Merge 3 drum tracks into one track

[brandon]

I have tried to merge 3 drum tracks into one single track by dragging the 2 tracks either side of the middle one into it. When I do most of the drum notes get copied over except for one section two thirds into the song where I am missing a tom, crash and snare drum. I have no idea what is happening in the drag process but would like to hear whether anyone else has had similar issues. I have tried copy and paste and copy special and paste special and the effect is the same.

[RBH]

It sounds like you're " merging "  clips instead of tracks. Make sure you are in sound on sound  mode. Do you see the notes in the piano roll view after the drag ? I would check that  - in the sections you are not hearing - make sure there notes there. ....... .bounce to clip  after the moves.

[mark skinner]

Solo the tracks you want to merge and just do a "bounce to tracks" from the "tracks" drop down. Keep and mute your original tracks if you want to make adjustments later.     ms

[chuckebaby]

Audio or midi ?

Midi- You might be better off using a midi source track and keeping all your drums on one track.

Audio- You might be losing instrument sounds due to drag and drop options. Try selecting "Blend new with old"

[brandon]

14 hours ago, mark skinner said:

Solo the tracks you want to merge and just do a "bounce to tracks" from the "tracks" drop down. Keep and mute your original tracks if you want to make adjustments later.     ms

I have tried that method Mark but nothing seems to happen. Just as you have explained above then I click 'bounce to tracks' but nothing actually occurs. Is it that I need to set up a destination track for the merged tracks as it is not quite apparent if that is the case?

[brandon]

3 hours ago, chuckebaby said:

Audio or midi ?

Midi- You might be better off using a midi source track and keeping all your drums on one track.

Audio- You might be losing instrument sounds due to drag and drop options. Try selecting "Blend new with old"

Hi - its Midi. I am trying to achieve all my drums on one track. They are on 3 separate tracks at the moment but for some reason I am not having any success in merging them.

[mark skinner]

Brandon , I was assuming these were audio tracks. I just opened a project that only has midi using 2 different synths. I soloed both synths and went to the Tracks drop down and clicked bounce to tracks. (I'm working in the regular tracks view window) It opened a dialogue box with a destination track already chosen. All the boxes were checked for stereo , entire mix etc. Clicked bounce  and the audio from both synths were merged together on the new destination track.  Don't have a clue why your's isn't working ..   mark

[lapasoa]

Regarding what Mark wrote, it's better using this method:  mute all tracks not interested in the bouncing except the 3 drum tracks. Check bounce to track. Cakewalk will choose the destination track.

[chuckebaby]

1 hour ago, brandon said:

Hi - its Midi. I am trying to achieve all my drums on one track. They are on 3 separate tracks at the moment but for some reason I am not having any success in merging them.

What drum synth are you using and how did you set up your midi track ?

[brandon]

1 hour ago, mark skinner said:

Brandon , I was assuming these were audio tracks. I just opened a project that only has midi using 2 different synths. I soloed both synths and went to the Tracks drop down and clicked bounce to tracks. (I'm working in the regular tracks view window) It opened a dialogue box with a destination track already chosen. All the boxes were checked for stereo , entire mix etc. Clicked bounce  and the audio from both synths were merged together on the new destination track.  Don't have a clue why your's isn't working ..   mark

Hi Mark - there is no audio data in the tracks they are pure midi notes that play through either SI Drums or the TTS1 softsynth - whichever I choose doesnt seem to make any difference. The bounce to tracks only seems to work on audio.

[brandon]

25 minutes ago, chuckebaby said:

What drum synth are you using and how did you set up your midi track ?

Hi I have tried SI Drums and TTS1 but the synth is probably irrelevant as its the midi notes i am trying to 'combine' that their resultant sounds. 

The 3 midi tracks were set up before soft synths as such, so that I could pan the drums left, centre and right hence the 3 tracks. All i want to do is combine that information now and run them through one synth and control the panning etc. from there.

[mark skinner]

You have to send them to a synth "Before" bouncing them to one common track. They can't be converted without the synth.  You would probably be better off sending all the midi tracks on separate channels to the synth. You could then make any adjustments later if you wanted to. You could then "freeze" the synth and choose "hide midi tracks" during the freeze. You will end up with a single track with all 3 midi tracks included. Easily unfreeze for adjustments. With each midi track you can adjust volume and panning before freezing. Every time I bounce to tracks I wish I wouldn't have. Can't make any changes  during the final mix or mastering stages..     mark

Edited July 1, 2020 by mark skinner

[User 905133]

20 hours ago, brandon said:

Hi I have tried SI Drums and TTS1 but the synth is probably irrelevant as its the midi notes i am trying to 'combine' that their resultant sounds. 

The 3 midi tracks were set up before soft synths as such, so that I could pan the drums left, centre and right hence the 3 tracks. All i want to do is combine that information now and run them through one synth and control the panning etc. from there.

This thread interests me. I have one tune-in-progress (really a loop-test of Sitala [drum rompler] to which I added a bass part) where there are 3 instances of Sitala (each in its own Instrument track) that were constructed in three passes (original loop 1 + overdub 1 + overdub 2)--not unlike many people have done for decades.

So, to test one method of combining the three tracks (midi data), I created a new MIDI track and used the time-honored old school DAW approach: (1) Select one track, (2) Select all (under edit), (3) Copy/Paste to the new track, (4) Select the next two tracks (one at a time) and do the same with the Advanced Option to blend the new with the old.

The resultant MIDI track has all of the MIDI data from the three Sitala tracks.  To hear the results, I routed the new track to one of the instances of Sitala.  However, it did not sound like the three tracks playing at the same time and I need to re-orchestrate it to work with a single instance of Sitala.

