Steel Drums

[John Vere]

I’m working on a bunch of Jimmy Buffet backing tracks and about all I can find are Marimbas. They sound close but I started looking for steel drums and all I found were there’s weird cloud drums and spacey sort of things. 
I installed the free Kontakt 7 but nothing seems cheep so far. 

[Glenn Stanton]

there are some SF2 steel drums, but finding good quality simulations are (as you note) not cheap. and the cloud drums (which are cool) are not steel drums. 

https://github.com/jlearman/jSteelDrum1 (decent)

https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts?formats=sf2&tags=steel+drum (this is one i've used, it's ok)

and one of the best ones: https://www.indigisounds.com/ (but $99...) ? 

[OutrageProductions]

This is the best, least expensive that I've found so far. I used to create a patch in Reaktor, because the convolved waveform of Steel Drums is just a modified Sine wave, but if you don't have that instrument try the 8Dio.

[Canopus]

You have the Soundpaint Steel Drum for $15 that runs inside the free Soundpaint engine. Soundpaint is part of 8DIO so it might very well be based on the same samples as mentioned above, although you won't need Kontakt or Reaktor.

[OutrageProductions]

@Canopus That is the budget sub-set of the main 8Dio instrument, and is quite good. I just opted for the full boat because I needed more depth. But I'd bet that John can easily get by with the Soundpaint collection.

[Johnny Tsao]

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Edited March 12, 2024 by Johnny Tsao

[John Vere]

Thanks everyone lots to try out. And ya I never usually think to check the TTS-1. Seeing as how it’s just a backing track that might be fine but I don’t mind anything that’s under $30 and is easy to use. I have stopped using TTS-1 other than for preview.   It can crash a project if added later like this would be. 
I like the sound of this 8Dio thing. Never heard of it. Tomorrow I’ll have time if it will stop snowing.  I’m learning  5 or 6 Jimmy Buffet songs to chase away the long Canadian winter blues. 

Edited January 20, 2024 by John Vere

[fret_man]

17 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

This is the best, least expensive that I've found so far. I used to create a patch in Reaktor, because the convolved waveform of Steel Drums is just a modified Sine wave, but if you don't have that instrument try the 8Dio.

On sale right now for $28. 13Gb , yikes! But yes, they really sound good.

[Glenn Stanton]

yes, i have a couple of projects coming up which need steel drums, so i bought them. they sound so much better than the SF2 i have been using over the years, and the hand tapping articulation is excellent. so for $28... the soundpaint version (also 8Dio) seems like it uses the same samples base (12.3GB) but the options and articulations is fewer. $15.

Edited January 20, 2024 by Glenn Stanton

[John Vere]

OK so it seem the only ones mentioned all use Kontakt paid version right? I only have the free version so I'm told that won't play files like those from 8Dio? 

I'm not about to pay $200 for Kontakt which also seems is a very hi CPU hog. 

I think I see if the TTS-1 crashes the project, I might get lucky. Or just use the Marimba. 

[John Vere]

19 hours ago, Johnny Tsao said:

Steel Drums is the main instrument in GM/GM2, and the Program Change is 115, so it is also included in TTS-1.
If you haven't found the Steel Drum instrument yet, just give it a try.?

 

 

And the winner is the TTS-1- I was listening to the demos of the 8Dio and that was totally not the sound I want, way to ambient. Might have been the choice of material. But the TTS_1 steel drum is unbelievably perfect and punchy.  It is exactly the correct sound!  Usually adding TTS-1 later in a project will crash it. Boy I will miss it when someday a Windows update kills DX. 

[OutrageProductions]

20 minutes ago, John Vere said:

... demos of the 8Dio and that was totally not the sound I want, way to ambient. 

Yeah, all of the demos are way too wet, but the samples are actually much drier. Glad that you found a solution.
And FWIW, I've never had a DX plug crash any sessions when adding at any time, especially TTS1.

