The inexplicable wretchedness of trying to use the drum pane

[Starship Krupa]

My latest dance with the Drum Grid in the pale moonlight was learning that unlike with other virtual instrument tracks, if I create a track template with a drum map applied, it doesn't save the drum map or the virtual instrument.

All I get is an instrument track with no instrument on it, routed to an empty drum map.

And before anyone says "yes, of course, because you need to add the drum map first," yeah I figured that out.

But sheesh, track templates are one of the best possible tools for sorting this out. If the track template could load the instrument and the drum map, that would be huge.

So at this point, from what I can figure out, if I have a beat that I want to program before I forget it, the only way to jump into that without going through half a dozen steps that may or may not work depending on whether I do them in the right order is to load up a project template.

Seems simple, but in cases where I don't start a project with that template, we're back to the buzzkill. And since I don't always use Addictive Drum Stew as my drum instrument, I can't just use that template all the time.

There are such simple things that could make this way easier, it doesn't have to be a full on overhaul at first. Maybe not simple from the devs' standpoint, but not huge changes in the UX.

[Starship Krupa]

30 minutes ago, David Baay said:

This is not the fault of CW. There is no standard for MIDI octave numbering. Greg Hendershott long ago chose to start numbering at 0, I assume just because that's the natural thing to do from a programming standpoint.

The reason that I read for the MIDI octave numbering is much worse.

Having pulled off the miracle of cooperation that was the MIDI standard, Yamaha immediately set about introducing incompatibilities. Roland synths had started at zero, but then Yamaha made the hugely popular DX7 respond to the 2 octaves up thing.

Greg probably had a Roland synth and/or thought that it made more sense the Roland way, as do I.

This causes so many problems. The two most powerful tools I have for making glitch and scratch effects are MRythmizer and Stutter Edit 2, and both of them are set up to respond to the Yamaha standard. So I have to use a MIDI transposer plug-in in order to be able to trigger them from a controller in real time.

[David Baay]

34 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

If the track template could load the instrument and the drum map, that would be huge.

Working for me. The only "magic" was (as mentioned previously) to save/re-save the map after setting the Outputs to the desired synth (if it didn't load that way in the first place).

 

[David Baay]

22 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Roland synths had started at zero

My Roland keyboards and rack modules all call Middle C (Note# 60) C4. I recall Yamaha generally went with C3.

Edited December 12 by David Baay

[Starship Krupa]

6 minutes ago, David Baay said:

Working for me. The only "magic" was (as mentioned previously) to save/re-save the map after setting the Outputs to the desired synth (if it didn't load that way in the first place).

Hmm. I wonder why I'm not getting the virtual instrument itself coming in with the track template....

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

I wonder why I'm not getting the virtual instrument itself coming in with the track template....

Mine was one MIDI track and multiple synth audio tracks for the separate outs of Session Drummer 3. I saved it from Sonar and validated by bringing it into a new project from the Basic template in CbB to be sure it wasn't dependent on Sonar somehow. They both reference a common set of Cakewalk Content directories so the same drum maps and track templates are available to both.

I've saved other drum track templates in the past to save time setting up the multi-out routing, track naming, panning, etc. Not sure I ever tried to include a drum map before but it seemd to work fine. And I've saved Simple Instrument tracks a templates and neve had trouble getting the synths to load with them.

[AxlBrutality]

3 hours ago, David Baay said:

This is not the fault of CW. There is no standard for MIDI octave numbering. Greg Hendershott long ago chose to start numbering at 0, I assume just because that's the natural thing to do from a programming standpoint. This makes Middle C "C5".  So-called "Scentific Pitch Notation" calls it C4 and many keyboard manufacturers follow that convention, but not all, and synth develpers are also all over the map on this (pun intended). A fair number of them call Middle C "C3" so, yes, you would have to go up two octaves in CW. Fortunately, CW offers  a solution: "Base Octave for Pitches" in Preferences > Editing.

I'm aware that there's technically no set standard, but when the majority of other major DAWs operate a certain way and almost every modern drum software operates under the assumption that it's done that way when presenting their mapping to their userbase...it makes sense to stick with that (or change to it) other than being the odd man out, not having any clear notation about it, and thus being a friction point for unaware or new users.

Which leads me to the next point...I have used this software for 20 years and wasn't aware/never noticed that option, or I did but had zero clue what it meant or did (because I honestly had no reason to).

(Yes, I'm sure it's buried somewhere in the documentation, but come on...lol.)

One of many areas that contribute to our continued use of the word "unintuitive".

And like I said, that's just one example of many, and things build up after a certain point.  And when we're talking about the one area of cake that hasn't been touched, while an awful lot of other things that arguably didn't necessarily need so much attention have been....yea.

Again, I also have a lot of colleagues that have worked with a lot of DAWs and they all say that working with drums in Cake has always had the most friction points and outdated/unintuitive ways of doing things.

Starship:  Unfortunately, I will say that some of these issues are pretty strange though, and even I haven't had issues with them.  My track templates pop up with AD2/Krimh/whatever loaded, all ins/outs correctly routed, and the correct maps loaded as well, so something's definitely off there.  I wish I could help. 

Getting there is always a headache, but once I have things set and templates created it works 90% of the time and I'm set for literal years.
 

Edited December 12 by AxlBrutality

[Starship Krupa]

3 hours ago, AxlBrutality said:

Which leads me to the next point...I have used this software for 20 years and wasn't aware/never noticed that option, or I did but had zero clue what it meant or did (because I honestly had no reason to).

(Yes, I'm sure it's buried somewhere in the documentation, but come on...lol.)

One of many areas that contribute to our continued use of the word "unintuitive".

You ain't seen nothin' yet. By this time you've probably found out that David missed by a hair when he said that Base Octave for Pitches setting was in Preferences/Editing. I think we can forgive him.

It's actually set in Preferences/Customization/Display. Because of course it is! I doubt that whoever put it there was trying to make it the last place in Preferences a naive user would look for it, but  if they were trying, they couldn't have done much better. When trying to track down why you can't get octaves to line up correctly in a DAW, is the first thing that comes to mind "better check the display preferences and make sure it's all ship shape?" Someone apparently thought so.

Not so long ago, I proposed a feature that would place an audition button in each clip's header. I got the usual chorus of "why don't you just...." replies, including one from a very veteran user who had this process for auditioning clips that required at least 5 clicks. He wasn't aware that you can click on a clip and hit Alt+Spacebar.

I wanted the buttons (one for Mute as well) because I don't like features that are keystroke-only.

As long as REAPER and Tracktion remain on the market, Cakewalk Sonar will never be the least intuitive DAW on the market.

I like to think that I can still imagine I'm a new user and trying to figure it out without being able to refer to the forum or documentation existed. There is a lot of learning with any DAW, but I think it should be made as easy as practical.

We do what we can do. When the Cakewalk Reference Guide was first published, after there had been no such manual the first years of CbB's release, I got busy and over the next months submitted several pages of corrections and suggestions. I submit bug reports, make suggestions here on the forum, try to help on the forum.

Most things that someone wants to do can be figured out with the help of Google. As long as BandLab lets Cakewalk keep the forums online it should be okay.

As for my own special troubles with the Drum Pane, it seems like if something is going to go wrong with it, I'll be the one it goes wrong for. But who knows, since so few seem to even use the feature? 🙄

[Steven White]

Mike to the rescue! https://youtu.be/sIquUl-7NfE?si=HbsPfsAUl22zmv16