Reaper, you've done it again. ReaSamplOmatic5000.

As I mentioned earlier I decided to make some drum tracks to play along with for my fingerstyle arrangements, equally to improve my tempo and equally to make them more engaging to audiences. I've played with drummers many times over the years, solo fingerstyle, it makes sense. Solo fingerstyle already incorporates a bassline so don't need a bassist, it incorporates a melody so don't need a singer, it incorporates a rhythm so don't need a rhythm guitarist are out...there's some but not a lot of percussion so drummers are a good fit! I've talked about playing with drummers many times as far back as 2009 and 2010 and at an open night a decade ago not to mention a gig I did this very year at work with my mate Geoff.

I'm not a very good drummer. I own an entry level electric drum kit, a Yamaha DTX Explorer, I dabbled a bit years ago, decided drumming is best left to drummers. But I've always had a love for the drums and how they fit with guitars, and it goes right back. Let my wax nostalgically for a moment.

In the mid 80's I was a Commodore 64 nut. It's where I learnt to program - C64 basic and even hand coded 6502 assembler. Musically, there were a few programs I used on it, one was "Funky Drummer". I would make drum loops and play along with them endlessly. Sadly no recordings of that exist anymore...I do have a few cassette tapes with various stuff on it, perhaps one day I will stand up a cassette player and see if I can find any!

In the mid-late 90's a mate of mine at work introduced me to the DOS multi-track sequencer "Impulse Tracker" which was a whole new level of drum machine, with actual drum samples! I had a lot of fun with that. That eventually gave way to "Modplug Tracker", being Windows based, but I never enjoyed it quite as much. I wrote several original songs in the late 90's early 2000's during the time I was getting more into arranging fingerstyle covers. Fingerstyle had always been my first love, but I had a fun experimental "full band" period of time which ended around 2001.

Impulse Tracker

ModPlug Tracker

Yes, recordings exist from that era...I need to find the masters and remix them...one day. I've never shared any here before, I'm not sure why - possibly because they just aren't any good - but why not. Have a listen to these badly mixed songs I wrote - using Impulse Tracker, my electric guitar, bass and some vocals. Ask me if you want me to talk more about songs from my distant past :-)

Blue Metal:
Sheister Meister:

Which brings me back to the topic of the day, making drum tracks. I'm not going to revive any of that old software, but I have my DAW Reaper, and I have Kenny Gioia, The Legendary Reaperian of Lore. He showed me the FX called "ReaSamplOmatic5000", which is EXACTLY what a sample tracker in the context of Reaper should look like. Good job Repearians. It took me a while to get my head around it, but it is just what I needed. Essentially using MIDI to track samples, making it the drum machine sequencer I loved from my youth. I've already churned out a backing drum track for "Wish You Were Here". What really makes ReaSamplOmatic5000 special for me is that I can us my little AKAI MPK mini mk3 MIDI device as a drum trigger - OR - I can use my Yamaha DTX Explorer as an actual kit through my PreSonus interface to record the drum hits, when I have drummer in the house. Or even, olde school, just click away in the MIDI editor and make them all like I did when I was a kid.

So nice. I've got my WAVBVKERY vintage kit drum samples, I will need to look for others for the various songs I do - but the 70's Ludwig is a great starting point . It will take some time, but it will be good to make these drum backing tracks.

JAW's guide to using ReaSamplOmatic based on Kenny G's tutorials

References: Youtube 1 Youtube 2

Note for Windows OS: In Options->Preferences Device, if you are just using your computer soundcard, then don't use DirectSound, it is gross and laggy. You could use ASIO (either the one that came with your MIDI controller or ASIO4All) but the driver takes over windows sounds so you wan't be able to listen to youtube/music/etc. A good option however is WASAPI, which is Microsoft's answer to ASIO. If you use it in Exclusive mode it is pretty close to ASIO, but then you may as well use ASIO. In Shared mode it is quite good - not too laggy, and you can listen to Youtube at the same time. Change your Block size to be low for low latency, but high enough that you aren't hearing crunchiness.

