Lessons

Lesson Info

Memory and Status

Easy Player Pro is a program that was designed to work with the original version of Superior to So Again. Just so you understand, many of you probably have Easy player pro because when Superior Drummer to was first released, there was no grooves tab. So it wasn't until Superior. I believe it was 2.1. I could be wrong. Forgive me if I am. There's a whole host of people working in a corporate office shaking fists at me. And if it's not 2.2, if it is that I'm a superstar. But I think was around 2.2 that we introduced the grooves tab because prior to that, if you wanted to work with MIDI files inside of Superior Drummer to there was an external program called Easy Player Pro that would allow you to work with the Manipulate Midi. Since the addition of the grooves tab that's not necessary anymore. Everything can be done right in this program, So a lot of people still love easy player pro because they got really good at using it and they still use it, and it's a great program. We still sell i...

t individually if you like it. It's a very cool, um, very, very cool Midi editing program. Quite honestly, there are features in our programs now that do the same things and allow you to kind of work in the same way. But workflow is important. So if you're someone that's out there that still uses easy player pro, thank you. We appreciate that you already know what these buttons. Therefore, if you don't have easy player pro or you're not using it because you're newer to the superior family, don't worry about it. It doesn't concern you. Fair enough. OK, so we just talked about Avatar. So the first kid that's gonna load is your avatar kit. And this is the page that we call the Construct Page. And on this page is so much information that we're about to go through meticulously that we want to make sure you really understand that this is sort of ground control for your superior experience. Most of the things you would want to get to and quickly adjust or change about anything going on in Superior can happen in this page. So just to kind of give you a quick overview before we start jumping around you can see that we've got some menu options here. These are our tabs. If you're familiar with these former to, obviously have a very similar tab system. But if it's highlighted, that's the tab you're on. So obviously we're on the construct tab. There is a mixer tab and this mixer tab basically replicates the mixer and all of these sort of outboard and routing options that were captured in the recording of this section. It's a lot it's gonna be allowed to talk about. We have a grooves tab and this is where your many performances live. You can scroll through them. We're gonna go over that. We have a mapping tab. Now you'll notice on the mapping tab. The picture from the construct page comes back, which is your cue to know that a lot of the decisions that are made on that page also have implications on this page. This is probably the most complex page that we have more time talking about this tomorrow. I'm just gonna ruin everyone's day right now that you know that you have to come back tomorrow to see the really cool stuff. Like any good marketer, Would you leave the best for last. So tomorrow we're going over mapping. We have the bounce feature, which, as we open in pro tools, we're gonna discuss because this allows you to actually take everything you've done in Superior Drummer and turn it into audio as opposed Amidi. And then let's close that we have our settings page, which is kind of where we're going to start this morning in conjunction with our construct tab. So we're going to actually start with construct and settings and make sure that we're all in a good place to understand how setting superior up from the get go toe work with you and your system is probably the wisest thing you can do. It takes you a few minutes, but there's lots of things to explain. Okay, so we've opened the superior drummer to software in solo. The standard avatar kid has come out, and now we're ready to make sure that the software is gonna work with our system to the best of its ability. So before we jump into this rabbit hole, anything, anyone, We're good. Yeah. All right. Here we go. So if you'll follow my mouse, I'm going to just sort of walk you around the construct page and then we're gonna dive a little bit deeper into each feature and function over here. We have what we call the standard view in the classic view, going to show you that a few minutes we have the construct menu. We actually have the library selection menu, and we noticed again its own avatar. We have another load save menu, some tool settings, and then we come over to something called Ekstrom. Ex drums have to do with mapping. Therefore, we're gonna be getting into those tomorrow as well. Again. Very, very cool stuff. We have our envelope feature our pitch feature the instrument control voice and layer limits. Master volume are easy mixer and our memory and status. Okay, that's a lot of stuff. And while on the surface it seems again like it might be very easy to navigate, let's just make sure. So what we're gonna do now is I want to talk about two particular areas. We're gonna start with memory and status and voice and layer, because these two