Session drummer basics tutorial

Millerbill, got me to thinking, lots of session drummer post come thru here, so i went back and wrote a more detailed tutorial for session drummer basics, here it is.

How to use Session Drummer
Session drummer is a plug in that allows you to create a complete drum track it can then be opened in a midi track, and then converted to audio thru a soft synth.

First open cakewalk and add a new Midi track and an Audio track.

Go to the midi track and maximize it, this is done be clicking the little box icon on the track itself. Now set your midi track fx to session drummer, in the track view you will see a long thin box that says fx in the left side and has two faint arrows in the right hand side, right click in the fx box in the track, and a pop up will say midi effects, slide the cursor to that, and another box will open called cakewalk effects, slide to that and a bigger box will open from that click on session drummer. Session drummer will open.

You will see three boxes, Style, Pattern, and song. Style is just that, the style of music the patterns work well with. Choose a style and left click it, you will see a list of patterns in the pattern window. You can audition those to see what you want by left clicking it once and then clicking the play arrow on the top tool bar. One is just a click count in and one is silence, others have a basic pattern, and still others variations of that then, there are also fills, and usually an ending.

Find the one that is named “Soft rock 152 – Rock and Roll” in the pattern list double click the one named “click” it should have been added to the song list below, now double click the one named “SN fill1”, It should be after the click in the song list, now double click the one named “Crash/Kick/SN/Hat” , next double Click “SN/Tom fill1”, double click “Crash/Kick/SN/Hat” once again and then double click “SN fill2” Now count the measures that you have added, session drummer will list these on the right side of the pattern list, It should total 18 measures.

Close session drummer, then go to the ruler bar (the scale looking thing above the tracks) left click near the 0 point, and drag until you highlight the exact amount of measures of your drum tracks on the ruler bar, stopping at the end of 18. This should place a darkened area in the midi track for the same amount of measures. Go to the beginning of the midi track, right click in the dark area of the track, A box will open, go to midi effects/session drummer and click it to reopen it and slide it to the bottom of the page, move your cursor to the very beginning of that track, hover over the start of the track, near the zero position, in the darkened area of the midi track, you should see a small square symbol pop up, click and drag open the drum track all the way to the end of the highlighted area, there should be a colored stripe with data in it now. If you are using a sound card with a built in chip it will play if you hit the play arrow in the top tool bar, you now have a midi drum track.

Now you can enhance that by using a better sounding synth to play the track thru. Go to the audio track that you opened, and maximize it, go to it’s fx box and right, go to DXi instruments, and find Edirol VSC, click that. Edirol will pop up minimize it and go back to the midi track, find the output box, left click ant it should have the option of Edirol VSC, click on that, Hit play, it will sound pretty good. This same setup can be used for any softsynth that you have and there are many of them out there.

Now if you want the midi file to become a wave file, so you can add some real nice effects to it like compression or reverb, you can use the bounce to track feature. Go to edit/bounce to track, click that and a box will pop up, hit okay and a blue bar will proceed across the bottom of the screen. You will have a new track below the others, maximize it and right click the fx box and go to audio effects, find cakewalk reverb, click on that, go to presets and find concert, chose that and close the effect, then hit play and you have a drummer in a stadium. Have fun.

I love you, man!! The help file was so unhelpful. I couldn't even find the Session drummer. Finally got it.

found a really cool site would like robo to check it out and post it where nessesary i called them and they seem very informative expecially for new guys like me. www.audiomidi.com/classroom/hardware/laptop_audio.cfm
just browsing around the site gave me ideas of what i needed to do to get better recordings.

on the computer go to start/my computer/local disk (C)/programs/cakewalk/music creator/drum styles/ and they should be in that folder, if not then you need to search the install disk for them, they did not load.

Here is a variation from ROBOMUSIC's excellent tutorial, that may help you.

Create your drummer as Robomusic has detailed. Then close Session Drummer. Your most recent song/drum creation is always saved.

Highlight in the measure area the number of measures you need for your beats, as Robomusic has explained.

SELECT a MIDI track (Highlight the number)

In the pane on the right you will see that your measures are highlighted (Even a MIDI track without events/notes will be highlighted.

Right click on the highlight.

Choose MIDI Effects - then "Cakewalk Effects" - then "Session Drummer"

When Session Drummer appears, click O.K. and your most recent song/drums you created in Session Drummer will be transfered to the highlighted MIDI track.

Robomusic's system is MUCH easier, but this will also work.

I have same problem. I cannot get any patterns,styles, songs, whatever, into Session Drummer to get to first base with your tut. Robo. My Drum Styles folder is there as subfile of Music Creator,under Cakewalk,under Program Files, in C drive. What am I doing wrong & what is the definition of 'Song' ? Thanks

Thankx Gregy....I get Session Drummer 'work face' up on screen fine, but I have no styles, patterns or songs therein....When I click to open file I also get the Open dialog 'face' OK, and my Drum Style files just looks at me and will not open....I presume Drum Styles is where the styles come from, and I guess Patterns follow that....I note that my Drum styles are .mid files, whereas SD is asking for .sdx files? Is this my problem...can I copy them and label as .sdx? 'Cakewalk' it isnt!

I'm having a similar problem to Meridith. When I right click on the grey box in track view, the session drummer window becomes dominant/exclusive and won’t let me do anything else until the box is closed. If I try to click on the grey box or anywhere out of the session drummer window, I get that annoying Window's tone indicating I'm trying to something I can't do. I can’t get the little box Robomusic is talking about either.

MillerBill’s system works, but I still cant add new drum tracks later in the song.
When I add any new tracks, they are put at the beginning of the song. I can move them, but it's kind of a pain.

Is this feature available in the introductory version or pro only? If it’s available in the intro version, any ideas?

Struggler: Please read my previous post on this thread. It doesn't sound like you followed my suggestion!

And I repeat:
OPEN is only good for loading previously saved 'Songs' or beats

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Yeah, TGRANT - I have to move them also - No mater how I highlight the tracks. A real pain in the xxx! I don't know about other versions. A post on the Sonar Forum might get an answer.

I don't plan to upgrade as I'm afraid that now I going to get bad documentation with every Cakewalk program I buy.

And to think I still wear my Cakewalk tee shirt. At least the washing instructions that came with it were to the point, and worked.

One more question. I'm not having any luck turning my session drummer midi track to audio. I'm playing it thru the VSC soft synth. I tried arming the audio track playing the VSC and recording the track for the duration of the song - that didn't work. I also tried to figure out Robo's advice re bouncing the two tracks, but unlike Robo, I'm spatially challenged, so I couldn't get it to work. I think I'm missing a step. Robo, can you tell me in detail how to do it. I'll send you a case of beer.

man, I tried it again and its not working. The first time I got nothing on my new track, the second time, I got a track with all my tracks mixed down. Can I just create a new audio track with the drums? I armed both the audio (vsc) track and the midi (session drummer track and selected bboth tracks then did edit, bounce... What am I doing wrong?

The idea is to bounce to a new track what is in the midi track, but to do that the midi must have audio output, so the audio track with VSC allows it to bounce or actually record itself as audio

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refer to Robo's earlier advice to me. Solo the MIDI track that you want to convert to audio (or alternatively mute all the other tracks). From the drop down menu select Edit - Bounce to Tracks. You will get a dialog box select stero audio track or whatever and make sure all the boxes are ticked. Voila.

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