• Make a new track called Drums. Set it to Record, set the Input to MIDI, All Channels.
• Right mouse click Input, Track Recording Setting, turn on Quantise to 16th notes.
• Right mouse click Input again, set Record MIDI to Overdub. That way each pass just adds drums.
• Make another track called "Kick". Add the FX ReaSamplOmatic5000.
• In the ReaSamplOmatic5000 drag in a Kick Drum sample. The View->MediaExplorer is a great way to browse your sample library, when you have found the one you like, drag it into the waveform window.
• Set the Note start and note end to both be the MIDI number for your target MIDI note. It's a good idea to turn on View->Virtual Keyboard so you can see what number/what is happening.
• Set Min vol to -inf if you are using a touch sensitive (velocity) MIDI trigger. If you are just using your computer keyboard, not really an issue, it's only on/off
• Make sure the Mode is set to Sample (Ignores MIDI note).
• Route your Drums track to the Kick track by dragging the routing icon from one to the other. Set Audio to Off, you only want to route MIDI.

You are now at a stage where you have a MIDI track to record your MIDI triggers, it passes the MIDI down to a drum track, the drum track listens out for the one specific MIDI note and then plays the sample when it gets it. You can add other normal FXs to it, adjust faders, panning, etc, like a normal track.

A few other tips/tricks:

• Obviously, add a track per drum type!
• You can include multiple samples per track, for instance I will have a "Hat" track, and it will include an open and close hat sample.
• In the case of an open hat which rings out, you can make it stop ringing if another hat strike is made. Add an FX "JS: MIDI Choke", set the Choke Note Range Start to the the MIDI note that you want to kill the ringing drum, set the Affected Note Range Start to the MIDI note of the ringing drum. In the ringing drum, set "Obey note-offs" to true. Now, if you trigger an open hat, then a moment later trigger a closed hat, the open hat sample will stop ringing, so more like a real drum kit.
• When in the MIDI editor, setting to "Named Notes" view is nicer, and double right click on a note to name it.
• You can change the Grid size in the MIDI editor in the drop down box at the bottom of the window.
• If you need a different time signature, for example there is a 2/4 bar, then right click on the bar in the main window, Insert Time Signature/Tempo Marker, set it to your new time signature, and then repeat the proces in the next bar to change it back to the previous timing.

What's happening December 2024

I'm mucking around with a number of musical stuff at the moment!

On the fingerstyle arrangement front, I am polishing, practising, and getting a few ready for recording over Christmas. It's been a while since I recorded an arrangement, I'm looking forward to getting some done. After around a year of mixing and learning about the DAW Reaper I have a slightly different perspective on recording, I might even start to sound a bit professional in the future - Watch this space!

In other news I have recorded a song from my teenage daughter's "girl band"...they are the quintessential power trio, Lyds is the singer/songwriter/guitarist front person, my Naomi is singer/bassist and Jess is the drummer. I'm thinking "Cream" with Clapton/Bruce/Baker, but they were well before even my time, so maybe "Nirvana" is slightly more contemporary, but I don't think Krist ever sang? Anyway.

I got them to record one of their originals to a click track. Mostly because all I *had* was a two channel mixer. Recorded stereo drums, then guitar and bass, then two vocals. It took several hours, it was like herding cats...they are 15&16 year old teenage girls. I later put together a mix, it took most of my effort just doing audio quantisation on the drums and the bass. Because the song is punchy, it needed to be super-tight and it wasn't. The vocals and the distorted electric guitar were okay - the guitar was not punchy so slightly out timing is not noticeable. The girls have been singing together for a while so they matched in nicely. And besides when vocals are leading or training a beat, well, that's "expression" :-)

Two things came out of that session. First is that recording with only two channels is not enough. In a fortuitous set of circumstance, while chatting about it to one of my mates at work who has been creating music for years, he said "Oh I have an old PreSonus with 8 channels, I'm upgrading to a Focus-Right, do you want to buy it off me?" So I have a PreSonus Studio 18|24 USB sitting in front of me that I need to get familiar with.

The other thing to come out of that session is I recorded electric drums as a stereo channel straight from my drum machine. I felt helpless mixing it. I'm now quite used to mixing an analogue kit with 7 mics on it, and I love the flexibility. In the stereo mix the snare sound was not at all what I wanted. I ended up putting a sample on top of it for all the hits of the snare, that was tedious. I know that my drum machine can act as a midi trigger, I even bought a midi cable for it a while ago, just haven't used it. The PreSonus has a midi interface, so I need to get familiar with that, I need to go back to glorious multi tracked drums.

