Cannot map Kick 1 Hit or Kick 2 Open

[creativenorthmedia]

Whilst building a drum map in Cubase I noticed that I cannot map either of these hits, the menus and midi maps inside SD3 don’t seem to change anything. See attached.

Topic

[creativenorthmedia]

Attached is my preset. This is near stock Metal Foundry, haven’t changed much at all except the kicks and stacked the snare.

[creativenorthmedia]

I found the fix:

Adding a note to that articulation in the Midi Mapping tab of that drum.

Honestly? This kind of sucks. It’s not clear in the docs, which admittedly would make this suck a little bit less but not by much, and the difference between the two menus is also not entirely clear. Like I get what they do but then also why do that in the first place?

Just have a main menu for midi options so this is less confusing. Awesome.

[creativenorthmedia]

See attached. This absolutely sucks. Can’t even expand that window out and also the “clear” function doesn’t exist in the Midi In/E-Drums menu.

Such a great program let down by the seemingly most important aspect of its function: MIDI.

[Taylor43]

cookie clicker

creativenorthmedia wrote:

I found the fix:

Adding a note to that articulation in the Midi Mapping tab of that drum.

Honestly? This kind of sucks. It’s not clear in the docs, which admittedly would make this suck a little bit less but not by much, and the difference between the two menus is also not entirely clear. Like I get what they do but then also why do that in the first place?

Just have a main menu for midi options so this is less confusing. Awesome.

I have the same problem when building a drum map in Cubase I tried your way and it worked. Thank you so much for your answer.

[John]

Hi,

I believe your confusion is about the different ways of mapping/assigning MIDI.

On the DRUMS page, the notes you see when you open the MIDI Mapping Property Box are the “hard coded” notes, so to speak.
BTW, this Property Box (as all of them) can easily be expanded in height as indicated in the attached screen shot.
These note values are recommended to not alter if you want to keep compatibility with Toontrack MIDI and GM.
I.e. if you decide to change the Kick note from 36 to 38, playing back MIDI from your Toontrack library (or from another user with a standard mapping) will not sound as funky as intended since the Kick will play back Snare notes.
However, there may be times when you need to add stuff outside of those standards, so you of course can. There is a small menu to the right of each articulation in the MIDI Property Box where you can Add, Learn, get suggestions or see where a note is on the MIDI layout. The suggested notes function will in general be your friend here.

Now, the recommended way of using a different MIDI note mapping is to Enable a MIDI Preset on the MIDI In/E-drums page. This lets you use pre-made presets or create your own preset for incoming MIDI notes, either from a controller or from a track in your host. It transforms the incoming MIDI note to another. This means you can have your special setup for e.g. programming from your favourite keyboard controller, while still be compatible with Toontrack MIDI.
If an instrument or articulation does not have a MIDI assignment on the DRUMS page, it cannot have an input transform on the MIDI In/E-drums page.

Does this help?

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[creativenorthmedia]

Hi John,

Thanks for the answer!

Sure that all makes sense, but the only issue is that doesn’t tell the whole story.

If I load all the cymbals and drums available on a kit (for example in the metal foundry) and I want to map using the MIDI In/E-drums page, I first have to remove all the extraneous allocations in the “notes” window before then mapping again to newer cymbals. Otherwise those spots in MIDI In/E-drums page will simply not be available.

I think it’s great you want to give extra features and I can definitely see why what you said about mappings would be necessary. However, with respect I would encourage Toontrack to think more carefully about how this feature is developed and possibly leave edge cases where they belong: at the edge.

Assigning new keys and building midi maps should be much simpler, require less work, and indeed should be accompanied by an updated how-to guide to make it more obvious for new old-comers to Toontrack like myself.

MIDI can get very complicated very quickly, but it doesn’t need to be this difficult.

 

[Author]

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