Synthesizing drum sounds on minibrute

[mikeberger]

Hey everyone. I've heard that the minibrute can make some great drum sounds. I've looked online but I can't find any patches anywhere and I haven't the first clue how to get started.

Does anyone know of a link with some drum patches or would someone be willing to explain how to make basic drum sounds, bass, snare, cymbals etc?

Thanks in advance

[beefinator]

Rudimentary cymbals and hats are probably the easiest.  Just turn up the noise, and put the amp ADSR to 0% sustain, and adjust decay or release for the length.
You can add to this by filtering the noise.  Play around with the different filter types, and tweaking cutoff and resonance. 
With the Filter ADSR all set to minimum, turning up the Filter Envelope depth can get a click at the beginning, which can enhance the hat/cymbal some.
Also, a tiny bit of triangle with max metalizer, at high notes, can add a bit of a 808-ish metallic hiss to it.

Kicks are also pretty easy.  Best way is to set the filter to lowpass or bandpass, and close it almost all the way.  Set both the amp and filter ADSR to 0% sustain, and adjust the decay to the length of the drum sound you want.  Turn up the filter envelope depth to positive, and bump up the resonance a lot.
Fiddle around with that, and you should be able to get the filter to self-resonate at a pitch that very quickly drops, characteristic of a bass drum.

Just some starter points.

[mikeberger]

Thanks! I've got three days off after today so I'm gonna experiment and sample my results to construct some beats. Can't wait!

[beefinator]

Yeah, it's really up to experimenting.   

So much of it can depend on the exact position of a knob, that you can't possibly share presets for drum sounds and expect it to come out the same on someone else's minibrute.


Another tip - snares.  Basically, similar concept to the kick drum.  Make the filter do a decaying pitch.  But with the snare, I've found the best way to get a snappy sound is to use the brute factor.  When you have the filter doing it's oscillating resonant thing (highpass probably works best), and you add in some noise, it'll just sound like noise with a bit of a pew sound in it.  But turn up the brute factor just right, you get a little bit of overdriving that emphasizes the filter only in the beginning of the hit, which kind of simulates a real drum hit.  Hit a snare hard, and the tone of the drum head itself can overpower at first, then the actual snares fill in as the drum head dampens.  Kinda hard to explain, but it's a distinct sound.

But yeah, just spend lots of time tweaking.  The minibrute can really get impressive results if you spend the time in getting it just right.  I'm still amazed at how good I got the drums to sound in this demo I made a while back:
https://soundcloud.com/beefinator-2/minibrute-illmerica

All the drums were generated by the minibrute, no external effects (besides a little ducking for the kick drum)  Each sound was also a single patch, no layering.

[mikeberger]

Had a few neat results already. Another question though. For the kick drum sound am I going to use the noise sound as well? Thanks

[beefinator]

you could try it.  also, maybe a bit of one of the oscillators at a low pitch, to add a bit more bass ringing to the end of it.
I think for the kick in that demo I posted, I only used the filter self-resonating, though.

[beefinator]

Another thing to definitely try:

With clever use of the filter keyboard tracking knob, you can actually get it to make multiple drum sounds out of one patch.

E.g. you could make a kick sound with a LPF, so that even when you turn up the noise, it's filtered out.  But if you hit a higher note on the keyboard, with the keyboard tracking on, you can get the filter to be more open, and get some noise through to make more of a snare sound.

Also, another interesting thing is how the brute factor sort of can select between filter self-oscillation and regular oscillators; that is, a higher cutoff self-resonating filter, such as in the beginning of a kick, will overpower any oscillators playing.  But after the fast filter envelope is finished, the oscillators will come in.

An example of what I mean:
https://soundcloud.com/beefinator-2/minibrute-single-patch-auto
The LFO is modulating the cutoff with a sawtooth every other note of the arpeggiator (in the "hidden" sequencer mode).   Combined with a filter envelope, that makes a kick-like sound every other note of the sequence.  Melody+rhythm simultaneously!

[coldwar1977]

You're absolutely right about the use of the keyboard tracking knob. A while ago I made a cool patch (check it!) that strongly makes use of key tracking to add some whitenoise/snare-like thingie, but sadly I forgot how I exactly did it 

[mikeberger]

That keyboard tracking knob is one of my favourite things when making drum sounds. Using the lfo on the filter,noise, the arpeggiator, and tweaking the tracking knob I was able to get kick, snare, and melody all at the same time. It amazing how many sounds I can get out of this thing without any pedals or modules hooked up.

[yusynth]

For cymbals you can mix noise (1/2 mixer range) with the metalizer (1/3 mixer range) selecting a high pitch and modulating the metalizer with the LFO at its maximum rate or near the maximum rate. This will create the metalic characteristic of the cymbal. Have this high-pass filtered with the VCF.