I don't have a midi keyboard. Will I still be able to make the drums happen?

When I do this:




"To repeat a pattern, hover your cursor over the right edge of the pattern. It will change into a little handle. Hold and drag the pattern out for as many repetitions as you want. You can tell where the loop ends by the notches in the clip."

when I play the track back, I don't have any drum sound or just one of the 8 bar patterns
  I know there's a simple way to solve this with one click of the mouse, but I just don't know how to do it.


I see the little dashes on the track but I don't get any sound.


Adam

check your routing, make sure its going to: / output:session drummer
input wont matter because your only using midi clips or piano roll, if you were using a midi keyboard input would matter.

this is a little tough because some of things your asking to do are not that easy with the software you are using, possible yes ?
a lot of trial and error, o yes ?

Ive used shs7xl .

dragging a midi clip on to the midi clip with session drummer like I said to set up should work no problem.
even if you open piano roll and click in the notes like I did in my first video should work.

ahmo


When I do this:




"To repeat a pattern, hover your cursor over the right edge of the pattern. It will change into a little handle. Hold and drag the pattern out for as many repetitions as you want. You can tell where the loop ends by the notches in the clip."

when I play the track back, I don't have any drum sound or just one of the 8 bar patterns
 I know there's a simple way to solve this with one click of the mouse, but I just don't know how to do it.


I see the little dashes on the track but I don't get any sound.


Adam

Maybe this will help:

Hover your cursor where you see the red square. It will change to a rectangle. Hold the left mouse button, and drag to the right. The pattern will repeat as far as you drag it out.
Also, note that my MIDI track output is set to the SD2 Drum Map (This will make working in the Piano Roll much easier when you get there).
The MIDI source track, synth audio track, and GIU(synth properties page) were selected when I inserted SD2 from the tool bar.
I changed the MIDI track output to the drum map from the drop down options after the track was inserted.

In this second view, I have dragged the initial groove out for 8 bars(two full repetitions), and dragged two different fills from the SD2 GUI.
I skipped measures 11/12 on purpose. Look at the waveform preview in the synth audio track. Since there is no MIDI data in these measures, there is no sound. In other words, there is nothing to tell the drums to play.




Hopefully, that helps answer some of your questions.

No-one has mentioned Groove clipping yet - or did I miss it?
Shouldn't the clip be Groove clipped first in order to drag-repeat? Or are SD clips Groove Clips as default (don't think so?)?

You're right, Kalle, no one has mentioned groove looping yet.
ahmo, if the corners of the MiDI clip aren't bevelled (as it is the clip in RobertB's image), just right-click the clip and select Groove Looping. That will make it a Groove Clip and it can be dragged out as far as you want and it will repeat.
You may also want to read up on the Pattern Brush tool in the Help files.
In the Piano Roll View (PRV), the Pattern Brush tool will let you 'paint' in MIDI patterns instead of clicking each hit in with the mouse.
Here I've selected the SD 2 Drum Map:
 

 
The I selected the Pattern Brush and clicked the arrow next to it to choose a kick pattern:
 

 
Then you just drag the brush across the PRV in the Kick line.
Add snare:
 

 
High hat and a Tom fill at the end:
 

 

 
And your drum track is done.
Repeat as desired.

Kalle Rantaaho


No-one has mentioned Groove clipping yet - or did I miss it?
Shouldn't the clip be Groove clipped first in order to drag-repeat? Or are SD clips Groove Clips as default (don't think so?)?

The SD clips are indeed already Groove Clips. So the ones that come with SD2 are ready to go.
However, if you were creating your own in the Piano Roll, you would need to convert them to Groove Clips before they would drag-repeat.