Have any of you integrated an spd-sx into your setup? How does it work for you? Do you have any tips for a good workflow for standard music production and drum programming?
I just bought an SPD-SX in the hope of using it to record in drum parts into cubase. I’ve got it to work by using the audio/midi mode in the spd-sx. However its not very intuitive to use when you have say a vst instrument with drum sounds spread out over 4 or 5 octaves.
The spd has 9 pads which play a certain section of the keyboard, and you can change this inside the spd so it plays a different section of the keyboard, but its very tedious to do this every time you load a new instrument.
What i want to be able to do is to shift the octaves so i can focus the 9 pads on the area/octave of the keyboard I’m interested in (usually the octave at the bottom where the kick and snare and hats are.
There is no button or function in the spd which allows you to do this.
You can use the midi modifier section of the vst/midi track to transpose the notes but this only moves in semitones… not octaves, which would be much quicker.
Ultimately i would like to assign an octave transpose function to a hardware midi controller knob…
What do you think? AM i missing a trick here? Should i use a different mode?
I don’t know the SPD-SX but I have an old SPD 20 that I use. I just set up various patches in the SPD to cover various areas of the standard keyboard that can match Groove Agent kits (though most standard kits are pretty much the same). I also have some patches for cymbals and less typical percussion.
A quick look at the SPD-SX manual shows it to be a very different beast (not as many buttons makes this task a little bit slower) to my SPD-20 but nevertheless the theory is the same. You just need to change the MIDI notes of a PAD (if not clear in the manual, this seems to describe it).
yes just found it! Funny coz Roland said it wasn’t possible! But it works…
Do you have any good workflow ideas for assignments for mapping out a whole keyboard (rather than Groove Agent)… Coz i only have 9 pads (less than an octave) - would you map half octaves or something?
The SPD-20 only has 8 pads but also a kick pedal and hi-hat pedal but I assign the pads as required for the MIDI kit I’m playing. Most kits have the main instruments in the same place so I don’t have to create new kits very often.
I don’t know how many kits the SPD-SX has for you to save to but although I think the SPD20 has either 99 or 128 I only use about half a dozen but it really does depend on how many different set-ups you’re going to be using.
