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The MIDI editors
I-notes (input notes)
When you play a note on your MIDI instrument, the pro-
gram looks for this note number among the I-notes in the
drum map. If you play the note A1, the program finds that
this is the I-note of the Bass Drum sound.
This is where the first transformation happens: the note
gets a new note number according to the Pitch setting for
the drum sound. In our case, the note is transformed to a
C1 note, because that is the pitch of the Bass Drum
sound. If you record the note, it is recorded as a C1 note.
For example, you may want to place some drum sounds
near each other on the keyboard so that they can be easily
played together, move sounds so that the most important
sounds can be played from a short keyboard, play a sound
from a black key instead of a white, and so on. If you never
play your drum parts from a MIDI controller (but draw them
in the editor) you need not care about the I-note setting.
O-notes (output notes)
The next step is the output. This is what happens when you
play back the recorded note, or when the note you play is
sent back out to a MIDI instrument in realtime (MIDI Thru):
The program checks the drum map and finds the drum
sound with the pitch of the note. In our case, this is a C1
note and the drum sound is the Bass Drum. Before the
note is sent to the MIDI output, the second transformation
takes place: the note number is changed to that of the
O-note for the sound. In our example, the note sent to the
MIDI instrument is a B0 note.
The O-note settings let you set things up so that the
“Bass Drum” sound really plays a bass drum. If you are us-
ing a MIDI instrument in which the bass drum sound is on
the C2 key, you set the O-note for the Bass Drum sound
to C2. When you switch to another instrument (in which
the bass drum is on C1) you want the Bass Drum O-note
set to C1. Once you have set up drum maps for all your
MIDI instruments, you do not need to care about this any
-
more – you just select another drum map when you want
to use another MIDI instrument for drum sounds.
The Channel and Output settings
You can set separate MIDI channels and/or MIDI outputs
for each sound in a drum map. The following rules apply:
• When a drum map is selected for a track, the MIDI
channel settings in the drum map override the MIDI chan-
nel setting for the track.
In other words, the MIDI channel setting you make in the track list or In-
spector for the track is normally disregarded. If you want a drum sound to
use the channel of the track, set it to channel “Any” in the drum map.
• If the MIDI output is set to “default” for a sound in a
drum map, the sound uses the MIDI output selected for
the track.
Selecting any other option allows you to direct the sound to a specific
MIDI output.
By making specific MIDI channel and output settings for
all sounds in a drum map, you can direct your drum tracks
directly to another MIDI instrument simply by selecting an-
other drum map – you do not need to make any channel or
output changes for the actual track.
Ö To select the same MIDI channel for all sounds in a
drum map, click in the Channel column, press [Ctrl]/
[Command] and select the desired channel. All drum
sounds are set to this MIDI channel. The same procedure
can be used for selecting the same MIDI output for all
sounds as well.
It can also be useful to select different channels and/or out-
puts for different sounds. This allows you to construct drum
kits with sounds from several different MIDI devices, etc.
Managing drum maps
Selecting a drum map for a track
To select a drum map for a MIDI track, use the Map pop-
up menu in the Inspector or in the Drum Editor.
Selecting “No Drum Map” turns off the drum map func-
tionality in the Drum Editor. Even if you do not use a drum
map, you can still separate sounds by name using a name
list (see
“Using drum name lists” on page 279).
!
Initially, the Map pop-up menu only contains one
map: “GM Map”. However, a number of drum maps
are included on the program DVD – how to load
these is described below.