I run my band’s lights by copying a drum track to a “light” track (midi), mapped just a few of the drum notes to midi notes that are “sent” to the light program - which triggers lights/scenes when it sees those midi notes coming in. Works good, lights do their thing with the kick, snare etc.
Now I’d like to track my “horn” track, assign any/all the notes to trigger some flashes with the horn stabs in the light program. I applied a drum map to the horn track but I’m having some trouble understanding what the drum track “output” (one the drum map page) really does. Seems like it overrides the original send to my Halion horn patch when I was thinking the drum map output drop down would let me send the horns to an additional midi output (the light controller).
Its a bit of a stretch to use the drum map this way but it works for the light track. Can anyone clarify what that drop down box on the drum track page (get to it by selecting “edit drum track”) really does. Right now I either get horns or the lights. What I need is both. Don’t really want to create another midi track and copy the horns to that and then send that to the lights via the drum map. Seems like there should be a way to do it all on the same track.
AFAIK that is to choose the monitoring while you edit the drum map.
Personally I would use a dedicated Midi track, seems much easier to keep track and edit without risking the playback.
The short answer from the Cubase manual re. the drum map page: “Output - Allows you to select the output for the drum map sounds.” That’s all there is in the documentation, it’s not much help, and it’s correct as far as it goes but there’s a fair amount more explanation missing.
If you put a path to something - like loopmidi - in that output drop down box, the drum map will send midi to that device on the channel(s) selected in the drum map. My thought was the original midi notes/data/channel would be unaffected and the drum map would just send a copy of the notes on whatever channel listed in the drum map to another device. Not true. It changes the channel to the channel listed in the drum map of the ORIGINAL midi notes. So if you’re using a multichannel synth, you get the WRONG instrument on that track. if you want the original instrument to continue to play, you have to make sure the drum map “channel” is the same as the channel as the synth you were originally sending to. It does not change where the midi data associated or the instrument associated with that track are sent to trigger an instrument - but it does change the channel. So the drum map does send a copy of the midi notes onto another source, on the channel in the drum map, but it alters the original channel of the data to that specified in the drum map. Not what I was expecting.
I’m probably the only one on this forum using instrument midi tracks to trigger lights thru midi and a separate lighting program so this is probably of limited use. Once I understood what was actually happening concerning the channel selection/change, I set my light controller to accept midi from “any” channel and things worked the way I wanted them to. Maybe it will be of use to someone using the drum map for some other unanticipated function. If you want a more detailed explanation, feel free to PM me.
