Tutorial: remapping EZDrummer keys with Sonar Drum Maps
After participating in
this topic and watching
Blades tutorial (thanks again!), I made and posted a (sort of) tutorial on the EZDrummer forum, where I was talking about how the keys in EZDrummer were mapped. I thought it might be a nice idea to post the tutorial here too. It's focused on EZDrummer, but there is more than enough information that non-EZD'ers also can use (I think). And since the MAIN focus is Sonar's Drum maps, I thought this would be the right forum. ;)
This post is quite long, but really, mapping keys in EZD with Sonar is EASY!
Let's say you have loaded the Twisted kit into EZD and want to record a groove by playing it live on your keyboard, but... the keys you want to use are out of the range of your keyboard, even when you use transpose.
Or let's say you want to use specific sounds that are spread all over the keyboard, but for your convenience, you'd like to see all keys you want to use grouped together in one octave on your keyboard, so you can play the rhythm with one hand while using the other hand for drinking a beer. This would also be great for editing the groove later on in the piano roll, because all notes would fit in one screen and you won't have to scroll up and down to reach that note number 127.
Or let's say you have a great groove in mind but you would like to use one or two sounds from for example the Nashville EZX while playing it live and have it all recorded in one go and in one groove instead of having to record it seperately and on another track, which would result in several midi clips scattered over various tracks.
Or let's say you have already recorded a groove but you would like to see how it sounds if one sound is replaced by another sound or a sound from another EZX, without having to copy notes and having to paste them somewhere else in the midi clip or to another track.
Well, all this can be done EASILY with Sonar's Drum map!
First of all, download the EZX Drum maps from the Toontrack site: login to Toontrack, go to your downloads, scroll down to Extra downloads > EZDrummer > > Hot stuff > Sonar > Drum maps and download them all. Extract the .map files you need and put them into your Drum map folder, which by default is (in Windows 7 anyway) C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\SONAR 8.5 Producer\Drum Maps. Tip: when you have installed the example drum maps, remove or copy them all to another folder, otherwise it will take ages to scroll through them all when you want to select a map in Sonar.
1. How to map sounds to another key Open Sonar and load EZD. For this first example I will use the Twisted kit, but it doesn't matter if you haven't got that one.
Change the output of the MIDI track from ezdrummer 1 to the Twisted kit drum map (or whatever map you need) like this:
Now open the piano roll and instead of the piano, you will see the drum map (this is just the top of it and you probably have to expand the column to the right to see it like this):
As you can see all keys have logical names now, making it very easy to pick the right sounds!
Not let's say we want to use the
(Rattles) Crescendo key, which is key 127, in a groove. For me this key is out of range of my keyboard, so I can't play it live. I usually play grooves in the range of key 36 (C3 in Sonar), which is the kick by default. I won't be using key 37 (C3# in Sonar, the
Side Stick sound) in this groove, so I will put the
(Rattles) Crescendo, which is key 127, under key 37.
Double click on key 37 in the drum map view and you will see the map properties of this key:
Notice the In Note and Out Note. The In Note is the note you play on your keyboard, in this case 37, and the Out Note is the note that is triggered in EZD, in this case (of course) also 37.
Now simply change the Out Note to 127, hit the 37 key on your keyboard (options are changes immediately so you don´t have to close the little window first, which is nice if you want to try various things) and instead of the default
Side Stick you will hear the
(Rattles) Crescendo. (For your own convenience you could also rename the key to
(Rattles) Crescendo in that same Map Properties window.)
That's it! It's as simple as this. And this way you can remap any key to any key you want!
2. How to use sounds from another EZD in one single groove Not let's say for example you want to record a groove playing it live, but you would like to use a kick from the Nashville kit instead of the Twisted kit.
Load another instance of EZD and load the Nashville kit. Now go
back to the drum map of the
first EZD track (so do not open another view for the new EZD track!). Double click on key 36 in the drum map view and you will see the map properties of this key.
Now click on the Out Port dropdown menu and change it from ezdrummer 1 (which is the first EZD which has the Twisted kit loaded) to ezdrummer 2 (which is the second EZD which has the Nashville kit loaded), hit the 36 key on your keyboard and you will hear the Nashville kick!
And that's all again!
You can combine these two options anyway you want to. So you can use key 113 from the Nashville kit in the Twisted kit on key 45 if you want to, by changing the Out Note of key 45 to key 133 AND changing the Out Port to ezdrummer 2. And so on. You can of course also open even more instances of EZD. You can also change things when you already completed a groove and want to try different sounds for a specific key, without having to copy notes all over the project. Or what about mapping a key to completely different synth and use that in the groove! The possibilities are endless.
And btw you do not have to save the drum map to a file, because everything is saved in the project! And, again, you can leave that Map Properties window open and change various keys: just double click on a key in the drum map view and the Map Properties will update to show you the properties of that key. So you can easily change various keys in one go without having to open and close that window a hundred times. (You can also use the Map Manager (the Map Mgr button in the Map Properties window) and change various option in one simple window: just open it and you will see how it works.) Another nice thing of the drum map: you can easily mute or solo specific keys with the M and S buttons in the drum map view.
The Map Properties has more options, as you can see, like Velocity, which makes it very easy to make sounds from various kits match better velocity-wise.
All in all the drum map is a very nice function of Sonar! Have fun with it!
P.S. There is a bug in Sonar 8.5.1 which prevents midi input echo when you enable a drum map, so you won't hear any sound when you play your keyboard. This will be fixed in the next patch. Luckily there is a (weird) workaround: enable the Arpeggiator of the track, by loading a preset, and set Mix to 100%. That's it.