I just started learning SONAR. I am mainly using it for recording audio, but I also want to build MIDI tracks for drums. I don't have much experience with MIDI, so I don't really know the terminology and whatnot. I tried to find some help online, but everything I found was way over my head.

Anyway, I was able to figure out how to create the MIDI drum track, but I can only get it to play using the standard drum sound. The standard sound is not quite what I am looking for. The standard set of drum sounds has a lot of sounds that I don't need (literally, too many bells and whistles). It also seems to be lacking -- as far as I can tell -- some of the sounds I do want (i.e. cymbal chokes, etc.).

Can anybody give me a VERY BASIC set of instructions for what I need to do to change my mapped drum sounds? If it is too complicated to explain in a forum post, maybe someone can point me toward a website or book that can explain this stuff in layman's terms.

Thanks.

What you want are soft synths that play drums, like Ezdruumer or superior 2.0. I us EZdrummer for my drums, but i trigger them with v-drums, but can do it many other ways also, like thru the prv. Sonar comes with a few VSTi soft synths that play drums. One is SD2, another i the TTs and the other is the groove something or another. I forgott.

Anyway, I was able to figure out how to create the MIDI drum track, but I can only get it to play using the standard drum sound. The

what standard sound where you using?? SD2?? TTs??
Cj

Okay here goes at simple, but there are so many variables it's hard to explain exactly. To get different sounds you'll need to load either drum software such as Session Drummer 2 or a sampler that has drum samples loaded or attach an external piece of equipment via MIDI such as a drum machine or one of the many keyboards that come with drum sounds.

In it's most basic form MIDI is a set of instructions for a piece of software/hardware that understands those instructions. Such an instruction might be 'Play the sound that you have at middle C'. A drum machine will probably have a drum sound, a keyboard might have a piano or string sound, a synth may well have some other sound, and a sampler a 'sample' (think of a sample as a short recording - a hand clap or a guitar note being played for example). In reality most MIDI equipment/software can play just about anything you could imagine.

What you have to do is tell the MIDI equipment or software what sounds play (or sound) when asked to by the MIDI 'trigger' - The trigger could be the click of a mouse, striking a key on a keyboard, hitting a pad on a drum machine or a note in a MIDI track.

Okay that's a bit of very basic background, here goes at putting that as to work as basically as I can to achieve what you are trying to do


1. Create a new MIDI track and then from the 'OUTPUT' drop down menu select 'DRUM MAP MANAGER'. You will then see the Drum Map Manager which depending on how/if you've used it in the past you may or may not see anything in the map window. Regardless of what you see though...

2. Click the 'NEW' button to 'Create a new drum map'.

3. Click on the presets arrow and select 'GM Drums (Complete Kit)'. Now you have a basic map to work with.

4. To get different sounds to standard you will need to load either a software kit such as 'Session Drummer' or attach a drum machine or keyboard to your computer via MIDI. Either a MIDI port on your sound card or via a USB interface that can transmit MIDI signals. If you don't have that piece of equipment or software/sampler you are stuck with the sounds you already have available. Assuming you have that equipment or software available then all you need to do is change the map to tell that equipment/software to play.

One of the lines in the map should read 'C2' as the 'In Note'. It will also read 'C2' as the out note have a name such as 'Bass Drum 1' a channel to play on (usually 10) then an 'out port' and then some more fields for other MIDI info, which we're not concerned about for now. This is where the changes are made, you'll need to experiment to get the results but this should give you the knowledge on how to do that.

5. First and simplest way to change that is to change the 'Output Port'. Click on it and select a different output port. Such as your drum machine, Session Drummer or your keyboard. You should then when you play the note C2 hear the sound from that piece of equipment/software. You can change that sound by adjusting your software/hardware equipment to play a different sound. You can do this by selecting the 'Bank' and 'patch' fields in the corresponding 'Port/Channel' row at the bottom of the drum map manager. Another more fiddly way of changing sounds is by...........

6. Change the output note from C2 to another note say C3. now when you play the note 'c2' you will actually hear whatever sound is at C3 in the software/hardware equipment selected in the 'OUTPUT PORT'. This method can get very confusing though but does give you more scope to change sounds.

That is about as basic as I can put it to achieve what you are trying to do unless someone else can put it simpler. The easiest way is use this as a guide and then experiment. Ultimately though you will only be able to play the sounds that you have available to you and if that's only a sound card generating MIDI sounds, you are very limited.

