In Cubase 5.0/5.5, making the drum editor (rather than the key editor) default for a given track, what you would do was click the “drumstick” icon and assign a drum map. For me, the only available option was “GM Map”.
That’s still the case after upgrading to Cubase 6.0, but what’s happening now is that, after clicking the “drumstick” icon in the track settings and assigning “GM Map”, sound stops being played for that track. In other words, I can either listen to the drum track, or set the track’s default editor to drum editor, but not both.
I can still edit the track in the drum editor by selecting an event, then choose “drum editor” from the Midi menu. So what I’m experiencing isn’t a show stopper but rather an inconvenience, albeit a quite nasty one, because I’ve gotten so much used to that feature.
The problem occurs only when Halion Sonic SE is selected as an instrument. When choosing the legacy Halion One, things work as they used to.
Is this a bug in Halion Sonic SE, or maybe rather a feature that I don’t understand (yes, I’ve read the Sonic SE user guide)? Or are “drum track” things handled differently in Sonic SE?
Maybe I’m not reading you correct, but have you checked the following:
that the MIDI channel in the drum map is corresponding with the MIDI channel being used for the drum preset in HSSE? (aren’t GM using channel #9 for drums?)
The different drum lanes (i.e. kick on C1, snare on D1, etc) in the drum map are assigned to the corresponding key in HSSE?
When using a GM map on the drum track you should use a GM ready drum preset on channel 9 in HSSE. That should make it work (but maybe I got it all wrong)…
Spot on! Pointing out Midi channels helped me solve this problem. What I did was take a look at the Sonic “Multi Program Rack”: The selected drum set (“Jazzy Kit” in my case) was listed first, which means “Midi channel 1” by default. (Something I’ve just learned; once knowing what to look for I’ve noticed that this is actually documented in detail.) Number 10 was flickering, so I bravely assumed that it was receiving Midi signals. And right – selecting a drum set for that number/channel started the sound again (which had been gone when selecting drum map “GM Map” in the track properties.
I wouldn’t call this exactly intuitive, but then again this has been my first day using Sonic SE. It’s fairly complex, at least compared to Halion One.
One thing that nags me is the apparent disconnect between the instrument selected in the track properties and the instrument actually used (from Halion Sonic SE). I’ve attached a screen shot to illustrate what I mean: The track properties show that I’ve selected “Jazzy Kit”, which is also what’s displayed as the preset loaded in Halion Sonic’s window (at the top), but what’s actually played is “Mono Rock Kit 3”, because that’s what’s assigned to Midi channel 10, in Sonic. I can see this when the Sonic window is open, but when it’s closed I would just see “Jazzy Kit” – while not hearing Jazzy Kit but something different. Maybe it’s just me, but I find this pretty confusing. (And it kind of made me look into the wrong direction when trying to debug my original problem.)
