Thursday, January 29, 2009

Infuriating Drumming

I'm continuing to improve upon the Variating Drummer plugin. I need to finish several things, the main one being the variation algorithm editor. Variation algorithms form the basis of the drummer's ability to give the style random twists. Unfortunately, building an editor for them is the most difficult challenge in terms of graphical user interface programming. I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out how I want the editor to look.

I also need to implement some sort of probability mapping for measures, so that the drummer will know when to apply fills and variations more effectively. For example, one does not usually do fancy rhythms during the first measure of the verse. Instead, one would wait until the second or, more often, the fourth, until spicing up the beat. It helps listeners keep track of measures, just like a metronome that highlights every fourth beat.

Finally, I need to develop some way to do fills. Right now I'm thinking that fills will just be special variation algorithms. I don't know. Right now I need to work on the variation algorithm editor. I'll post pictures later.

No comments: