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Posted By: johnnyo34 Importing Midi, & separating drums - 05/08/13 02:53 PM
I know I've seen this topic before, but I can't find it, Sorry .. I want to import a Midi song, & I can do that OK, but I want to separate the drums onto different tracks.. e.g. kick to track 8, Snare to track 9, crash to track 10 etc..
Can some one guide me to the link..
thanks in advance.
john
Posted By: johnnyo34 Re: Importing Midi, & separating drums - 05/08/13 03:37 PM
I just found Bob's post about right click or highlight the drum track & go to track menu, & split the drums.. I did that, but there is nowhere that says split drums.. I see where it says Split Piano, but no drums..
Posted By: jford Re: Importing Midi, & separating drums - 05/08/13 05:12 PM
From the main menu, select "Edit, Split MIDI Drums" (last item in the menu list). This obviously only works with MIDI drum tracks, not with RealDrums.
Posted By: johnnyo34 Re: Importing Midi, & separating drums - 05/08/13 06:04 PM
Thanks John.. I got that part of it, & another post is right, if I change the crash Cymbal volume, the volume on everything changes. not just the crash..
I'm not real Midi Savvy, so if I'm right drums is on 10... How would I change everything so that each would have it's own volume.?? & I could then control each one by it's own volume slider.. Could you give me an example??
Sorry for the noob question, but I'm going to try & learn Real Band as a daw..
Thanks again for answering my query..
John
Posted By: jazzmammal Re: Importing Midi, & separating drums - 05/08/13 09:03 PM
Originally Posted By: johnnyo34
I'm not real Midi Savvy, so if I'm right drums is on 10... How would I change everything so that each would have it's own volume.??


You will be midi savvy by the time you figure this out John or you'll wind up giving all this up and take up lawn bowling.<grin>

The reason everything changes is because all the drums are on Channel 10. Change one you change them all. After you split the drums you then have to manually change all the channels. But, but what about my synth you ask? Right, you have to reconfigure that too but my synth has all the drums on Channel 10, etc, etc so now what? Now you're getting into the real midi stuff, not the simple baby steps for noobs. A good midi drum module has all the drums on separate channels so with one of those all you do is match them up but that drum module is a completely separate synth just for drums. Therefore this is not a simple mouse click or two and hit play. Oh no, you have to do some real work like a recording engineer would.

Welcome to the world of digital audio recording.

So maybe you want to rethink this whole splitting out the drums thing? There are reasons why things are initially set up the way they are but these programs allow the user to get as deep as they want.

Now that I've scared you a bit there is a decent workaround you can use while keeping the drums on Channel 10. In addition to volume there's a midi control called Velocity. Velocity is based on how hard an instrument is hit, plucked or in the case or drums banged on. The higher the Velocity, the louder the hit. The only problem is how hard you hit something can also change the character of the sound but for most basic drum kits in a simple synth, changing the Velocity and leaving Volume or Expression alone can work because changing Velocity is not channel dependent. In a midi drum kit each drum is considered it's own key and piano keys have different Velocities all the time.

There's issues with that too that requires further explanation so I'll leave it here for now and just ask you to go to the Piano Roll window, hit the Help button and read about Velocity.

But, (do you see a pattern here? Lots of buts) this is only using Velocity as a substitute for volume, what about EQ? That is channel dependent so you're back to that if you want to EQ say the cymbals alone.

Like I said midi is tricky. This is why when you look at a picture of a studio control room you see this huge console with a gazillion channel strips. How big is a drum kit? How big do you want? It could be 20 different individual pieces. Then there is the percussion station, that could be another 20 so if you want all that on separate channels with individual control that's 40 channels right there. Obviously most people don't do that, they set up subgroups.

And that is yet another discussion.

Bob
Posted By: LynB Re: Importing Midi, & separating drums - 05/09/13 01:25 PM
Hi John,

While you cannot vary the Volumn of a single Drum instrument, you can vary the Velocity which is specifically set within the Drum Kit. Use the Classic Tracks Window and change the value in the Column "Vel" from Zero to a plus or minus figure. Note also that by varying the number in column "Key" you can vary the Drum instrument selected, thus if the Drum Kit does not support a particular instrument you seek one that it does.
Posted By: johnnyo34 Re: Importing Midi, & separating drums - 05/09/13 02:21 PM
WOWWWW, Holee Shamolee... Did you scare me??? YUP... Looks like I won't be changing volumes.. I'd probably learn to play drums faster than I could learn all this Midi stuff..lol..
Posted By: johnnyo34 Re: Importing Midi, & separating drums - 05/09/13 02:23 PM
Thanks LynB.. I will play with that. Sounds much easier than changing volumes..
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