A virtual collaboration is helping bring a 25-year-old drum module into the 21st century.
Three software tinkerers, collectively calling themselves Team ddrum4ui, recently unveiled an app that breathes new life into the iconic ddrum4 drum module by enabling editing of factory sound files and adding new audio samples to the brain and with some other features.
Before examining the advances, it’s worth looking back at the history of the drum brain which is still sought after today.
Brief history of the ddrum4
The ddrum4 hit the market in the late 1990s, when it was released by Swedish synth innovator Clavia, best known for the Nord keyboards.
ddrum first emerged in the ‘80s with one of the early acoustic drum triggers. The first ddrum module, the ddrum1, was launched in 1985.
The ddrum4, which was launched in March 1997, was hailed as a breakthrough thanks to its custom samples and nuanced trigger technology – not to mention its lightning-fast processing. Indeed, the ddrum4’s latency performance has only recently been bettered.
Key characteristics included a 24-bit digital sound engine, an expandable sound library, 10 trigger inputs, each with adjustable trigger parameters, and full MIDI capability.
E-drum historians point out that what truly set the ddrum4 apart was its dynamic multi-layer sampling. Rather than relying on synthesized tones or simple sample playback, the module featured velocity-switching with up to 10 layers per instrument, providing seamless transitions from soft ghost notes to rimshots and accents.
The ddrum4 and subsequent ddrum4SE, added in November 2001, were actually scaled-back versions of the ddrum3, which boasted 1,000 velocity levels (as opposed to today’s benchmark 127) as well as positional sensing.
The ddrum modules disappeared in the mid-2000s, when Clavia sold the ddrum brand to Armadillo Enterprises in the US. Much of the technology was revived in 2012 when some former Clavia staff formed 2box and launched the DrumIt Five module and a companion mesh head kit.
Former Clavia and 2box engineer Rik van der Brugghen sees the user-accessible sounds, the extensive sample library and the free sample editor as significant innovations at the time.
He is also proud of ddrum’s anti-machinegunning technology.
Despite going out of production more than two decades ago, the ddrum4 is still widely used by drummers around the world. Modules are quickly snapped up when they appear on instrument sales websites or auction sites. At the time of writing, there was a ddrum3 and a ddrum4 available on Reverb and a ddrum4SE on eBay. The module also continues to be widely discussed on a dedicated online forum and social media e-drum groups.
A new lease on life
French amateur drummer Alain Duval had been following the progress of e-drums for some time when, in 2017, he saw a “a nearly complete ddrum4 for a ridiculously low price and took the plunge.”
“It was a revelation: I immediately loved the responsiveness, the feel, and the sound,” he recalls, explaining that he has been using the kit daily ever since – at home and at gigs.
Meanwhile, American Ken Wright stumbled across a ddrum forum in 2019 and spent some time studying the previous decoding work done by other forum members seven years prior. His tinkering resulted in the release of ddrum4edit in 2020.
In a post on the “unofficially ddrum” forum, Ken announced his software tool to the world, explaining that it could “1) display the contents of the sound file in a human readable way, 2) export the contents (samples and configuration) for modification and re-use, and 3) create new sound files using previously exported/modified contents”.
“Along the way, I was also able to identify some more attributes related to pitch bend and decay that were not in the previous documents bundle provided on this forum,” he wrote.
Ken continued to improve ddrum4edit, implementing a higher compression capability, reading/writing of the system, pallet and kit files, and supporting ddrum3 and 2Box files.
The next development began on Christmas Day, 2023, when Geoff Levner reached out to Ken with some questions related to his plans to design and build a GUI wrapper (user interface) around ddrum4edit.
Alain had contacted Geoff, who describes himself as the only non-drummer in the trio, because they had worked together for several years in the field of computer graphics since the early 90s, and remained friends.
“When I came across Ken’s work on the development of ddrum4edit, I was immediately very interested and thought there was something I could do to make this software more user-friendly. And I immediately thought of Geoff, (who) had to learn what an electronic drum kit is, the meaning of layers, samples, and so on. And recently, I forced him to learn MIDI to develop an interface that opens the ddrum4ui software to control systems other than just the ddrum4 module. This part of the work is still in progress,” Alain explains.
ddrum4ui in detail
ddrum4ui (which is a graphical user interface on top of the included command-line utility, ddrum4edit) allows you to edit sound files downloaded from a ddrum4 drum system, or to create new sound files from scratch by importing your own samples.
In essence, the program allows users to explore the factory sound files provided by Clavia and even modify them.
With ddrum4ui, you can create new sound files from audio samples, preview a sound file before publishing it, use a graphical “pad” to simulate where the pad is struck and how hard, and browse a catalogue of sound files, listening to each.
The app also lets users hook up a drum kit or MIDI keyboard to simulate the behaviour of a complete drum kit.
For detailing information on exactly what you can do with ddrum4ui, use this link.
Alain notes that since the first versions of ddrum4ui, he has modified and created hundreds of sounds and regularly continues to search for new ones.
“The software is extremely powerful in terms of possibilities, especially for creating completely original sounds,” he explains, adding his only wish is that the ddrum4 module had more internal memory than its stock 8 MB allocation.
Refreshingly, all of the ddrum tools, together with the old sound files, are available for free and there don’t appear to be any plans to commercialise the software.
Editor’s note: The digitalDrummer trigger test bed includes a ddrum4SE module which we use to test third-party drum and cymbal triggers. The module is surprisingly versatile, working with almost every trigger with which it has been tested. And to really bring it into the 21st century, we pair the module with a Zourman Drums hi-hat conversion module for ddrum4 SE, which enables us to play variable hi-hats using a Roland-style controller in place of the now-defunct ddrum hall effect sensor system.