My turn for a dumb question - TTS-1 drum track plays piano sounds in PRV...huh?

Try setting the channel on the MIDI track to channel 10 ... that's the GM standard for drums

What you just discovered is that Channel 10 has a systematic drum map that is compiled into SONAR.

That's sort of a crude way to describe it... perhaps someone else has real details.

The other drum maps are mini databases that can be edited to point the note numbers to patches.

SONAR's channel 10 implementation is very similar but hidden because it is contextual to General MIDI and there is no reason to anticipate modifying it.

best regards,
mike

mike_mccue


What you just discovered is that Channel 10 has a systematic drum map that is compiled into SONAR.

That's sort of a crude way to describe it... perhaps someone else has real details.

The other drum maps are mini databases that can be edited to point the note numbers to patches.

SONAR's channel 10 implementation is very similar but hidden because it is contextual to General MIDI and there is no reason to anticipate modifying it.

The dedication of channel 10 to drums is only applicable to GM synths, of which TTS-1 is an example. If you set the output channel to 10 on a MIDI track pointing at a hardware synth, or a non-GM synth, you won't see the GM drum note names in the PRV that you see with TTS-1, and you won't hear drums unless that synth happens to have a drum patch loaded on that channel.
 
And it isn't the drum map that makes you get drum sounds when you change the track output to channel 10, it's just having the channel assigned to the channel of the synth that has drum sounds on it. For a GM synth, that's always channel 10, but other synths may have drums on channel 2 or channel 13, and dedicated drum synths will usually respond on any channel.
 
All the Drum Map does is determine what note number is generated by each key on your keyboard (or pad on a drum controller), and what port and channel it goes to. If there's a piano synth on that port and channel, you'll get piano sounds, but the notes may not have the normal correspondence to note numbers. Drum Map is really kind of a misnomer; There's nothing that forces you to use a drum map to drive a drum synth. Its really just an all-purpose note number/channel/port map that can translate input values to different output values, and allows you to give friendly name to each note number and add a velocity offset.
 
 

I know that you are a MIDI expert...

 
Ha! I wish. More like I know the basics very well.
 
I'm afraid I kind of drowned my main point in a sea of detail. That point was that the linkage of Channel 10 to drums and the default drum map in the PRV is a function of TTS-1, not SONAR per se. Channel 10 works just like any other channel in until you get a GM synth involved. 

As well as GM (more accurately GS in the case of the TTS-1) channel 10 being the default standard for drum sounds on a GM/GS/XG standard synth you could change that or (GS and XG being additions to the GM spec. implemented by Roland and Yamaha respectively) designate more than one channel via system exclusive messages.

I've found it a weird science when it comes to Sonar, Softsynths and sys-ex though, whether that's to do with specific soft-synth implementations or whether it is down to how Sonar affects midi files on loading and subsequent saving (which it most certainly does) I've yet to determine despite exhaustive testing using either sys-ex banks or messages.

I do know that transmitting midi over the wires via a specified port to a GM/GS/XG equipped module has more predictable and manageable results though. One of those little niggles for me in Sonar is that you can't assign an instrument definition to a soft-synth which makes choosing a patch from a synth like the TTS-1 by name impossible for example.

As the OP has already worked out it isn't worth worrying about the ins and outs of it if you can just simply get it working right as most synths no longer conform to a recognized standard even if some still follow elements of the 'old' ways.