Biab midi drum parts are way easy to make.

Can I make styles from my audio clips I play into a tune?

I set up my drum machine last night to play a pattern and recorded like 2 million measures of it. Funny thing was that in order to make the metronome in RB match the clock of the drum machine I had to set RB at 126 and the Roland at 124. It stayed in sync for maybe 48-50 measures and then one of them drifted, but I can't tell which one.

Can I save that drum track out as a WAV and use it for a drum style later? I know I can always import that WAV as track one and go from there, but that seems like kind of cheating. The drum machine doesn't sound as good as the RB Drums overall, but I can't find anything close to what I need for this particular song in RB.

Eddie
Often I'll find a BIAB midi style with a good drum pattern (you can edit and change them in BIAB) and tweak the patterns - much the same as you are doing with the Drum machine. Then when I move the BIAB file to RB I'll keep the midi track and also search for a good RD style. I'll split off Kick and Snare to separate tracks and then mix/slide them behind the RD track just enough to add a bit more punch to the RD sound.

With my hearing it's a way to avoid drum eq'ing - I figure someone with good ears has already taken time developing algorithms for midi sounds, and someone has already eq'ed the RDs - so I'll just add the compression, midi kick and snare voices come in light medium and heavy voices.

Good luck with it - takes time. eh? Like the brand name hook - "we will serve no wine before it's time."

Ian

See, this is where I get lost when you talk about MIDI tracks. They are audio tracks to my eyes and ears and not using MIDI in any way. What I MAY end up doing for these songs is just playing my drum machine patterns in and recording the whole song that way and then play everything live over it. I had a bear of a time trying to keep a drum machine in sync with RB last night.

Now, I can pull different drum parts out and make them either solo tracks or edit them? Huh? I can do that? If I can get a good kick and hat track, I can fill in the rest with the Roland 707 I have. I would keep a decent kick and hat track forever and use it often.

I really wish I had more time to play with this. 40 a week job and an half hour drive each way every day.... by the time I get home and spend some time with the dog, make her dinner, make MY dinner... it's 7:30 and I am tired and nodding off....

Stinks getting old.

You need to sync RB to the drum machine (or vice versa) so they use the same clock.
No more drifting.

So I take it that one of the many things I don't know about RB is that it does MIDI clock. I never had a reason to look into that. So out of my interface into my drum machine and the computer will send the pulses to the drum machine.... Been so long since I did that that I don't remember when I did it last, and if the drum machine did the clock or the synth that had the sequencer in it. I think it was the Ensoniq ESQ-1 but I'm not sure. That'd be like 1991 and that was followed by 16 years of retirement.

You need some basic midi education just like I suggested to LadyJazzer in the Biab thread. Midi is great assuming and this is big, you have a good midi sound source. I've posted at least twenty times over the last couple of years that for drum tracks in RB I will use both midi and RD's each on it's own track. I may have 5 or 6 going but not active all at once, lol. Use the mute or solo buttons and check each one out as your tune is playing. Many times on certain tunes I'll have a midi drum track that I copied from a midi file that I downloaded along with a RD track but usually not a full kit track. I tend to use the RD percussion tracks with a full midi drum kit track. Midi is how you insert song specific drum fills and punches into an otherwise great sounding RD track. The Yamaha Studio kit in my Jamstix drum module sounds almost exactly like a lot of the RD's. They blend perfectly.

For now just create a Biab midi drum track, it generates almost instantly, set up your Ensoniq to play it and then try mixing and blending some RD's using the mute buttons. You'll soon see what I'm talking about.

I know you're setting up your new digital mixer so once you can tell you have several good drum tracks to work with, drag the thing to Sonar and use your automation to mix them. With the tools you have don't worry about having too many different drum tracks. You could have tracks 20-30 nothing but drums, who cares? You have virtually unlimited tracks to play with and then if there's something missing you just have to have, create it in RB and drag it over. No need to mess around cutting and pasting or using gain changes, none of that. Your automation in Sonar will do that effortlessly.

Bob

The MIDI is not the issue. Implementing it in THIS application is new to me.

My rig for years was 3 keyboards, 3 modules, which all ran through an MX-8 MIDI patch bay. That thing has 50 presets, and I used 22 of them. Each preset sends patch information to each synth and you can route what controls what, so board A can control itself, board B and module 2 and layer those sounds. I have a Roland patch change transmitter that looks like a calculator and it sat on a calculator stand on top of my front stand, so when I wanted setup #11, I entered 11 <enter> and it sent setup 11 to the MX-8, which sent patch changes to all the sound sources. The only thing I had to watch was that I used 2 disc based samplers and needed to make sure the right disc was in the sampler. One setup sent a keyboard as controller to my drum machine, and you should have seen me trying to remember what keys sent what MIDI numbers to that drum machine! I finally had to mark the key that played the hand clap with a piece of roadie tape... I have a different MX-8 now but it isn't programmed yet. And won't be spending the time on it if I don't take on a job playing keyboards (unlikely). If I recall it took me about a week to program that box as I went through the WHOLE set list saying "Okay, what do I play on this, which patch numbers do I use, how do I route master and slave...." And it was a bear because several of them called for passages in the song where I had as many as 4 sound sources playing from one controller. For example, in Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On" in the bridge I had a glass bell attack, a full string on quick attack, a second string on slower attack, and a chorus singing "aaaahhh" all playing together. And that meant changing setups DURING a song, making sure I did not have a key pressed when I hit enter or the depressed key would never get a MIDI NOTE OFF message and keep playing. When I DID make that mistake the MX-8 has an ALL NOTES OFF button that sent an OFF message to every port.

