Doktor in your own home

slicepack · 14 May 2003, 03:50

There has been some interest in my 'Build your own Doktor' project, and in the absence of a website, here's where we're at so far:

The brain of the whole system is a 486 laptop with a monochrome screen which is running Voyetra's Sequencer Plus. This is Andrew's weapon of choice, and having been a Cubase user, having no GUI feels weird. You can download SQ+ for free at:

http://www.voyetra.com/site/kb_ftp/340ftp.asp

MIDI instructions leave the 486 via a Music Quest Note1 MIDI interface which is plumbed into the 486's Parallel port. Although the real Doktor uses a Voyetra V24S MIDI interface, they are REAL hard to track down, and those that are for sale go for silly money considering how old they are and what they do.....

Anyway...the MIDI data then goes to two Akai S2000 Samplers. The first contains the drum samples - Kick Snare & Hat sampled from a Yamaha RX5 and the Toms sampled from an Oberheim DMX. It's important to have each 'drum' coming out of a different output (the S2000 gives you a maximum of 8), so they can be individually mixed in a live environment - you also need to pan the toms from left to right to make it sound more 'Rock'.

So we now have six drum tracks, with the snare fed through a Yamaha SPX90 for reverb, and then they're all forced through individual compressors (we're cheapskates so at the moment we're using Behringer MDX2200s). The compressors are vital for a convincing live Doktor, as cunning use of them (and the gates) gets a real thumping sound.

The second Akai S2000 deals with other percussion - some tracks such as 'Vision Thing' appear to have a tambourine playing the hi-hat part, plus there's some wind-chimey noises that occur occasionally. The website says that there's a piano stashed away as well, but that's for another time...

The current Doktor also plays bass in the form of a Roland D550 which is fuzzed up through a Korg A2, but as we have access to a bass player, this isn't a requirement.

So now we're creating the song sequences, and we're currently pondering whether the drum parts are constructed from indivdual sampled 'hits' or longer 1 or 2 bar segments glued together by Sequencer Plus - there's an intangible groove that evades us so far.

Of course Mr.E. could just email us the original songs in their native .SNG format (he's not going to be needing them for while....)but so far he has been less than helpful.

When we get it as close as possible (musically that is - sonically it already sounds like a WOMD) we'll get a website up with lots of Geeky photos and then let Paddy take a listen.......

Ed Rhombus · 14 May 2003, 08:40

Bloody hell!

You've done you're homework.

For Rhombus we took a bit of a short cut.

1) Buy Alesis SR-16
2) Give it a stupid name
3) Program it
4) Sling it in a flight case and put a little bouncing picture of it on the website

Gary · 14 May 2003, 09:53

and i just use reason 2 & Cubase sx, and rewire.. hehe but then i dont play live shows so if it all dies... no harm done.

slicepack · 14 May 2003, 10:07

I think it goes deeper than just reliability in two respects:

a)The compression stages are vital to making any drum track sound credible in a live/recording environment.

b)The limitations of Sequencer Plus must affect the composition as it forces the 'artist' to think in a certain way. The Cubase GUI portrays the sounds over time in a way that allows the creative side of your brain to get on with other tasks. To use Sequencer Plus (which has no such visual clues) requires the user to have to imagine the relationship between the sounds and their position within the musical time-space. What I'm trying to say is that it's not intuitive, therefore to reach a point where its use is transparent (and therefore musically satisfying) you have use muscles in your brain made flabby by years of GUI err.....obviousness.

Zuma · 14 May 2003, 10:07

ah, miss my old SR-16, got a Yamaha QY700 now, which promises much if I ever get the time to learn the OS properly...

slicepack · 14 May 2003, 10:10

Well that's the rub - those people who who excel in the bio-mechanical process of art & technology are those few who have "Read the instruction manual".

14 May 2003, 10:31

you people actually read manuals?!?!?

Zuma · 14 May 2003, 10:40

no, but it is neatly filed away in the bookcase beside all the others

The cubase one is even worse - far better just to hit buttons till you get used to it...

Funny that my Les Paul never came with a manual!

CellThree · 14 May 2003, 19:15

Rebirth confuses me! I have no idea how to program it, which worries me considering the amount of 3rd rate techno around that seems to have been done using the preset sounds on it. I want to make bad 3rd Techno dammit!

I have Cubase. I had it hooked up to Rebirth. And that is as far as I got! Anyone got an idiots guide to these two?

Zuma · 14 May 2003, 19:29

I got myself one of these, Roland U8 digital studio that runs with Cubase.
It's a mixer, PC controller and sound card all in one. Â£350 which aint too bad as these things go I think.

http://www.edirol.it/europe/details.asp ... K&code=115

Works for me as the mixer runs a lot of the PC stuff for you - you can knock up demos in minutes....suits me as you can still play with faders and twiddle knobs

No idea on the Rebirth stuff though....sorry

X · 14 May 2003, 20:06

The X guide to Rig set up Pt 1

Whack it up to ten ....... Walk away!

hallucienate · 14 May 2003, 20:08

X wrote:The X guide to Rig set up Pt 1

Whack it up to ten ....... Walk away!

what ? it doesn't go up to 11?

X · 14 May 2003, 20:36

11 is there when it still sounds like the speaker tower could take a little more reverbe... Like I said .... This was part 1.
When you play dropped to D instead of the standard tune to E ... You gotta take the precautionary step of not just stick it on full.. The Bass tech just gets Pissed off at ya!
Its like Marty Mcfly in back to the future .....
Now ....wot ya sayin? The tinitus is ok .... If it wasnt for all this buzzin................................................................................

dora · 18 May 2009, 20:57

another copy of Dr. Avalanche
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXwOvkoI_2U

James Blast · 18 May 2009, 21:40

sample of a sample of a sample.... and the guitar snouds too much like the Hedge out of The Ewe Twa

shameful all round

19 May 2009, 12:17

Don't push me cos I'm close to the hedge

Guedzilla · 20 May 2009, 21:10

I usually end up using Fruity Loops to do the drum loops, then I get rid of most effects, export the track and open the .wav file in Cubase.
The one time I used it live I ran it directly from Fruity Loops, which worked quite well actually.

Brad · 20 May 2009, 21:34

Would second Guedzilla's approach.
Using an older stable version of Fruity Loops provides a good nucleus to accomplish a lot of the Doktor's duties.
The trick is layering a variety of snares and kicks to provide more of a "live" feel.

22 Jun 2009, 16:46

interesting article on linn drum and oberheim dmx machines in today's gaurdian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/ju ... m-machines

its well documented about the dok and he dmx samples, and afaik the march violets used a linndrum for their post-mercifiul release stuff...

timsinister · 23 Jun 2009, 16:59

Odd, I thought I'd find out head warbler hanging around here - he also does the doosh-doosh for Leg-iron. Just hope Porl K doesn't catch up with him!

Maisey · 24 Jun 2009, 02:18

ahem

timsinister · 24 Jun 2009, 13:23

Tell me I'm wrong!