Drambo community instrument collection?
Drambo is such a wonderfully flexible modular environment that it is has so many potential applications and people make so many incredible racks on patchstorage it makes my head spin. The one thing I find is lacking is just playable synth instruments like most other synth apps have. I know @giku has expressed interest in people sending their patches in to potentially be featured in the instrument presets later on.
I've seen the loopypro (formerly audiobus) forums community come together several times in the past to make large preset packs for different apps (like model d, model 15 etc) and was thinking i have about 30 or so pretty cool patches I've designed for me but l'd be interested in maybe joining forces and making a large collection for Drambo.
Id love to see other peoples creations and I think it might encourage new users to dive in easier with more sounds available to go. Thoughts?
Comments
I’m all for expanding the collection of presets, although there’s a pretty nice collection already. I’m afraid mine mostly sound like shit, so I’ll just leech from other’s creations
but get to work guys, bring it on
Good evening @sinelanguge,
I'm knee deep in my own projects right now to contribute directly however creating a large community based preset collection
is a good idea taking into account the amount of dRambonauts who hit a few hurdles and get discouraged.
Having more playable instruments especially with the addition of the new visual oscillators will make dRambo even more accessible.
While you can find hundreds of saved instruments on Patchstorage, and probably a few more here on the forums; Drambo does include a bunch of saved playable instruments right out of the box if you look under Generators/Instrument Rack/Factory/Instruments.
Now, with that said, this is a completely modular synth environment. Your typical modular synth hardware setups, like the popular eurorack format, or older 5U /Moog vintage modular synths never included presets or instruments, as they don't have patch memory.
Even modern Moog synths like the Grandmother or Matriarch, don't have patch memory. You have to dial in your instrument/sound with knobs and patch cables each time. (Some users actually take photos of their knob positions and cable routings in order to be able to recall later.)
So in essence, while Drambo is indeed software, and does have the ability to save instruments, MIDI racks, effect chains, and entire project files, (and now visuals), it's designed in a way, just like real modular synth hardware, to promote exploration, and lends itself to experimentation and discovery. You'll earn how to design your own sounds and synths by trial and error, which IMO, is much more satisfying, and definitely more rewarding.
As a musician, I will admit that sometimes I just want an established instrument to lay down a track, be it a piano, a guitar, or a saxophone etc. And it's not like Drambo doesn't support all of the thousands of AUV3 apps out there. But when you're ready to start your journey into sound design, all the tools are here. Nobody is going to have that sound you are trying to create in your head.
There's tons of tutorials inside Drambo, as well as on YouTube, on how to build your first synth. If you're new to modular synthesis, I'd start there.
@sinelanguge if you need assistance in curating the presets feel free to reach out.
Agreed with everything that’s been said. Been using Drambo for years and its p easy at this point to make just about any synth or effect I can think of. I also use a lot of the instruments I’ve previously made since Drambo is my one stop shop for synth related stuff at this point. Definitely would be my desert island 🏝️ app if I had to pick one.
the thing is when I first saw Drambo showcased years ago I was under the impression it was not capable of making rich sounds compared to something like Zeeon which is just not true. I remember thinking “oh this is more of an 8bit, digital simple modular sound. I’ve since been able to make just about any kind of synth I’ve heard elsewhere
I think if nothing else it would be a nice demonstration of drambo’s ability to actually make very rich analogue sounding instruments and also give people who want to use it like a groove box an easier place to start. I also learned a lot from pulling other people’s patches apart to learn how they worked so it functioned as a tutorial as well
I would very much like the help! What’s a good way to collectively collaborate on this. Can we get all the patches in one place so we can sort thru and pick out a good portion of them for a collection?
Agreed.
When I first started using dRambo I used it use mainly as a sequencer then @giku @rs2000 and @bcrichards
switched me on to synthesis, they were and still are a huge help in answering my questions
and they've pointed me in the right directions many a time over the years..
Since then I've also learnt to build sequencers, reverse engineer synths and hardware and I started diving into actual Eurorack.
Now with dRambo visuals all of my digital artistic endeavours are pretty much covered, I rarely use other synth apps these days.
Maybe something like Dropbox or Google drive could be a way forward.
That way we can save stuff or adjust stuff and then when they are ready release them into the wild.
Let's see.
Looking forward to it.
