I just opened an old project in the new version of Cubase. The drums are all MIDI and one sound per track. So, the kick on one instrument track, snare on another instrument track, crash on another, etc etc. It’s also not playing the right sounds.
What would be the FIRST STEP to cleaning up this mess? Should I select them all and merge them as first step? Or should I try to transpose each track until it is being output to the correct sound? Should I be looking for a drum map? Argh…I’m confused!
Some help would be appreciated as I dust off my Cubase SX days and get up to date!
It’s ALL midi. Only audio files were the vocals.
It was done in 2004 and all drum tracks were going to “HalionOne” on what seems to have been Standard GS drum map.
…i think back then a closed hi-hat was always the same note value… same for kick… looks like things have changed and sounds can be assigned to any notes now depending on what drum VSTi you’re using. So what sounds like a hat in Addictive Drums might come out like a crash in Superior Drummer, and a cowbell in Groove Agent. Is this accurate??? I have no idea where to start cleaning up this mess
OK…some progress has been made I think. I found that I can still assign the old GS Standard drum map to a kit in Groove Agent. However, with every part of the drum kit being on a different track, right now I’m going in the inspector and assigning each one to a (new) instance of Groove Agent. This doesn’t seem right… something tells me I should be only using ONE instance of Groove Agent. Can’t seem to specify that I want to use the same instance. Can you point me in the right direction please?
Ok, if the original was done using a standard map that’s good because it means that any other kit playing GM sounds should at least get the drums matched with similar sounds. But if they don’t it’s gonna get a bit tedious. First do an inventory to see how many different drum sounds/slots the existing MIDI Parts are using and keep track of their trigger’s note numbers. It likely isn’t more than a dozen or two (or maybe just a handful), so not too bad, but still… Then you need to find out what sounds are supposed to be playing for each different note# in the Part. Start with the easy to ID sounds like Kick, Snare & hats. Once you know what drum sound each note# plays edit a Drum Map to route those trigger notes to the desired sound. Alternatively edit the MIDI Parts and move the triggers to the desired note numbers.
Another option, and one that I highly recommend if it is feasible (it often isn’t) is to just redo the drums from scratch. Whenever I do this I almost always end up with something better than what I did back then. Let the song become what it wants to be now instead of trying to revive its previous existence.
Add one Instrument Track running GA. Then for all the rest of the Tracks you want select the Instrument Track and then add a new MIDI Track. These should automatically route to the VSTi in the selected Instrument Track (if not you can reroute it later). Each new Track will be set to the next MIDI Channel number so you might need to change those.
Alternatively you could merge the MIDI Parts for each drum kit piece into a single MIDI Part that plays all the sounds and put it on the Instrument Track…