If your Sonar is fairly recent you should have Session Drummer though that comes with some basic kits to get you started but MIDI is very, very powerful and you can play almost any piece of equipment from any other as long as they are both MIDI capable. For example if I wish I can play my keyboards piano sound by hitting my MIDI drum kit if I so wish. It's all about experimenting once you've got your head around the basics outlined at the start of this post.

Hope this helps a bit.

Thanks for the reply.

The sound I was using was from the TTs. I'm using an older version of SONAR (SONAR 4), and it looks like the TTs is the only soft synth available with drum sounds. When I open the soft synth list, there are only five listed. I've tried all the others, and they don't seem to give me any drum sounds. Session Drummer isn't one of the five available choices.

After reading this and the other reply to my post, it seems like I need to get something else to generate different drum sounds. I do have an old Alesis SR16 that I haven't used for a while (and it wasn't working right the last time I did use it), but I might see if I can get that to work. I might also look into EZ drummer or Superior 2.0 as you suggested.

Thanks for the explanation. I think that helps. The help menus and tutorials are good, but they are still a bit over my head. The tutorials did help me get the basic drum sounds I've been using so far, but I still couldn't seem to figure out how to change the sounds. Based on the responses to my original post, it seems I probably don't have any other sounds available at this point, so I'll have to get some.

I do have an old Alesis SR16 which I might try to use via the MIDI ports on my sound card. I'll probably also look into some software options (Session Drummer, EZ Drummer and Superior 2.0 have all been suggested).

I tried doing a web search for soft synths that have drum sounds, but I must not have been using the best search terms, because I came up with very little. The only things I found on my own were Scarbee Imperial Drums XL -- a DXi plug in that is now discontinued; and BFD2 -- a VST plug in that costs about $400.00 and has over 50GB of samples (quite a bit more than I would need at this point). My searches didn't even come up with Session Drummer, EZ Drummer or Superior 2.0.

Does anyone know if there is a place online where I can research and compare different soft synths for drums?

As long as you have physical MIDI ports to attach the SR16 to, you'll definitely be able to access the sounds in it. It'll show up in the Drum Map Manager so you can select it in the 'output port' field. You can use it for the whole kit or just select the notes you want to use from that. Think of Drum Maps as a Drum Mixer, you select the sounds you want from all the different drum machines/synths/software and then access them all via the drum map.

Set up as many different maps as you want and save them as presets to be called up at the click of a mouse. Fantastic.

UGH!

This is frustrating stuff to learn. Sorry about the length of this post. I wanted to explain everything I was doing so that IF someone reads it and wants to help, they’ll know what I have already tried. I started working tonight feeling very optimistic about being able to get some new drum sounds. At this point, I am no closer to my goal.

Here is where I am starting from:

I have created an original drum part by using piano roll view and dropping the notes in. By using the help menus and tutorials, I was able to my drum part to play via a very basic drum sound. I got that sound by using the GM drums (complete kit) drum map and Cakewalk TTS-1 1 as my out port. At the bottom of the drum map manager, my bank setting is 15360-preset rhythm, and the patch setting is 'standard set". There are eight other patch settings that do change the sound, but none of them is quite what I want.

So with that as my starting point, I have a MIDI drum part that will play, but it doesn't sound the way I want it to sound.

Tonight, I tried several things. First I connected my SR-16. I did this two ways: (1) through the MIDI ports on my sound card (an M-Audio Fast Track Pro) and (2) directly into a USB port. Second, after determining that I do have Session Drummer on my system, I tried to access drum sounds through that. None of these things worked.

When I tried to use the SR-16, it was as though SONAR couldn't find it. I tried going into my existing drum map (the GM drums one that was giving me the basic drum sound) and I tried changing the out port for my bass drum note. When I did this, it only gave me four choices: (1) Fast Track Pro MIDI out; (2) NI Guitar Rig 2 1; (3) NI Guitar Rig 2 2; and (4) Cakewalk TTS-1 1. When the SR-16 was connected by USB, none of these choices seemed appropriate. When it was connected through the sound card, I figured maybe the Fast Track Pro MIDI out choice would work. When I selected this as my out port, it gave me three different bank choices – each with a small number of patch choices. I tried each of the three bank choices, and every time I got no bass drum sound.

I played around with the drum machine and the settings in SONAR for about two hours trying any different configurations I could think of. I even flip-flopped the MIDI cables where they were connected to the sound card to make sure I didn’t have my in and out inverted. I searched the help menus and tutorials, but I couldn’t find anything that would help (at least nothing that I could understand).