components on this page will coincide with some of the settings you put into play on the settings page, and these two components are ultimately going to sort of create the framework for how the software works in your operating system. Does that make sense to everybody? So basically, what you're about to do in these two settings is going to determine how the software responds to the actual hardware you're working with, the memory you have installed so on and so forth. So let's start with some basics. So most people, when they get new software, will generally tend to look for a settings tab. Right now, we know where in solo were in stand alone mode. So we've already adjusted our audio enormity. Everyone's with me so far. Yeah, so we know that we've got that taken care of. We've tried it, We hear sound, we feel good. So we're gonna go to our settings page, and the first thing we're going to see is a little confusing. The first option you can select and these were your selection boxes is mono all channels. Now, this is referring to an option that exists on our mixer page. So a little bit about the mixer without going to into detail, OK, come back. Don't even look at it. I look at it till tomorrow, but mono all channels is a very, very simple command When you enable anything in the setting section. What you're telling superior drummer is the next time it opens. You want these things to sort of be the standard for the way things work in a recording session, which is obviously what had to happen for us to get the library for superior drummer. The engineers obviously set up the mikes. They do everything the way that they would do it. The producer gets involved, and there are a number of different miking techniques involved. One of the most common miking techniques involved would be a room like maybe a stereo room pair. Now, if you're not familiar with that, creative life has a bunch of recording classes you can take. But ultimately, no, that stereo is to write, so ultimately, what's gonna happen is you're gonna have to microphones that create a channel that can accommodate two microphones in the mixer. Does that make sense to everybody? It's a stereo channel when you select mono all channels, any of the channels that were recorded in stereo and played back through the mixer are going to be bounced out to audio, right for mono, So watch what happens. So here we go. Let's take a look. I'm going to do a couple of things that I haven't explained you how to do. We're gonna get to him, but I just want to make sure that you can sort of understand what we're doing. So as we go through here, you see that you have a number of channels in the mixer and you get to overhead and you see the first stereo channel really right, Because you've got to Fader. So it's a stereo channel, right? These would be mono channel stare channel. So ultimately, if you come into settings and you mano all channels, you're going to get a dialogue which everyone freaks out. It's pure Germany's restart for the setting could take the fact Bruce can your plus. So, ultimately a number of things we're gonna happen here that change the way the mixer right works. I don't know that we want to do that right now, and I can't cook out of it. So guess what I have to do Nothing, cause I condone Check it afterwards. Psych. So we just turned it off. You're not stuck with it. It's not going to change until you restart. But ultimately, any time the software gives you a warning, please read it right. Sometimes we might even sneak stuff in there like we're not responsible for your computer blows up after you do this just to see if you're paying attention. Just any time you get a warning, do that. But ultimately, that's just going to change model all channels, the way your mixer functions when you reopen superior. Now I'm gonna jump all the way over to a few things here way, have a number of things, and we're gonna go through these as we need to. But I want to jump over here to memory usage limit, OK, because that's going to effect this down here. So again, it could be a little confusing. So as we're flipping through these tabs again, I just want you to notice that the bottom component of our construct page stays intact as everyone see that. Yeah. So even as you're going through, unless you're on mapping because we needed the space right and balances asshole of the world. But is your in settings is your in your grooves is your in your mixtures and your construct. These components are going to stay intact and it's important. So back to settings. You need to know how much RAM you have installed on your computer in order to make Sapir drummer to work to the best of its ability for you. And there are a number of other features that are going to have to do with that as well. It seems silly. It seems boring, but it's really not superior. Drummer is exactly that, and I need to take a step back so that everybody understands that it's not called superior drums. This isn't about just the drums, and the software superior drummer is the process of giving you a virtual performer and instrument and production environment, and all of those things require software magic, as I like to call it, that happens behind the scenes in order to obtain the most realistic right output. So the amount of ram that you have allocated in your system to superior German is a big deal, so you'll notice here memory usage limit. All right, so follow me on this because we're gonna use numbers. Everybody's favorite. If you have four gigabytes of ram in your computer system and you set this, let's just set this to four. I have 16. Not bragging, but right. 