I made an expression map for cymbals and I have:
- soft mallets: keyswitch F0
- hard stick: keyswitch F#0
- brush: keyswitch G0
I made a percussion map with midi notes for e.g.:
- loose hit Midi Note C3, playing technique ‘hit (loose)’
- choked hit Midi Note C#3, playing technique ‘choke’
Everything is correctly assigned in the endpoint window:
The problem is:
If I choose my newly created Expression map AND my newly created Percussion map, and I enter for example as playing techniques:
‘soft mallets’ (keyswitch F0) PLUS ‘hit (loose)’ (midi note C3), it doesn’t work at all.
But
- if I choose ‘Standard Expression Map’ within my endpoint configuration, all my newly created Percussion Map assignments work
- if I leave the Percussion Map empty within the endpoint configuration, all my newly created Expression Map assignments work
I can’t use both simultaniously and I don’t know why.
Maybe a combination ‘keyswitches - midi notes’ is not possible because they both work with keys.
I’m also wondering if it is possible to enter 2 playing techniques for the same note, like: ‘brushes’ & ‘roll’
I don’t believe it’s (yet) possible to combine playing techniques from an expression map with notes in a percussion map. This is something that we are planning to make possible in order to more fully support percussion-heavy libraries like Virtual Drumline, but it’s not yet possible.
Seems silly asking this now considering how close D4 is, but will this be possible soon? Just ran into this limitation trying to map a choke playing technique to Addictive Drums 2 whilst also using a percussion map. (Perhaps the sillier part is I’ll have a drummer playing this soon anyway and I have more important things to worry about, but I’ve never been one to shy away from procrastination on this forum)
Mostly just wondering if anyone has come up with any good workarounds?
I’m not sure I understand where the problem is. You can define all these things in the percussion map. I suggest you study my Spitfire Percussion Dorico file. There are two cymbal flows with choked cymbals!
Even if you don’t own that library, you can study how I have built up the percussion maps from the ground up. The expression map associated is only there to allow gradual dynamics.
Spitfire Percussion
Thanks for that Marc! Perhaps I’m still misunderstanding what I should be doing here, but maybe this image will explain it:
I have the choke playing technique mapped to play MIDI note 78 which is the crash cymbal choke key (i.e. it’s essentially a note off). But the note never reaches AD2.
Well, what I understand with libraries is that it does not work the way you’d want them to! The choke sound should be triggered on the first beat, because the sample is triggered there. Of course, the player will choke the cymbal where you wrote it but the sample starts at the start of the note! So here’s a situation where the choke sound has to be triggered without it being visible on the score. And the choke marking should not have any effect on the playback.
At least, that is how it is designed in the Spitfire Percussion library.
Ah okay, so in the Spitfire library there’s a “choked cymbal” sample? In Addictive Drums it works similar to a hi hat, in that there’s a note to play the cymbal and a note to choke the cymbal (at any arbitrary point you wish).
There are different cymbals (at least two) that have choked sounds — check the dorico file I’ve sent. Everything is described as thoroughly as I could.
I do have the Spitfire Library, but not on my laptop. I’ll check it out with the file and get back to you once I figure out what’s going on…
Please use my percussion maps (and endpoints, templates…) and tell me if there are problems to correct! I’ve done that several months ago, and learned a lot in the process… but there might be failures.
Okay so as I suspected, in the Spitfire library there are a number of cymbals, each with a keyswitch for a choked cymbal. As in, you play one single note and you hear the sound of a cymbal being played and choked in one fell swoop. As opposed to my situation where you play a single note and the cymbal rings out forever and ever until you “physically” choke it by playing a different key. Does that make sense?
In essence, I need to play a note on beat 2 without putting a note on the score, hence why I was trying to use a playing technique and an expression map.
I will use these percussion maps in the future though - they look very detailed and extremely useful!
It makes totally sense to me ! That’s why I told you libraries were not designed as you’d want them to. We have to cope with what does exist, even though it’s not what would happen in real life…
BTW, I’ve just corrected a wrong mapping in the bongo ensemble instrument. I think what gave me most work was to actually re-build all the kontakt instruments, give them keyswitches, etc. And this is very error prone, especially when you have hidden settings (here, the problem was a hidden two finger trigger on the field drum that took two keys instead of one!)
