Bezier velocity curve

[thenewdrummer]

Can someone explain how it works and how should I set its values?

I'm trying to calibrate my pad (side mesh trigger) and I can't seem to have a good response. At first the sound is good but it goes to 127 pretty fast. I do a small roll and the sound is going up real fast. I suppose it's the velocity?

Also when I calibrate how hard should I hit the pad? I watched the video, it doesn't seem that hard but I get the result explained before. If I go harder the gain is very low and I have to hit the pad really hard to produce a decent sound.

[Rob]

The velocity curve is not going to fix your issue. What is the gain set at?

[thenewdrummer]

The velocity curve is not going to fix your issue. What is the gain set at?

It depends how hard I play when I calibrate. It varies a lot.
So I'm not sure if I do it correctly. Where should it be?

[thenewdrummer]

I recalibrated it.

Gain for snare is 7.9 and floor Tom is 11.4

But it's still reaching the maximum sound easily

[thenewdrummer]

I redid it another time hitting a little bit harder and the gain is now 3.7 for the snare.

The range of notes is really better but it sounds almost too low or soft when playing gently.

[MWJT42]

The velocity curve is not going to fix your issue. What is the gain set at?

It depends how hard I play when I calibrate. It varies a lot.
So I'm not sure if I do it correctly. Where should it be?

My understanding is, hit it ALL the hardness that you intend to play it. The whole range.

The auto calibration isn't perfect, but does serve as a useful starting point for setting up your pads.

It's ok to then manually adjust gain, threshold to get the levels you're expecting. (scan, hold and decay to manage your double triggering and overall response to the level).

The curve is then the way smooths this out to feel like playing a linear progression of velocity (smoothly playing soft to loud).

In your example of quickly ramping up, then you would pull the right hand side up, to give a plateau to the top, so that for every increase in velocity it senses at the loud end (left to right) the response is more gradual on the output (bottom to top) e.g. It senses an increase of '10' velocity, but you feel it was only a '5', so you can slow down the rate of increase (at the high end only, the slope will have to compensate somewhere by being steeper).


You can then further smooth this out in your software too, if eDRUMin isn't giving you exactly what you want, although it's recommended to get it right in eDRUMin if you can. MDrummer's hidden Midi input calibration is an excellent example, if anyone uses that.

[monospace]

I set my gain manually, and always as low as possible. It’s between 1.5 and 2.5 for most pads, a little higher on the cymbals, going up to 5 for difficult ones like the CY-5. It’s counterintuitive, but lower gain (“Sensitivity” on a Roland module) gives you the most dynamic range. Cranking it up too high gives you the result you’re getting: you’re reaching maximum velocity at really soft strokes.

The curves are just for evening out the range. I use a gentle logarithmic curve, so that lighter strokes are a little louder, and harder strokes a little softer. But you gotta first have your gain set properly for that to be most effective.

[thenewdrummer]

The velocity curve is not going to fix your issue. What is the gain set at?

It depends how hard I play when I calibrate. It varies a lot.
So I'm not sure if I do it correctly. Where should it be?

My understanding is, hit it ALL the hardness that you intend to play it. The whole range.


The curve is then the way smooths this out to feel like playing a linear progression of velocity (smoothly playing soft to loud).

So I have to do ghost notes and all accented note?
In the video for adding dual pad zone he seems to hit it always the same velocity. (mine is single zone)

[thenewdrummer]

I set my gain manually, and always as low as possible. It’s between 1.5 and 2.5 for most pads, a little higher on the cymbals, going up to 5 for difficult ones like the CY-5. It’s counterintuitive, but lower gain (“Sensitivity” on a Roland module) gives you the most dynamic range. Cranking it up too high gives you the result you’re getting: you’re reaching maximum velocity at really soft strokes.

The1 curves are just for evening out the range. I use a gentle logarithmic curve, so that lighter strokes are a little louder, and harder strokes a little softer. But you gotta first have your gain set properly for that to be most effective.

That's what I observed when my gain was low. The range was really good but for soft hit the sound is really low compared to a real snare.

Maybe it's just another setting for the volume that I'm not aware of. On my alesis module I have a velocity and volume settings. Is there a volume setting in it?

BTW I'm using ezdrummer if it makes any differences.

[monospace]

You have to make sure that your drums are up to proper levels in EZDrummer (or SD3, or wherever) first. So load up a loop, something with nice dynamics, and adjust levels until everything sounds the way you want.

Then, adjust your settings on the eDRUMin, making sure you get the most dynamic range out of a pad. In the bottom right of the Curves panel, you can see the velocities it sends out. Ideally this goes from near zero on your softer hits all the way up to 127 when you whack it real hard. I've found that most pads don't respond quite linearly though, so the curve I use boosts the softer velocities until it sounds more natural to me.

Screenshot of my snare pad settings (just as a reference for the above, it's quite likely that your pad responds very differently.)

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