Drum Maps

[Gerald Cordier]

I don't understand how the philosophy of the drum maps in Cubase SX work.can anyone help with this problem?

[noisewreck]

Basically the idea is you associate a MIDI note with a drum name, so when you open a MIDI part in the drum editor, you see the drum name, which makes it easy to program drum parts. Instead of inputting C1, you're inputting "Kick Drum" for example.

Needless to say, you want to create the map so that it conicides the mappings in your sampler/drum machine/drum synth.

[Bass Master "K"]

To add on a bit more...

If you have a synth, chances are it has a patch called 'percussion' or 'drums'. Every note is associated with a different percussive instrument ie, you'll have toms, woodblocks of different pitches, snares of different pitches, symbols, gong, all that stuff. Well if you take the time to map out that patch, or are lucky enough to find someone who has already done it for you on the web, it makes constucting drum tracks by hand a whole lot easier. The name of the instrument for each key will be listed on the left so you can quickly tell your tympani from your agogo instead of randomly clicking your way up the map trying to find the right instrument.

It's not as essential if you can play your keyboard drum tracks realtime. I had a friend who knew his setup well enough he could construct some pretty decent drums playing realtime on his synth. He still would go back and add in extra's though.

It's time consuming to map it out yourself, but if you are hand constructing drum tracks it is a time saver in the long run.

[altitude909]

Its worth mentioning that most drum machines (and synths) made since the late 80's will conform to the GM spec so when making your own maps, you should try to conform to that at some level since it will make things easier to know all those assignments

[Atterion]

Drum maps are also used to convert note information, i.e.:

If you have a MIDI track that conforms to the GM standard, that you want to play on a device/patch that does not conform to the MIDI standard, you could program the map to convert incoming notes to output a new value (i.e. MIDI spec says that Acoustic Snare is MIDI note #38, but say your synth has a sound that you want to trigger instead that is on MIDI note #70, you program the map so that any incoming #38's are converted to #70's). Obviously it is beneficial to design patches to meet the GM spec (Or at least most of it), in case you later use MIDI files created specifically for one synth/patch with another synth/patch, but for the times when you can't, the Drum map will be your best friend.

[Gerald Cordier]

Thanks a lot guys for really clearing things up for me. you guy are priceless.
at the same time,I want to clear things up a bit more by letting you all know that I'm working with the Korg Triton LE and the Roland Fantom X6 keyboards
in the event one of you owns or records with one of these boards,you can probably clear things up a little more.

Once again,
Thanks
you guys are priceless