400 megabytes. The memory there's to ensure that your computer does not crash as a result. Remember I told you to read all these? I could read them to you now, but I'm not gonna write. So 400. That's not a lot, is it? megabytes, that's what. Can you load up 400 megabytes? So what if you put in 4000? 40,000? Boom. Okay, so 4000 megabytes is the equivalent as anyone else. How many gigs of Ram that is for this? Were they paying the camera? So I look like a crazy person pointing at the camera, cause like, nobody knows there's an audience. This guy over here, imaginary guy. Okay, so I've now got my memory usage limit set to four gigs. Now, if I only have four gigs of RAM and my system, is that a problem? Because I'm using all the ram I have in my system. And your system is always going to be doing other things, right? It's always gonna be running things in the background just to be a computer to be on. It has to have memory available, so this could cause problems. So what happens is ultimately, if you hit that maximum peak, if you account that you're basically telling your computer, let's superior Drummer Max out. All my resource is, and that can affect the way that it plays, the way other things work. That's not good. The other thing to take into consideration is if you have this open in a daw right, your digital audio workstation. That dog also requires memory to run. And if you only have four gigs and you have your entire allocation set to four gigs, you're basically saying the only thing I want working is my drums. Forget about play playback record. None of that stuff matters. It's just a shell. So you need to know what you can and can't get away with from a memory standpoint. So for me, I keep mine at zero because I wanted to use, and I know that I'm going to show you how to use the right amount for what it's doing. There are a number of things that you can do so everyone follow me. So far, I know it's not as confusing, but so your memory usage limit is a direct correlation to this first component we're looking at, which is memory and status. I know this is earth shattering stuff, but you would be surprised at how many people can't figure out why. Sapir drummers crashing everything all the time and they just haven't really looked to make sure there's a correlation between what they're loading and what they have available. So your safest bet is to just keep this empty until you kind of get a feel for what kind of things I'm about to show you that you could do toe minimize that footprint. It should also be noted that we had the question earlier about whether or not you should be loading your samples onto an external hard drive. There's a miss no more or misconception. I don't even think, quite honestly, those two words mean the same thing, but I'm going to pretend they do. I'm sure they mean totally different things and my college brain in an attempt to sound smarter than I am cause I'm on TV just like a misnomer. It's gotta be the same thing, but someone's calling me on an online right now, totally happening. So bills calling me on a raised Google. He's Googling the result right now. So there's a misconception that, um, I met. I mumbled on about the misnomer. Misconception selling. I don't even know what I've misconceived. What was I talking about? Superior drummer, All the external hard drive. That's why we have studio audience. The misconception is that we're streaming the samples from the hard drive that as the computer or the software needs them, it's pulling them from the hard drive because there are programs that work that way. That's not what is happening, and that's why the external hard drive option is great. But it's not necessary to have a smooth running superior drummer. What happens is so, for instance, were in construct. We have the Avatar kit loaded. All right, right here. We're seeing this first part, says Total. Now this is a guess. The actual ITT's. This is not confusing, but remember I told you there's a superior one. So when you design superior to you, sort of, you bring a lot of the terminology things over you don't really think about it cause you're so used to it. The total is the anticipated total memory that this particular kit that's loaded is going to take up. The Loaded is telling you exactly how many, right? So you're like, why is one total on one So loaded is exactly how many megabytes, gigabytes, whatever you got going on, this kit takes up, so you'll notice. Right now 500 anyone megs for this kit and all of that information is loaded into your ram. So all of the articulations, all of the instruments, everything you need for this particular kit you're looking at is already in your systems ram right now. So it's not streaming from an external drive if you have it on another drive. So that really doesn't matter other than the low times, right, So the streaming medium of an external drive will only determine how long it takes for a