newbie drums question

Hi all,

I'm new and learning a lot in a short time,  but finding certain things hard to figure out.

I am trying to learn how to get drum/percussion sounds I want.   I have figured out how to use session drummer 3 in my Sonar 8.5 setup to get any of the included SD3 kits rockin out.

However, I want to get a more electronic, or laid back sort of kit I'm hitting walls.   i can see in any midi track that I can select any of hundreds of midi drum kits as the output,  but how do I actually get to hear the sound?   I tried dragging a midi clip to the track pane for the midi track, but I don't hear any drums.  Should I?

Also, is this the best way to try and find kits that I like the sound of?   I have Sonar 8.5 PE which has lots and lots of things I have yet to discover.   Is there a better place to go looking for non-rock sounding drums than the output channel of the midi track?

Probably obvious I'm super new.   Any help appreciated.

Oh boy.  Thats a weird one.  If I have the midi track in Solo mode, I don't get any sound.  Turn off solo, and I get sound.   Yup, totally confused.

Did you try out what I suggested? First set up SD3 via Synth Rack. Second choose a kit in SD3 or you won't get any sounds. Third When you press solo make sure you click the solo on the folder not the tracks within it because you won't get any sounds. fourth drag those midi clips into the SD3 MIDI Track.

I two have session drummer 2. I found this program/plug-in to be extremely powerful and utterly limited at the same time. Granted for once I can set the pan and volume of each drum to where I need it in a mix, however I ran into a wall when I wanted drums other then the stock spread. If I want to add a fourth tom, it becomes a silent instrument if it is not in one of the preexisting three tom slots.

I tried to get around that by loading two instances of session drummer on my set up, and Sonar X1 Essential crashed for some reason. I don't know if that is simply because Session Drummer 2 is not meant for X1, or if it is something else.

Now what I did discover, is I can load drum sets into "DropZone", using tow instances of that, I can set the stereo spread to where I want the drums. However there are some drums that the Velocity setting in the piano roll dose not change the volume of a drum (It changes the pitch instead). Case and point, the cymbal crash is ten times louder then I want it. I want the cymbal crash in the music, not blowing out my eardrums. This is where session drummer comes in. loading just the cymbals into session drummer, I can individually set there volumes to be just right in the mix.

Pitfall, I end up with three different piano rolls for just the drums. There has got to be an easy way to make my own custom drum sets without resorting to piano roll origami. lol


P.S.
I purchased SesionDrummerd2 long before I upgraded/replaced ProAudio9 to Sonar X1 Essential. I can confirm that Dimension Pro and Session Drummer 2 do not work in the seriously outdated Cakewalk program (ProAudio9). I have yet to try to install Dimension Pro, as I am still learning the basics of Dimension LE.

rcorbett


 
However, I want to get a more electronic, or laid back sort of kit I'm hitting walls.   i can see in any midi track that I can select any of hundreds of midi drum kits as the output,  but how do I actually get to hear the sound?   I tried dragging a midi clip to the track pane for the midi track, but I don't hear any drums.  Should I?
 

That is probably just a list of pre written drum maps. You won't hear the sound unless you actually have the sound source itself.

Get BFD2 and a couple of expansion kits.

Lets try this. Open a new project, call it test1.
insert a soft synth "Session Drummer"
to the right of the little session drummer thing (in the song window thing), open up the piano roll for session drummer.
now open up the session drummer window (previously posted picture above).  in X1 I double click the little session drummer thing to bring up the synth window of session drummer thing.
left click the "prog" thing to open the drum set selection menue.
click any of the plus signs, and double click a drum set of choice.
now all the little drum pictures should be no longer darkened out.

now if we left click on any of the drum pictures, we should hear that drums sound?
Like wise, there should be a few piano keys in the piano roll that also make the drums produce sound? between A4 and Bb1 for the "Hard Rock Room.prog"?

Dose that at least work?

Hi all.
I haven't had any trouble getting SD3 to work.    There tutorials I found online were straight forward and easy to follow.

I was just struggling with finding other drum sounds.    One way I found these was to take a normal midi track and select the output as any of the hundreds of drum maps that are included.  I could drag and drop a PTN file into the track and eventually (by UNSELECTING solo) I got the sound to come out.   I reboot my machine over night but I haven't had a chance to test it yet today.  I expect that the solo functionality has been corrected, but we'll see.

So, I'm getting somewhere,  there are just so many ways to make drum sounds its a little overwhelming when trying to find a sound I'm looking for.

Now I did notice that somewhere in DropZone, there were some strange sounding drum sets with X1, I dont know what soft synths came with Sonar 8.5. It shouldn't be two dificult to load thoes samples from there folders into Session drummer as individual drum pieces.

 
I don't think you want to have a whole drumset loaded onto say the kick....
 
Here is a good video to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X-fIfLFtvM
http://www.cakewalk.com/CakeTV/SONARU.aspx/Master-Class

The OP can preview drum sounds using the Media Browser. The Session Drummer 2 sounds are at

C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Vstplugins\Session Drummer 2\Contents\Kits

Not sure if Session Drummer 3 sounds are in the VST folder but you can easily see where they are at by Right clicking a drum in Session Drummer 3 and selecting Load Instrument. That will take you right to directory.

Use the Media Browser to browse to that location and then save it to the Location List by clicking the floppy disk icon. Then you can audition all of the SD3 sounds independently of SD3.

Have you looked in all the folders? In Session Drummer 2 the samples are in their own folders. For example, the folders outlined in red in the image below contain wave files.

What about Windows Explorer?

Do they show up there or are we really looking at an incomplete installation?