Hi Guys, long time no see 
Can someone tell me what the difference between using beatdesiner and using the drum-key-editor in cubase is? (or the differences are?) or when to use what ?
Cheers
Ernst
Hiya Ernst,
One’s a toy, the other’s a tool? 
Just kidding. Seems to me BD is geared more towards making loops. If you Google, there are some vids of it in action.
I see it more as an essential difference in the creation process.
BD can be used to create and store some patterns, which you then play around with during the creation process of a song. Unfortunately the handling is ver different, as the changes are triggered by midi-notes, so that’s what you then store in a midi track.
When using drum-key editor you see what you have in each block.
I normally stick to the drum-kit editor during composition, but beatdesigner supposedly allows you an approach which is closer to Ableton and could be even used within a live-setup with cubase.
So BD it’s more for the creative/chaotic/playful composition process.
DrumKey Editor is more composition in a traditional way…
I only use BD now for creating drums, and haven’t opened a drum editor since it was introduced, let me explain why…
You can create one bar (or two or four) in BD and it will loop along with the track, you wanna make a fill? Copy and paste the bar in BD to another key and adjust for the fill, do the same to make as many (up to 48 I think) variations.
As for having it triggered by MIDI notes, you can do this, I only did once and didn’t like it. What I do is drag the patterns on to the MIDI track, where they now become fully editable MIDI clips, now turn BD off, but don’t remove it and you have a bank of drum parts ready to use anywhere, save them as a preset and they can be re-used again and again.
There are loads of other useful features in BD, such as swing, flams etc.
BD is a very powerful beat creation tool and can do so much more than the drum editor, so much simpler, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just for dance music or DJ/ producers.
I switched to beat designer, I do guitar/vocal stuff and don’t use loops.
I’ll setup a beat. I copy the track and work off the copy. Mute all other tracks, eliminate everything except for a given drum (e.g. kick drum), export 1 bar of it as a wave. Delete copy, Repeat and export all other drums. Import all kick drum waves to 1 track, all hihat to another etc.
Basically, by having a track as Kick Drum (etc), I can set the EQ far better than having all the drums in one track, some of the sampled kits are really nice (I like the vinyl kit) and I’m getting some great drum sounds. For example, cutting my bass guitar at 100hz and boosting the kick drum at 100hz helps the kick come through, whereas, boosting a drum track at 100hz means the snare and toms etc are also getting the boost and the kick drum won’t stand out. You also get some panning options on the drums, just a hint helps on separation (e.g. hihat left 6, Cowbell right 6).
Don’t keep the same pattern through the whole song - or even a whole verse unless you want a robotic drum backing… While elements (e.g. high hat) may be a standard 1 bar pattern repeated for a verse or chorus, probably the snare or some other component will comprise of several different patterns, as well as some fills to transition from intro to verse to chorus etc.
A little help please… I’ve done a program in beat designer and want to save it . So I go save presets give it a name ok
When I go to load presets its not in the list!! what am I doing wrong or has anyone else got this problem?
Cheers
Roger
Try the following: Go to the Cubase user application data folder, remove the “mediabay3.db”, restart Cubase.
how do you change/personalize the samples of Beat Designer?