kid to load as opposed to playback. It will not have any effect on the way or drums playback as everything's loaded in Ram makes sense. And that's why, again in settings, let's say you had this Onley set to 570. You have a problem because this particular kidney and 500 anyone megabytes to be loaded completely makes sense. So while we're talking about this hard drive phenomena, here's a really cool feature of function also in customizing that has to do with your memory. So we've talked about memory usage. We've talked about model channels, and we're starting to talk about memory and status. Let's talk about the actual library path here because, as you can see, New York avatars loaded and what it's showing me is where this particular library is loaded in my system just makes sense to everybody kind of a file hierarchy, right? And then I can set that I could clear it if I wanted to move these files somewhere else. And there is this interesting feature. I don't use it as this anymore, but a lot of people do use it as such. Every Superior Drummer library is available in two sort of formats, or even as you install them in their entirety, you can choose the level at which you want to install. So, for instance, if we were to talk about the Avatar Library that comes with superior drummer as you're installing that library, you get a dialogue that says, Do you want to install a full library? Maybe just parts of the library, you know, and it's it's always based on. It's going to take up this much space and your systems with nine. Gig 12 gig. Do you want the full 20 gigs? So it gives you the option? Ah, lot of people that have smaller hard drives don't want to travel with an external drive will install a smaller version of the library on their actual laptop for when they're working. Maybe they're out on the road. Maybe they're someone else's studio, and then they'll stall installed the full version of the live around an external drive. So what you can do is actually set the path to an external drive. Or you could basically have two paths for every library. Now I've got upset to the same just because that's all I'm using right now. But then you could switch it with no superior German would know, based on whether or not that external hard drive was plugged in which library should be pulling from. It could pull from either or make sense, so you have this option to sort of customize your workflow based on again the type of hardware you're working with, the type of machine you're working with, all of these things matter and are completely customizable, which is more than I could say for a lot of other software that does what we do make sense. So we've got so far memory usage, and we know that you can install two different versions of the hard drive from a space standpoint that's appeared drummer can use. So if we come back, Torre construct Page will go back to settings were gonna bounce between the two. So right here we're looking at something that's unique. Our sound design team has been doing this for a very long time. And as I mentioned at the beginning, Superior Drummer 2.0 is made to work basically in three sorts of scenarios, obviously working within the program with MIDI midi tracks, working with an external keyboard control or maybe creating your own media or doing some sound design or working with an E kit. So we know from experience as we should, what the ideal settings are for each preloaded kids that come up does that make sense. But that doesn't mean you have to keep those that way. So I'm going to show you a couple of things. We're gonna kind of again. We're gonna be moving between the memory and status. Now we're gonna be talking about voice, layer, voice and layering. Okay, Combine them is one voice and layer. Okay. And we're gonna talk about the sort of drum kits that you can open. So let's talk about this. So we opened Avatar. This is the default kit. Now you'll notice just like some of our other drone program. He's drummer to. If there's a shadow, clearly nothing's there. You can drop down. Select its indicating that there's another instrument that's available for you to load. That makes sense. Correct. But again, when you open it and avatars your stock library, the default kit looks just like this. So in this actual construct library, every expansion product has some similar and some different functions. Everyone follow me. So we're working with Avatar That comes disappeared. Number two point. Oh, we've got the default kit, which is great. The empty kit. Oh, it's empty. There's nothing there, which means you can go in to start from the ground up and build your own drums. And as we're doing this, the reason I'm going to this component now is I want you to try and keep an eye on your memory usage to right. So you have an empty kit. You could open the pop rocket, right. You'll see that you're getting a message loading samples it low. It's fairly quickly. There's a number of different preset give full kit, right? Look at this. Oh, and again, these air loading, based on what we have decided as a company, is the general usage that most people going to use. But you can change that. So again, we have no memory usage limits so we can make This is bigger, as little as we want to. Until the actual program tells us no