCM card as well, after 
auditioning it at a local music emporium.  Nothing I have tried 
has been successful at changing their essential "garbage-can lid" 
nature.  That said, in the context of full mix, the trashiness of 
the cymbals is not that noticeable.  But taken by 
themselves...yeech. 

Overall, as a drummer, I feel the actual drum samples are the JV-
80 are pretty good.  They don't compare in sparkle and response 
to, say, the sounds on an Alesis D4 (my preferred drum module), 
but they are good recordings of good-sounding drums, and have 
plenty of punch. The lack of sparkle probably comes from the same 
11k frequency ceiling as with the cymbals, but generally speaking, 
drums don't need as much top end as cymbals.  What redeems the JV-
80 for me as a percussion module is (1) the complete editablity of 
the drumkit sounds, (2) the ability to use any JV waveform in a 
drumkit sound, and (3) the inclusion of the reverse drum samples.  
The reverse sounds are fun to work with and very useful, 
especially in fills (I ended using one reverse sample in RAINDRMS 
in a fill).  A tip on using reverse samples: try to synchronize 
the release of the sample with the attack of another, forte, 
percussion sound. Thus the reverse sound will appear to lead into 
the forte sound.  This will take some trial and error, because the 
MIDI duration of the reverse note won't correspond to actual 
amplitude rise-rate of the sample.  Another use for reverse 
samples is to create pretty realistic rolls.

The Part levels I have set for the mix so far are: 
Chorus Guitar, 62;, Lily Pad, 73; and DrumKit, 112.  
Of course, these levels are subjective-- I like to hear drums 
loud-- and with only three parts,there's still lots of room for 
experimentation. However, I've tried to make sure the first two 
parts were always clearly audible against all the drums going on.  
I also set the drumkit at a lower-than-maximum level (112, vs 127) 
so it has somewhere to go if other parts make it necessary to add 
level later.

Voice Allocation:
4 voices should be fine for a reserve setting, because drummers 
have only 4 voices (limbs) that can speak (play) at any one time. 
But at fast tempos, a higher setting may be necessary, because the 
sustain portion of one sample can overlap the attack portion of a 
following sample. So if you increase the tempo of this piece, you 
may notice some voice stealing in a dense passage, unless you 
increase the voice allocation.
  

Playback requirements:
Play it loud! 
A system with good bass will bring out the power of the kick and 
toms. 

How I did it:
I imported Greg's Standard MIDI file into my sequencer (Opcode's 
Musicshop 1.02, running on a Mac IIci).  Monitoring Greg's 
ChorusGuitar and Lilypad "backing" tracks, I recorded a new drum 
track, which was basically played live via drum pads. The pads are 
mostly old Remo practice pads to which I have attached piezo-
electric transducers.  The transducers put out a trigger signal, 
which goes to a D4 which does the trigger-to-MIDI conversion.  The 
MIDI output of the D4 went to the sequencer.  After laying down 
the live drum track, I went back into the sequence and moused up 
all the mistakes and tweaked the track until it was just right.  
So actually, I did not use the JV80 directly to write this part, 
although of course, it was the drum sounds inside the JV80 that I 
was using and hearing at all times.  

The final Musicshop sequence was exported to a Standard MIDI file, 
and saved as RAINDRMS.mid. I bulk dumped the final JV-80 
TEMPORARY/ALL configuration to the Mac, using Bulk Sysex Utility 
1.02, and saved this file as RAINDRMS.syx. This documentation was 
written in Microsoft Work 5.1a, and saved as RAINDRMS.txt.
