- 6 hours ago
The EVANS Hybrid Sensory Percussion Sound System not only delivers an entirely different approach to hybrid drum setups, but it unlocks a whole new level of creativity, flexibility and power - turning the acoustic drums that you’re familiar with into a complete hybrid controller. To say this system is deep is an understatement, we barely even scratch the surface of what it can do.
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TechTranscript
00:00Hi, Si here for Music Radar. Today I'm joined by Stu and we are checking out the Evans Sensory
00:06Percussion System.
00:30So, Stu, tell us all about the Sensory Percussion System from Evans here. What does it do?
00:43Well, what doesn't it do? Sensory Percussion has been around a little while now. This
00:47is the version 2 which has just been released and Evans have partnered with Sunhouse, who
00:53are the original creators of Sensory Percussion, to kind of revamp the whole setup really and
00:59they've overhauled these sensors and the portal module is a new kind of design for them and
01:07then they've also created a new version of the Sensory Percussion software which we'll
01:10get into later on.
01:11Yeah, yeah. So it's all brand new? This is all brand new?
01:14Yeah, the concept has kind of been developed but yeah, this is kind of like all brand new
01:19kind of overhauled stuff. And yeah, it works quite differently to kind of other hybrid electronic
01:27type percussion stuff because these that look like triggers are in fact actually sensors.
01:33Right, not triggers, sensors.
01:35They're not triggers, they're sensors and they work by attaching to the rim like a trigger
01:41would but you've also got underneath here kind of metal sensor elements so they work kind
01:47of magnetically between the element and the actual sensor.
01:49So you stick something to this mesh head here or you can be a normal head, any head.
01:55It works on mesh heads which is what we're using today, the Evans DB1 but you can also put these
02:00on standard acoustic heads of any brand. And yeah, you stick the element to the head, put the sensor
02:07onto the rim of the drum and then from there it's capable of splitting each drum and each sensor can
02:15create up to 10 zones per drum. Wow, 10 zones, that's loads. And that's like, well it depends
02:20on which drum, they're all slightly different shapes and then you design all of that in there,
02:25in the software. Yeah and then so that the sensors connect to the portal interface there which in
02:29turn connects to the computer and then you can define the zones and which sounds are kind of
02:35assigned to each zone within the software. Yeah and then the software itself is packed
02:39jam full of loads of sound packs, loads of effects, loads of ways of manipulating the audio with kind
02:46of modulators and generators, sequencers, samplers, all sorts of stuff. It's quite deep. Very deep.
02:53Which we're going to get into in a bit. Yeah. So as you mentioned Stu, in the box you get the sensors,
02:59the portal and then the software we've downloaded, installed and all that but also I'd like you to
03:04show me how these things actually attach to the drums and the skins and stuff. This is
03:09the sensor element isn't it? Sensor elements, yeah. The whole kit comes with, I think there's nine
03:14of these in there so there's spares for you to be able to kind of put it on different drums if
03:19you've got multiple kind of drums that you want to use across the thing but yeah essentially this
03:24works as a kind of measurement tool so while it's a v-shaped piece of metal it's only really the
03:30little dot that sticks to the head that's left behind and this purely gives you kind of like the
03:35right distance from the the rim so that when you stick it to the head and clamp the sensor on
03:40it's reading right above the dot. Perfect. Right, let's do that now then. Yeah. Cool.
03:57Okay Lentitude, everything's out of the box. We've attached all the sensors, done a little measurement
04:26things, all that's done, everything's hooked up but before we can actually play anything we need to
04:31train them don't we? Yeah you do. With the sensory percussion software it will walk you through it
04:37but to give you your kind of 10 zones you've got multiple levels of training so you don't have to
04:42have 10 zones you can have up to that many. There's three layers of training for each drum
04:47and basically you just kind of set it there's a thing that will walk you through it and you hit
04:53each zone kind of roughly around 100 times and then it knows that's the center that's the edge
04:59that's the rim and there's there's loads you can hit the side of the shell you can do cross sticks and
05:04you can do what they call a stick hit which is that and will produce a different zone so there's lots
05:10you can do for now I think we'll just train it each one to kind of level one just to keep it simple.
05:14Yeah but you can go super like lots of gestural differences and yeah wicked. All right let's do that now.
