why is the note mapping in drum machines so weird?

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 2:21 am

This relates to forge's criticism that there are not preview buttons available on a lot of the chains.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 2:26 am

Here is my best guess as to how it came to be like this:

They wanted the individual sounds in racks, even if they only were single notes, so that they could associate macros with the sounds for easier tweaking of certain parameters.

....

If you pull a drum rack into another drum rack, it defaults to setting input for that chain to 'all'

....

They then had to set different distinct inputs on the top-level chains which they wanted incorporated into choke groups.

....

mass confusion ensues.

In their defense, a drum rack pulled into a drum rack really does need to default to 'all notes' in order to allow multiple sounds to be played through the sub-rack

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:18 am

Mass confusion for sure.

My take:

Why not just use a multi-simpler/sampler for each velocity layered drum "sound" (i.e. snare). Put it in an instrument rack if you really want to map macros, and put one instrument rack per Drum Rack Pad. Therefore each drum sound in a kit is in one instrument rack. Set the note selectors for each pad to correspond to the GM standard, but arrange them all in one grop of 4x4 visually in the drum rack.

Isn't that SOOO much easier to do and comprehend? The current method seems so convoluted, not sure why they made it so complicated?

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:24 am

How can a sound be played by it's GM note, but be displayed on a different pad?

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:35 am

Also, I don't think that an Instrument Rack will map out to the pads at all..except generically as "instr rack"

ditto for Impulse.

And a Drum rack will only map out to the pads if it's input is set to 'all'

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:41 am

longjohns wrote:Also, I don't think that an Instrument Rack will map out to the pads at all..except generically as "instr rack"

ditto for Impulse.

And a Drum rack will only map out to the pads if it's input is set to 'all'

yeah I suspect it is something to do with the naming

but I guess we all could really do with some more conclusive answers from Ableton....

funny enough I'm trying to make a tutorial on Drum racks as we speak, so I could really do with knowing exactly what I am talking about!

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:46 am

longjohns wrote:How can a sound be played by it's GM note, but be displayed on a different pad?

I guess this boils down to the fundamental confusion about the system - it's very easy to perceive Pads as extensions of chains, but they aren't - they are just a kind of 'note view'

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:53 am

longjohns wrote:This relates to forge's criticism that there are not preview buttons available on a lot of the chains.

I was thinking about this and if the problem is that it's not specified which note the preview button would trigger then it should just default to C3 but maybe in those rare cases when you want it to be different you hold ALT or something and click/drag it up or down and the note is displayed in the status bar just like knob/slider values are now when you hover the mouse over it

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 5:03 am

Ungh, headache, I'll just use my own drums, much easier than all this!

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 7:06 am

I made a little MIDI FX rack tonight, to stick in front of the "Kit - 606 Body Electric" kit, and remap the whole thing to a chromatic scale starting with C0

two problems:

-as my first try, it was pretty confusing to set all the scale plugs correctly

- the scale plugs are passing not only the transposed notes, but also the original notes...

(i fear something is wrong with scale?)

Anyway, my hope from there would be that this FX rack would work for any versions of the 606 kits. (?)

I have already tried shoving it in front of the drum rack, grouped as another drum rack.. It works in terms of how the notes go through the rack, and you could therefore save it as a preset. However it does NOT change the pad display, unfortunately

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 2:34 pm

Hmm...doesn't seem it's so easy as just dragging the pads around or putting a midi plugin in front of it.

bump

Just keeping this thread on page 1. Hopefully we get a response from Ableton.

BTW, which commonly used controllers use GM mapping anyways? Wasn't GM drum mapping for old hardware rack synths back in the 80's?

dbone · Post by **dbone** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 3:11 pm

icedsushi wrote: BTW, which commonly used controllers use GM mapping anyways? Wasn't GM drum mapping for old hardware rack synths back in the 80's?

WORD! I actually LOL'd when I saw the whole GM setup thing!! As if most of us need to construct our workflow to include regular use of a xylophone or tipmani sound.

Seriously - how many people are going to actually re-scale their entire drum sample library to GM?? The time spent coding this GM feature would have been better spent on ANYTHING else.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:09 pm

After building that MIDI FX rack, if Ableton could make it so that a drum rack's pad mapping would account for the MIDI plug actions, then someone could easily make a set of presets which would convert the kits as-is to a compressed pad layout.

I wonder which would be easier to implement:

1. Re-building every kit from scratch, ditching the GM layout (keeping the GM presets as well, in case someone does want to play GM files through the kits)

2. Coding Drum racks to account for MIDI note transposition within chains via scale and pitch plugins. (tracing pad mapping back through the MIDI plugs which are used)

?

I favor #2 because it goes beyond the current discussion/problem, and provides a useful feature. That way you could take any complex Drum Rack and convert it to a different pad layout just by building a MIDI FX rack and sticking it on the front end.

v00d00ppl · Post by **v00d00ppl** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 5:00 pm

after switching the note locations to fit with my mpd........i haven't noticed anything different in terms of note change. for example i tested it out on the 707, 909, and 808 all to fit into bank a of my pads and no change.

there is one drum machine that had one bad translation after i changed it to the 16 pad setup. it is the C78 Bender. No matter what i do on that preset the snare drum won't make a sound. all the other C78 kits i have the snare works. i wonder if anyone else has this problem.

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:28 am

found more weirdness - really dont know if it's deliberate or a bug

I had a drum rack containing 1 sample assigned to C1 then 3 drum racks set to all - I then dragged another sample to the chain list instead of the pad view and instead of it being added to C2 it went to C1 and C1 became 'multi'

before

after

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