articulations via interface and or controller plus remap for traveling

[tooner10]

i’m diving back into EZD and SD after a long absence and trying to learn how to use the software to it’s fullest.

PART 1

is there a way to simply click on a different part of the each drum graphic in either EZD2 or SD to trigger a different articulation (ie is it possible to map different articulations to different parts of the underlying interface img in either program so that when you hit the edge of a snare it might be a rim, the outer half cirumference an edge and the center a center snare hit; similar mapping for hi hats; bell vs edge of a ride.. etc)?

it doesn’t appear it’s possible but it would be a great feature. if not what are my work arounds?

i know i can go into play edit window (or whatever it’s called??) vs the main drums tab and then right click drill down to assign a different articulation under a nested submenu which will assign the WHOLE img of a snare or hat to a given articulation but it’s sort of cumbersome to drill down to those menus every time you want to do it and it doesn’t achieve the layering i’m asking about? ironically in the main drum tab you have the “details” pop out menu but it’s nested under the drum part drop down menu, doesn’t actually insert midi notes to my knowledge (it’s just an audition), doesn’t assign a different articulation to the actual current set piece img in the drum view. you also can’t reposition that window and it closes every time you switch to a different kit piece which means you have to drill down two times to the detail panel again.

PART 2

since i’m on the road a lot, i’m limited to my laptop and a maybe few pieces of additional hardware. that’s why i’m trying to get as much functionality in real time by assign the articulations to the kit piece images and enter their midi notes using the mouse or laptop keyboard in real-time per above.

now if i have to get a controller, it’s going to have to be small to travel with and carry on : either a small drum pad or a small maybe 2 octave max keyboard controller with velocity sensitivity. because of the way toontrack mapped the EZX / SDX / stock EZD kits to a wide GM mapping on a full 88 keyboard, it makes using the articulations difficult unless i create remaps to assign them to the limited notes available on my small controllers. that’s not a deal breaker but only if creating the maps is not only easy but also managing them and loading them when i need to switch EZXs / SDXs, etc.

so where and how would i remap in EZD / SD, how do a manage and load them once they’re created, and how consistent are the toontrack EZX / SD GM mappings shipped with the different kits so hopefully i don’t have to keep switching maps all the times? (ie i’d prefer to get one map setup and use it across all the EZX / SDXs vs switching them all the time.. obviously i wouldn’t expect the same map to work for percussion EZX or similar with different instruments)

note that the remap actually is kind of a problem in my daw S1 as well. if i try to edit in the piano roll, the articulations are spread out over the whole 88 / wide octave range making it hard to zero in on just the midi note articulations i want. (ie i have to scroll a lot leading to alignment fatigue in the daw) . i see myself wanting lots of HH and a few different snare articulations mostly. i will probably use std articulations for everything else so i think my goal is to try to consolidate the toontrack GM “wide” mappings into a two octave range (24 notes) and or 16 physical pads on a controller.

any suggestions to help me achieve what i want most efficiently would be great. i’m not a midi guy by trade at all 😉

Topic

[tooner10]

actually it looks like EZD does at least have two different articulations for the bell and the rim of the ride img and the snare img has two one for the rim (which is a true stick that you can’t change) while the rest of the drum is single articulation. still would love to assign more articulation to the snare and HH img if possible or some other method to tighten up GM mappings

[John]

Hi,

when you’re in Superior 2, you can select the articulation that is triggered when you click the Snare Pad by either scrolling while hovering the mouse over the Snare or selecting articulation in the Instrument properties.
In EZdrummer 2, you have to expand the Instrument Properties Details tab to trigger other articulations. If you are mouse-click recording to a loop section on the Song Track, these articulations can also be recorded that way.

All Toontrack libraries follow a certain mapping scheme, yes, with a few exceptions like e.g. the Latin Percussion EZX, the Electronic EZX and the Dream Pop EZX.
All but the Latin Percussion EZX should work with the GM drum standard, though.
Remapping can not be done in EZdrummer 2 and I don’t recommend doing it in Superior 2 either, since it breaks the inter-library compatibility.
If you get a small controller for travelling, like e.g. the KORG nanoPAD2, you use its included Editor software to configure the pads’ mapping and you can save different scenes to jump between different pad configurations, e.g. Scene 1 has all drums you want to use laid out over the pads and Scene 2 all Hi-Hat articulations plus Cymbals you want to use.

