Midi mapping

[fritdsklubben]

Hey Toontrack

Is there a way that you can map you preferred kits sounds to specific keys on your midi controller ?
For instance I would like to map all the Cajon sounds from the Latin Percussion kit to let say “g,a,b,c,d and so on” is that possible ?

Looking forward to hearing your answer.
By the way I also have Superior drummer if that helps.

Topic

[Scott]

You can use the MIDI Learn function in S2 to map keys to a controller. MIDI Learn is not available in EZD2 and making would need to be done in the controller itself.

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Jesus Garcia]

This is important to me so let me make sure I understand.

I’m about to purchase a keyboard controller with pads (just because it is easier than computer keyboard/mouse). Are you saying that in EZD2 I can’t program the pads to the specific drum kit elements I want? Meaning that I have to map the controller pads externally to the MIDI values already assigned to the drum kit elements.  Am I getting that right?

Thanks

JG

EZdrummer version: 2.1.8
Operating system: macOS High Sierra (10.13)

[John]

Hi JG,

 

in short: yes.

The longer answer is: if you could easily change the MIDI notes in EZdrummer 2 for each articulation, it would break compatibility with the Toontrack MIDI grooves (and escalate the Support Tickets) and previously programmed songs. Unless you go the more advanced route and create mappings for the incoming MIDI only but then it’s not EZ anymore and a feature of its bigger brother Superior Drummer 3.

It’s usually not that hard to assign MIDI notes to pads on MIDI controllers, they usually have Editor programs you can run on your computer to set things up like MIDI notes.

BR,

John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Jesus Garcia]

Thanks John

I appreciate the fast response. I’m in the software business myself (different industry) so I understand everything about increasing support calls/tickets and if you break the MIDI then EZD isn’t very useful. I also understand that you have to draw the line between EZD and SD. The keyboard controller I intend to buy has a really good editor so all in all it is not that big of deal to program your kits and I did notice that if you replace a kit component with another the MIDI assignment remains the same so your controller will continue to work. It is a bit of work but once it is setup it should require little modification.

I hope you don’t mind me sharing a few suggestions. I hope that EZD3 is in the works. The program is a God send….I study guitar,  I haaaate programming drums, and I’m allergic to the MIDI editor. The sounds are incredibly realistic not to mention is just plain fun.

1 – Include the above in EZD3.

2 – Expanded MIDI support of soft knobs in EZD. Having to turn the Amount and Velocity knobs with a mouse in Edit Play Styles is kinda of wonky

3 – Expand the size of the interface for improved readability. I’ve gotten older and my eyes are not what they used to be.

Best,

JG

1

Thanked by: John

[Neb]

Hi,

I’m new to all this, and this thread caught my attention.

I was just going to buy a Arturia MiniLab MkII to help me manipulate the EZD2 interface, and to edit midi in the Reaper piano roll.

You seem to be saying though, that this won’t be a case of just plugging it in?

From their website:

MiniLab MkII also works beautifully with our MIDI Control Center software, letting you create, edit, and save different MIDI mappings to suit whatever project you may be working on. MiniLab MkII can also save up to 8 of these MIDI maps on its internal memory. Recalling them is as simple as pressing ‘shift’ and hitting one of the 8 pads

Does that sound as though it will do the ‘mapping’ that you’re talking about in this thread?

Am I correct in saying that once I have mapped the MiniLab keys and pads to one giant EZDrummer map, that the one map will work for all kits?

Thanks.

EZdrummer version: 2.1.8
Operating system: Windows 10

Beginner-level Guitarist/Drummer/Mixer. EZD2|3 / EZKeys1|2 / EZMix3.
Desktop - Ryzen 5 4650G @ 3.7GHz | 16Gb DDR4 | 1TB SSD | Win10 Pro.
Reaper | Roland Rubix 4x4 interface | Arturia Minilab II controller.

[John]

Hi NebWeb,

it seems like that MIDI Control Center will help you with the mapping, yes.

