Is there a Piccolo Snare MIDI sound which I can setup in BIAB ? or is there a Drum Set that used Piccolo snare instead of regular snare?

Thanks,
Victor

Assuming you are using MIDI, rather than RealDrums, I don't think that any of the General MIDI drum banks have a piccolo snare sound. You would have to use a dedicated drum library to get that sound, which would probably be better accomplished in a DAW anyway, since all the percussion instruments in BIAB are on the same channel/track.

One thing you might could try is to find a piccolo snare drum loop and apply it to an unused track in BIAB.

thanks jford for your reply. You are right , I did not find a piccolo snare as a General Midi sound.

How do I used a piccolo snare drum loop and apply it to an unused track in BIAB? Well let go basic (I am new to BIAB) what is a Drum Loop in BIAB?

Thanks,
Victor

DelMismoRacimo,

Welcome to Band-in-a-Box and the forum!

There are several names to call a MIDI instrument sound including "patch',"instrument patch" or "MIDI patch". That's because in the old days sounds were created from rack mounted hardware, oscillators and filters, that created one sound at a time. The hardware pieces were patched together using short chords that looked like guitar chords.

Loops are short (1 to 8 bar or measure) audio or midi phrases. An audio loop will sometimes have embedded pitch and tempo data so a DAW, or digital audio workstation, can manipulate the audio to make it sound faster or slower or higher or lower in pitch. For percussion instruments you can "tune" the drum notes to match your song or change the cadence. Besides manipulating a loop can be repeated as many times as you desire. So for instance if you need a consistent tamborine sound a loop would likely work for you.

Band-in-a-Box includes more than 2,000 audio loops. They are at X:/bb/RealTracks/Loops where X = your storage drive letter where Band-in-a-Box is installed.

A piccolo snare sound is available for free from freesound.org. It is available +++ here +++

That link has about 240 audio samples available for download. The audio samples are recordings of strikes to a 13" X 3" Pearl piccolo snare drum. Each sample is called a "one shot" because each sample is one hit on the snare head. Each sounds different because of tuning, playing style, strainer on/off setting and velocity or how hard each strike is on the snare head.

Velocity is very important with audio samples because the sound, or timbre, changes depending on how hard each strike is made. Many people confuse velocity with loudness but they are different. You can strike a drum head hard and the sound WILL be louder than a soft strike but the hard hit also sounds different than a soft strike. Thus a change in timbre. In audio production timbre is more difficult to emulate than volume level. I suspect you know this already which is why you want the sound of a piccolo snare instead of a standard kit snare.

MIDI can call up 128 different velocity levels where 0 = no sound or note off up to 127 which is full volume. Each velocity can "playback" a different audio sample so you can emulate the timbre of a patch from off to full volume or anywhere in between. Most patches playback a single sample across all velocities or just a few samples in three or four velocity ranges.

Okay, now you've downloaded the samples you want so, now what? Now you need to mold the samples into a patch. Programs like Plogue Sforzando, Synthfont 64, Kontakt and SampleTank create patches from audio samples.

You could also copy and paste audio samples into a RealBand track.

Thank Jim Fogle, that is a lot of great information. Still reading it for the third time to try to understand.

Let me follow on the samples . Lets say I get a sample of the Piccolo Snare that I like. (I recall Plogue Sforzando on the BIAB installation). How do I make Ploque Sforzando to substitute ONLY the MIDI regular snare to the Piccolo Snare?

Thanks,
Victor Martinez

You will need a DAW that can separate a multi-drum track into individual drums tracks. That is take a BiaB multi-drum track and separate it into a bass drum, low tom, crash cymbal, in fact put each different drum on its own track. Then you can assign a different drum to each track including changing the standard snare into a Piccolo snare. I know that both Cakewalk and Studio One Pro can do this and I am sure that many other DAWs can do it also.

Band-in-a-Box MIDI normally follows the General MIDI standard. General MIDI uses MIDI channel 10 for drums and note assignments for each drum instrument. The drum note assignments are given on +++ THIS +++ webpage. The note assignments are 37 for side stick or rim shot, 38 for acoustic snare, 39 for hand clap and 40 for electric snare. If you have a midi file loaded you can use the piano roll view to verify which note is used.

Then you can use the midi editor to remove all notes but the snare drum, add Sforzando and your sample. Export the audio and move the audio file to the audio track. Delete the snare notes. Now when you play the file the snare should come from the audio track while the rest of the drums play on the drums track.

Thanks MarioD and Jim Fogle for your reply. I used BIAB as a way to develop ideas for our band. I understood your advice/steps but it will not be practical for me to do all those steps. I was hopping for a more simple/direct way to change the snare sound to a piccolo snare sound within BIAB.

It is so easy to change other Midi sounds (piano, bass, etc) but not the Drums .....

I really appreciate your quick respond and all your ideas. Let me share one of our original songs recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvm_jZPgpmI

(we mix styles Cumbia + swing...)

There maybe an easier way. Check out some drum VSTis like Steven Slate's SSD 4 and 5, Addictive Drums 2, Toontrack's drum software, etc. All of these I have listed have an included VST mixing board that not only handles volume and pan but also drum replacement. If you contact those companies they will tell you if they have a kit with a piccolo drum. Then just use that kit or swap out the snare and replace it with the piccolo drum and you will be all set. You may have to use a drum MIDI map to make some GM compatible but I do know that Addictive drums comes with a GM option so others may also.

I have both Addictive Drums, SSD5, as well as a couple of other drum VSTis but my music computer crashed and is in the shop. I will have to reinstall everything so it will take a while but if you need me to look at what I have just let me know.

Thanks MarioD , will look into those software/VST.