Electro Batá Set Test
I recorded a quick test with the electro-batá set I’ve been working on, over some live drums I recorded. It’s all pretty rough playing wise but it does the job - the main thing I wanted to check is whether I could get the latency down enough to track parts with the Batá in time over a recording - and I’m pretty happy with the results!
I’ve been imagining this 6/8 pattern called Ñongo over a heavy backbeat groove, so I decided to try it out - it was a pretty hard one to play at the speed I choose so it was a challenge but a lot of fun as well!
For those playing at home, the drum track was required with just one mic, using the Zoom H2 in front of the kit, sitting on some boxes facing in towards the snare / hi-hat. The Bata was recording MIDI only, which then translates to samples.
Latency
So I was very happy with the latency - I played the part live over the drum track, using my speakers to hear the recording and the batá (an advantage of MIDI-recording since there’s no actual sound from the room) with a metronome, and it felt perfectly in time for me apart from my actual playing mistakes and my own time drifting.
The setup I was using was the ASIO4ALL driver, with a Sample Rate of 96kHz, and 64 samples, which Reaper estimated to have a delay of between 5.6-7.6ms. It wasn’t enough for me to notice! All of this was still running through my legacy dd506 drum brain.
I don’t fully understand why the higher sample rate settings etc. made it better, but I had read to try this in several articles on reducing latency, and it certainly was much better than when I was trying at 44100 or 48kHz.
Set Design
In terms of the actual play-ability of the set, it was not bad. I could reach all of the drum heads which was pretty important since the pattern was so fast, it was at a good height that I wasn’t leaning down overly, and the width seemed to be good - shorter than what an acoustic set would be but quite comfortable. My main issues were still hitting the plastic rims of the drum pads, since they weren’t designed for playing with hands, and that the pads can sometimes move if they become loose on their mounting rods.
I could fix both of these issues by making my own pads, with no rims and a different mounting system, which is something I’m considering, but I’ll explore after some more testing.
I was also able to track the cowbell and shekere parts for the end of the video quite nicely, just setting up another track and assigning those samples to the right pads.
Sound
I was pretty happy with the sound - I think it blends well with acoustic drum sounds and sounds good, although there weren’t many dynamics because of how fast and roughly I was playing. It would be good to try a slower pace and try out more dynamics and some of the tapado notes.
Here’s a test just showing the range of samples I’m using - after doing this, I think I’m going to have to adjust some of the sensitivities.
Let me know what you thought!
