Some beginner problems and questions

I already posted this on the Steam forum, so if you read it there, feel free to ignore this :)
 
When playing guitar and drums I like to use MIDI software instead of a metronome because it is more configurable. I have been using LMMS, but decided to "upgrade" to MC6T, but it hasn't been as easy as I planned...
 
So basically, I'm not creating a song, just A LOT of 2-4 bar patterns in the same file, then I combine them in different ways with the SOLO button depending on what I'm working on...
 
Here are the issues I've run into so far, and some other questions:

1. Start MC6T and do File->New, and choose Blank Project.
 
2. Do Insert->Soft Synth->SI Drum Kit, hit OK with just Simple Instrument Track checked.
 
3. Rename the new Track "1/8s"
 
4. Do Views->Step Sequencer
 
ISSUE1: In the SS all of the rows have the default note-value names (C3 to B3), instead of the names of the correct drums that appear in SI Drums' VST window. Is there a way to get the drums names to appear automatically?
 
ISSUE1a: How do I see ALL available drum sounds? Not "Programs", but individual sounds like kick, snare, side-stick, crash, ride, etc. Is there a cowbell anywhere? Hand clap? I NEED [MORE] COWBELL! In the VST window I know I can right-click each of the "pads" and it will show some of them, but no where could I find a list of ALL of them.

5. For the kick (C3) right click and do Fill Every->4, for the side-stick (Db3) do Fill Every->2. Hit the Play button to make sure it sounds correct (1/8 notes with 1/4s on the kick). Close the SS window.
 
6. Right click Track 1 (1/8s) and choose Clone Track (NOTE: "Link to Original Clip" is NOT checked), rename the new one to "triplet 1/8s"). With this new track selected open the SS again.
 
7. Turn "Fit to Quarters" ON, and change Steps to 3. Check ALL steps in the side-stick row (Db3). Hit Play to make sure it sounds good (triplet 1/8s with 1/4s on the kick). Close this window.
 
8. Hit the main Play button on main control bar at top to hear both tracks together.
 
ISSUE2: They are BOTH now identical, they are both triplet 1/8s. If I start over, and go back to step 6, select both tracks, and do Clips->Unlink Step Sequencer Clips before editing Track 2, then this doesn't happen, but why is that necessary? I didn't choose to link them when I cloned track 1.
 
9. Start over and unlink the two tracks as described above. So that you have one track of 1/8s and one track of triplet 1/8s. When the main Play button is pressed you should hear the correct 3:2 polyrhythm, with 1/4s on the kick.
 
10. In Track View, press the SOLO (S) button on either track to hear it by itself.
 
ISSUE3: Both tracks get solo'd and you keep hearing the same thing. Why aren't the two tracks seperate? If I start over, and create the second track from scratch (Insert->Soft Synth->SI Drum Kit) instead of Clone'ing the first track then this doesn't happen, but why is that necessary? What is the point of cloning a track if I can't then edit it independantly? Having to start everything from scratch will make this a very tedious process.

OTHER QUESTIONS:
 
1. Are there any other ways to quickly change the overall tempo besides the box in the main toolbar? I change tempo a lot, and that box isn't very convenient. I saw in the Preferences dialog that the keys were mappable, but I didn't see any tempo-related commands that would help (Tempo Up, Tempo Down, etc..)... I saw the Tempo View, but that looks like its more to map tempos thoughout a long song, not just globally change the overall tempo (my "song" is only 2-4 bars, so a tempo map is no good). Are there any low-level ways to change tempo by sending MIDI commands?
 
2. I have some short .wav samples that I'd like to trigger from the SS, is this possible?

Thanks!
 
Regarding 1: I have already kinda worked around this by manually naming all of the SS rows myself, then saving the Pattern (with no notes activated) as "blank", then whenever I create a new drum track I load "blank", and that fills in all the names.
 
Issues 2/3 are the most troubling... After posting this last night I realized that I could work around most of my problems by just starting every track from scratch (never cloning). It is very tedious, but it works... until you get to 8 tracks/synths. There appears to be an 8 synth limit (although I had to figure this out myself, an error message would have been nice), after 8 basically everything in the Insert menu is grayed out, and trying to Insert a synth from the Browser view just fails silently.
 
So I'm really back to my original problem(s); I need way more than 8 tracks. I'm fine with an 8 SYNTH limit, I only need 3-4, but I need many many more TRACKs going through them (independently).
 
So it is not possible to have multiple tracks going through one synth?
 
I haven't tried Matrix View yet either... I'll look into it. Thanks again.

So since the SI synths only have 1 output that means that if they have multiple MIDI tracks pointed at them, they (the TRACKS) can't be independently controlled (soloed)?

Yea. I watched a few vids about the Matrix View after I saw your first post, it looks promising, I'll check it out later.
 
I'm still not clear on how do create multiple MIDI tracks using one synth, without them being linked somehow, but I'll play with it some more when I get home later.
 
Thanks again.
 

If you use channel 10 for your MIDI drum tracks, the drum names should appear automatically every time.
Channel 10 is reserved for drums under the General MIDI Standard, but you can have drums on any channel.
Right-clicking on the Piano Roll view keyboard on the left should give you the option to change the keyboard to drum names by selecting General MIDI Drums from the drop-down menu.
 
In my (old) program, there are also hundreds of drum maps included when you click the Output arrow in the MIDI track and select New Drum Map. I don't have Studio Instrument Drums, so I can't say if there are drum maps for SID.
 
Many synths are multi-timbral and can accept input from up to 16 MIDI tracks. TTS-1 is one of those, but SID is not. 
 
If you find that you want (or need) more than 8 synths, you can bounce the synth track to an audio track, mute or archive the MIDI track, and re-use that synth or delete it and add another one.

scook
The step sequencer does not care what channel the MIDI data is on. The step sequencer always shows note names. In order to show anything other than note names one must rename the rows by hand. Not only that, but after setting up the step sequencer with new names for the rows, those names are only stored in the project. Saving the project as a template loses the renamed rows in the step sequencer.
 

 
I'm almost certain that when using the TTS-1 drums, the drum names are automatically used in the SS/PRV, just not SI-D. My Save/Load Pattern workaround has been working well for that, so I'm not too concerned with that issue anymore.
 
The Matrix View is exactly what I was looking for, and has solved most of my previous issues. I now just have one track per instrument, with lots of CLIPs per track, and then those clips are added to the matrix and triggered as-needed. Thanks again.
 
When I first started doing this I was getting A LOT of lag/skips/etc. but increasing the buffer/latency seemed to help with that (so far). But it still seems like certain combinations of clips, when played at the same time, are not lining up correctly in time (like some notes are off by a few dozen ms). I'm still not too sure about this yet, I need to play with it more...
 
Also changing tempo (while the matrix is playing stuff) is really bad. Sometimes it kinda works (but causes temporary skip/lag), and sometimes it just causes all playback to stop, and I have to manually restart it (hitting master start/stop usually works without having to retrigger the matrix cells I was using).
 
Intel i7, 16GB RAM, Windows 7, 250GB SSD HHD, onboard sound (Realtek)
 

Yea that's what I figured. I pretty much decided last night to just go back to LMMS, because that was working for me before. I'm not going to upgrade a soundcard just for what is essentially my metronome ;)