feature request Drum map: a couple of small simple improvements

[kmather741]

I've been a happy user of Cakewalk for many many years.

There are lots of comments about how clumsy the Drum Map Manager is to use.  A major update would be nice, but probably is a big effort. A couple of very simple things would make it much more convenient to use.

Very often I use it to just display drum note names for a drum VST. I assume that this is a common case. This is awkward because:

• the Out Port moves to different positions for a VST
• sometimes different a channel other than 10 is used

Typically one Out Port and a single channel are needed for a drum VST. It would be really nice to have a couple of buttons like:

• Set all Out Port to X
• Set all channels to X

Otherwise it is very cumbersome to edit dozens of items.

Note name "instrument" definitions can be used instead, but Drum Maps have advantages.

Edited May 2, 2022 by kmather741
Updated and corrected text about note names, since this has more or less been resolved

[scook]

34 minutes ago, kmather741 said:

[Of course it would be much easier to just load a text file of note names for one track (sometimes mentioned in other requests) and avoiding the Drum Map entirely, but that would also be a much bigger change.]

Persistent per-track note names using instrument definitions was added in 2021.06.

Have not used a drum map for note naming since this feature was added.

I created several VST drum synth instrument definitions and posted about them in the instrument definitions area on this forum.

Once created they are easily imported into the master instrument definition file used by CbB.

Instrument definition files are plain text files.

[kmather741]

 

8 hours ago, scook said:

Persistent per-track note names using instrument definitions was added in 2021.06.

Where is this feature? I looked through help and read a lot of release notes. The menus in PRV look the same to me.

I have added note names in Master.ins before, but I haven't seen a way to use a separate file.

Edited May 2, 2022 by kmather741
add info

[scook]

This is documented in the "Misc enhancement" section of the release notes for 2021.06.

No changes were made to the menus.

To use Individual instrument definition files, import them into the master.ins (see the link provided above).

Of course, one may directly edit the ".Note Names" and ".Instrument Definition" sections too, but most often individual ins files are created to share definitions.

[kmather741]

Thanks.

So it is really more of a bug fix: note names are saved per-track for the PRV, not globally. That is a big step forward (it was kind of useless before). But note name definitions themselves are pretty much defined as always.

The Drum Map still has some advantages - such as allowing you to define a much smaller subset of useful notes.

[scook]

Alternate note names for plug-ins have always been per-track, however; prior to 2021.06 they had to be set every time the track was opened in the PRV.

This was how the feature was originally designed.

For 2021.06, the feature was modified to store the setting in the project in order for note names to persist across sessions.

7 minutes ago, kmather741 said:

The Drum Map still has some advantages - such as allowing you to define a much smaller subset of useful notes.

 There are a few and this is one of them, although there is no requirement to define all 128 notes in an instrument definition there is no way to suppress displaying all the notes.

That said, the drum map editor and file layout could be improved quite a bit.

The method to make bulk changes to values in the Drum Map Manager is a little clunky.

[David Baay]

On 5/1/2022 at 8:05 PM, kmather741 said:

Typically one Out Port and a single channel are needed for a drum VST. It would be really nice to have a couple of buttons like:

• Set all Out Port to X
• Set all channels to X

Hold Ctrl+Shift when changing the first port/channel and they will all change. Or Change one and hold Ctrl+Shift when changing another one to have that range changed.

[tparker24]

On 5/2/2022 at 7:22 AM, scook said:

Alternate note names for plug-ins have always been per-track, however; prior to 2021.06 they had to be set every time the track was opened in the PRV.

This was how the feature was originally designed.

For 2021.06, the feature was modified to store the setting in the project in order for note names to persist across sessions.

For me,  the note names do not persist across sessions.  I have to re-select them again each time from the Notes Names dialog.  I normally open PRV by double-clicking the track (MIDI or SIT).  I'm running the latest CbB (2022.11).  Is there perhaps some setting I'm missing?

[Starship Krupa]

On 2/22/2023 at 12:15 PM, tparker24 said:

For me,  the note names do not persist across sessions.  I have to re-select them again each time from the Notes Names dialog.  I normally open PRV by double-clicking the track (MIDI or SIT).  I'm running the latest CbB (2022.11).  Is there perhaps some setting I'm missing?

Not one that I know of; this is supposed to "just work." Is this in every project or just one or in some of them. Whatever the case, the devs would probably like to see a project that exhibits this behavior. As simple as possible.

Then they can study it and see what's going wrong.

Have you tried a simple reinstall or "clean" reinstall?

[tparker24]

On 2/22/2023 at 1:15 PM, tparker24 said:

For me,  the note names do not persist across sessions.  I have to re-select them again each time from the Notes Names dialog.  I normally open PRV by double-clicking the track (MIDI or SIT).  I'm running the latest CbB (2022.11).  Is there perhaps some setting I'm missing?

Finally figured it out!  My Screenset was locked ...  once I unlocked it, the note names in PRV are now persisting.

[scook]

I supposed an argument could be made either way but this seems like an unintended consequence of locking the screenset (aka bug).