You have a kit you love in Superior Drummer 3, but what if it’s not fitting in the track? The fix usually takes five or six small moves across the drums and the mixer, and if you make them one percent at a time you never hear them working together.
Superior Drummer 3 macros can be a solution that allow you to make drastic and custom changes to your sound with a single knob. Bind as many controls as you want to a macro, decide how far each one is allowed to travel and turn them all at once. Below are three creative use cases for macros, why each control is present and how to assign the knob on a MIDI controller.
What is a macro in Superior Drummer 3?
A macro is one knob that controls other parameters assigned by the user. Almost anything you can adjust in Superior Drummer 3 can be bound to a macro: a property box setting on a drum, a parameter inside an effect, a fader in the mixer. Every bound control gets its own minimum and maximum, so a single turn can move one control a little and another a lot. There are 100 macros available, which is more than any session should need.
The problem a macro solves is convenience for automation, live control or complex signal manipulation. Shortening a drum’s tail in three different places by ear is slow, and by the third tweak you’ve forgotten what the first one sounded like. With a macro you sweep all three together and stop when the kit sounds right. That same knob can then be assigned to a hardware fader or automated in the Grid Editor, which is covered further down.
3 custom macros in Superior Drummer 3
How to use macros in Superior Drummer 3
The setup is the same every time:
The macro then shows up in Macro Controls, ready to turn.
Right Click any control and select Bind to Macro.
Why the minimum and maximum limits do the real work
The limits decide whether a macro is a gimmick or something you’d trust in a mix. Left wide open, one knob driving six controls may be too much. So for each control, ask two questions. What’s the most I’d ever want? What’s the least? Set those as the limits and the entire sweep of the knob stays usable.
It’s important to understand limits can be inverted, so a control can travel down while the knob travels up. And if you shift-click several entries in Macro Properties, typing one value sets it for all of them. That saves a lot of time when the same control is bound on eight channels.
Each addition to the macro gets its own lower and upper limit.
Macro 1: tighten up a kit with one knob
There are a ton of ways to tighten a drum sound and Superior Drummer 3 includes quite a bit. For this macro I picked three, because each one shortens in a different way:
The release point of the Envelope and Offset Property Box.
Level Envelope Releases sits in Mixer Properties, the same panel that holds the bleed controls in Superior Drummer 3, and the two work well together when a mix needs to be tighter.
To find the far end of this macro, I push it until the kit sounds choked, with toms stopping dead and all of the ring removed from the snare. For this effect I only selected the shells of the kit and left the cymbals alone.
When the effect is overdone, the kit sounds like someone set a noise gate too hard on every channel. The video at the top of this post shows the macro being built and swept so you can hear both ends.
Macro 2: an intensity macro for the biggest part of the song
The first adjustment for intensity should always be MIDI velocity. Find the most intense part of your song and put your loudest hits there. Think rimshots at 125 to 127. Use the rimshot when you want the snare to hit harder, but don’t do it all the time or nothing will stand out. There’s more on this in our guide on how to program drums.
Once the performance is right, the macro handles the production side of intensity. It has two parts.
Transient attack on every close mic
I put the Transient effect on each individual close mic and bound the Attack control on all of them to one macro. Why every mic separately? Because some mics react more strongly to the transient than others. The kick in mic has a ton of attack already and doesn’t need more, so you probably don’t want to boost it as much as the kick out, the kick sub, the snare bottom or the toms. One shared amount would make the kick too clicky long before the toms are sharp enough. Separate amounts per close mic channel solve that issue.
Here the minimum goes below the flat point, so with the macro knob at zero the transients are softened by a set amount. That gives the macro more dynamics. Verses sit back and the chorus jumps forward. Be careful with that lower limit, and try not to make it too soft.
For the minimums, I shift-clicked all the channel names in Macro Properties and typed one value so they’d all conform to the same number, then set the maximums channel by channel. The amounts for both limits vary drastically depending on the drum. The brass snare in this preset needed more reduction at the lower limit than most snares do.
Punch Exciter 361 on the parallel compression bus
The second part is the Wet control of the Punch Exciter 361, bound to the same macro. I’m using the Rock Brass preset from the Superior Drummer 3 core library, which comes with a parallel compression bus (you could easily set one up yourself if your preset doesn’t have one). I inserted the Punch Exciter 361 after the compressor on that bus.
The position in the chain is important. The compressor has already flattened the hits, so the exciter is adding bite to a dense, compressed signal. And since all of it happens on a parallel bus, the dry kit underneath never changes. You’re only blending more or less of the aggressive version in.
In my example I set the maximum wet mix to 33%. How much you use will depend on your preset. An exciter on crushed drums gets harsh quickly, so find the point where it turns and set the limit below it.
Macro 3: an effects macro you can perform
This one is meant to get extreme. I loaded the Dry 70s preset from the core library and created an effects bus that runs in parallel with the kit. On that bus I have Fat Muff, 1981 Classic Echo, Room Reverb and Tape Delay.
One macro is bound to the drive control of the Fat Muff, the mix controls of the reverb and the delays, and the fader level of the effects bus. Drive sets how distorted it gets. The mix controls set how much space and repeat there is. The fader sets how loud the effect is against the dry kit.
Setting the limits works backward here. Make the effect exactly as extreme as you want it first, then copy all of those settings to the upper limits. For the lower limits, set the wet/dry controls to completely dry and lower the channel volume. Why bring the fader down as well? Because a distortion at its lowest drive setting is still passing signal, and you want the knob at zero to mean the untouched Dry 70s kit.
I set up a second macro for a low pass filter on the master fader and kept it separate on purpose, so it can be mapped to its own MIDI controller. A filter sweep is its own gesture. With two knobs you can close the filter on a dry kit, open the effects on an unfiltered kit or do both for a breakdown.
How to map a knob to Superior Drummer 3 macros
A macro is already a single control, so it only takes one knob or fader. Right-click the macro control, click MIDI Learn, then move the physical fader on your MIDI controller.
Right-click the macro, choose MIDI Learn and move a fader on your controller.
Imagine how useful that is for a live performance with electronic drums. One slider next to the module takes the kit from tight and dry in the verse to wide open in the chorus, changing as many parameters as you bound to it. Put the effects macro and the filter macro on two faders and you have something to play with between songs too. If you perform with a kit, our guide to using e-drums with Superior Drummer 3 covers the rest of the setup.
Superior Drummer automation with macros
Once a macro is assigned to a MIDI CC, it can be automated in the values editor of the Grid Editor.
Macro automation drawn in the values editor of the Grid Editor.
Frequently asked questions
What is a macro in Superior Drummer 3?
A macro is a single knob that controls any number of other controls at once. You bind controls to it with Bind to Macro and give each one its own minimum and maximum in Macro Properties.
How many macros can I use in Superior Drummer 3?
There are 100 macros available.
Can I map an SD3 macro to a MIDI controller?
Yes. Right-click the macro control, click MIDI Learn and move the knob or fader on your controller.
Do Superior Drummer 3 macros show up as automation in my DAW?
No. Macros that have been assigned to a MIDI CC can be automated in the values editor of the Superior Drummer 3 Grid Editor. They don’t appear as plug-in parameters in hosts like Pro Tools or Logic. But you could control the CC values in your DAW if desired.
Can one macro turn a control down while turning another up?
Yes. The limits in Macro Properties can be inverted, so any bound control can move in the opposite direction of the knob.
Start with a simple macro
Macros can be simple and subtle. One that raises the ambience channels or a reverb level is worth having on a knob. Start there, and build toward something like the effects macro once setting limits feels natural.
Explore Superior Drummer 3 here.
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