To create timpani rolls in a MIDI environment, there appear to be only three choices: Looped timpani roll samples, recording rolls in real-time through a MIDI keyboard as MIDI or audio tracks, and creating notated rolls through a score program such as Finale or Sibelius. If your sampler library does not have looped roll samples, it leaves you only with the second or third choices. This is precisely my situation, and it left me struggling to find a way to produce good, realistic sounding timpani rolls.

It seemed logical to me that timpani rolls by notation should work well. All I had to do was solve a few math problems -- or so I thought. However, I found out (as I'm sure many of you have) that playback from notation alone has a rather nasty "machine gun" effect. That effect is caused by a lack of small variations in note start times (and to a certain extent, key velocity) which are produced by timpani players in live performance.

I recently tried giving the real-time keyboard option a chance. Although I determined that it simply wouldn't work for me, I did make some discoveries that led me to develop a different method for creating timpani rolls which, at least to me sound surprisingly realistic. Absent looped timpani rolls, the choice is no longer between notation and real-time keyboarding -- there is a third way.

My timpani roll method consists basically of creating timpani rolls through notation, exporting them as MIDI files to a sequencer, then applying what I call "manual randomization" to the note start times through sequencer editing. I know this seems complicated, difficult, and probably quite tedious. However, my method is systematic, and it includes a set of tools to make the job easier and faster than you may think. There is, of course, a learning curve involved. Before you start climbing it, I'd like you to listen to a few sound samples of timpani rolls I've created according to the techniques and procedures I describe in my tutorial. These samples will give you a comparison of what the rolls sound like from notation only, and how they sound after sequencer editing. After you listen to these samples, you can decide for yourself whether or not my tutorial is worth your time and attention. If you like what you hear, you can download the tutorial from the link below.

Before you continue, I'd like to mention a couple of things. First, this tutorial is intended primarily for those of you who find it difficult or impossible to produce good results from real-time keyboard timpani rolls. However, even if you can, I invite you to compare your results with what I'm doing. If your sampler has looped roll samples, you may want to do the comparison as well. Second, I'm all about choice, so you can use my techniques to whatever extent you want. How much or little you use is purely up to you.

Okay, so let's get started. Here are sound samples of three different timpani rolls. The first two have both a notation-only and notation+sequencer-edited version, followed by a side-by-side comparison so you can hear the difference more directly. The third sample is just me showing off a little. (If you'd like some technical info on the timpani patch I used to record these samples, click here.)

If my timpani roll samples passed the audition, and you would like to get my timpani roll tutorial, click on the link below to download the tutorial zipfile. Besides the tutorial itself, the zipfile includes some other goodies that go along with it. To see what's included in the tutorial zipfile, click here.

Download the Timpani Roll Tutorial Zipfile

I hope that what you've found here will be of some help to you in your musical endeveavors. In the event that my work may provide some benefit to my fellow musicians, this tutorial can be freely distributed by and to anyone who could find it worth using.

Happy rolling!

Steve Johnson