Some MIDI Effects Racks for Superior Drummer 2.0
Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 12:32 am
Hello! Beware, this is possibly going to become a rather lengthy post ;-) But if you are a user of Ableton Live 8 and Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 this might be interesting for you.
I am in principle a happy user of both Ableton Live 8 and Superior Drummer 2.0. Nice tools, nice sounds, nice everything. Nice everything? Not exactly. Since SD2's Avatar library has quite a few sound mappings, there are quite a few MIDI notes needed to be controlled if you want to make use of all these sounds.
Unfortunately, the order in which these sounds and articulations are mapped to the MIDI notes appears quite randomly to me. Yes, I know, there is the GM Standard mapping, and I guess you have to bow to that a little bit, but nevertheless the MIDI mapping is - as I said - more or less randomly. Working with this is tedious, at least.
To say it differently: I am just too old to always memorize that, say, "Hihat Open 3" is mapped to D0, whereas "Hihat Open 4" is mapped to C3, just to give an example...
Always complaining is not a solution, you are right. For that reason I decided to invest some time and make (at least my) life a little bit better.
I have created in total 3 MIDI effects racks which help organizing this chaos a little bit. Each of them can be used in different scenarios, depending on how you work. These Live 8 racks can be used with SD2 and the standard Avatar library. I suggest that you "install" them by just copying the three patches in that ZIP file to your Live library / Presets / MIDI Effects / MIDI Effect Rack folder.
Scenario 1: Just giving names - "Avatar_Named"
This first rack just provides names to all of the ca. 70 notes mapped in the Avatar library. Put it in front of the SD2 plugin, and directly all the notes in MIDI clips on this track are named. Have a look at the following image - left side shows the state before and right side shows the state after inserting the rack. Now all the names of the drum articulations are shown (e.g., BD, SD Center, HH Open 3) instead of a long list of C-2, C#-2, D-2, etc.
The first rack provided names to all the mapped MIDI notes, but still the order of the notes is not exactly straightforward. To solve this, please move on to the second scenario.
Scenario 2: Giving names and re-map everything - "Avatar_NamedAndRemapped"
With this second rack I have remapped all the notes. (Believe me, this was not exactly a fun thing to do ...) If you put this rack in front of the SD2 plugin, then all the MIDI notes appear not only named but also resorted in a MIDI clip.
The following image shows the difference between the first and the second rack. Please note that on the right side all the notes are now sorted (at least in a way that made sense to me). Left side shows the names when using the first rack.
The mapping is done completely in Live 8. The mapping in SD2 is not touched.
Unfortunately, my resorted MIDI mapping is completely incompatible to any standard mapping. So, all the MIDI clips which come with SD2 (the Nir-Z pack and all the others you can get) will not work anymore.
To solve this, please read on to the next and last scenario.
Scenario 3: Having everything nicely named and resorted but still being able to play standard MIDI clips. - "Avatar_NamedAndRemapped_PreProcessor"
In order to get the standard clips working on a track which has the scenario 2 MIDI effect rack loaded, we need to apply some inverse mapping. For this, you have to create another MIDI track and load the Avatar_NamedAndRemapped_PreProcessor rack on this new track. The already existing track with the SD2 plugin needs to have the Avatar_NamedAndRemapped rack loaded.
Now you have to route the output of the new MIDI track to the SD2 track. By doing this, every clip played on the new preprocessor track will be finally heard on the SD2 track. For example, you can now place the Nir-Z loops on the preprocessor track and you will hear the expected result on the SD2 track.
The Avatar_NamedAndRemapped_PreProcessor effect rack just applies a MIDI mapping which is exactly the inverse of the mapping of the Avatar_NamedAndRemapped rack.
That's it. I hope my explanations are clear to you. In fact, I hope that this post is not too long so that at least some of you will reach the end. :-)
I am looking forward to getting some remarks, thank yous, or whatever reactions from you!