I think it perhaps sounds harder than it is; it is a question of assigning e.g. pad 1 to a MIDI note e.g. note #36 for the Kick (which it probably already is), pad 2 to e.g. note #38, etc. then save your MiniLab preset.

 

BR,

John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Neb]

If I only have to do it once because all the EZD kits use the same mappings, then it’s no problem to create one big map that will work with all/most EZD kits.

Thanks.

EZdrummer version: 2.1.8
Operating system: Windows 10

Beginner-level Guitarist/Drummer/Mixer. EZD2|3 / EZKeys1|2 / EZMix3.
Desktop - Ryzen 5 4650G @ 3.7GHz | 16Gb DDR4 | 1TB SSD | Win10 Pro.
Reaper | Roland Rubix 4x4 interface | Arturia Minilab II controller.

[David Abraham]

Hi, I am also a guitarist wanting to purchase an Arturia Minilab MK2 controller to make using ezdrummer 2 Easier instead of using a mouse. I have never used midi so this will be new to me. Are you now using the Arturia and if so, was it fairly easy to get the pads to work with ezdrummer drums? I’ve never mapped any midi. Midi newbie I am!

Operating system: Windows 7

[Jesus Garcia]

You should be able to use your keys/pads just fine. Arturia likely provides a midi editor software (usually free) that you can download. You just need to create the mappings the way John describes on his July 11 post. Your mappings can usually be saved to the program or to an external file. (you can create multiple files to use say….multiple drum kits). Once you create them they can be easily uploaded downloaded to your device.

EZdrummer version: 2.1.8
Operating system: macOS High Sierra (10.13)

[Neb]

Hi David,

To be honest I never followed through with this completely. It’s still on my To-Do list.

The MKII controller comes with some software called ‘Midi Control Center’. It has two panes – one with eight memory ‘slots’, and the other with as many ‘local templates’ as you want to create. The idea is that you create a (mapping) template, save it, and then drag it to one of the memory slots to use it. Then on the controller itself, you can choose which of these eight memory templates you want to load. Actually it’s only six, because memory one and eight are reserved and read-only. Actually one thing that annoys me is that it defaults to memory 1 every time you power-up.

Anyway, mapping the pads is as easy as finding out what note you want to trigger, and choosing it from a list. You find out which note you want to trigger from the ‘midi layout’ pdf file that comes with each EZD2 drum kit. Most kit layouts overlap, so you only need to use one map. But it’s possible that you’ll have to make more than one to accommodate some kits.

You can also map the MKII’s pots to some of the other controls in EZD2, such as mixer elements like compression and reverb. I think there are 10 parameters you can map. However, I prefer to just use the mouse for adjusting the EZD2 mixer, so I didn’t set up midi mapping. For this task, rather than the procedure above for the pads in the Arturia software, I think it is easier to use the ‘midi learn’ feature in your DAW (this is where you right click on an element/parameter in the plugin, and choose ‘learn’ from a drop down menu, and then touch the controller you want to assign to it, so they become linked). To save these mappings permanently, you’d probably have to save the plugin-state as some kind of template in the DAW – it will differ in each one.

Another option I have in my DAW is to put a midi re-mapping plugin between the MKII controller and the EZD2 plugin. So that I could press C1/36 on my controller, but ‘re-route’ it to C#1/37 before it gets to EZD2, so instead of triggering the kick, the physical C1 note in this case would trigger a side-stick.

For me, though, all that re-mapping stuff is less important than just having the drum names displayed on my DAW’s piano roll, and then using the MKII’s black and white keys to trigger the drums instead of the pads. This is different from actual ‘mapping’; it’s just putting text on the keys, showing which drum each note triggers. In my DAW (Reaper) I was lucky enough to find someone who had already done it for most of the EZD2 kits and provided the text files. In Reaper’s case the file just looks like this:

76 Sidestick
75 Rimshot
74 Center
73 Rimshot
72 Center

The number is the midi note and the text is the designation which will display in the piano roll. Each DAW will have a different format for the name-files. EZD2 kits are not strictly GM (General Midi) mapped, and each kit may have it’s own individual differences too. So if you buy lots of kits, you might have to create several name-files so that you cover all the different kit layouts.

