MIDI drum file not playing in PT9

[Gouge47]

Hi. I'm new to Pro Tools, but I have been producing MIDI backing tracks using Sibelius for many years. I have a whole library that I want to convert to Audio(wav?) but mainly to make use of the great instrument sounds available in PT9.

I've successfully imported a MIDI file into Pro-Tools and managed to assign instruments to each track. They all work except for the drum tracks!!

I tend to use 2 staves in Sibelius for drums: one for percussion (cymbals) and one for kick,snare, toms, etc.

I've tried using Xpand2 and BOOM but I'm unable to get any sounds to play. The vu-meter shows activity, so I've obviously not got the path configured correctly or is it that the VI's for drums only respond to single drum lines? I don't want to have to re-write the drume tracks for every single backing track to have a line for each drum/cymbal.

Is there a VI plug-in that will play the file with multiple drums?

Any help would be appreciated. Looked through FAQ's and can't find anything specific to my problem.

[Gouge47]

Problem partially solved!!

I hadn't copied the drum files into the instrument tracks. The bad news is that the drums don't sound the same as they did in General Midi - the same notes don't trigger the same drum items - especially the cymbals. I used Xpand2 pop kit to try it out.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Gouge47

Problem partially solved!!

I hadn't copied the drum files into the instrument tracks. The bad news is that the drums don't sound the same as they did in General Midi - the same notes don't trigger the same drum items - especially the cymbals. I used Xpand2 pop kit to try it out.

You may well have to go back and edit the MIDI tracks unless the vi's you're using can have their notes remapped. That's assuming you're not using and GM specific drum sounds. Not many vi's have GM mapping for all the sounds and the only one I know of definitely for Drums is Battery which is now at version 4. NI dropped some of the acoustic kits in v4 that were in v3; don't know if that includes the GM kit or not. GM is a specific note mapping that not everyone follows in their vi's.

There are some vi's that sort of follow the GM mapping but they don't have all the sounds. BFD2 is one of those.