05:44Right Stu we've described what comes in the box of course let's focus on the software here of the
05:52sensory percussion system we've installed we're fully loaded up all the sound source that comes
06:00from the software doesn't it? Yeah everything's generated from within the software so the interface
06:04itself isn't actually creating any sounds or anything it's literally an interface to get your
06:09sensor signal into the computer where everything happens. Okay i.o the brain well that is technically
06:15a brain as well but this is where all the sound comes from so we've got three main views here we
06:21have a play edit and mix screen we're on the play screen right now and essentially you can kind of
06:26get started straight away here can't you it does everything that you kind of want to straight out
06:30of the box. You can yeah and the play screen is kind of like your very quick get going and probably
06:35where like most people spend most of their time because you can use this screen here to go through
06:42different sets which we'll get into in a second yeah and there's these macro controls along the
06:47bottom there so you've really got a lot of hands-on stuff straight on this screen yeah and then there's
06:52other screens for for doing more in-depth editing well let's have a quick look at these other screens so
06:57if you want to go deeper of course then edit is where you get into the sort of the next layer down
07:02and then where you can design the zones and all this other stuff it's quite it's a modular system
07:07essentially isn't it it is yeah everything's sort of modular within this so you can kind of grab
07:13components from other sets which is what sensory percussion call their kits so a kit preset is called
07:19a set yeah you can grab a snare drum from this one uh melodic stuff from over there and assign it to
07:24different zones within this screen here but it does a hell of a lot more than that as well so the
07:29customization is just kind of almost mind-blowing and very deep on what you can do yeah almost
07:34limitless i would yeah yeah great and then let's get the third one then it's quite simple it's the
07:40mix window so we can actually just you know adjust the the levels of each individual yeah exactly and
07:46you've got kind of master effects and things like that but a lot of that stuff is also you can set it
07:50up so that that's accessible from the uh play window so that you you may not need to kind of keep
07:56switching between screens and stuff so it's set up more for for being able to play easily yeah that's
08:00great so when you're actually playing we you're on the play screen so we'll go back here um so
08:07describing a bit of what's going on yeah so across the top there you've got um seven sets uh and that's
08:14arranged into what's called a session which is the overall kind of thing there so you can have all of
08:19your different sensor configurations um and you know a whole whole list of different um kit setups
08:27and save that as a as a session yeah for recalling later on so along the top you you switch through
08:32them and you're essentially loading a new kit so if you want to kind of adjust any sort of session and
08:37like add stuff to we can we can come out of this little menu on the side here can't we that's right
08:42yeah sensory percussion comes with a number of um of its own kind of sample packs and sound sound
08:48packs here and each one of these that we can see here is uh loadable as a session so a collection of
08:53kits yeah um or you can go through and add individual sets into your own session okay yeah so if we double
09:00tap each one then it loads up yeah yeah so each one of those is a is a set and you can um drop those into
09:08your own session all right i'm going to do that now i'm going to go with 80 snappy drum kit in you go
09:14there done and that one's ready to go in okay and i'll select that that's what that looks like
09:21awesome so going back to i mean each individual one um obviously the naming might not kind of allude to
09:29as to what's happening here but there is this this little description on each one isn't there which is
09:34quite handy yeah it's really useful and everything is sort of laid out nice and cleanly and you know
09:39it's very kind of graphical but if you drop down on on the uh the kind of more tab there
09:44then it explains to you exactly kind of where things are rooted and um because there are so many
09:50zones doing so many different things it's quite handy to have a little bit of a description to know that
09:55you know if you hit that rim then it switches certain things in and out or if you hit the center of
09:59that tom towards the edge then you're going to get different sort of fluctuations in pitch
10:02um sometimes things are connected via like velocity so there's there's lots of ways of manipulating the
10:09the sound and the way that you're playing oh great so stu elsewhere on this screen we've got
10:15we've got our virtual input section which we can kind of actually start firing off some of these
10:20like an audition sound from zones and things yeah that shows you what um sensors you've got connected
10:27into the portal at any one point so obviously there are more inputs here than we have sensors
10:34we're just using the three that come with the kit but you can add them and define them and they appear
10:38down there and within there you can sort of um audition and check out what's on it yeah without
10:44actually having to worry about you know the hitting the kit at that point so and on the on the right
10:49hand side we've got our layer mix which is just the levels of each sound essentially isn't it yeah it
10:54gives you like a quick view of uh essentially i suppose what you'd have in the mixer uh screen
10:59but without having to delve and change screens while you're playing or anything so you can tweak
11:02things there yeah but possibly i'd say personally for me i think the real power is in in what is the
11:08macros down on the bottom row here and was basically there are so many different controls you can
11:13assign to each zone and how you can affect all the sounds and all that sort of stuff isn't there yeah
11:19um and what this does is uh this is quite a good example really because um each of these sensors and
11:25the software can react to multiple things like we said earlier playing dynamics um kind of speed as
11:32well as uh velocity yeah um and you can use that to kind of influence what's happening here and on this
11:38kit um the floor tom has is got some kind of melodic tonal uh sounds mapped yeah across from the center to
11:46the edge yeah um and you probably just saw it there the delay macro at the bottom just here um yeah
11:53that's been linked to uh playing dynamics so every time you hit that depending on how hard or soft you
11:59hit the um the floor tom uh it's going to change the level of the delay so oh right cool like if you kind
12:06of hit it quietly you can see it sort of staying fairly moderate there but you can start
12:10oh wow that's cool and get a lot more delay yeah it doesn't have to be delay it could be
12:20kind of you can attach that to any macro control or any control and create a macro from that which
12:25is then accessible from the play screen right so everything's all set up we've gone through the
12:29software um so we know how everything's working i think now's the time to hear actually what it sounds
12:35like yeah let's try to start playing let's try out some sounds yeah cool
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