When writing drum MIDI, I make each instrument its own MIDI track, which is fed into a single drum VST. For flexibility mixing, I ultimately render each of those tracks separately. It would be nice if the names would be copied over from the MIDI track, instead of using the name of the VST channel.
A common workflow for me is to render these tracks, rename them to share the respective MIDI track name they were generated from, and then hide the MIDI tracks. Keeping the MIDI tracks is essential for fixing anything unexpected much further down the line, but for the purposes of mixing, I do not need to see those tracks anymore.
I think adding some configuration to the Render in Place GUI would be great for this.
However, if you have any alternatives for me, I would also be thankful.
If there is some way to use scripting in cubase, I would love do that, as I am a programmer myself. Essentially this boils down to a rather simple for loop with some renaming (after rendering) as long as retrieving & manipulating the track objects is as simple as I assume it is
I am open to changing this workflow if you have a better one
EDIT for clarity here is a screenshot of my output when rendering in place:
So if I understand you correctly, you have several MIDI tracks, e.g. one for kick, snare and so on, that go into one VST drum plugin (presumably a rack instrument), and then you solo each track and render it? Or does your drum plugin have multiple outputs, and you render all individually outs in one pass? If the latter, I’d just rename the individual outs the way you like them, and iirc the rendered tracks get that name. If the former, I wonder why you don’t use multiple outs in the plugin? Or does the specific plugin in question not offer that feature? In which case, I’d pester the developer to add that functionality, imho it is a requirement for a modern drum plugin.
I just added a screenshot to my OG post to maybe show better what I mean.
I am using the Groove Agent SE. I don’t need to solo anything, I just select all the the MIDI events, do a right click and select Render in Place → Render settings…
I am not sure what you mean with the multiple outs. I do know that you can somehow assign different outputs for the groove agent, but I don’t fully understand how this works and I never delved into it as I have not needed it yet. Is this what you are referring to? Here is a second screenshot
Yes, this is exactly what I mean. When I use Groove agent, it is on an instrument track, where I put all the MIDI events for my drums (I don’t understand why you use several separate MIDI tracks, that seems very cumbersome to me). I route each cell that I use to a different output, or sometimes through the internal mixer and then route those channels to a dedicated out. groove agent will automatically create an audio channel for each new output with the name of the cell, oder the mixer channel.
I don’t render those, but you can do that, of course, and the resulting tracks will have the names of the groove agent channels.
Ok thank you! I believe I tried doing what you are describing in the past, but could not figure out how to route each instrument into a dedicated audio track. I will simply spend some time getting that set up correctly now!
The multiple MIDI tracks were initially just a workaround so I could render each part separately. But I did actually find some small benefits to having them separate.
different MIDI modifier settings, for example I like to keep my kick drum tight and on the grid, while hi hats and other higher frequency elements may have loads of variance for my taste. Some kits have built in variance modifiers, but this specific one doesn’t unfortunately. And I just love the sound of this kit, I am stuck with it for now haha
arranging can sometimes be easier, usually I copy paste recurring 8th note patterns on hi hits/rides but switch up the kick & snare beats
