- I recently switched over to NotePerformer from Halion on a big band tune I had already finished so I could get brushes sounds from the drum set on playback (I’m not convinced NotePerformer is better for winds, piano and bass). Now my kick drum comes out of the Alto Sax channel on a B natural. In fact, there’s no channel for the drum set showing on Endpoint setup at all, although all the other instruments of the drum kit play fine. What am I doing wrong?
Just a thought…
On the Play page, Track Inspector tab, select a track and click the gear icon. Verify that the appropriate number of channels appear there and all the assignments are correct in the matrix.
I commonly make the mistake of just changing Port / Channel / Ex map / Perc map (because they are visible) and wondering why things don’t work. Clicking the gear often shows me that channels have not been allocated (the other more visible controls don’t take care of it).
Hopefully this helps. Hopefully others don’t make the same mistakes I do.
I did that and found that there’s not a channel listed for the drum set part, although it’s listed on the mixer and subdivides into each instrument.
This may be a separate problem, but when I try to adjust the individual drum kit instruments, (for example, making the high hat louder) it makes a uniform change to ALL the instrument different levels.
So: 1) how do I add another channel for the drum set part and 2) how do adjust the mix levels of the different kit instruments without changing them all? I’d sure appreciate any help you can offer!
(I think I may have seen a post about a similar issue some time, but can’t remember exactly. Maybe I can find one.)
I can do the following which brings in HALion, and it looks weird to me, similar to what you describe. I’m testing with Elements 6.
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On Setup, add single player “Empty-handed player”, then “Create Empty Kit”. It gets named “Percussion”.
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Click the 3 dots on the green bar in the player and “Edit percussion kit”.
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Add (for example) Kick Drum and Snare Drum.
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On the Play tab, the mixer shows 2 channels “Percussion” and “Kick Drum”, which looks wrong to me.
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There is a lane “Percussion” with a “[>]” button. Clicking it expands to show “Snare Drum” and “Kick Drum”, which seems right.
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Clicking on either lane “Percussion” (top) or “Snare Drum” (expanded)
shows the first HALion channel. Clicking on “Kick Drum” (expanded) shows the second one. Seems like an issue here. -
If I click on either “e” button, I see 2 channels have been added to HALion: “Percussion map” and “[GM 129] Stereo GM Kit”.
This doesn’t seem right. I would expect both to be GM. -
If I click on either gear button, I see 2 channels assigned to “Percussion” & “Kick Drum” with weird percussion and expression maps. Seems wrong.
The percussion maps could explain the strange playback behavior. In my case, I think they should be “General MIDI”; I changed them with the combo box. I think expression maps should be Default; I changed them with the combo box.
After all this, the instruments seem to play correctly. Each fader in the mixer controls one instrument individually. The first one “Percussion” just seems to be mis-named - it controls “Snare Drum”.
I’m not sure if any of this helps - I hope it might. I don’t know how NotePerformer looks or operates.
Actually it’s even a little worse. I moved Snare and Kick from channels 4 and 5 to 1 and 2, changed HALion presets accordingly. I had to re-select expression and percussion maps in the combos.
Then I had a leftover Percussion on channel 4. Clicked the gear icon and reduced channels to 2. Selecting the Percussion lane still shows channel 4.
Now I see 3 mixer channels: Snare Drum, Kick Drum, Percussion (apparently in channel order). Snare and Kick faders work correctly and individually. Percussion does nothing.
I guess I’m as confused as you are.
Maybe the point of confusion is that the mixer channels are labeled with instruments, but they aren’t really controlling the instruments - rather the MIDI channels for the instruments.
This can lead to confusion with percussion instruments. Typically in a DAW the percussion instruments are distinguished by using different notes, playable in a single MIDI channel (often 10). If you assign all the percussion instruments to the same MIDI channel in Dorico, no matter how many faders you see, they all control the “MIDI volume” of that one channel.
So every percussion instrument which needs a fader needs a separate MIDI channel. With HALion, this isn’t a big problem - you might need to assign the same preset to many channels. Even if it is a “kit” preset containing all the notes/instruments. (With another VST supporting only one MIDI channel, you might need many instances of the VST.)
Percussion maps associate instruments to notes, but are not related to channels or faders.