[Canopus]

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

OK so it seem the only ones mentioned all use Kontakt paid version right?

No, not really. I mentioned an instrument which runs inside Soundpaint, which is free. 

Edited January 20, 2024 by Canopus

[JnTuneTech]

1 hour ago, John Vere said:

And the winner is the TTS-1- I was listening to the demos of the 8Dio and that was totally not the sound I want, way to ambient. Might have been the choice of material. But the TTS_1 steel drum is unbelievably perfect and punchy.  It is exactly the correct sound!  Usually adding TTS-1 later in a project will crash it. Boy I will miss it when someday a Windows update kills DX. 

8Dio & others will be more customizable, and because they have more dynamic range, often seem less "punchy" at first. But often times we don't need all that, and something basically pre-mixed like the samples used in the TTS-1 and its cousins can be all that is needed in a pop mix. And that's what most GM sets were created for.

I reluctantly still have to plug the older Roland GM samplers, like TTS-1, because for me, they have had some of the most usable & affordable sound sets, with for my tastes some great metallic percussion samples since the late 80s. You should listen to the metallic percussion card demo song on an old R8-M - that one still impresses me. So, it's often that I also refer to TTS-1 for things like steel drums in a quick mix. -And, FWIW, on my systems, that DX only crashes on a few initial project setups using downloaded MIDI, but once I clean up the tracking, it never does it again. And I have tens of old projects with TTS-1 included that have loaded fine every time, for years now.  -Of course, yes, eventually, it will go away... so I am starting to export all those things to audio, to be sure!

[John Vere]

It’s been a long time but there was this a period of time when I had a lot of crashes with TTS-1. It was only when adding it later to a project.  
I use it a lot with the download midi files and often keep it in the project for extra unimportant parts that I may or may not use. 
And you can always freeze things you don’t trust to last forever. 

[John Vere]

@Canopus  Thanks for pointing me at Soundpaint. I installed it and bought the Steel Drums for $15. My kind of budget .  
Defiantly a step up from TTS-1.

The biggest difference is how it responds to velocity which of course the TTS-1 doesn’t.  So I had to rework the track paying close attention to velocity.
  Sounds excellent.  
Will be exploring the library for more goodies. 
Do they go on sale?  

[Canopus]

21 minutes ago, John Vere said:

Do they go on sale?  

No , that's the thing with Soundpaint. It's said they will never go on sale, but the prices are always pretty low.

Also, there are a few free libraries you may want to download. You won't find instruments like that in TTS-1.

• 1928 Vintage Grand Steinway

• Adastra Ambiences

[John Vere]

Ya priced just right for me. It’s odd how many vendors are always having 75% off sales. Why not just keep the price reasonable in the first place. 
I already grabbed the piano:) 

[Will.]

On 1/20/2024 at 9:12 PM, John Vere said:

And the winner is the TTS-1- I was listening to the demos of the 8Dio and that was totally not the sound I want, way to ambient. Might have been the choice of material. But the TTS_1 steel drum is unbelievably perfect and punchy.  It is exactly the correct sound!  Usually adding TTS-1 later in a project will crash it. Boy I will miss it when someday a Windows update kills DX. 

Bounce them to track dry and store them as a sample pack. Create a new folder in the browser pane then drag and drop them from the TV in to your sample folder. 

[John Vere]

I don’t use samples in the sense of sticking little bits of audio together in a track.  That sounds like too much work. I leave the samples to be included with an instrument that I can play. 

 Soundpaint crashed Cakewalk twice. I submitted a dump file. The free piano is pretty terrible. 

 I had to return to using the Marimba on Xpand.2. It’s not a steel drum but it works.  I’ll mix it with the TTS-1 steel drum. 
 

I’m hoping Sonar will have the sample player just like Next. Life will be easier.

Kontakt was a bit of a failure and now it looks like Soundpaint is doomed to my excluded list too. You crash Cakewalk and you are a dead duck. 

Edited January 22, 2024 by John Vere