Eventually, I unplugged the drum machine and reverted my project back to the starting point (where drums would play, but I didn’t like the sound). Next I tried to see if I could get different sounds via Session Drummer. I got the basic drum sound by opening Cakewalk TTS as a soft-synth, and using that as the out port on my MIDI track. I tried doing the same thing, but with Session Drummer, but Session Drummer isn’t listed as a soft-synth. My synth rack only has five things listed, and Session Drummer isn’t one of them.

The only way I could open Session Drummer was as a MIDI effect in my MIDI track. But when I opened it, all it seemed to give me was a list of different patterns. It did not seem to give me any choices for modifying the sound of my drums. Again, I tried the SONAR help menu, but it didn’t say much about Session Drummer. If there is a separate help menu for Session Drummer, there was no option for it on my screen, and I have no idea where to find it.

Anyway, I seem to be back at square one with my drum sounds. What am I missing? It seems like one of these options should have worked for me, but after about two and a half total hours of trying, I am just left more confused. There is probably some simple step that I am missing because I am so new to MIDI.

You have to tell SONAR to use you connected MIDI device. I thinks that's would be under Options/MIDI Devices (I'm not on my SONAR computer right now).

Secondly, the guys above are talking about Session Drummer 2, and SONAR 4 Doesn't have SD2 it has SD1 which is really a totally different animal. Drum maps can be confusing. SD2 is good with drum maps, EZD is not IMHO.

I'm not sure what search engine you're using but EZ Drummer and Superior are on www.toontrack.com - and another one people seem to like is Addictive Drums. I wouldn't buy more stuff until you've mastered your SONAR setup a little better.

The problems you're having are why there's now a SONAR 8. Cakewalk keeps cranking out tools to make it easier.

As far as the sounds in TTS-1, they're never going to be super rich organic sounds, but I've heard a lot of nice stuff done with them. Did you try adjusting the effects like chorus and reverb? Also applying audio effects to the output channel can be cool. You can put a delay on there and make some nice trancy sounds.

From what you've written above it sounds like you've managed to connect the SR-16 via your MIDI interface okay. When you say you didn't get a bass drum sound was it just the bass drum not working? Could you get a snare for example?

If I remember correctly you may need to switch the SR-16's MIDI In on, via the MIDI set up on the SR-16. Initially I would try these settings via the SR-16.

1. Press MIDI set-up and set the MIDI channel to omni. - This means the SR-16 will send and receive on all 16 channels which will help eliminate a wrong channel setting. As you get more experienced with MIDI you can then start setting various channels, 10 is usually used for drum parts (a sort of tradition) but for now use omni. Channels become more important as you start to use more and more MIDI devices.

2. Use the next page button and make sure that 'DRUM IN ON V1' is On. I'm guessing this may be currently set to off which would explain why you are not hearing anything. The SR-16 is effectively ignoring MIDI messages.

3. If you want to be able to record taps on the SR-16 pads as MIDI data in a MIDI track you also need to press the next page button and set 'DRUM OUT' to On. This will then allow the SR-16 to send MIDI data (remember that's just instructions for other equipment/software that understands MIDI)

That should sort it for now although there is a page for assigning what MIDI note triggers what pad, but the defaults should be okay.

See if this helps you get some sounds, if not post up and we'll try something else. Don't give up, I know it seems complicated and can be very frustrating at first, we've all been there. Once you get the hang of it it will all become much easier and the power and control you can get from MIDI really is worth the effort.

Thanks for the info. That definitely explains why I had no luck with Session Drummer. I’m tempted to buy SD2 now, but I’ll take your advice and try to work out some of these other issues first.

I’m at a different computer right now, too, but I’ll try the Options/MIDI Devices menu later, and see what happens.

I did play around with the effects on the audio output channel, and I got it to sound a little better. The trouble is, I play and I write, but I have very little sound engineering experience. That’s one of the things I am trying to learn, but at this point, applying effects and whatnot is pretty much just a crapshoot for me. Actually, the idea of being able to get decent drum sounds right out of the box without much wrangling was one of the reasons I wanted to start recording like this. I know it can be done, I just need to figure out how.

I’ll keep playing around though. The truth is, I’ve only been at this for less than a week, and I suppose I have made decent progress under the circumstances. Patience has never been my strong suit, though – especially when I feel completely lost like I do with this MIDI stuff.