Modulations

Jul 28 2009

ParamDrum

ParamDrum TR Edition from Peter Dines on Vimeo.

ParamDrum is a Reaktor drum sequencer for people who want a fast, easy way to create unique sounding electronic beat sequences with a MIDI controller. It puts the fun back into creating rhythmic variations that can be saved, recalled and tweaked in live performance or recorded and arranged into the backbone of a track.

It doesn’t have a compressor or reverb – surely you already have these things yourself, right? – what it has is a fast workflow, and the ability to produce sequences that will surprise you as you create them. It’s not a one-button “tada, here’s your beat” randomizer, nor is it a traditional sequencer that expects you to painstakingly determine every detail. It’s a nice balance between the two. I put a lot of effort into the usability and workflow and I hope you’ll find it as much fun as I do to work with.

The most important features:

Note velocity represents probability a step will trigger
Enter and delete notes with a MIDI keyboard
Record per-step automation with MIDI CCs
Independent sequence length for each of the three sequencers
Extremely low CPU usage – 1 to 3 percent CPU on my four year old laptop
fun beat sequences practically fall out of it

Here’s a quick peek at the previous version, which uses some generic samples from the Reaktor factory library and has a different GUI.

Reaktor drum machine with parameter locks from Peter Dines on Vimeo.

Both versions are available for the comically low price of $12.50. Once you have purchased a password, you can open the RAR files on the official ParamDrum drop. A non password protected PDF on the drop has more details on usage and features.

Remember: you need Reaktor 5 in order to use ParamDrum, and you need to enter a valid email address in order to receive the password.

I am a Kontakt dope

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13 Comments

Joe Syndrome

Hell yes.. That totally looks fun and seems like a go to tool everytime i need some crazy beats. Looking for download link now : ) Expect to be thanked in the album. THanks peter !

July 30th, 2009 @ 8:36 am

amarillo114

Thanks Peter for spreading you knowledge!

August 5th, 2009 @ 5:17 pm

Albertito

Does it run outside reaktor?

August 13th, 2009 @ 3:56 am

Peter Dines

Nope, it’s a Reaktor patch. So it runs in Reaktor, either standalone or as a plugin in a host.

August 13th, 2009 @ 4:00 am

Veiss

Hello, i just purchased Paramdrum, and recieved the paypal confirmation email. I didn’t recieve a password by mail. Maybe it’s too soon and you just haven’t sent the password yet or something. When i do get it where do i put the password. I tried downloading it on the drop, and it didn’t ask for one and just downloaded a file called downloaded file.

August 24th, 2009 @ 12:14 am

Peter Dines

The way it works at the moment is, I get notified by Paypal and then I send the pass. I know, it’s positively stone age doing it manually, but I haven’t had time to look into automating it. I know there’s some sort of Paypal API but I have to set up something on my own server, blah blah etc.

The other option is to redirect the user to a page with the password but I don’t want to leave it hanging out there and have to rely on a robots.txt file to keep from getting indexed by a search engine.