The inexplicable wretchedness of the drum pane

[Starship Krupa]

On 10/26/2024 at 5:56 PM, Base 57 said:

Be back in studio next week. I will try to help more then. 

Meanwhile, some kind of voodoo dance may be more effective....

I'll give credit where it's due and say that it's been quite a long time since I've had to sacrifice a chicken to Cakewalk's MIDI routing.

You know the scenario, where a MIDI track and a synth track are happily joined and cooperating, but then....something changes and the synth stops producing sound. You check everything, all the inputs and outputs are set correctly, nothing solo'd, nothing muted, lights on the MIDI track indicate that data is flowing, yet somehow no sound is being produced.

Then you start Trying Things, and eventually some combination of saving/deleting/exiting/reloading/reinserting the project/track/computer makes it start producing sound again.

The sound comes back as mysteriously as it went away. There was a time in the past where you would try to retrace the steps that led to the dysfunction, in the hope of avoiding the situation in the future, but it is now as impossible to break as it was to fix.

All you can do is Save As and thank the spirits that control such things for allowing you to continue.

Anyway, I'm holding you to your earlier pledge to help more when you were back in the studio, assuming you are now back in the studio.

How do I get my spiffy diamond drum editing grid without having to piddle around with forcing it to use Channel 10 or some such?

[David Baay]

8 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

You know the scenario, where a MIDI track and a synth track are happily joined and cooperating, but then....something changes and the synth stops producing sound.

This could actually be related to problems you're having with drum maps in some cases. If you set a MIDI Output to a drum map and subsequently delete the map from the project (e.g. because it' not working as expected) without first deliberately reassigning the MIDI Output, there's no guarantee that it will re-route to the original synth. IIRC, it will default to the first available port, be it a hardware OUT or some other soft synth.

[Starship Krupa]

6 hours ago, David Baay said:

This could actually be related to problems you're having with drum maps in some cases.

Nah, once I get the drum pane set up, it tends to keep going okay.

The problem isn't getting sound to come out, it's getting a drum grid with note names on the left. And I don't use the note remapping feature for any synth that's not a drum machine.

You're thinking in terms of "he's having trouble with drum maps." The "map" part of the feature is the part that actually works for me. Remapping controllers to different MIDI note numbers. Nice feature. A bit clunky, but it works solidly.

The feature that tends to fail miserably is displaying the drum pane with the names of the notes on the left.

They are two different aspects of "drum maps." Note mapping and drum grid editing. One works fairly well, the other one is frankly such a mess that even veteran, savvy Cakewalk users have given up on it. How many people chime in to say that the drum grid works just fine for them vs. how many say that they use Instrument Definitions or just memorize the note locations on their MIDI controller? I myself have a strip of board tape on my keyboard controller with the GM note numbers written on it.

Which I submit is a less common goal than wanting to edit drums on a nice compact grid with note names on the left.

One good thing is that XLN just issued a free upgrade to Addictive Drums 2 that makes accessing its own internal MIDI mapping more inviting, so I may be able to just use an extended GM mapping with AD2. Or, since they've made their own drum editing grid more inviting, I may get more into editing patterns with that.

For AD2 users: this upgrade is a must, it has so many new features and such an extensive UI update that it could have been called Addictive Drums 3 and been a paid upgrade. It functions as a great preview of things to come when AD3 ships.

[David Baay]

17 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

You're thinking in terms of "he's having trouble with drum maps." The "map" part of the feature is the part that actually works for me.

No, I was just responding to your post about unexpectedly silent tracks and thinking that if any part of a Drum Map wasn't working as expected, you might  remove it without re-directing the track output first - a simple oversight that could lead to unexpected silence. Thought I'd mention it accordingly.

[Base 57]

On 11/3/2024 at 10:44 AM, Starship Krupa said:

I'm holding you to your earlier pledge to help

I spent several hours experimenting with Drum Maps and the Drum Pane. But...

 

18 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

They are two different aspects of "drum maps." Note mapping and drum grid editing. One works fairly well, the other one is frankly such a mess that even veteran, savvy Cakewalk users have given up on it. How many people chime in to say that the drum grid works just fine for them vs. how many say that

I couldn't make it not work.

At a loss to explain how it always works for me and rarely works for you or some others, I was going to blame it on the inexplicable differences in the way different people perceive software. For example, V Vocal. Some people loved it and hated when Cakewalk replaced it with Melodyne. I was the opposite. I couldn't get my head around V Vocal at all. But I hardly had to touch the documentation to use Melodyne.

So last night I spent a couple more hours screwing around with this and had a Homer Simpson head slap moment....

Two things

01. If your Drum Pane is empty, then your active Drum Map is also empty.

02. When you open the Drum Map Manager it always opens the first Map in the project, not the map assigned to the current track.

Here is a short experiment to demonstrate how this is supposed to work. Keep in mind that a Drum Map does not care what synth(s) or Port(s) it routes to, and to demonstrate this we won't use any at all.

First, create a New Empty Project and add a single Midi Track to it. From that tracks output dropdown, select Drum Map Manager

   At the top of the Manager, click on New. Then at the bottom, click OK

Next, change the track output to the Drum Map you just created (DM1). Then open the PRV. If the PRV shows the keyboard, then click its View dropdown and select Show/Hide Drum Pane.

That Drum Pane will be empty because the Map is empty.

Next, go back to the Track Output Dropdown and re-select Drum Map Manager.

  In the middle of the manager, under "Settings for DM1", Click on the New button a couple of times. You will see the added notes populate the open Drum Pane.

  Go back to the top of the Manager and click on New under Drum Maps Used in Current Project. Then at the bottom click on OK to close the Manager.

Next, go to the Track Output Dropdown and select the 2nd Drum Map (DM2). The Drum Pane in the PRV will again be empty (because the Map is empty).

Next, create a new Midi Track and assign its output to DM1. The Drum Pane will no longer be empty.

Now the output of Track 1 is assigned to DM-2, and the output of Track 2 is assigned to DM-1. Click back and forth between them and you will notice:

The Drum Pane is always going to display the "Current" track regardless of Selection.

Go to the output of Track 1 (DM-2) and again select Drum Map Manager.

Notice that it displays the settings for DM-1, not the map assigned to the track, DM-2. 

This, I believe, could be the source of confusion for some users. It is not illogical to assume the Manager would display the settings for the map used in the track you opened it from.

There are two other things I want to point out before closing this tldr.

Any time you edit a drum map, save it as a preset with a name that will put it at the top of the list (think numbers). 

And you can change the output port of all the notes in a map at once by holding down Cntrl-Shift while making the selection.

I hope this little experiment helps but as always, YMMV.