Written 1999/07/31
The hallmark of mainstream synthetic music is, hands down, the synthetic kick drum. It can be heard anywhere from old school hip-hop and electro, to the modern rave scene or dance mix. You may find 808 infiltrating television programs, or booming annoyingly from the car stereo of some baseball-capped arsehole at four in the morning.
But in spite of the many ways the synthetic kick has been used to evil ends over the years, I have to admit I still like it.
One day I was checking the Software Synth section of The Synth Zone on the Web, when I spied a link to a downloadable drum sample generator called Stomper Ultra++, authored by a Swedish fellow by the name of Hakan "Master Zap" Andersson. Enticed by the promise of creating my own drum samples on my PC, I followed the link and DLed the .EXE.
The interface of Stomper is simple and fairly intuitive once you learn the basics, which is easy with the included help html file. The program starts out with default settings on a single sinewave oscillator. Other selectable oscillators include sawtooth, square, triangle, and WAV (.wav files that is). Sample time, frequency, and amplitude all have numerical start and end values.
Below these is the noise section, which is probably the least intuitive area of the program. Those of us used to instant analog-style white noise wouldn't expect to see random frequency modulation as the method for generating the noise needed for snare, hi-hat and cymbal sounds. The parameter called "Noise Factor" controls the degree of modulation of the source tone, and "Noise Type" controls the frequency of the modulation. A high noise factor with a low noise type produces the most suitable results for snares and the like. Also, the frequency start and end times for the oscillator should be quite high, in the thousands of Hertz.
Further down is a section for editing the curveshapes for the frequency, amplitude, and tone, which can be changed either by using the scrollbar, or by latching on to the curveshape graphics with your cursor and tugging them to and fro. Messing with the curveshape for tone is especially novel, changing the harmonics of the oscillator, and in the case of a square wave, altering the pulse width.
You can choose various sample rates in the upper-right corner of the interace, from 11025 Hz, to 44100. This lets you use the minimum rates necessary for a given sound: for deep kicks you can safely go to the bottom 11025, for snares 32000 is adequate, but hi-hat and cymbal sounds will require the highest fidelity. Alas, I only wish my outmoded workstation could accomodate the cool hats I've made with this program!
As well as being able to have dozens of oscillators (probably way more than you'll need for anything other than additive synthesis), you can also add filters into the mix. The filters can be used to add a new quality to percussion sounds, or to make analog emulation sounds with oscillators that have similar start and end frequencies.
You can tune these oscillators using the built-in "Musical Frequency Calculator", which shows musical notes and the corresponding measurement in Hertz. Just click the button between the start and end settings. This little feature is so handy I often open Stomper just to use the calculator while designing sounds on another program.
As mentioned above, .wav files can be used as oscillators. What's exciting is that they can then be mutilated and processed like any of the basic waveforms.
To prevent clipping, your mass of oscillators and/or WAV files can be normalized by hitting Ctrl+N, or by accessing the tools menu.
In between tweaking a parameter here and there, you can audition your sound either by pressing the Play button, or by the oh-so-convenient shortcut key: ENTER. You can save your settings as .stp or .stu files, and generate samples by hitting the Write WAV File button.
Should you be at a loss to come up with nifty new synthetic percussion sounds, you can always play a game of Visual Tetris(?!). I have no idea why Master Zap built this in, but I'm not complaining!
To top it all off, Zap also promises an upcoming, cross-platform Java version, although it has been said Stomper will already operate on Macs using SoftWindows 95.
The only catch is that Stomper Ultra++ is what Zap calls "Musicware", a variation of shareware where, if you make music with samples generated with his program, you are urged to send him a copy for his listening pleasure/displeasure. A fee of $10 or purchase of any of his CD's is optional.
Stomper has gotten quite a bit of attention in the synthetic music world. Ensoniq has incorporated it into the operating system of their ASR-X Pro. Swedish dance band Antiloop reportedly used Stomper samples in their song "In My Mind", which you might have viddied on MuchMusic's R U Receiving? Stomper users have created an MP3 archive of music created with Stomper-generated samples called "Stompilation".
None of this should be surprising. Stomper Ultra++ makes the creation of powerful new synth percussion sounds incredibly facile. In a world where the synthetic kick rules, it is an invaluable bit of software indeed. You can download it at:
Also download my Stomper files at the Sounds page
