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[Help request] Routing three different notes in a Drum Rack to one instrument

Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2023 8:36 pm
by janpeeters
Does anyone know of a way to route three different notes in a Drum Rack to one instrument? Like this?

Image

I would like this to play three different instruments from my Roland SPD-S.
I thought of putting an instrument on each pad but that might make it a bit memory/CPU consuming.
Thanks.

Re: [Help request] Routing three different notes in a Drum Rack to one instrument

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:51 pm
by yur2die4
You might have to get a little clever and messy if you’re determined to do this.

1. Change the input on an instrument to ‘all notes’ instead of one specific note.
2. Make a rack chain inside they only allows certain notes through.
3. If you need to pick specific notes they those trigger, you’ll maybe need to use Scale or Pitch midi fx in rack chains to get them to be triggers not By certain notes but As certain notes.
4. The result might be that your instrument doesn’t appear to have a home slot. So you might have to drop empty placeholder devices into those slots in order to make them show up as triggerable slots on the GUI.

I am actually kind of curious which notes you will be triggering with the 3 consecutive pads. For instance, doing 2 chromatic steps up isn’t very common musically. I could see the value in each pad either being a different velocity or the same note maybe. Just trying to get a better idea of what you’re trying to accomplish with it.

Re: [Help request] Routing three different notes in a Drum Rack to one instrument

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 11:10 am
by janpeeters
yur2die4 wrote:
Sat Mar 18, 2023 8:51 pm
You might have to get a little clever and messy if you’re determined to do this.

1. Change the input on an instrument to ‘all notes’ instead of one specific note.
2. Make a rack chain inside they only allows certain notes through.
3. If you need to pick specific notes they those trigger, you’ll maybe need to use Scale or Pitch midi fx in rack chains to get them to be triggers not By certain notes but As certain notes.
4. The result might be that your instrument doesn’t appear to have a home slot. So you might have to drop empty placeholder devices into those slots in order to make them show up as triggerable slots on the GUI.

I am actually kind of curious which notes you will be triggering with the 3 consecutive pads. For instance, doing 2 chromatic steps up isn’t very common musically. I could see the value in each pad either being a different velocity or the same note maybe. Just trying to get a better idea of what you’re trying to accomplish with it.
Thanks a lot for the ideas @yur2die. Can you tell me a bit more about 2 and 3 How do I allow only certain notes through?
Would I need three Pitch Midi FX with very restrained Ranges (just one note) to play three non-consecutive notes to one instrument?

Because regarding your last remark, it would indeed not sound great to hit three consecutive notes. So, I wanted to change those notes to notes that I really wanted to play. I hope I'm clear enough, I'm not yet very experienced with AL so it's a great discovery ;-)

Thanks again. Because I'm away from home I cannot try your suggestions yet, so I'll have to do that later.

Re: [Help request] Routing three different notes in a Drum Rack to one instrument

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 8:58 pm
by chapelier fou
That said, I’m not 100% sure that duplicating the chain would consume more memory. Did you check ?

Re: [Help request] Routing three different notes in a Drum Rack to one instrument

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 9:17 pm
by janpeeters
chapelier fou wrote:
Mon Mar 20, 2023 8:58 pm
That said, I’m not 100% sure that duplicating the chain would consume more memory. Did you check ?
To be honest, no I didn’t. Most musicians I know that use AL tell me to make your projects as bare bones as possible when performing live to minimize CPU usage. So I assumed that duplicating instruments would triple the memory usage. But I’ll try that when I can experiment with it again. Thanks for the question.

Re: [Help request] Routing three different notes in a Drum Rack to one instrument

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 9:34 pm
by yur2die4
If duplicating works, that’s probably the more straightforward approach.

If you absolutely need to use a single instrument. You can restrict notes by choosing the instrument and Grouping it into a Rack. The rack will then allow you to restrict notes it is triggered by. After that, Scale inside the rack will let you transpose by an octave and then set how an incoming note’s output will be. That’s the most streamlined approach. For more meticulous adjustment you’d need to do even more racking.

Re: [Help request] Routing three different notes in a Drum Rack to one instrument

Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 10:06 pm
by janpeeters
Clear, I understand it now and will experiment with it. Thanks a lot for the help.