So as if all that is not enough, I have been playing a bit more often to a metronome. I still dislike them, but as far as being a useful all round musician, you need to be able to play super tight to a click. But recently, I had switched to a drum beat instead of a metronome. It is less like being constantly hit in the brain with a stick. I've found it almost pleasant. The problem is, not every drumbeat suits every song. So I thought "why don't I use a drum machine app where I can save each beat, and the tempo, and recall it when needed?" Not to mention not having to remember a tempo I like to play each song as. While looking for something that could do this, I found that most apps that will do what I want are cut down-DAWs, rich in features, of stuff I don't want to learn. So then I figured, I'm already learning a DAW, reaper, why not just knock up a MIDI drum track for a song, export it as MP3, and then play along to each one? It ties in with my need to use my drum kit as a midi trigger anyway, so two birds with one stone there.

The fingerstyle guitar snob purist in me squawked "You can't do that, you can't have any sound other than what your fingers and guitar is doing!" I've never done backing tracks or looping, and to be honest it's forced me to be a better guitarist - forced me to think outside the box to fill out a song, forced me to develop techniques for a rich guitar only sound. Maybe playing along to a drum track is a gateway drug, but my path of being "just a solo instrumental fingerstyle guitar player" has blurred over the years, I think there would be benefits in playing along to a drum track - firstly being a tighter rhythmist, and secondly a bit of enhancement to the music I play to audiences.

Vox Pathfinder Bass 10

My mate Steve and I both have pieces of paper that say "Batchelor of Electronic Engineering", but neither of us do that for a living. We both however want to be able to say that we can actually work on electronics. For example, a while back I fixed a broken amp. So when a broken Vox Pathfinder Bass 10 fell into my hands I felt compelled to fix it.

I have however come to realise that I will only go so far. If it's not a broken wire, popped fuse or simple power supply issue, then it's going to take too long and I neither have the patience or equipment to really dig in deep. This amp was no simple fix. It had a weird distortion coming through. Steve however, he loves a challenge. And since this is just a little analogue amp, I threw it his way and he persisted until he fixed it.

During the, I'm going to guess hundreds of hours he spent debugging it, he produced an electrical schematic. It needs to be on the internet, so here is a pdf of the electrical schematic and here is a jpg.

A short discourse...it presented with some high mid/high frequency distortion on top of the expected signal. You could set the bass volume and the amp volume to reduce it, and if you played softly it wasn't too bad, but it was always there.

On first inspection Steve discovered a hole in one of the speakers which I hadn't noticed and sent it back. Seemed fair enough, that could cause noise. The speakers in there were a fairly non standard 5", I decided that some cheap 4" speakers from AliExpress would do the job. Put them in, no, distortion still there. and they were pretty rubbish. Without thinkng too hard I grabbed some slightly less cheap 6" speakers, and put them in with some slight hassle (they were a bit big, but I made them fit). Still distorting. I had concluded it wasn't the speakers and sent it back to Steve. He was not convinced and bought some not-so-cheap correctly fitting 5" speakers...still distorting.

During let's call it "the speaker phase" Steve mapped out a frequency response curve of the 4" (YH-1008) and 6" (YH-600) speakers, and for reference the sub speaker from his home theatre system. Remembering that the low E on a bass is around 40Hz you can see that the two cheapy speakers aren't great around there and don't really flatten out frequency reponse wise until over 100Hz. The sub speaker starts flattening out at 50Hz which is better, but we discovered that for bass amp design you really need to think about how you are going to get those low frequencies pumping air.

But the speakers proved to be a red herring.

Steve's equipment was struggling to show the nature of the distortion, which is kinda frustrating "I can hear it, but I can't see it". Looking at a bass guitar signal as it goes through the circuit, we could see that there seemed to be a few pixels of high frequence noise superimposed on sections of the waveform. But neither of us would declare "that was it". Steve, being persistent, then went to town replacing components.

Signal vs Opamp 1a Maybe noisy?

