Splitting the Drum Track - PG Music Forums

PG Music Home

I know this has been asked before but I can't seem to find it ...

Isn't there a way to take my completed BIAB compilation and send it to Realband and have the drum track is split into separate tracks for each kit piece? For example, I want to be able to control bass, treble and volumes individually for individual drum kit pieces.

If you are talking about MIDI drums, in RealBand you can use Edit | Split MIDI Drums. However, if you are using RealDrums, that is another matter. Since they are "recorded" audio. There was a discussion about isolating the instruments within a RealDrum track. Here is a link to that. Maybe not a viable solution compared to splitting MIDI drums. As Mac points out, there will be bleed over when trying to isolate each part.

http://www.pgmusic.com/ubbthreads/showfl...true#Post257951

Quote:

For example, I want to be able to control bass, treble and volumes individually for individual drum kit pieces.

The gotcha here is when you split the drum kit in Real Band, all the different parts are still on the same midi channel, 10. That means, change the treble on one and you change it on them all so in addition to splitting the parts, you also have to manually set each part to a different channel to have individual control and that further means you have to go into whatever synth you're using for midi drums and match up all the channels there too. That gets really tedious and confusing. This is also the reason why people talk about using velocity to change the volume on each part in order to balance the kit instead of the preferred way of using volume itself. Test this by using the volume slider for any one part and you'll hear the whole drum kit go up or down because everything is on the same midi channel. Velocity works without having to reset all the midi channels but volume doesn't.
Midi is far trickier to work with than it first appears.

Bob

To work around that "gotcha" -- go ahead and export the same way, and as soon as the separated MIDI drum tracks are imported properly into your sequencer of choice, go ahead and *convert each one to a separate AUDIO track*.

After conversion, MUTE the original MIDI tracks and work off of the newly made separate Audio drum tracks. You can apply any of the Audio Effects, control Vol and Pan using the mixer in your sequencer.

Note that the separation of Drum tracks like this will only work on MIDI based tracks. It does NOT work on RealDrums tracks.

--Mac

Thanks all! Many options here.

I elected to follow Mac's suggestion. Will post what happened.

Bob,

Couple of questions regarding your reply:

1. If in RealBand you use the option to split the drum track ... if the music in that track isn't going to be split, such that you can independently change it's settings, why was this feature implemented in the first place? I'll rephrase this ... Under what circumstances would one want to split the MIDI channel without wanting to change something related to one part of the drum kit? Don't understand the idea there.

2. I've been studying the program quite a bit since Feb. I thought that I had a handle on the term Velocity. When I seen this term, it was always coupled with Volume. I'm confused now ... You are saying that Velocity doesn't refer to the same thing as Volume?

Also, could you give me an example of how I could change velocities independently from track to track?

Velocity tells a MIDI instrument how hard it is to be played. The quality of the sound will change as well as the volume. Think of using a mallet on a vibes note, brushing it softly and then really bearing down with a hard hit. The timbre of the note will be quite different.

Quote:

Velocity works without having to reset all the midi channels but volume doesn't.
Midi is far trickier to work with than it first appears.

Thanks Bob. Works just like I wanted!

Thanks Matt, that makes perfect sense to me now.

Mac, Bob, Matt

Now that I understand what Velocity is compared to Volume and now that I understand how to change both, including Mac's version (creating separate audio tracks of the drum kit), are there any advantages to working with one or the other (Audio versus MIDI) - assuming I've got both to work with.

Quote:

Mac, Bob, Matt

Now that I understand what Velocity is compared to Volume and now that I understand how to change both, including Mac's version (creating separate audio tracks of the drum kit), are there any advantages to working with one or the other (Audio versus MIDI) - assuming I've got both to work with.

Excellent Russell, you're picking this up fast.
First, even if you're staying in midi it's easier to split up the drum part to change parts of the kit. Maybe the whole part is good but the kick and maybe one of the cymbals just isn't what you want. In any good drum module you can modify the kit using a whole library of samples so you switch out the kick and the cymbal. You can still do that with the drums on one track but it can be easier to do it with separate tracks. Also, I've split out the drums in order to use different synths for different parts. For example, I liked my Jamstix for the basic kick, snare, hi hat, cymbal kit but used the Forte for the congas and timbale on a hot latin drum track that somebody played live using a full midi drum and percussion kit. That track had something like 12 or 13 parts on it and it was definitely easier to split it out so I could decide what I wanted to do with which part.
As to your audio question, don't do it until you know the drum part is playing correctly. Then converting to audio gives you way more options to use your full suite of audio editing without stressing your CPU. For example you can put compression, eq and a limiter on just the kick and do something different on the snare and cymbals. Audio puts you back into classic old school mixing and mastering plus you can really change the character of the sound in audio. Not sure exactly why but while you can make pretty dramatic changes in midi using DX plugins, there's something about editing in audio that just sounds better. But don't do all that and then decide you want to change the drum part on the third chorus or something. Even if the quality of the sound isn't exactly what you want, you can tell while it's still midi that the part is at least correct.

Bob

Thanks everyone for your posts about this. I've learned a lot about this from you in a pretty short period of time.

I guess I'm of the opinion now that it's too bad I didn't get into this stuff a lot of years ago -- it would probably have been a lot easier to learn BIAB, RB, hardware, recording & mixing, etc.

There's still lots that still confuses me though but thankful I've got somewhere to get answers!. It would have been boxed and shipped back months ago had it not been for this forum.