Has anyone created a really authentic steel drum preset? I’ve watched a few tutorials, but they didn’t sound right and none of my experiments at creating one has been very satisfying either.
As a general advice: have you tried to cut a sample of the drum’s tail, drop it on an oscillator in Vital, set the window to a large value to capture more inharmonic partials and then fiddle with that to make the patch change in time as a real drum does, comparing to a spectrum view of the full drum sample? You’d probably need to use different FFT window lengths to see some of the details.
Maybe a sample of the attack would be useful (dropping it into a sample player) if it’s too complicated to figure it out with reasonable effort.
It took me just a couple hours to fiddle with a recording of crickets at sea to make a patch which sounds reasonably naturalistic to me, though crickets are way simpler; in that case there were just three frequency peaks there.
P. S. It well might be the case steel drums of different sizes have different partials. But probably not that much! That’d be a matter of elaborations if it’s true; it’s probably the best to start with a single drum’s spectrum and match its tail, then attack, then all else?..
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Thanks for helping me think that though. Also, yes, real steel drums of different sizes have distinctly different tonal character due to the materials and construction technique. I have played steel drums manufactured at industrial scale that are very linear and to my ear somewhat sterile.
Anyway, appreciate your inspiration.
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I sampled my handpan into a wavetable and made this preset that sounds similar to a steel drum.
they wont let me upload attachments as a new user so heres a g drive link: Handpan.vital - Google Drive
Part of a preset pack i just finished here: Aurora - Ambient Presets for Vital – Anima Audio
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I think I got really close: How To: Steel Drum/Pan in Vital - Synthesis Sound Design Tutorial - YouTube
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This subjectively sounds more natural to me. I bought Sounds You Know, do I get an update?
I sent out an update to anybody who bought it several months ago. If you check your inbox for mail from ericbowman@creators.gumroad.com you should find it.
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