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Drum Kit

The MAGDA drum kit is five synthetic drum voices: Kick, Snare, Hat, Tom, and Clap. Every voice is synthesised, not sampled. Drop them onto Drum Grid pads to build a kit, or add any one to a track and play it standalone.

All five are 16-voice, MIDI-gated instruments. Kick, Snare, and Tom tune to the played note where noted; Hat and Clap have a fixed character set by their own controls.

Common controls

Most voices expose Curve knobs (range -50 to 50) that shape the decay envelopes. At 0 the decay is linear, positive values swell and slow the tail, negative values make it faster and more concave.

Kick

Three layers: a pitched sine Transient sweep, a tuned sine Body with pitch-snap into a saturator, and a noise Click.

Parameter Range Default Description
Transient 0 to 1 0.5 Transient sine level
Trans Pitch 60 to 1000 Hz 220 Transient pitch
Trans Sweep 0 to 1 0.5 Transient downward pitch sweep depth
Trans Decay 1 to 100 ms 8 Transient decay
Pitch 30 to 120 Hz 55 Body fundamental
Snap 0 to 1 0.5 Body pitch-snap depth
Snap Time 5 to 1000 ms 60 Pitch-snap time
Attack 0 to 400 ms 0 Body attack
Body 1 to 4000 ms 500 Body decay
Drive 1 to 10 2 Saturation (body and click)
Click 0 to 1 0.3 Click noise level
Click Tone 500 to 12000 Hz 2000 Click high-pass cutoff
Curve / Trans Curve -50 to 50 0 Body / transient decay shape

Snare

Three layers: a Transient (pitched sine sweep plus a high-passed noise crack), a tuned Body, and a resonant-high-passed Rattle tail.

Parameter Range Default Description
Transient 0 to 1 0.5 Transient level
Trans Pitch 100 to 2000 Hz 400 Sine sweep frequency
Trans Sweep 0 to 1 0.5 Pitch-sweep depth
Trans Decay 1 to 100 ms 10 Transient decay
Trans Tone 1000 to 12000 Hz 4000 Noise crack high-pass cutoff
Tune 100 to 400 Hz 180 Body fundamental
Snap 0 to 1 0.25 Pitch-snap depth
Snap Time 2 to 80 ms 12 Pitch-snap time
Attack 0 to 100 ms 0 Body attack
Body Decay 1 to 1500 ms 180 Body decay
Snappy 0 to 1 0.6 Blend from body (0) to rattle (1)
Tone 800 to 12000 Hz 3000 Rattle band-pass centre
HP Freq 20 to 6000 Hz 300 Rattle high-pass cutoff
HP Reso 0.5 to 10 0.7 Rattle high-pass resonance
Rattle Decay 1 to 1500 ms 200 Rattle decay
Drive 1 to 20 1 Rattle saturation
Curve / Trans Curve / Rattle Curve -50 to 50 0 Per-layer decay shape

Hat

Two independent layers: a metallic additive Ring and a high-passed Noise sizzle. Short decay reads as a closed hat, long as an open hat.

Parameter Range Default Description
Ring 0 to 1 0.6 Metallic ring level
Pitch 200 to 2000 Hz 540 Ring fundamental
Spread 0.5 to 2 1 Ring dissonance (1 nominal, above spreads, below is more harmonic)
Ring Decay 0.01 to 2000 ms 10 Ring decay
Noise 0 to 1 0.5 Noise sizzle level
HP Freq 800 to 18000 Hz 8000 Noise high-pass cutoff
HP Reso 0 to 1 0 Noise high-pass resonance
Sat 0 to 1 0 Noise saturation
Noise Decay 5 to 2000 ms 100 Noise decay
Ring Curve / Noise Curve -50 to 50 0 Per-layer decay shape

Tom

Two layers: a tuned sine Body with a downward pitch sweep, and a high-passed Noise stick attack.

Parameter Range Default Description
Tune 50 to 400 Hz 120 Body fundamental
Bend 0 to 1 0.4 Downward pitch-sweep depth
Attack 0 to 100 ms 0 Body attack
Body 5 to 2000 ms 400 Body decay
Noise 0 to 1 0.3 Noise attack level
Tone 200 to 12000 Hz 1500 Noise high-pass cutoff
Noise Decay 5 to 1000 ms 60 Noise decay
Curve / Noise Curve -50 to 50 0 Per-layer decay shape

Clap

Band-passed noise shaped by a fast three-peak flam envelope, followed by a diffuse tail.

Parameter Range Default Description
Tone 400 to 4000 Hz 1000 Band-pass centre
Spread 2 to 30 ms 9 Flam spread between peaks
Decay 20 to 1500 ms 200 Envelope decay
Tail 0 to 1 0.4 Diffuse tail level
HP Freq 500 to 8000 Hz 2000 Resonant high-pass cutoff
HP Reso 0.5 to 10 1 Resonant high-pass resonance
Drive 1 to 20 1 Saturation
Curve -50 to 50 0 Decay shape

Macros, modulation, and presets

Each drum voice is a standard MAGDA device, so its parameters accept macros and modulators, and patches save and recall through the preset system. On a Drum Grid, each pad chain can carry its own macro and modulator links.