When I write a song, I put together all of the drums in EZ Drummer. I can mix the song and export it with it playing directly from EZD. Is there any advantage to copying the EZP MIDI and dragging it into a Cubase track which will then show the MIDI information in the track it self. You then have to “turn off” EZ Drummer or you’ll have two sets of drum beats. One being played in the MIDI track and the other in the EZP app.
I seem to have no computer limitations, so I could work either way. I just don’t know what the best way is. Or what advantage there is either way.
Use EZ Drummer as a plugin in Cubase and do all your drums there like you usually do…then when you’re ready to mix bounce the seperate tracks(kick, snare, overhead, etc.) to audio. I keep the kick, hihat, and snare as mono for placement and the rest as stereo. Then create a group and call it Drums and send all your drum tracks to it. If you want to get deeper from that drum group create two sends. Setup two FX groups to send to…one with a heavy compression and one with an overboard reverb, then mix those two FX Groups with the original Drums Group to taste.
Audio is just easier to mix with…you can leave your drums as MID if you want but it’s harder to get them to place well without the tools audio tracks and groups will give you
So yes with ezdrummer and sd3 you can create the midi in the plugin and follow the DAW when used as a plugin. I see no reason to use it standalone if you use a DAW. I don’t have midi in any vsti. I like to see all my midi in Cubase. With sd3 I use the Cubase drum map. This can be used for ezdrummer too. The main reason I do it this way is all my midi is in Cubase so I always know where it is. If in the future toontrack doesn’t exist or I no longer use sd3(or ezd) the midi is still there and can be remapped in the drum editor to another drum vsti. This can be done by changing the out note in the drum editor. Cubase drum editor is very powerful and has been in Cubase since Atari days.
The reason I never used Cubase for drums, (and I may be completely wrong here) is EZ Drummer has all of the beats, intros, fills etc. sorted and searchable ready to drag and drop. Not being a drummer, I could never program the complex beats that exist there. Again, I never gave Cubase a chance, but just from what I’ve seen, people (like Dom) will put down kicks, and then say “I want a 1/4 swing beat snare here”, and so on. If I have to create a drum track like that, I’m toast. I’m not doing techno dance tracks. My drums have to be more complex.
Even with EZD, I still put in way more time than I want on a drum track. When I’m done the drums still sound like there isn’t enough fills or “fun stuff” a real drummer would do.
Any ezx or sdx midi you simply drag onto the Cubase Arrange page.
Personally I never create midi track songs in Toontrack. I much prefer the flexibility of the Cubase drum editor. (And often removing so many flams that seem to appear with the snares)
Would you mind elaborating a little more on how you do this?
I’m coming back to Cubase from Ableton Live and my drum use case has changed (authentic vs. electronic sound). I have SD3 but the routing feels so tedious that it’s useless in real time and to move forward we typically end up grabbing an audio loop or loops from SD3 and chopping those up instead.
I would love a clear path to success in Cubase. Any advice (or even useful links) you can offer would be appreciated
Click it and drag to the Cubase Arrange Page where you either have a midi track or instrument track created.
In real time? Are you using an electronic drum kit with SD3? I don’t think the routing could get any better on the Toontrack side. However without seeing what you have set up, I’m clueless. I’ll assume you are applying multi-channel outputs from the mixer in SD3?
To keep nomenclature clear, audio loops don’t exist in Toontrack. I understand you are using 3rd party audio loops too. Toontrack only uses Grooves, or what you are calling Midi loops. You can convert the SD3 grooves into rendered .wav files. I prefer to keep things in the midi realm in Cubase for greater flexibility until the point (if that point exists) that I’m forced to commit to .wav.
Some users keep the Grooves in EZX or SD3 and create entire drum tracks synced to Cubase. I prefer to drag/drop the grooves into Cubase at the beginning and then do all editing.
Keep in mind to be careful when it comes to any type of quantizing in Cubase as there is great potential to ruin the groove originally created in Toontrack. Some creators of those grooves like Chris Witten will facepalm themselves if they happen to hear their quantized groove.
Toontrack plus dozens of 3rd party channels has many tutorials including using EZD and SD3 with Cubase. SD3 IMO is the most comprehensive drum tool around. Invest some time to learn it.
