Wishing for “Kit Pieces” solo buttons in SD3’s browser, like in SD2.
Requests and Feedback
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In SD3 I miss being able to solo one or more kit pieces while auditioning grooves in the browser, like in SD2 or EZPlayerPro. The Solo feature in SD3’s Edit Play Style tab is great, though of course one needs first to have committed one or more grooves to a track in SD3’s MIDI arrangement player. However, I find it also very useful to audition grooves widely and quickly with the option to solo one or more kit pieces without committing to the MIDI arrangement player, especially with a view to mixing and matching individual kit-piece parts from several grooves.
In Logic I would have used EZPP as SD3’s surrogate groove browser to get around this limitation, but unfortunately SD3’s MIDI grooves don’t seem to work with EZPP’s Kit Pieces facility – only Hi-Hat and/or Hi-Hat Pedal show up in that column of the EZPP browser, and even they don’t work reliably as solo buttons.
So I’ve built a work-around in Logic’s Environment. In there I’ve set up a mapped instrument for each of SD3’s kit pieces, labelling articulations for one kit piece exclusively in each mapped instrument, as per the SD3 MIDI map; MIDI notes not belonging to the mapped kit piece are routed to cable 2 which goes nowhere; the Cable 1 outputs of all these mapped instruments are connected directly to the Logic mixer strip in which SD3 is inserted. Each of these Logic mapped instruments is connected directly to its own track header in Logic. I have EZPP on another Logic track and its MIDI o/p is routed from the Physical Input object to the Sequencer Input in the Click and Ports page. In this way I can use EZPP to browse all my MIDI groove libraries by playing their MIDI stream through to the kit-piece Logic mapped instruments, such that the Record Arm button on each (mapped instrument) track header serves as a solo button for the associated kit piece. I can also play back TT groove MIDI regions on Logic’s tracks for each kit piece without editing; in this case the track header’s On/Off button or the region’s mute switch serves as kit piece solo. Moreover, the articulation labels show up in Logic’s MIDI region editor.
Hoping this may prove useful to some Logic users who like to get their hands dirty in the Environment.
27" iMac, 3.1GHz, 32GB RAM; Clarett 2 Pre; Logic Pro X, Ableton Live Suite, Reason, Reaper; EZPlayerPro, EZD2, SD2, SD3 (complete).
