Stacking in SD3 using E drums

[olliepudge]

Hi. I tried stacking a couple of snares, but they’re not triggering. I noticed this under a couple of presets of yours as well. You had set up stacks, but I don’t hear them when I hit the snare. I’ve only installed the basic library so far. Does this have anything to do with it? I see the x-drum faders in the mixer screen, but there is nothing playing and I routed the mics to them. Any pointers here?

Thanks!

Topic

[Olof Westman]

Right click on the snare: More > Stack, Add> Center.

Olof Westman - Toontrack
Coder

[olliepudge]

Yes I understand how to add a snare for stacking. What I’m saying is that they do not trigger. For example, your Metal Confusion preset has 4 snares stacked, but when I hit the snare pad on my e drum kit only the first one plays. The other 3 do not.

[Olof Westman]

What articulations have you stacked and what articulations are you hitting?

Olof Westman - Toontrack
Coder

[olliepudge]

I’ve just added the center hit which is what I’m hitting as well, but like I mentioned in my other posts, this is happening even when I load a preset without editing anything. I’ve only installed the basic library so far. Do you think that has anything to do with it? What’s weird is I’ll click the center stack tab above all of the snares and they all sound, but I hit my snare pad and only the first snare plays.

[Henrik]

While playing a MIDI file, have the snare selected an open the articulations drop down menu (the one that says “All Articulations”). In there, you’ll see what articulations the MIDI is playing.

For example – if you have a stack on “Center” articulation, but the MIDI plays the rimshot – the stack won’t be played. You can then either move the MIDI notes in the Grid Editor, so they play the Center (stacked) articulation, or you can move the stacks from the center articulation to the rimshot articulation (right click on the stacks and select “Move to Stack”.

For example, your Metal Confusion preset has 4 snares stacked, but when I hit the snare pad on my e drum kit only the first one plays. The other 3 do not.  

Select one of the stacks and check the Velocity Gate property box – you’ll see that it’s set to be triggered only within a certain velocity range. That means that if you hit the Center articulation with lower velocity – the stack won’t play.

If you play with more than 117 in velocity and the stack is still not playing – it means that your e-drum pad doesn’t trigger the Center articulation – which has the stacked drums. Some other articulation is being triggered. Try to check that too in the articulations drop down menu (or the “MIDI mapping” property box, “MIDI monitor” property box, or the MIDI Mapping Keys view.

Post back here if you get it, or don’t understand a thing what I am talking about 🙂 It’s a bit tricky in the beginning to get a grip over all the aspects of the stacking system.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[olliepudge]

Hi Henrik,

I’m getting nowhere here. I’ve hit the pad soft and hard and I just get the first snare at the top of the list on the Metal Confusion preset. I tried playing around with the velocity gate and had no luck. I checked all of the MIDI mapping and all three snares have the same note number (38) for the center hit , so when I hit the snare pad it should be triggering all three since it triggers the first one correct? I even hit the drop down menu under MIDI mapping and tried the learn function. I clicked that and hit the snare and got nothing. All three snares sound when I play one of the included grooves though. It’s driving me nuts! I’m hoping you or someone can help here. Thanks.

[olliepudge]

Another weird one. I brought up the Bob Rock Rock Kit 1 preset and the cymbals don’t trigger. Just the hi hat. I see the cymbals move on screen when I hit the pads, but no sound. What is going on? Would this have anything to do with me just having the basic library installed? I noticed on a few presets in the mixer section there were a few channels that said the mics were not routed. Thanks.

[olliepudge]

@olliepudge said:
Hi Henrik,

I’m getting nowhere here. I’ve hit the pad soft and hard and I just get the first snare at the top of the list on the Metal Confusion preset. I tried playing around with the velocity gate and had no luck. I checked all of the MIDI mapping and all three snares have the same note number (38) for the center hit , so when I hit the snare pad it should be triggering all three since it triggers the first one correct? I even hit the drop down menu under MIDI mapping and tried the learn function. I clicked that and hit the snare and got nothing. All three snares sound when I play one of the included grooves though. It’s driving me nuts! I’m hoping you or someone can help here. Thanks.  

Thought I should mention that I’m noticing this in other presets as well. Just the first snare triggers and none of the others in the stack.

[Henrik]

@olliepudge said:
I checked all of the MIDI mapping and all three snares have the same note number (38) for the center hit , so when I hit the snare pad it should be triggering all three since it triggers the first one correct?

That is correct. All articulations that put in a stack will have the same MIDI note(s), since they should be triggered at the same time.
Even though your center articulation is being triggered when you hit your hardware MIDI pad, it is not sure that that it sends out a MIDI note that the center articulation is using. If you, for example, have turned of your Rimshot articulation and you play that – the hit will be redirected to a turned on articulation, in this case often Center.

To analyze what’s going on, you can open the MIDI Mapping box (to see all MIDI notes connected to articulations), MIDI Monitor (to see all incoming MIDI) and MIDI Mapping Keys (if you want to see all triggered MIDI notes).

You can also open the Articulation Drop Down (that I mentioned earlier) to see what’s going on. If a turned off articulation blinks with a orange crossed over speaker icon next to it, it means that you are playing a turned off articulation, and you’ll see what articulation it substitutes to (plays instead).

I even hit the drop down menu under MIDI mapping and tried the learn function. I clicked that and hit the snare and got nothing. All three snares sound when I play one of the included grooves though.

This is strange, since when you active Learn in the MIDI Mapping box, it should listen to incoming MIDI notes, and just learn the first one that comes in. In this also it would help to open MIDI Monitor to analyze what’s going on.