There are downloadable Cubase drum maps for just about every EZX and SDX. Or you can take the Toontrack midi map layout under the help tab and create your own Cubase drum map.
As @mkok said if you are no later using the toontrack map, you can change it in the Cubase drum map
Sorry, you’re right. I can see how my wording would be confusing. I meant during tracking and studio sessions. For example we record a guitar and bass part and then we want drums on the fly. We don’t have a drum kit but do have an AKAI MPD and/or Arturia MIDI keyboard in the studio to trigger with. We’ve been trying to come up with a system for this and have used Triaz as a loop based solution with some success but it’s sad that SD3 with all it has to offer becomes a mood killer - too much fumbling from lack of fluency with the VSTi and all it takes to get it working in Cubase in the moment. Before moving to Ableton Live for some years, I used Re-Wire to get drums from FL Studio and/or Ableton Live into Cubase. This worked fairly quickly and well back then (we could build the drum pattern up as we go), but Re-Wire is no longer a thing in Cubase.
Again, agreed, poorly worded. Yes, these would be exported .wav files. This works well to get something going which might then move our tracking session into recording vocals. Trouble is, then we then have a single file/track for all drums in Cubase. So, modifying a snare by adding verb, for example, or side chaining the kick as another example, later is a challenge. If it’s possible at all, it’s pattern dependent. For example, a slow/sparse drum track is easier to chop up in that scenario.
Thanks for your reply. If anything I was looking for a little more information, especially from Cubase users, to see if I could finally crack this nut and open up realistic drums more. I haven’t tried in a few months and the OP’s thread gave me some inspiration.
mkok’s post made me curious what changing it in the map entails. It might be a verbiage thing again, but I don’t think I’m familiar at all with this and wouldn’t know where to begin.
Can you elaborate here? Maybe list the steps you go through to get SD3 to work?
Yeah, I apologize, I don’t understand this. SD3 has 32 output tracks and that’s reflected in Cubase assuming Apply Multi Channel is checked in SD3 and Cubase “activate all outputs” is checked.
Open the Cubase drum map. In the drum map, make sure the left side divider is slid to the right in order to see all the columns. One of those columns is an output or “O” column that you can change to whatever note/drum sound you wish.
I’m afraid I can’t elaborate on the steps well at the moment. It’s been several months since I’ve tried. It wouldn’t be fair to your efforts to assist to go off of memory. That said, I’ll likely be trying again soon. I have a tracking session tonight, so maybe very soon if we go in that direction.
I just meant that all the drum audio was mixed down as a single .wav. We didn’t get kit level stems. So, one track in Cubase with a .wav that consists of all drum sounds summed is what we have settled on in past attempts… just to get drums in general into the project; which limits mixing options to mostly track level +/- volume edits and sends to verbs.
I don’t recall enabling ‘activate all outputs’ but will look for this next time.
Thanks for the information. I’ll definitely be trying again soon. After this conversation, I’m pretty eager to. I mostly gave up on SD3 when I was using Ableton Live because the routing was a nightmare. I’ve been working with Cubase again for a good 18 months or so now, but most of the drums in the track list (we’re working on 2 EPs) were already established. So, I ‘ve only tried SD3 again 2 or 3 times and, for reasons stated, we also used Triaz or a quick ‘export to audio’ of a loop to get us through the moment… after failing miserably to use SD3 in Cubase. I’m sure a dedicated session with it where I don’t have an ADHD singer songwriter playing an acoustic guitar into the side of my head while I’m troubleshooting will also help
Yes, by default Cubase typically only shows L/R. You need to enable “activate all outputs.” So first go to SD3 and enable Apply multi channel outputs. Then in Cubase enable Activate all outputs.
Then you will see 32 channels in your mix console and 32 channels on the Arrange Page inside your main Toontrack track.
If you open a drum map and expand the left panel where you see the note name/value. Once you do this you will see there is an in note and out note. So if you have a midi drum part that doesn’t trigger the right sound you can change the out note without changing the midi. You can also give each sound its own midi channel. That comes in useful if you are sending midi to external instruments and you want to keep all the drum/percussion midi together.
As mentioned already you can enable multi out. You can then assign what you want in sd3 to whatever output you want. You can then either use sd3 effects and/or external. SD3 is very powerful.
To get the most realistic drumming though you need a drummer triggering it with an ekit. That’s where I come in for many people.