Signal vs Opamp 1b Inverted, looks fine!

Signal vs Opamp 2 Inverted, maybe noisy?

Signal vs power Opamp 3 Inverted, DC offset, some noise?

An interesting part of this amp design is that the power side is an opamp! That is, an Operational Amplifier, which is more of a circuit in a chip than just a transister/FET/tube valve. Opamps are great, because they have a pretty flat frequency response across the full spectrum, super high gain, super high input impedence...I didn't imagine a power opamp would be the power house behind an amp! There are some low power opamps in the circuit too, which are there to handle the overdrive circuit, the treble, mid and bass EQ signal adjustments.

Steve's experience with electronics makes him suspect capacitors every time. Because capacitors fail. He popped every single one of the board, and tested them. None were a problem.

He discovered that although the signal opamps and the power opamps were obsolete, there were equivalent replacements which he also swapped out. It was not a function of the opamp.

At this stage we were both scratching our heads. There wasn't much left to swap out. Something that he had noticed along the way is that the transformer power supply was being pulled down pretty hard, getting close to the minimum operating voltage for the power opamp. While the supply was within spec, after looking at what the opamps can handle voltage wise, he decided to buy a higher voltage transformer with a few more VAs too. The one he selected could fit in, it was right at the upper limit of the opamp capabilities, se he swapped out two resistors to ease back a little on the voltage.

Oh, and he grumbled a lot about the board. How 240VAC was intertwined with signal voltages, how there were so many links on the board and just a generally poor layout of the board, and how difficult it was to pull apart and put back together - that it, like so many things these days, is not designed to be easily serviced. Are you listening Vox?

Well Steve was right. With a new transformer kicking in a bit more juice, the distortion went away. Fixed. My take on this is that the power supply selection is build down to a price, and most of the time, when things are running to specification, it will work. But without a little bit of over-engineering in place, the moment the transformer had dropped a few VAs, some higher frequency weird opamp distortion crept in. Getting those opamps back up to plenty of voltage headspace, problem solved. Vox - spend a bit more money on parts!

Board Before

Board Modified

Good work Steve! We both learnt something! Oh, and one other very cool thing I learnt - inside the unit were two LEDs back to back. "Why are there LEDs inside the unit, that will never be seen?" After staring at the circuit for a while, working from our electronics first principles knowledge Steve and I realised that as the "drive" level is turned up, the LED foward volt drop, probably around 2V, will start to kick in, which will begin to clip the waveform. As we know, if you raise the amplitude of a signal but then start to clip the peaks, you get both an additional loudness increase, and all those extra harmonics as it clips which brings more complexity to the sound. After reading up about it on the internet, aparently LEDs have quite a sonically pleasing soft-clipping sound rather than the much harder clipping found in other diodes!

What's happening October 2024

I've continued to do a lot of mixing. It's easy to load an SD card into the deck at my local church and record all 32 tracks, and then you have 4 songs to experiment with. I have a mate from work who has been doing that sort of thing for years, and trained, so it's great to pass mixes to him for a critique. It is a universe into itself the world of mixing, I've got at least my toe in it now. The more I do, the more I practise, the better and faster I am getting at it. I'm not aiming for perfection, I'm aiming to be competant at it - so when it actually counts I might be able to mix a song with some skills.

From a fingerstyle guitar point of view, you may think "What's the point JAW?" I have noticed it is making me think more about production. What does a song need? How can I fit the bassline in? Percussive strums to make a strong beat? The melody IS SO IMPORTANT! There is no doubt that mixing a multi-instrumentalist song will improve your overall musicianship - and it helps improve your ear. So would many other musical pursuits - like learning more theory! What is the best bang for buck? I don't know. But I do know that I'm enjoying the world of mixing and I'm more likely to do something that is fun than something that may be more beneficial, but I don't currently have any interest in.

Meanwhile I need to do a stocktake on fingerstyle arrangements that I really should record. Before I forget I can play them :-)

• Don't Dream it's Over - Crowded House
• It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards - Tame Impala
• Come on Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners
• White Room - Cream
• I Want to Break Free - Queen
• Horse With No Name - America
• Rain - Dragon

There's few others that I have put effort into but I'm not sure if I will continue to pursue them...

