Can not get S1 drummer to record in Essential

Hi Rick,
are you trying to "record" hits as you click on the drum kit pieces in the GUI?  if that's the case then it will not work that way.  SI drums are like the other drum softsynths in that the GUI is just for auditioning the kit pieces and loops.

if you want to record your own hits, you need to do it either by a controller (e-drums, MIDI keyboard, etc), by adding the hits in the PRV using the mouse.

or you can use the included loops by dragging and dropping them from the GUI onto the MIDI track.

You drag the loop from the Browser and drop it right into the track. Then you can open it in PRV or the Step Sequencer for editing if need be.

Also remember once you've dropped one instance of the groove (I think they are actually called grooves... not loops in this situation) you don't have to keep dragging and dropping the same thing from the browser. You can just drag out the end of the clip to make it longer or copy/paste it as needed.

The one thing that REALLY helped me wrap my head around working with MIDI drums is the Sonar University Master Class "Drum Production" series (2 parts). I highly recommend watching them. However Seth is using an older version of Sonar so if something looks different or you can't find a menu he's referring to look at the bottom of the video screen and there is text explaining how to do that step in X1. Here's a link to the vids... http://www.cakewalk.com/C...NARU.aspx/Master-Class