Although the layouts on the keyboard keys aren’t great for playing live beats, just showing the note names suffices for me. I got EZD2 to never have to program drums ever again, because I hate sequencing drums and think it is a gargantuan waste of time. So mostly I use the supplied drum patterns, and only have to add little edits to them, like extra cymbal hits or little rolls – very light live editing (which I usually need to go in and fix a bit in the piano roll anyway, so playing the edits live doesn’t even help that much).

If all this midi stuff seems overly-complicated, that’s because it is. I much prefer working with an audio signal.

Is the MinLab MKII any good? It’s ok. I maybe would have looked for a model that had proper mod/pitch wheels, and an expression-pedal jack. I thought all those pots would be more useful than they are, but I haven’t bothered linking them to anything in Reaper yet. I’m sure all the controllers in that price range are all about the same though. The Arturia Analog Lab4 synth software is good, but you need a powerful computer; I ended up having to use free synths like Helm and Synth1.

I noticed you’re using Win7 – you’ll need to ensure that whichever controller you buy, that there are drivers for it. I’m not sure any of the new controllers will support Win7 now?

Beginner-level Guitarist/Drummer/Mixer. EZD2|3 / EZKeys1|2 / EZMix3.
Desktop - Ryzen 5 4650G @ 3.7GHz | 16Gb DDR4 | 1TB SSD | Win10 Pro.
Reaper | Roland Rubix 4x4 interface | Arturia Minilab II controller.

• This post was modified 5 years ago by Neb.

[David Abraham]

Thanks, I am using Mixcraft 8 Pro Studio with Ezdrummer2 . I noticed that if I open up the musical typing keyboard, I can use my desktop computer’s querty keyboard to trigger the ezdrummer 2 drums except the numbers assigned to the drums don’t seem to match the numbers on the keyboard so maybe the kick drum on ezd2 shows its F#-1 and the corresponding keyboard key is the “D” key but piano roll showing it’s a “A”. I guess if I went that route, I would just have to remember what keyboard keys to tap that correspond to which ezd2 drum. Not sure if using a querty keyboard will be sufficient to use ezd2 but it seems to work so far.

[Jesus Garcia]

I would not recommend using the computer keyboard for this specially if you already have a keyboard controller. The keys are too small and sometimes you may hit them with more force that you would with say a keyboard controller. You may end up damaging your computer keyboard.

EZdrummer version: 2.1.8
Operating system: macOS High Sierra (10.13)

[Neb]

In addition to what Jesus said, your computer keyboard does not have any sensitivity, so every note recorded will be at 127 velocity. If you don’t want it sounding like a 1980’s drum machine, you will probably have to edit and ‘humanise’ the velocities later.

Your controller on the other hand will allow you a dozen or more levels of sensitivity, and a choice of velocity curves (to adapt to your tapping). So your drums will sound much more natural when you play parts live.

This is not just a simple volume control of the same drum sample (1980’s!), but the articulation of a dozen ‘layered’ samples. Play softly and the drums will sound as though a real drummer is playing lightly. Play harder, and it will sound like the drummer is playing more forcefully. The drums actually change timbre, like a real kit. So it’s worth getting the feel right.

kick drum is F#1, the corresponding keyboard key is the “D” key, but piano roll is an “A”

The midi mapping to the computer keyboard is pre-mapped, and I don’t think you will be able to change that mapping (but it could depend on the DAW). So the other reason why you probably don’t want to use your computer keyboard is that you might not be able to trigger some of the drums from it – your chosen kit might be limited.

I don’t know why F#1 (30) is leaving EZD2 and triggering A1 (33) in your piano roll – that’s a DAW problem you need to look into. It shouldn’t do that.

Beginner-level Guitarist/Drummer/Mixer. EZD2|3 / EZKeys1|2 / EZMix3.
Desktop - Ryzen 5 4650G @ 3.7GHz | 16Gb DDR4 | 1TB SSD | Win10 Pro.
Reaper | Roland Rubix 4x4 interface | Arturia Minilab II controller.

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