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[tooner10]

@John said:
Hi,

when you’re in Superior 2, you can select the articulation that is triggered when you click the Snare Pad by either scrolling while hovering the mouse over the Snare or selecting articulation in the Instrument properties.
In EZdrummer 2, you have to expand the Instrument Properties Details tab to trigger other articulations. If you are mouse-click recording to a loop section on the Song Track, these articulations can also be recorded that way.

All Toontrack libraries follow a certain mapping scheme, yes, with a few exceptions like e.g. the Latin Percussion EZX, the Electronic EZX and the Dream Pop EZX.
All but the Latin Percussion EZX should work with the GM drum standard, though.
Remapping can not be done in EZdrummer 2 and I don’t recommend doing it in Superior 2 either, since it breaks the inter-library compatibility.
If you get a small controller for travelling, like e.g. the KORG nanoPAD2, you use its included Editor software to configure the pads’ mapping and you can save different scenes to jump between different pad configurations, e.g. Scene 1 has all drums you want to use laid out over the pads and Scene 2 all Hi-Hat articulations plus Cymbals you want to use.

BR,
John  

hey john i appreciate the thoughtful feedback. i’ve been diving into the SD manual and online videos and i’m starting to see the powerful articulation and mapping support so i think i’m on the right track. it’s just going to take some time to incorporate it into my workflow and muscle memory. thanks for the SD rollover tip to change the articulation. i didn’t see that anywhere! let me play around some more and see where i can get with this.

some followups to this reply though.

i explored the mapping feature in SD last night and i was really excited about it. it looks really easy to remap, save presets and more importantly go back to the toontrack / gm default at any time. the majority of toontrack libs i have are what i would consider “standard” per your description above. so *if* i did remap and the majority of the kits are all standardized to one GM map, the new remap should work with all the kits i have except the latin percussion, thus giving me perhaps an easier way to work with the tool. so how does this break the inter library compatability? i’m just trying to understand your suggestion better.

just so i’m clear (pardon i’m not a midi guy by trade but slowly getting there ;)), the articulations selected on a kit piece in EZD or SD never change the underlying midi files triggered in the SD grooves or EZD browser during *playback*. ie the midi notes in those files stay the same, it’s simply that EZD / SD somehow remaps what gets triggered by that note in real time (ie what you set that kit piece articulation to) right? this should hold true for any non-toontrack midi files that trigger using the same GM map as toontrack midi files yes?

so to follow, if i want any of my toontrack ezx / sd midi files or any of my own midi files / parts to use a variety of open hh 1, 2, 3, 4 and or vary the snare hit from center to edge or rimshot within a single 2-4 bar phrase (assuming those articulations and their underlying midi notes haveN’T been incorporated into the file itself), i have to edit the stock hh or snare in the underlying midi file taking the one snare / hh trigger note and moving it around to the other articulation notes throughout the passage to get what i want. which is to say using lots of articulations is really more of a daw edit thing then either an EZD / SD operation UNLESS as i stated the underlying midi file already contains those articulation midi notes in the first place. put another way, if the 4 bar midi pattern contains hh notes that always triggers hats closed tip , the only way you can get it to vary is to go edit the file in the daw and change some of those single hh midi notes to open 1, 3, and or closed tight edge etc (just an example). EZD / SD are pretty useless here except for the playback to trigger all the underlying pattern notes and of course to audition different articulations of a given kit piece in real-time to see what you might like vs what is actually contained in the pattern. make sense?

the only exception is IF i record directly to the song track in EZD browser (SD grooves is only playback so i have to drag midi to daw) which actually will record whatever articulation i have set in the kit construction to the song track midi file, which can then be dragged to daw or saved for future use (it doesn’t appear that you can move the details articulation window if it covers up the pattern in the song track though?). i think these are my options?

