Swing on tr707 maximum

[princefan3]

Hi guys...would you say that the roland swing setting of a maximum of 5 is good enough to get the hi hat as close to the kick drum for dance music / house....it sounds pretty close and it can't be bettered I guess if using hardware.
But is having a DAW a lot better.

[pflosi]

I'm not sure I understand the question What do you mean by "getting the hi hat close to the kick"? And what does a DAW have to do with it?

[princefan3]

Well...when I listen to house music I hear a hi hat very close to the kick drum in about 90% of house music...back in the day people only had the tr707 and I guess they relied heavily on this swing to get the speed of a track vibing along.

I guess now we tend to use a Daw to draw the hi hats in and adjust the notes..

That's what I meant

[pflosi]

You mean "very close" to the kick, but not simultaneously? As far as I can see, you would need two drummachines for that (one without swing for the kick, one with swing for the hi hats). That's how I'd do it.

There are other ways, like non-quantized real time note entry (R8, R70, MPCs, etc.) or some sequencers with the possibility for microtiming adjustements (same as you would do with a DAW piano roll).

[princefan3]

Seriously ....Pflosi....nobody's mentioned this ever in house production in the day....what drummies do you do this with...I'm interested in your method.

Cheers

[meatballfulton]

Most simple drum machines (like all the Roland TR series) have very metronomic timing. If you placed the hi-hat and kick on the same beat of the bar, they would sound at the same time, or as close as possible.

Some drum machines have sloppier internal timing and when driven over a MIDI cable rather than the internal sequencer, it's actually impossible to get multiple drum notes to play at precisely the same time since they arrive over the cable at different times.

If your goal is to have a slight gap between when the kick and hi-hat play, it would require use of a sequencer more sophisticated than that in a TR-707. That's probably why pflosi suggested using two drum machines.

[princefan3]

Very interesting stuff......I'm thinking that at the time of the TRs were there sequencers even around then that could do this.

The 707 cannot be programmed over a sequencer either, so I guess that you either put up with the swing you got or employed another drummie...

There is not much in it when I set the swing to 5 on the 707...I am just curious if it was bettered by some other means. Pflosi may have answered this.

I've watched hundreds of you tube clips and no ones ever said they employed double drums mainly because of our DAWs now but you might have thought it would have been brought up along the line somewhere.

[meatballfulton]

The 707 cannot be programmed over a sequencer

Not programmed, but played.

People have argued for years over the feel of a particular drum machine's sequencer, esp. claiming the swing on the Akai MPCs is superior to other sequencers. If properly implemented, all sequencers should generate the exact same thing, since they are at some level quantized. MPCs have a maximum resolution of a 256th note triplet, while a TR-707 has much tighter quantization, 1/16 note triplets.

I have never seen a technical explantion successfully explaining why one sequencer's feel could be different other than processor overload. If the processor cannot generate the digital signals fast enough, then timing could get sloppy. This has been demonstrated in some hardware multitrack sequencers when heavily overloaded...say 16 channels of polyphonic parts with lots of CC activity at the same time...but drum machines don't have the capabilitity to send that much data.

It's possible that any timing slop could be a factor of the instrument itself not being able to keep up with the amount of data...in other words the sequencer could be rock solid but the instrument sloppy. Some very early MIDI synths were known to have noticeable latency when played over MIDI.

MIDI over cables by default is sloppy because notes are sent in a serial manner, one after another, not all at the same time. If the programming requires all of the sounds of a drum machine to fire on the same beat...kick, snare, toms, cymbals, etc....they will not be heard as firing at the same time because of the time it takes to send each note message over the cable. This is hotly debated by users of DAWs (where clock timing can be sample accurate and all the notes can fire at the exact same time, making layering of sounds predictable) who want to layer external hardware with the same tight timing.

I'm still not sure what you are trying to achieve. Swing by itself will not cause two sounds meant to fall on the same beat to play at slightly different times. It changes the timing of pairs of notes, such that the first of the two is slightly longer and the second slightly shorter. At maximum swing, the timing should be as if the first note is two tied triplets and the second a single triplet...for 1/8 notes, the first note would be two tied 1/8 triplets and the second a 1/8 triplet (a triplet by definition is three notes played in the space of two).

Perhaps you are hearing the difference in the attack of the kick drum and the hi-hat?

[princefan3]

Thanks Meatball....Really appreciate your explanations.
I'm trying to work with hardware only...no MPC stuff just the TR drummies to get authentic results.

When I listen to most house even early chicago house the hi hats are so so close to the kick, in order to get that speed going in the track. I was just interested in how they sorta did that back then.

Cheers.

[meatballfulton]

Post an example so we can hear what you are writing about. Ideally something where the drums are exposed.

[pflosi]

Seriously ....Pflosi....nobody's mentioned this ever in house production in the day....what drummies do you do this with...I'm interested in your method.

Cheers

I personally wouldn't do it like that, because when I use swing (which is rare), I want it to be the same swing on every instrument - ideally. So, I dial in the swing in my master clock, namely an Innerclock Sync Gen Pro 2.

If I wanted to do it as you describe it (or at least how I understand your description), I'd do it with two different drummers, one swinged and one straight. For example, clock two of your drummachines with the same masterclock, say a 808 and 707. Program a straight 1/4 kick on the 808 and straight 1/16 hats on the 707. Now dial in the desired swing on the 707. Bingo - as far as I understand you, this should give you the desired effect.

Post an example so we can hear what you are writing about. Ideally something where the drums are exposed.

Yes, that would be helpful!

I have never seen a technical explantion successfully explaining why one sequencer's feel could be different other than processor overload.

I wouldn't call it "processor overload", but rather define it by the opposite: The machines known for "groove" are the super tight ones. Here's Roger Linn himself explaining that regarding the old MPCs: https://www.attackmagazine.com/features ... pc-timing/

The Roland drummers are not that tight at all, especially not the 707 and 909 (better via DIN sync than MIDI clocked). The "feel" of them, especially the analog ones, is more about subtle timbre variations on each hit, IMO (so that is sound related rather than rhythm related) - which is why it's so hard to create decent 808 beats using samples.

when driven over a MIDI cable rather than the internal sequencer, it's actually impossible to get multiple drum notes to play at precisely the same time since they arrive over the cable at different times.

That's not entirely correct: Yes, the MIDI protocol is serial, but the data is "converted" back to parallel. Basically, as if the receiving device "waited" for all the information before acting upon it. That will result in an inevitable delay (a minimum latency of 320 microseconds), but the MIDI notes are still sent simultaneously. Look up "MIDI running status".

Cheers

[micahjonhughes]

What?

Roland swing delays each even-numbered 1/16th note. Swing on Roland drum machines does not shift the down beats, where you would expect the kick.

We need a track as an example of what you are trying to accomplish.

There were no DAW for most of the acid house movement. Tracks were recorded live to 2 track or dat for the most part.