writing drums w/ EZ/DKFH/ElevenRack/PT

[Intelli-Shred]

Hello, I’m curious if anyone here is writing drum parts in GuitarPro and exporting the midi into ProTools for use with EZ Drummer or EZ DKFH? My current issue is that I’ve gotten most of my basic track already fleshed out using and editing/trimming midi from EZ Pop/Rock and EZ DKFH.. but I’ve got some bars where I need to write specific fills or hits.. so for this I figured it was possible to just export midi from GP6 and drag it from my MacBook Pro’s desktop into my PT session.. I tried this, dropped the two bars right into the gaps left in my midi measures in PT.. and it played.. but not in time?.. another detail to mention is that this particular track starts @ 82bpm.. but these end sections are double timed.. @ 164bpm.. for the midi blocks from EZ, I simply hit the 2X toggle on the EZ window and then dropped and dragged those.. no brainer.. 1. Is there any thing special I need to do to the exported midi from GP6 before I drag and drop into PT? 2.) Do I need to make a separate track for these or am I on the right path simply dropping these into the gaps/bar I left open in my midi track in the PT session? 3.) Do I need to indicate a bpm of 164 on my drum part as I’m writing it in GP or will it lock in with the tempo of the rest of the midi I already have? I did search here and a few places and found some nice video tutorials but none that address this that I could find. 4.) I also wanted to mention that when I did do the drop and drag into PT from my desktop, I got a window that said another device was changing the bit rate.. I’ve seen a few tutorials suggest lower the bit rate of the playback engine for tracking and raising it back up for mixing and adding effects/plugins.. any advice here?.. My setup is Avid ElevenRack.. MacBook Pro.. ProTools 8LE and EZ/DKFH. If there’s anyone writing their parts out in this manner, I’d greatly appreciate any and all advice or help.. thank you so very much for your time and consideration in advance.

Topic

[John]

Hi, just by reading your post, it seems you haven’t done anything wrong but I am not familiar with GP6. A few things to check: – Are you in ‘Grid’ mode in the PT Edit window when you drop the MIDI? Is it set to ‘Bars’? – Do the Timelines in GP6 and PT match in terms of Tempo and signature and also the Tempo change you mention? – Do you have any settings/preferences for Exporting MIDI from GP6 with regards to the above? Bit rate changing sounds odd. Sample rate likelier but it *shouldn’t* affect what you are doing. And I think that you mean that you lower the H/W Buffer Size when recording and raise it when you mix in PT, right? This is good practice in all PT versions prior to 11, though a higher value than 256 always seemed to affect MIDI timing negatively IMO when I used versions 8.x-9.x. BR, John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Intelli-Shred]

John, Thank you sir so much for taking the time to reply! In PT I’m in grid mode with bars and beats. You are correct on the sample rate… a PT dialog box pops up if I open GP6 while running PT and it simply says that “protools has re-set the sample rate of the HW device because it was changed by another application” .. that was the specific box that popped up. Im going back to my fill file in GP and making sure that the bpm’s match.

[Intelli-Shred]

Okay.. now I got it to play in time/sound in PT but it isn’t sounding the samples from EZDKFH. Other than that it locks in perfectly.

[John]

but it isn’t sounding the samples from EZDKFH

How do you mean? Have you selected the dfh EZX in EZdrummer in the Pro Tools instance?

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Intelli-Shred]

I closed the session out and rebooted everything and now its there and everything works just fine.. I’ll need to open the midi editor and bring the imported section’s velocity up to be equal to that of the other part.. but it works! THANK YOU GUYS! I’m sure I’ll a jillion other silly things to ask.. but I am extremely thankful for the advice and time.

[Author]

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