• Got What You Need - Eskimo Joe
• Live it Up - Mental as Anything
• Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People
• Toccata - Bach (Sky Version)
• 19-2000 - Gorillaz
• It's All Over Now Baby Blue - Bob Dylan/Graham Bonnet
• Fly Like an Eagle - Steve Miller Band

Mmm. Fly like an Eagle.

Mmm.

<Some Time Later>

I'd forgotten how groovy that song is! I noodled further with my previous efforts from a few years back, started developing a cool bassline. I needed to refer to the chords (ultimate guitar) and a quick check of melody (musescore). I had a rough for the verse and the chorus pretty quick just from memory. I then re-listened to the song again :-) So much cool electronics in it. But I can't really emulate that. The bassline rocks, but the studio recording relies on the synth and the electronics to carry the, um, chord extensions progression? You can hear the chorus and verses moving through some chord extensions, but it's not in the bass. The bass is just hanging onto an A, popping up from a G on a beat, but it's hanging on the chord of Am. I couldn't come up with a chord progression and hang onto the A without it sounding a bit boring. But I can make the bassline emulate the chord extensions.  Maybe the first verse could be just on the A?  So much I could do!

And so groovy! I hooked up my practise electric guitar, dialed in a tiny bit of distortion and recorded a quick rough so I'd remember what I was playing with, have a listen!

Fly Like an Eagle rough thoughts:

Yamaha G65-A

Another vintage Yamaha found its way to me, I was pleased that it was not a C40. Don't get me wrong, a Yamaha C40 is an adequate classical guitar, often not bad at all. But often not good. This G65-A (serial 31109517 - 0426423 so probably 1983) is in good condition, doesn't look like it has been played much. I whipped the few remaining strings off it and checked the fret level and neck angle, all was okay. Well, neck angles always seem out once a classical guitar is 20 years old, but we make do.

I ran a block with sandpaper across the frets and it did not take very long before it was touching everywhere.  I barely needed to put my fret file on it. Note: my latest fret file is nice, the one with the wooden handle, but the profile is too deep and was barely touching the frets. I am going to have to splurge on a decent fret file.

There were no sharp fret ends!  I think it is because the manufacturers tapped in frets already cut to size with pre-finished ends...and they are slightly too narrow!  It feel like that's not great because you lose a bit of fretboard at the edge. I want every bit of my fretboard to count. I reckon it is better to put the frets in and then sand them flush to the fretboard edge.

After polishing all the frets and giving the fretboard a heavy oiling, I decided to replace the nut. The existing one was pretty awful.  I had already bought a bag of standard classical bone nuts a while back, and they are a perfect fit.  Well, other than sanding the bottom down a few millimetres to get the nut height right.

The saddle was not the worst saddle I've ever seen, but, yikes, comes close! A cheap plastic one, and so thin! I've never seen a saddle so thin, I was tempted to open up the saddle slot a bit more to fit a bone saddle in, but, nah. A little too much effort for this calibre of guitar.

Restrung it up, it sounded okay.  Marginally better than your average C40. It has the usual G string resonance nastiness when you dig in, so many classical guitars have that.  I reckon that is your first test with a classical guitar. Pluck the G string hard, does it have a tedious resonance that grinds your ears - and does it sound a bit out of balance with the other strings? Otherwise this guitar has a good bass, the mids are bolder than I was expecting, and the trebles are adequate. It is not the worst vintage Yamaha I have played.

It is a cheap model, that's for sure, marginally up from my G-55A. For starters it does actually have a solid wood (rosewood?) fretboard, and a solid bookmatched soundboard (cedar?).  The rest of the body is all veneer, so quite cheap, and no attempts to bookmatch the back or sides. Although the back is interestingly pretty though, I mean veneer is still wood, just a really thin sheet of wood, I'm guessing this is an example of rotary peeled veneer. At least the veneer is not on a backing of MDF, it looks to be on some sort of (probably) laminated cheaper wood.

As found

Fret tool not quite right sadly

New nut installed, compared with old

Interesting veneer back

So overall it came up okay, sounds okay, and it is pretty, so ready to go back to its owner.

Here is my standard test song, raw from the microphone.

Yamaha G65-A: