SSD5 how to add all drums to the mixer view?

[user390096]

Hi,

Does anybody know how to insert all of the drums in a SSD5.5 kit into the mixer view? The "Mixer" only seems to display a pre-set list of drums and there isn't any channel for any of the crash cymbals. However, there are channels for cowbell and tambourine but they aren't even part of my kit. Confusing.

I've tried going to the SSD5 web-site but it doesn't seem to address this situation. Help!

[reginaldStjohn]

I don't have SSD5 but from the pictures it looks like you should be able to click on the "out 1 st" below the mixer channels and route them to other outputs. At least that is how you do it in Superior drummer. Then in Cakewalk you make audio tracks and assign them to have their inputs receive from the specified SSD5 outputs.

A quick google search showed that Steven Slate has some videos on how to do multiple outputs in other DAW. They should give you a good start on how to do it in Cakewalk.

https://stevenslatedrums.com/videos/

 

[user390096]

Thanx reginald, I'll look into it.

[Billy86]

The OP has a point. I’m working with SSD5 right now. Routing out and having individual tracks for each out is pretty straightforward. It doesn’t help with the cymbal situation. The issue is there’s no Dedicated out channel for cymbals in SSD5 that I’ve found. Controlling them is a matter of mainly using the overhead outs where the cymbals primarily live. Using the ‘Instrument master’ (top left) and the velocity control (top right in the GUI) increased to the 80-90 range feeds more signal in the OH and provides A relative volume boost.

try boosting the volume levels of the various mic controls (particularly the volume level on the OH mic) on the crash cymbal GUI you show, and combine that with Juicing the velocity control. I’ve found I can barely hear them at the default settings. With some tweaking, mine are sounding a lot better. 

[Chaps]

1 hour ago, Billy86 said:

The issue is there’s no Dedicated out channel for cymbals in SSD5 that I’ve found. Controlling them is a matter of mainly using the overhead outs where the cymbals primarily live.

Addictive Drums 2 is the same. You can't assign an audio track to the output of the cymbals and can only hear them through the Room or Overheads tracks.

[kc23]

The way these drum instruments work is to simulate a normal multitrack workflow for recorded drums.

When recording drums, you don´t have an isolated mic/track for each cymbal, you just have overheads and/or rooms.

[Michael Vogel]

Steven Slate also has a very active forum where you should be able yo get more specific help.

[Robert Bone]

There is a slider at the bottom of the UI mixer screen, that you can slide left or right, to expose the other mixer channels. 

I just went through the exercise of splitting the Cutya Kit to all separate output channels, and I built a custom drum map in Cakewalk for it, and setup a Project Template and a Track Template, complete with additional buses (Drums master, kick, snare, toms, cymbals, OH, Room, parallel compression), set up the parallel compression, and gain staged every last bit of it.

There are something like 70 or so, drum note mappings, for an absolutely incredible number of nuanced variants, I mapped them all.

WHEW.  If anybody wants that custom drum map, and the project and track templates, just let me know, and I will upload them to Dropbox and post a link.

Bob Bone

[Billy86]

7 hours ago, Robert Bone said:

There is a slider at the bottom of the UI mixer screen, that you can slide left or right, to expose the other mixer channels. 

I just went through the exercise of splitting the Cutya Kit to all separate output channels, and I built a custom drum map in Cakewalk for it, and setup a Project Template and a Track Template, complete with additional buses (Drums master, kick, snare, toms, cymbals, OH, Room, parallel compression), set up the parallel compression, and gain staged every last bit of it.

There are something like 70 or so, drum note mappings, for an absolutely incredible number of nuanced variants, I mapped them all.

WHEW.  If anybody wants that custom drum map, and the project and track templates, just let me know, and I will upload them to Dropbox and post a link.

Bob Bone

Yes please, Bob!  Do you know if one would have to do what you did on the one kit on a kit by kit basis in SSD5?

[Robert Bone]

3 hours ago, Billy86 said:

Yes please, Bob!  Do you know if one would have to do what you did on the one kit on a kit by kit basis in SSD5?

Yes, because different kits have different configurations, though for the stuff that is the same, you can reuse any of those note number row entries in the custom map.  For instance, one kit may have different percussion instruments, or perhaps none, and one may have different number of cymbals, or different number of toms.  But, basically, and hopefully, they went with standard note numbers for standard kit pieces.

So, hopefully, all the note number mappings for all their kits, would use the same note numbers for the kick drum, and the high-hat, for example.  I wouldn't understand if they used different mappings, except for any kits that are set up to map to general midi specs.  The Cutya kit does not conform to the standard/general midi note mapping specs.  

But again, even if a kit differs from what I built, for the custom drum map, you could use my drum map as a starting point, and figure out what is the same, and what is different, and then you could simply adjust the delta (whatever is different), to map to the other kit, and that should save a load of time. So, I would suggest starting a new project, using the Project Template I will post, as that has what you would need, to start with, then change the drum kit in the SSD5 instance in the Synth Rack, to whatever kit you want to map, then I would suggest opening the Drum Map Manager, and enter a new drum map name in the text box, and click the Save icon just to the right of that text box, so that you save it under the new name (that way, you won't risk overlaying the map I built for Cutya), and then start comparing the mapping of those notes against the mapping of the kit you want to change the map to match.

I also have a text document I built, with the Cutya mapping, and that might be easier to use for comparison, than using the Drum Map Manager rows, as the text boxes for the Names aren't wide enough to display the whole names of the mapped notes.  I will post that text doc as well.  What I did, was to have Cakewalk running at less than full screen, by double-clicking on the title bar (top) of the Cakewalk window, and that way I could open the text document and keep it on the right side of the screen, so it wouldn't keep disappearing every time I clicked on a row in the Drum Map Manager, and I simply would copy the text for a given row, from my text doc, and paste it into the apprpriate row in the Drum Map Manager, and that made things go a lot quicker, plus it was easier to see the info in that text doc, to make sure I had it all correct.  You will see, when you open up the doc and the Drum Map Manager......

Also, I set the gain-staging for everything to around -18 dBFS, just to let you know.  (confession time).

I am about to get into some other stuff for a couple of hours, but then I will circle back and post what I set up for the Cutya kit, and you, or anybody, is free to use and hopefully like what I built for it.  We are all on the same team - one planet, one people, as they say. 

Bob Bone

Edited July 13, 2020 by Robert Bone
Added a confession on the gain staging

[Billy86]

6 hours ago, Robert Bone said:

Yes, because different kits have different configurations, though for the stuff that is the same, you can reuse any of those note number row entries in the custom map.  For instance, one kit may have different percussion instruments, or perhaps none, and one may have different number of cymbals, or different number of toms.  But, basically, and hopefully, they went with standard note numbers for standard kit pieces.

So, hopefully, all the note number mappings for all their kits, would use the same note numbers for the kick drum, and the high-hat, for example.  I wouldn't understand if they used different mappings, except for any kits that are set up to map to general midi specs.  The Cutya kit does not conform to the standard/general midi note mapping specs.  

But again, even if a kit differs from what I built, for the custom drum map, you could use my drum map as a starting point, and figure out what is the same, and what is different, and then you could simply adjust the delta (whatever is different), to map to the other kit, and that should save a load of time. So, I would suggest starting a new project, using the Project Template I will post, as that has what you would need, to start with, then change the drum kit in the SSD5 instance in the Synth Rack, to whatever kit you want to map, then I would suggest opening the Drum Map Manager, and enter a new drum map name in the text box, and click the Save icon just to the right of that text box, so that you save it under the new name (that way, you won't risk overlaying the map I built for Cutya), and then start comparing the mapping of those notes against the mapping of the kit you want to change the map to match.

I also have a text document I built, with the Cutya mapping, and that might be easier to use for comparison, than using the Drum Map Manager rows, as the text boxes for the Names aren't wide enough to display the whole names of the mapped notes.  I will post that text doc as well.  What I did, was to have Cakewalk running at less than full screen, by double-clicking on the title bar (top) of the Cakewalk window, and that way I could open the text document and keep it on the right side of the screen, so it wouldn't keep disappearing every time I clicked on a row in the Drum Map Manager, and I simply would copy the text for a given row, from my text doc, and paste it into the apprpriate row in the Drum Map Manager, and that made things go a lot quicker, plus it was easier to see the info in that text doc, to make sure I had it all correct.  You will see, when you open up the doc and the Drum Map Manager......

Also, I set the gain-staging for everything to around -18 dBFS, just to let you know.  (confession time).

I am about to get into some other stuff for a couple of hours, but then I will circle back and post what I set up for the Cutya kit, and you, or anybody, is free to use and hopefully like what I built for it.  We are all on the same team - one planet, one people, as they say. 

Bob Bone

That's super generous, Bob! That sounds like a ton of meticulous work. Thank you! I've yet to do a drum map, so I'll have to the start to at least see what the end product is supposed to look like. :) I like building a drum track in EZ Drums, then dragging it to a MIDI track and pointing it to SSD VSTi, with the SSD5 map configuration set to the EZ drum map that's included. Let's see what kind of routing knots I can tie myself up in!!

Particularly interested in this: "I just went through the exercise of splitting the Cutya Kit to all separate output channels, and I built a custom drum map in Cakewalk for it, and setup a Project Template and a Track Template, complete with additional buses (Drums master, kick, snare, toms, cymbals, OH, Room, parallel compression)..." 

Are you saying you were able to route the cymbals out separately from SSD5 mixer, which gave you access to direct those cymbals into the additional cymbals bus you mention in the bolded text above? 

[Robert Bone]

2 hours ago, Billy86 said:

That's super generous, Bob! That sounds like a ton of meticulous work. Thank you! I've yet to do a drum map, so I'll have to the start to at least see what the end product is supposed to look like. I like building a drum track in EZ Drums, then dragging it to a MIDI track and pointing it to SSD VSTi, with the SSD5 map configuration set to the EZ drum map that's included. Let's see what kind of routing knots I can tie myself up in!!

Particularly interested in this: "I just went through the exercise of splitting the Cutya Kit to all separate output channels, and I built a custom drum map in Cakewalk for it, and setup a Project Template and a Track Template, complete with additional buses (Drums master, kick, snare, toms, cymbals, OH, Room, parallel compression)..." 

Are you saying you were able to route the cymbals out separately from SSD5 mixer, which gave you access to direct those cymbals into the additional cymbals bus you mention in the bolded text above? 

Well, it turns out I was sleep, when I typed up that post, and my brain blurred things a bit - those buses and nuanced drum mappings were from a Kontakt drum library, called Studio Drummer, and so I will try to now correct my earlier mistakes of description.

There are bunches of nuanced drum note mappings in SSD5 Cutya kit, though they do differ a bit, from what I had posted earlier.  The SSD5 drum kits use a different method for avoiding that famous machine-gun sound that older drum sample libraries had.  Rather than using a different set of samples, for a Snare Left and a Snare Right, like is done in the Kontakt Studio Drummer, the SSD5 drum kits use an approach they call 'stacked', or 'stacking', which they claim does a better job of representing the sound of repeated snare hits, or toms.

The 2nd correction I need to make, is in my description of the buses - the buses I listed, and that you quote above, were from that Kontakt Studio Drummer kit.  The SSD5 kit does not have cymbals split out from the OH and Room mics, and I am sorry for any confusion.  I had been up working on stuff until 6 AM, and even though I then slept until around Noon, I was still a bit bleary and blurry when I wrote that other post.

The SSD5 approach to having the cymbals handled through the OH and Room mics IS the most realistic way of presenting cymbals, because that IS how real drum kits have microphones recording the cymbals.

I think the SSD5 kits, particularly the Cutya kit, and their handling of the cymbals using OH and Room mics, sound realistic, and that is way kewl.  I have other drum synths and libraries that do allow for cymbals to be routed separately, but the SSD5 approach works fine for me, so I don't bother with the other ones.

I am trying to wrap up some stuff so I can upload the drum map and templates - quick as I can, I will

Bob Bone

[Robert Bone]

Howdy @Billy86 and anyone else.  Sorry it took so long to circle back to this.  I had a great many things that got in the way.

I have uploaded a folder with the custom drum map, project template, and track template, I created for the SSD5 Cutya Kit, splitting each mixer channel, to a separate audio output channel.

In the project and track templates I created, I created a track folder, with a main MIDI track, as well as a MIDI track for click, and audio tracks for all the kit pieces.  I did set gain staging to around -18 dBFS for each of the audio tracks, though for at least 2 of the kit pieces, the Ride Cymbal and the Tambourine, multiple note numbers with different variations, have pretty good sized volume differences, so since all Ride Cymbal note numbers go to the same audio output channel, additional mitigation of volumes needs to be done, either with velocity editing, and/or automation.  There may be other kit pieces that have that issue - I did not pay any attention to note number mappings I would rarely use - I just went with the most likely used note number for a given kit piece.  You will see what I mean when you start programming up MIDI data for this drum kit.

I also set it up for parallel compression of the Kick bus, Snare bus, Toms bus, and Percussion bus., using Sends and a Parallel Compression Bus.  There are a number of buses set up, as well, and those will all be inserted into the project from either the Project Template, or the Track Template, though when inserting from the Track Template, the bus colors do not persist, so they will be the default Cakewalk color for buses.

I also uploaded a text document with the note mappings - might be easier to read then the shortened visibility in the text boxes of either the Drum Map Manager, or viewing the drum map note names in the Step Sequencer.  Place this text document anywhere you want, on your hard drive.

Please read the Text document in the folder, because it has instructions on where to copy and paste the different uploaded custom components in the Dropbox folder.

Enjoy - sorry if you don't like the track colors.  Change as desired.

Here is the link to the uploaded folder in my Dropbox account: SSD5 Cutya Kit Custom Drum Map and Templates for Cakewalk

Bob Bone

[Billy86]

6 hours ago, Robert Bone said:

Howdy @Billy86 and anyone else.  Sorry it took so long to circle back to this.  I had a great many things that got in the way.

I have uploaded a folder with the custom drum map, project template, and track template, I created for the SSD5 Cutya Kit, splitting each mixer channel, to a separate audio output channel.

In the project and track templates I created, I created a track folder, with a main MIDI track, as well as a MIDI track for click, and audio tracks for all the kit pieces.  I did set gain staging to around -18 dBFS for each of the audio tracks, though for at least 2 of the kit pieces, the Ride Cymbal and the Tambourine, multiple note numbers with different variations, have pretty good sized volume differences, so since all Ride Cymbal note numbers go to the same audio output channel, additional mitigation of volumes needs to be done, either with velocity editing, and/or automation.  There may be other kit pieces that have that issue - I did not pay any attention to note number mappings I would rarely use - I just went with the most likely used note number for a given kit piece.  You will see what I mean when you start programming up MIDI data for this drum kit.

I also set it up for parallel compression of the Kick bus, Snare bus, Toms bus, and Percussion bus., using Sends and a Parallel Compression Bus.  There are a number of buses set up, as well, and those will all be inserted into the project from either the Project Template, or the Track Template, though when inserting from the Track Template, the bus colors do not persist, so they will be the default Cakewalk color for buses.

I also uploaded a text document with the note mappings - might be easier to read then the shortened visibility in the text boxes of either the Drum Map Manager, or viewing the drum map note names in the Step Sequencer.  Place this text document anywhere you want, on your hard drive.

Please read the Text document in the folder, because it has instructions on where to copy and paste the different uploaded custom components in the Dropbox folder.

Enjoy - sorry if you don't like the track colors.  Change as desired.

Here is the link to the uploaded folder in my Dropbox account: SSD5 Cutya Kit Custom Drum Map and Templates for Cakewalk

Bob Bone

Thanks so much for this @Robert Bone.  I can appreciate the time this takes. I look forward to diving in!
 

[Robert Bone]

13 minutes ago, Billy86 said:

Thanks so much for this @Robert Bone.  I can appreciate the time this takes. I look forward to diving in!
 

OK, go for it!

[Robert Bone]

 I am going to create a new thread, to post the link to the Dropbox folder I uploaded, with the components I created for the SSD5 Cutya kit, in case anybody else wants to download them.  Hopefully, I won't catch too much flack for my track color choices, or my gain staging.  Perhaps the not having to build it all themselves will temper the comments  hee hee

@user390096 - are you all squared away now, on accessing the other channels in the SSD5 Mixer?

Bob Bone

[user390096]

Yes, and thanx for posting your Cutya kit. I have Add Drums 2 and notice they don't have any mixer channels for the cymbals either. I guess I can just go onto the individual instrument "edit - detail page" and turn up/down the volume on each cymbal if I desire but it would sure be easier if they had a mixer channel for each cymbal. If they can have a channel for the sacred cowbell, they should provide them for cymbals as well. We need more cymbals (not cowbell)!?

Edited July 15, 2020 by user390096

[Robert Bone]

I agree on wishing we could have the extra control for each cymbal, but I think they just view it as trying to faithfully recreate the sound of how regular acoustic kits are recorded.  I look at it like, why can't we improve on it, by adding that same level of control to the cymbals?  Oh well.

Glad you are all set. 

You mentioned having AD2 - do you have the drum map for AD2?  If not, here is the link to where you can download it:

https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013364/Setting-up-a-Drum-Map-for-Addictive-Drums-2-in-SONAR 

[Billy86]

10 hours ago, user390096 said:

Yes, and thanx for posting your Cutya kit. I have Add Drums 2 and notice they don't have any mixer channels for the cymbals either. I guess I can just go onto the individual instrument "edit - detail page" and turn up/down the volume on each cymbal if I desire but it would sure be easier if they had a mixer channel for each cymbal. If they can have a channel for the sacred cowbell, they should provide them for cymbals as well. We need more cymbals (not cowbell)!?

To have more control over the cymbals , I’ve thought about creating two channels in Cakewalk. Call them OH-complete and OH-cymbals. Maybe bring the SSD5 OH “out”  into each of them separately and then you could EQ/mix them separately at the high-frequency crossover where the cymbals shine. Maybe it’s just me, but the SSD cymbals seem to disappear in a rock mix.  I’ve also taken to creating my own cymbal channel and inserting one-shots .wavs to supplement.

Hmmm... that spurs a thought on a workaround that could be easier: you can add one-shot samples in SSD, and I believe it creates a channel for that sample.  If you did that with cymbal samples, maybe that would give you dedicated cymbal channels to work with. 

[Robert Bone]

30 minutes ago, Billy86 said:

To have more control over the cymbals , I’ve thought about creating two channels in Cakewalk. Call them OH-complete and OH-cymbals. Maybe bring the SSD5 OH “out”  into each of them separately and then you could EQ/mix them separately at the high-frequency crossover where the cymbals shine. Maybe it’s just me, but the SSD cymbals seem to disappear in a rock mix.  I’ve also taken to creating my own cymbal channel and inserting one-shots .wavs to supplement.

Hmmm... that spurs a thought on a workaround that could be easier: you can add one-shot samples in SSD, and I believe it creates a channel for that sample.  If you did that with cymbal samples, maybe that would give you dedicated cymbal channels to work with. 

I think you reawakened the nub of a thought that I briefly had dance in front of my brain for a fleeting moment the other day. 

No reason a 2nd instance of SSD5 couldn't be created, as a custom kit, with each cymbal routed to its own audio output channel, and nothing in the kit but the cymbals, and maybe some additional percussion kit pieces, or addditional toms, as long as you didn't have more kit pieces present between both instances, where you ran out of available note numbers.  But even with that, you could always incorporate an additional MIDI channel for that second kit (though that would be a bit of an editing PITB (pain in the ....).  I would think that perhaps an additional MIDI track might be warranted, I dunno, I am not awake enough yet, for such lofty thinking.

Potential complexities aside, I DO believe the addition of a 2nd instance of SSD5 and a custom kit for the cymbals to be routed to individual audio output channels sure SEEMS to resolve that issue (mind you, this is one a single cup of coffee).

If I get amped up enough, perhaps I will give that a go - setting up a 2nd instance and a custom kit for just cymbals, for the SSD5 kit I built the maps and templates for, and see if that would work.  Drum Maps can point to multiple Output Ports (different soft synth instances), so a single drum map could easily handle doing that.  I just need to get my musical buddy to get me set up for a Team Viewer remote session, so I could give it a go.  This might require a fresh full pot of coffee, but if I get enough time today, or in the next couple of days, I might just give this a shot.  Could be kewl.

I like the idea of the additional control over individual cymbals, though technically speaking, SSD5 did that to best approximate/recreate the approach to how actual real acoustic drum kits would have mics set up, but why not improve the process - move drumming forward a little, new horizons, and such....

Tally Ho!

Bob Bone