Best regards, Martin
I am in principle a happy user of both Ableton Live 8 and Superior Drummer 2.0. Nice tools, nice sounds, nice everything. Nice everything? Not exactly. Since SD2's Avatar library has quite a few sound mappings, there are quite a few MIDI notes needed to be controlled if you want to make use of all these sounds.
Unfortunately, the order in which these sounds and articulations are mapped to the MIDI notes appears quite randomly to me. Yes, I know, there is the GM Standard mapping, and I guess you have to bow to that a little bit, but nevertheless the MIDI mapping is - as I said - more or less randomly. Working with this is tedious, at least.
To say it differently: I am just too old to always memorize that, say, "Hihat Open 3" is mapped to D0, whereas "Hihat Open 4" is mapped to C3, just to give an example...
Always complaining is not a solution, you are right. For that reason I decided to invest some time and make (at least my) life a little bit better.
I have created in total 3 MIDI effects racks which help organizing this chaos a little bit. Each of them can be used in different scenarios, depending on how you work. These Live 8 racks can be used with SD2 and the standard Avatar library. I suggest that you "install" them by just copying the three patches in that ZIP file to your Live library / Presets / MIDI Effects / MIDI Effect Rack folder.
Scenario 1: Just giving names - "Avatar_Named"
This first rack just provides names to all of the ca. 70 notes mapped in the Avatar library. Put it in front of the SD2 plugin, and directly all the notes in MIDI clips on this track are named. Have a look at the following image - left side shows the state before and right side shows the state after inserting the rack. Now all the names of the drum articulations are shown (e.g., BD, SD Center, HH Open 3) instead of a long list of C-2, C#-2, D-2, etc.
The first rack provided names to all the mapped MIDI notes, but still the order of the notes is not exactly straightforward. To solve this, please move on to the second scenario.
Scenario 2: Giving names and re-map everything - "Avatar_NamedAndRemapped"
With this second rack I have remapped all the notes. (Believe me, this was not exactly a fun thing to do ...) If you put this rack in front of the SD2 plugin, then all the MIDI notes appear not only named but also resorted in a MIDI clip.
The following image shows the difference between the first and the second rack. Please note that on the right side all the notes are now sorted (at least in a way that made sense to me). Left side shows the names when using the first rack.
The mapping is done completely in Live 8. The mapping in SD2 is not touched.
Unfortunately, my resorted MIDI mapping is completely incompatible to any standard mapping. So, all the MIDI clips which come with SD2 (the Nir-Z pack and all the others you can get) will not work anymore.
To solve this, please read on to the next and last scenario.
Scenario 3: Having everything nicely named and resorted but still being able to play standard MIDI clips. - "Avatar_NamedAndRemapped_PreProcessor"
In order to get the standard clips working on a track which has the scenario 2 MIDI effect rack loaded, we need to apply some inverse mapping. For this, you have to create another MIDI track and load the Avatar_NamedAndRemapped_PreProcessor rack on this new track. The already existing track with the SD2 plugin needs to have the Avatar_NamedAndRemapped rack loaded.
Now you have to route the output of the new MIDI track to the SD2 track. By doing this, every clip played on the new preprocessor track will be finally heard on the SD2 track. For example, you can now place the Nir-Z loops on the preprocessor track and you will hear the expected result on the SD2 track.
The Avatar_NamedAndRemapped_PreProcessor effect rack just applies a MIDI mapping which is exactly the inverse of the mapping of the Avatar_NamedAndRemapped rack.
That's it. I hope my explanations are clear to you. In fact, I hope that this post is not too long so that at least some of you will reach the end. :-)
I am looking forward to getting some remarks, thank yous, or whatever reactions from you!
Best regards, Martin
I wish Ableton had an easier way to rearrange the notes in fold mode; i know the feature has been requested but it's not there yet. An easier drum map translator would be nice too, maybe a later release.