@sinelanguge I've dm'd you my email.
We could just start a new thread? Especially now that project files can now be attached to posts without having to zip.
Why start a new thread when this one was created for that purpose and it also reduces the amount of clutter.
True. Let's start posting some instrument patches here then
Guess I’ll start. Here’s a simple instrument I was playing with today actually. I’m calling it ‘Broken Trumpet’.
Here is about 80 or so patches. Some are labeled (1,2,3) variations of eachother, or WIP so I’d probably only want to include like 40 of these.
Save that folder in instrument rack and should be p easy to delete later if you want
Use polyphony, monophonic patches have a cv to midi 1 voice inside the instrument rack so they’ll function normally. A lot of them don’t sound like much till you actually start to play more than a note then they have some p cool velocity / envelope stuff going on
also a few like “horni” and “goblin” are played with the XY pad not the keys (should probably include a note in the patch)
enjoy.
Well done.
I'll go through them over the weekend and make a selection of the ones that I prefer.
Wow @sinelanguge thats an impressive collection! I’ll be going through these as well.
@sinelanguge I've gone through them and quite a few of them are instantly playable.
As mentioned before I'll list my preferences by weekend.
Once again well done.
Hey, there’s a lot of really good ones here @sinelanguge!
Thanks for sharing.. very inspiring!
Thanks so much! Yea I’ve been having a lot of fun experimenting with making sound generators like the pixel camping one. Reminds me of old msdos game sound fx.
@supadom and @rs2000 have some amazing patches on patch storage. Wonder if they’d be down to throw some of their old/new stuff in the collection?
Some projects on patchstorage don’t work anymore, or don’t work as intended (I mean old ones, because drambo grows so fast) so it would be great if the original creators “curated” their own ones and we (by we I mean you) assembled a “community” bank that @giku could include in an upcoming update
You know, for my own unselfish pleasure
Sounds good to me. I made a post on loopypro forums asking if anyone wanted to send any in so we’ll see how that goes. I asked people to format their patches as instrument rack .drmodule not .drproject files
Instrument rack or Rack presets makes more sense than .drproject files unless they are using the .drproject files to demo the synth patch.
I saw your post next door. Hopefully we'll see some contributions.
Regarding the format, it was the general consensus a while back, that sharing the project file was the preferred method.
I think it was decided that, while we know what to do with the .drmodule files, of course, the newer users were downloading these files, and ending up with many questions, as it was confusing as to where these files go.
Trust me, I was team Drmodule file as well, but @giku , @rs2000 , and some others had to change my mind. Now I'm converted. (Not @bcrichards though... Ben is still a die hard team drmodule member lol)
Very valid point I hear you however if you want to import a 100 patches loading a bunch of drprojects doesn’t make sense.
I understand for a single patch but if I’m getting a 100+ preset pack I don’t want to individually press save preset 100 times to save them all for use in other projects.
Agreed in regards to using *.drmodules for delivery.
I do believe that Intrepolicious was referring to the files that the Forum itself accepts
not how the presets will be delivered in it's "final" iteration, I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
In regards to the latter, that's when organising the presets into folders will come in handy
then it will be a simple matter of opening up the zip file in the Instrument preset folder
and extracting the files, the folder structure should hold.
Ah I see. might be easier for people to submit drproject files. We can resave them since we’re going thru them anyways. I misunderstood
Deleted loopy forum post submission note*
If users submit drproject files that maybe because they want to demo their preset.
Which ever way is cool.
In regards to the LP Forum post, noted.
Also I assume people probably want credit on their patches. Initials or handle [in brackets] on the end of the patch name or something?
I've been working in the world of professional music production for quite some time now
and crediting at the very least is very important especially if I were to be challenged on plagiarism
or if I were to challenge someone in regards to plagiarism.
Keeping track of who do what can sometimes lead to court cases or potential rifts in professional relationships.
When I do the curating on my side I will use my method of keeping track of what presets I have used for reference.
For instance, "dRambo imports/beta team members names/drambo projects or presets".
In this case I would use preset Category names/names of contributors/presets themselves.
Adding a text file with contributors is also very useful.
hello :)
here is my submission, although it crashes drambo sometimes. hopefully this can be resolved.
https://patchstorage.com/dual-stage-physical-modeling-feedback-synth/
Thank you.
We'll add that to the submission with full credit.