I do miss those days when I was a total geek!!!

'Sync source' is half way down on the options menu. A fast way is to hold 'alt' and type 'o' then 'y', let up on 'alt' and type the down arrow to select 'midi clock', hit enter and RB should sync to your drum machine.

Edit: I just realized that I'm assuming again lol (I'm assuming you can run midi from your drum machine to your computer. ).

Yes Eddie
RB will either be the master MIDI clock and send it out to other devices, or it will sync to other devices.
Pay attention to whether your other devices use MTC or MIDI Sync
It will also work with SMPTE in various frame rates. I think it follows song position pointer (SPP) messages too if the other device supports it.

Thanks guys. I can run it either direction but I will let RB be the master and the drumx be the slave. Mainly because I know how to put the drumx into "receive" mode... LOL!!

And I do remember that the Roland uses MIDI Sync. Is that yet another parameter in RB? (I am not at that computer to check it....)

Yes.
There is MTC and MIDI Sync mode in the options-preferences-MIDI-MIDI Output dialogue. However that should default to not having MIDI Time Code enabled so MIDI Sync should work.
Your drum machine may support Song Position Pointer, which is likely enabled in the same window. If so, it will start at whatever measure RB is at when you hit play; don't have to start at the beginning all the time.

The 'Options-Sync Source' selection is for choosing whther RB is the master or slave, so leave that at is (internal) so RB runs on its own clock, and it *should* just send the MIDI Sync out of the selected MIDI Output port as the default setup.
In other words it'll probably just work, as long as the MIDI out selection is the desired connection. If it doesn't, see if you have have 'reroute all MIDI to DXi Synth' enabled.

The winning combination is

SEND MIDI SPP

ZERO CONTINUOUS CONTROLLERS

SEND REALTIME MESSAGES

and NOT

SEND MIDI TIME CODE

Took a few tries and I found a bad MIDI cable, but it works.

Thanks all.

Eddie,
Your doing something I used to do back in '89 if you get my point. Time to toss all the old antiques and move up. There are many, many ways to do things right inside your DAW program with a lot less hassle. I know winding back the clock sort of feels good but take it from another old goat. Your still an old goat.LOL.All of this interconnection is actually very taxing to the brain.It is fun to do though but just for fun. If you're trying to work and be productive find an easier and better way. Just my opinion.

At this point, my fellow old goat, I have to use what I have as there is no budget to buy much more. This track needed a very specific "side stick on the quarter notes with high hat 8th notes" pattern over the verses, and nothing in RB came close. As far as the physical side of it, MIDI is second nature to me. I just had never used it inside of RB for clock, only to play parts in, and that's where the questions started. My M-Audio is now fed into an MX-8 MIDI patch bay, with 6 ins and 8 outs, and patched to the drum machine, the digital reverb, a vocoder, 2 synthesizers and a sampler. Also note that at this point I am not playing anything back via MIDI outside of the pass through the song when I record what the clock is controlling. That will also come into play later when I do backup vocals through the vocoder. (I LOVE that thing!!!)

All the audio stuff runs into a patch bay, so when I want something from the ESQ-1 (which does organ VERY well), I run a cable from patch bay point #7 to the input of the M-Audio, and that routes the audio from the ESQ-1 to my interface. If I need anything from the ESQ-1 via MIDI, that is connected through the MX-8. All started with buying that control surface. Then the server rack. Then a change in thought process about mixing. Now to keep learning about what fx do what.... and how to use them.

Remember, I am just trying to write songs here. I will never play this stuff out anywhere. It's just to make good enough quality demos to shop. Outside of my annual reunion I really don't want to play gigs anymore. It used to be that I was a professional musician that was a network nerd on the side. Now I am a professional network nerd and a music hobbyist. I am not likely to ever play out again. Too much like work moving stuff. Dragging it downstairs, packing it somehow into my little Kia, set up, perform, tear down, unload.... nah. Not for me anymore. Your needs are very different because you play gigs. I can't even imagine where I would try to find the energy to play gigs after working a 40 hour week in a stressful position like mine. And I will never be able to retire and do this as supplemental income (too many years with no W-2 income) so this will remain a hobby.