I mention this for because I suspect that whichever method you use to combine the MIDI data, you will probably have to re-orchestrate the result.  

UPDATE [July 2, 2020]: The method worked as expected, but the description as originally worded was wrong. Since the 3 tracks were Instrument Tracks and the combined track was a MIDI Track, after doing the method as described, I actually added a 4th instance of Sitala.  That instance was the one that sounded different.

So, after trying the Lord Tim's method (see below) I found that by pointing my resultant MIDI track to one of the original 3 instances of Sitala, the MIDI Track sounded exactly like the 3 Instrument Tracks played together--after the original data was deleted to avoid one of the parts being doubled.

There was no need for reorchestration.  

Edited July 2, 2020 by User 905133
(2) to correct the description and to explain why the description was wrong; (1) changed "single" to "three" in the interest of clarity

[brandon]

6 minutes ago, User 905133 said:

This thread interests me. I have one tune-in-progress (really a loop-test of Sitala [drum rompler] to which I added a bass part) where there are 3 instances of Sitala (each in its own Instrument track) that were constructed in three passes (original loop 1 + overdub 1 + overdub 2)--not unlike many people have done for decades.

So, to test one method of combining the three tracks (midi data), I created a new MIDI track and used the time-honored old school DAW approach: (1) Select one track, (2) Select all (under edit), (3) Copy/Paste to the new track, (4) Select the next two tracks (one at a time) and do the same with the Advanced Option to blend the new with the old.

The resultant MIDI track has all of the MIDI data from the three Sitala tracks.  To hear the results, I routed the new track to one of the instances of Sitala.  However, it did not sound like the three tracks playing at the same time and I need to re-orchestrate it to work with a single instance of Sitala.

I mention this for because I suspect that whichever method you use to combine the MIDI data, you will probably have to re-orchestrate the result.  

Yes interesting. I have managed to drag and drop all three tracks into one track but the result is not as it should be. Certain notes have been omitted from the resultant single track.

[Lord Tim]

I would do it like this, assuming there's 3 MIDI tracks (Track 1, Track 2, Track 3) and you're wanting to merge everything to Track 2:

1. Select nothing, either by clicking an empty spot in the Clips area or doing CTRL+SHIFT+A

2. Click on the number of Track 1, you'll see the entire track is now selected.

3. Hold down SHIFT and drag from the header part of the clip down until it's on Track 2, release the mouse button. SHIFT dragging constrains horizontal movement, so you'll make sure it moves in time correctly.

4. Select nothing again, as per step 1.

5. Repeat the procedure for dragging Track 3 onto Track 2.

Make sure that Track 2 is the one that's triggering your drum synth or you won't hear anything. Here's a GIF to show what I did:

Edited July 1, 2020 by Lord Tim

[chuckebaby]

3 hours ago, brandon said:

Hi I have tried SI Drums and TTS1 but the synth is probably irrelevant as its the midi notes i am trying to 'combine' that their resultant sounds. 

The 3 midi tracks were set up before soft synths as such, so that I could pan the drums left, centre and right hence the 3 tracks. All i want to do is combine that information now and run them through one synth and control the panning etc. from there.

You cant multi output using SI Drums or pan multi output tracks using SI Drums.

You'll need to keep 3 instances of SI Drums active to achieve this. SI Drums does not support multi output. Session Drummer 3 does.

Ideally, SI Drums should have one midi track as show in this video

You can use Panning within the VST itself. You might be better off bouncing down to audio tracks instead or use a beater drum synth.

Edited July 1, 2020 by chuckebaby

[brandon]

2 hours ago, chuckebaby said:

You cant multi output using SI Drums or pan multi output tracks using SI Drums.

You'll need to keep 3 instances of SI Drums active to achieve this. SI Drums does not support multi output. Session Drummer 3 does.

Ideally, SI Drums should have one midi track as show in this video

You can use Panning within the VST itself. You might be better off bouncing down to audio tracks instead or use a beater drum synth.

That's interesting because I have used SI Drums to output any number of drums from one midi track. The volume, pan and tuning are all available for each drum. Did I miss something there perhaps?

[brandon]

5 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

I would do it like this, assuming there's 3 MIDI tracks (Track 1, Track 2, Track 3) and you're wanting to merge everything to Track 2:

1. Select nothing, either by clicking an empty spot in the Clips area or doing CTRL+SHIFT+A

2. Click on the number of Track 1, you'll see the entire track is now selected.

3. Hold down SHIFT and drag from the header part of the clip down until it's on Track 2, release the mouse button. SHIFT dragging constrains horizontal movement, so you'll make sure it moves in time correctly.

4. Select nothing again, as per step 1.

5. Repeat the procedure for dragging Track 3 onto Track 2.

Make sure that Track 2 is the one that's triggering your drum synth or you won't hear anything. Here's a GIF to show what I did:

This is also interesting as I tried it and it didnt copy everything in sync. What I have ended up doing and it worked, was opening piano roll view and copying the midi information from one track into a new track - I did this for all three tracks and voila it worked. But it seems an odd way to go about things. Thanks for the tips guys. it has taken a while but I learned a lot and that matters more .

[lapasoa]

15 hours ago, chuckebaby said:

What drum synth are you using and how did you set up your midi track ?

It is impossible to help you if you don't answer to this question

[Lord Tim]

Weird about the sync thing. Make sure you hold down SHIFT first and keep holding it down while dragging, as per Step 3. Unless there's a bug that not many people are experiencing, this should absolutely preserve the horizontal position of your clips.