Superior Drummer 3 is a deep program that can accomplish lots of things, that’s why some areas are trickier than others. But once you get a hang of it, you can accomplish almost anything you like 🙂 Report back here on you progress!

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[Henrik]

@olliepudge said:
Another weird one. I brought up the Bob Rock Rock Kit 1 preset and the cymbals don’t trigger. Just the hi hat. I see the cymbals move on screen when I hit the pads, but no sound. What is going on? Would this have anything to do with me just having the basic library installed? I noticed on a few presets in the mixer section there were a few channels that said the mics were not routed. Thanks.  

That is correct. Some presets use some microphones that are included in the other packs (that you haven’t installed yet) – but very few should have silent instruments. In most cases, it’s bleed and extra ambience that gets lost by not installing the other packs.

To make the cymbals audible in Bob Rock’s presets, in the mixer click Edit Visibility and raise thee volume on Mic Channel “OH Dyn”. You can un-press the “Hide” button and the click Edit Visibility again to hide all the unused channels, but still see OH Dyn.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[olliepudge]

Hi Henrik,

Did some playing around here. The articulations in the stack under the Metal Confusion preset are Center, Hit, and Rimshot. Only the first center hit triggers when I hit my snare pad, yet when I have the MIDI key map open and I click the snares in the stack individually (not my snare pad) they all show the same number “Center 38.” It makes no sense. I just don’t get why the snare wouldn’t trigger ALL three if the MIDI note is the same.

The only way I got it to work was removing the stack entirely and recreating it under a Trigger stack. Then all three snares triggered. Not sure why. I then had to create a Rimshot stack to get the rim shots which worked, so why didn’t the original rimshot sound (3rd stack) work when I first opened the preset without changing anything?

This would take forever to redo all of the presets though and it would make the presets useless. What am I doing wrong? There has to be a solution here. This is so frustrating. I hope this makes sense. If not, I would love to troubleshoot this over the phone with you if possible. Thanks.

[olliepudge]

@olliepudge said:
Hi Henrik,

Did some playing around here. The articulations in the stack under the Metal Confusion preset are Center, Hit, and Rimshot. Only the first center hit triggers when I hit my snare pad, yet when I have the MIDI key map open and I click the snares in the stack individually (not my snare pad) they all show the same number “Center 38.” It makes no sense. I just don’t get why the snare wouldn’t trigger ALL three if the MIDI note is the same.

The only way I got it to work was removing the stack entirely and recreating it under a Trigger stack. Then all three snares triggered. Not sure why. I then had to create a Rimshot stack to get the rim shots which worked, so why didn’t the original rimshot sound (3rd stack) work when I first opened the preset without changing anything?

This would take forever to redo all of the presets though and it would make the presets useless. What am I doing wrong? There has to be a solution here. This is so frustrating. I hope this makes sense. If not, I would love to troubleshoot this over the phone with you if possible. Thanks.  

Hi Henrik,

I think I figured this out. Like I said above, I noticed that the samples would sound when I hit the snare pad if I created a Trigger stack. I recorded a beat using the song creator (which is an awesome feature by the way for those of us who do not use a DAW) and then ran into another problem. The Trigger stack samples would not sound during playback. I was considering setting my computer on fire and building a shrine around it at that point?.

Since the sounds would only play under a Trigger stack using my e drums, I checked the MIDI note number for the trigger in the articulation drop down which was 6 and I added it under the MIDI mapping drop down and it worked! Is this the proper way to do this? It works but I’d like to know if I made this more difficult than it had to be. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks.

Josh

[olliepudge]

@olliepudge said:

Hi Henrik,

I think I figured this out. Like I said above, I noticed that the samples would sound when I hit the snare pad if I created a Trigger stack. I recorded a beat using the song creator (which is an awesome feature by the way for those of us who do not use a DAW) and then ran into another problem. The Trigger stack samples would not sound during playback. I was considering setting my computer on fire and building a shrine around it at that point?.

Since the sounds would only play under a Trigger stack using my e drums, I checked the MIDI note number for the trigger in the articulation drop down which was 6 and I added it under the MIDI mapping drop down and it worked! Is this the proper way to do this? It works but I’d like to know if I made this more difficult than it had to be. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks.

Josh  

Hi Henrik,

I’m sure you guys are overwhelmed with emails on SD3. Just wondering if you have any feedback back on this when you have time. No rush. Thanks!

Josh

[Henrik]

Hi, sorry for the delay. As you wrote, we have lots of stuff to do these days 🙂

I think I know what’s causing your confusion. When you hit your pad, you are playing the trig articulation – correct?
When the trig pad selects what articulation to play (center for example), it doesn’t currently play the stack – it only plays that articulation. So, as you say, if you want to use a stack when playing on the trig articulation – you could add a stack to the trig articulation.

We will look into this, since the stack should be triggered from the trig articulation – not just one articulation.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[olliepudge]

Hi Henrik,

No worries friend. I know you guys are busy. I’ll try to explain this the best I can. When I realized that only the first snare in the stack on ALL presets including stacked snares would sound when I hit my snare pad, I went through the articulation drop down and clicked every one until I found the one that only triggered the first snare which was the trigger articulation (MIDI note #6). That’s when I clicked the MIDI mapping drop down and added that MIDI note number which fixed the problem. It’s working well so I’m good to go, but I’m still puzzled that I had to do this considering the first snare sounded and not the others even though they all had the same MIDI note number 38.

That being said, this software is absolutely incredible. I can’t see any company coming out with something better than this. I can’t stop playing and tweaking sounds! My wife is pissed at me because I’ve been consumed by this software you jerks? Great job on this! I couldn’t be happier. Hope my email made sense. Thanks!

[Author]

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