Drum Maps - How to see both drum names and black/white keys?

The keys are in a separate pane, below the drumnote names and on top of the controllers. You may have to drag it open (it may be at minimum height).

SidebySide would be nice but it isn't available, and also wouldn't make a lot of sense for drum maps where the note order isn't necessarily the same as the normal scale note ABCD etc.

Most of the kits I use have drums spread over several octaves. Having to show the drum map at the top and then the keys at the bottom really makes things crammed vertically. That's why I was hoping for a way to see the drum names superimposed over the keys rather than in separate panes.

Has anyone found a way to do this?

I suppose one hacky workaround would be to rename the drum names to indicate which ones are black keys. For example:

-------------- crash 1
-------------- tom 4
XXXXXXXXX open hat
-------------- tom 3
XXXXXXXXX closed hat 2
-------------- tom 2
XXXXXXXXX closed hat 1
-------------- tom 1
-------------- snare 2
XXXXXXXXX click 2
-------------- snare 1
XXXXXXXXX click 1
-------------- kick 1

Of course, this won't work unless I can get X2 to stop sorting drum notes by name rather than note; see http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2674505

Do you have an example of one of your customized drum maps (with white and black keys simulated)?

drum maps needs an overhaul.. nice idea.. but takes an age to do something you should be able to do in 2 minutes.. e.g. take an sfz file.. and take the sample names out of it for a start

perhaps having the option to invert the black keys would be of help also

hey... sorry i kinda vanished on this one. i'm taking a look at using instrument definitions (i've started using them for keyswitches), and they might be a better solution for what you're doing.  i'll post a couple of ideas in a day or two and an example. 

swamptooth - you can define note names to note numbers in instrument definitions, similar to drum maps but in a text file. Once imported the instrument definitions are available by right click & selecting "use this definition" in PRV. The drawback to this method is, once selected, the instrument definition is used for all tracks on the project until you revert to default by the same method. Disclaimer: I haven't tried this in X2

If you'd like to see an instrument definition with note names defined I've a few (largeish) ones I can share to show how they're defined (from memory it's not covered in the documentation)

ducatibruce2


swamptooth - you can define note names to note numbers in instrument definitions, similar to drum maps but in a text file. Once imported the instrument definitions are available by right click & selecting "use this definition" in PRV. The drawback to this method is, once selected, the instrument definition is used for all tracks on the project until you revert to default by the same method. Disclaimer: I haven't tried this in X2

If you'd like to see an instrument definition with note names defined I've a few (largeish) ones I can share to show how they're defined (from memory it's not covered in the documentation)

hey bruce... 
yeah i'm thinking about how to easily present this in a video. the only thing that you really lose with drum maps that i can see is in workflow. for example, having a drum map where the c2 key is always a bass drum and d2 key always a snare and f3 always a hi-hat and then mapping the output note to those samples so you can have consistency of keys and you never have to learn that say the snare in one kit is g3 and another kit e2 etc.  also the fact that you can have one drum map that incorporates various soft synths so if you like the snare in bfd but the 808 bass drum in the GS then you can have one drum map routed to different vst's and keep all the drums in a single midi track - but i suspect not too many people do this??

@bruce - i've never had a problem with multiple midi tracks having different instrument definitions, or the standard diatonic keyboard layout etc. they have always reflected what i assigned to them.

jeez! i never noticed that! omg i must have just been working around it for flipping years. lol.  but really... why if you can have a per-track arpeggiator can't you have per-track not names or base octave?? :/