finally. i used to have a nanopad but no more. i’m thinking about going with a smaller more travel-sized velocity sensitive keyboard instead. would you recommend any that would give me the same level of velocity control as say the nano pad or the mpd216? i’m starting to think i don’t think the pads necessarily offer me much more control and could benefit from the keys as true keys. plus, it’s more of a one to one map to the piano roll in my daw which i’m probably going to be using fairly heavily

thx for all the input

[John]

Well,

I’ll try my best to answer concisely and forgive me if I miss something.
If you use EZdrummer 2 and select an E-drums preset, the incoming MIDI from your kit gets transformed which means you can still audition grooves in the Browser and play your kit and both will play back as expected.
When you select an E-drums MIDI Preset in Superior 2, you change the instrument articulation’s actual MIDI note (HH is special with Trig notes). Try this with auditioning a groove (preferably with HH, Cymbals and Toms besides Kick and Snare) in the Browser first with Default mapping and then you switch to Alesis, Roland or Yamaha.
As you hear, it plays back differently.

So if you Learn the notes in Superior 2, the Toontrack MIDI and your own MIDI files recorded with a different mapping will not play back correctly.
Using a small MIDI keyboard with up/down octave buttons and a MOD wheel might prove the best solution, then you can jump down and use the Trig notes and MOD wheel to open and close the HH and mostly use the GM standard notes for the other drums and cymbals.

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[tooner10]

@John said:
Well,

I’ll try my best to answer concisely and forgive me if I miss something.
If you use EZdrummer 2 and select an E-drums preset, the incoming MIDI from your kit gets transformed which means you can still audition grooves in the Browser and play your kit and both will play back as expected.
When you select an E-drums MIDI Preset in Superior 2, you change the instrument articulation’s actual MIDI note (HH is special with Trig notes). Try this with auditioning a groove (preferably with HH, Cymbals and Toms besides Kick and Snare) in the Browser first with Default mapping and then you switch to Alesis, Roland or Yamaha.
As you hear, it plays back differently.

So if you Learn the notes in Superior 2, the Toontrack MIDI and your own MIDI files recorded with a different mapping will not play back correctly.
Using a small MIDI keyboard with up/down octave buttons and a MOD wheel might prove the best solution, then you can jump down and use the Trig notes and MOD wheel to open and close the HH and mostly use the GM standard notes for the other drums and cymbals.

BR,
John  

i think we’re saying the same things. basically if a toontrack or non-toontrack midi file has coded an open HH 4 at GM note y, it expects the GM mapping to the kit piece articulation in SD to reflect that. if you start changing the SD mapping around so that open HH 3 gets routed to GM note z then all hell breaks loose. well unless of course i want to go and edit all the toontrack midi files and transpose the existing notes to reflect my new mapping. sound right? i think the only solution would be if i created some kind of real-time remapping in my daw that translates all toontrack midi notes on the fly at playback to whatever i decided (but that doesn’t change what’s coming directly from SD browser anyway) i wanted my new SD map to be. then any private midi files i created could use my own mapping directly. it sounds like a lot of trouble though and not worth the hassle.

any keyboard you’re recommend that fits the description you mentioned?

thx

[John]

@tooner10 said:
i think the only solution would be if i created some kind of real-time remapping in my daw that translates all toontrack midi notes on the fly at playback to whatever i decided (but that doesn’t change what’s coming directly from SD browser anyway) i wanted my new SD map to be. then any private midi files i created could use my own mapping directly. it sounds like a lot of trouble though and not worth the hassle.
 

Input Transforming is available in some hosts, like Cubase and Logic. I am a Pro Tools user mainly myself, so I am not really familiar with using one but if Studio One has one, you should be able to save a scheme like a preset.
 

any keyboard you’re recommend that fits the description you mentioned?
 

No, unfortunately not. I’d be interested in finding one myself that fits my laptop bag and doesn’t break just by packing and unpacking it. I have an AKAI LPK25 which is OK for being that small but it doesn’t have the mod wheel.
I’m looking at the KORG microKEY series or the AKAI Advance 25 (which is a bit big).

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[tooner10]

ok thanks as usual

[Author]

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