Midi/Instrument drum track notes do not correspond

[qingcong]

I have an mbox 2 and Protools 8 LE.

I have a midi file containing various keyboard, bass, string, and drum parts that I want to redo with better sounding virtual instruments from the Komplete Essentials package I have.

Everything is okay except the notes for the drum part on the midi file do not correspond with the notes on the Komplete drum plugin, the Xpand plugin also doesn't match. Is there some way to solve this issue? Thanks.

[albee1952]

I suspect that those VI's use different note assignments, so its really a matter of figuring out which notes need to move, and where they need to move to. I would start by saving the session with a new name(just add "drumfix" after the old name). Now you can mess with it and not screw up the original session file. Drag the midi track so it fills a lot of the screen vertically. Use the pencil tool to drop an extra note on the piano roll and drag it up/down to find the sound you want(start with bass drum). Once you find which note makes the proper sound, on the left edge, see the little keyboard(in the EDIT window). If you know which note corresponds to the original bass drum, click on that note and ALL hits will be selected. Now you can drag any one of them to the desired note, and they will all go(or use the Event>Transpose feature). I'm sure there are other ways to make this happen, but this is what I do(knowing enough about midi to be dangerous)

[qingcong]

I see, unfortunately with a somewhat complicated drum track that method may take a while for me. I could give it a try though.

My friend who has cakewalk doesn't have any issues with note assignments on the drum track somehow. I think he just has some generic virtual instrument plugin that comes with the software. I don't get why they don't just standardize the note assignments.

[cneal92]

There is a standard for drums, called General MIDI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GMStandardDrumMap.gif). I would be surprised if the "kits" in XPand2 weren't built around the GM spec, although I never use it. Many of the drum modules don't follow the GM standard as they have many more articulations for the different kit pieces than available spots (due to all the perc in the GM standard), however some can be "re-mapped" to GM if needed (like SD2 and I'm sure others).

[qingcong]

Originally Posted by cneal92

There is a standard for drums, called General MIDI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GMStandardDrumMap.gif). I would be surprised if the "kits" in XPand2 weren't built around the GM spec, although I never use it. Many of the drum modules don't follow the GM standard as they have many more articulations for the different kit pieces than available spots (due to all the perc in the GM standard), however some can be "re-mapped" to GM if needed (like SD2 and I'm sure others).

That's very useful. If I can figure out how to remap the kit in Komplete that would be perfect, but I'm not sure if it can be done.

[Carl Lie]

What Albee said works but you don't need to find the notes first. Just select a whole line of say all the notes on C# by pressing that key on the keyboard on the left. Then drag them to the correct note.

Carl

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by qingcong

I see, unfortunately with a somewhat complicated drum track that method may take a while for me. I could give it a try though.

My friend who has cakewalk doesn't have any issues with note assignments on the drum track somehow. I think he just has some generic virtual instrument plugin that comes with the software. I don't get why they don't just standardize the note assignments.

The reason your friend doesn't have issues in Sonar (there's no such program as Cakewalk - they are the programmers of Sonar) is because he's probably using the TTS1 General MIDI synth and the drum section of that follows the General MIDI protocol. That or he's using Session Drummer which has it's own set of drum sounds to MIDI note setup and that's NOT GM compatible.

In another post you mention Komplete Essentials. I can find nothing on that on the net as such. There are a couple of things that do pop up on Google but going to those sources while at least one post refers to Komplete Essentials the threads rapidly change it to Komplete Elements. Either way there's no drum program like Battery 2 or 3 - that easily allows one to remap what plays in each cell to whatever note you want which is much easier than redoing your MIDI drum track.