Drum Sequencer MIDI Mappings for drum machine

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mark_orion
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Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2017 1:00 pm

Drum Sequencer MIDI Mappings for drum machine

Postby mark_orion » Tue Jan 07, 2020 6:16 pm

I have an Alesis SR-16 drum machine that I want to control from G-Stomper studios drum machine. Where do I assign a particular drum to a particular drum track in terms of MIDI ? I notice that my MIDI monitor shows me that a Hi Bongo at octave 4 is triggered, but I do not know where this Bongo is configured. The only configuration option I could find is the MIDI channel that I set to the standard drum channel (10).
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planet-h
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Re: Drum Sequencer MIDI Mappings for drum machine

Postby planet-h » Tue Jan 07, 2020 6:39 pm

Welcome to the forum, mark_orion,
and thanks for your message.
mark_orion wrote:I have an Alesis SR-16 drum machine that I want to control from G-Stomper studios drum machine. Where do I assign a particular drum to a particular drum track in terms of MIDI ? I notice that my MIDI monitor shows me that a Hi Bongo at octave 4 is triggered, but I do not know where this Bongo is configured. The only configuration option I could find is the MIDI channel that I set to the standard drum channel (10).

You have two options to map/trigger the drum samplers:

1. Mapping a MIDI channel per Drum Sampler Track (main screen / setup / midi / sampler channels, ports). In this case you can just send MIDI NoteOn events towards that channel in order to play the Sample in that track tonally (dependent on the sent note).
https://www.planet-h.com/gstomper/docs/ ... part43.htm

2. Mapping the Global MIDI channel (main screen / setup / midi / Global channel, ports). In this case you have to send a NoteOn event of specific a specific note (the one that is mapped in the global midi section to the particular track) in order to play the sample of a track. Which note is globally mapped to a specific drum sampler track can be seen or changed at : main screen / setup / midi / global key mappings.
https://www.planet-h.com/gstomper/docs/ ... part42.htm

The complete MIDI docs can be found here:
https://www.planet-h.com/gstomper/docs/ ... _Midi.html
mark_orion
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2017 1:00 pm

Re: Drum Sequencer MIDI Mappings for drum machine

Postby mark_orion » Tue Jan 07, 2020 7:49 pm

I just cannot get it to work. Tried all options, but the tracks are stuck at the C, Octave 4, Bongo. I tried setting up tracks manually and with midi learn. With midi learn I had one single success, but the next track I tried to map following the same route was a Bongo again. The settings do actually change in the Global Key Mappings settings window, but the sequencer still plays the wrong C4. I even tried to reset G-Stomper by erasing all data - no chance to get this to work.
planet-h wrote:Which note is globally mapped to a specific drum sampler track can be seen or changed at : main screen / setup / midi / global key mappings.

Does not work. Feature request: Drum Sampler Key Mappings with a learn function that automatically sets both channel and note and does not require changing any other settings.
mark_orion
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2017 1:00 pm

Re: Drum Sequencer MIDI Mappings for drum machine

Postby mark_orion » Tue Jan 07, 2020 8:05 pm

Just to add to my observations: The C4 Bongo is played by default. However, when I play a drum manually on the drum machine by tapping the associated pad, that drum becomes the default and is played for all tracks.
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planet-h
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Re: Drum Sequencer MIDI Mappings for drum machine

Postby planet-h » Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:12 am

mark_orion wrote:Just to add to my observations: The C4 Bongo is played by default. However, when I play a drum manually on the drum machine by tapping the associated pad, that drum becomes the default and is played for all tracks.

If you map the "selected sampler track" to a MIDI channel.... sure that's what it's supposed to.
mark_orion
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Re: Drum Sequencer MIDI Mappings for drum machine

Postby mark_orion » Wed Jan 08, 2020 11:41 am

planet-h wrote:If you map the "selected sampler track" to a MIDI channel.... sure that's what it's supposed to.

Problem solved! I did not get the bit that I have to go to "Global Channel, Ports" in order to enable channel 10 for the Drum Machine. Everything working fine now. Thanks for your assistance and this great program in general. I was already worried that I cannot use G-Stomper studio as "Sequencer Central" in my setup of mixed hardware and software synths.
The "Global" thing got me confused. Coming from an IT background where local always overwrites global I was assuming that "Sampler Channels, Ports" takes priority over "Global Channel, Ports" and not realising that both are completely different things. What adds to the confusion is that the VA beast synthesizer does not require any global setting to get a midi signal. You just map the synth track to a channel and it works. I wonder if the naming could be changed and the settings rearranged so that this is more clear. Personally I would prefer to have all drum machine related stuff under the "Drum Sampler MIDI Mappings" - including dedicated key mappings for the drum sampler.
Anyway thanks again for giving us this great program.
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planet-h
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Re: Drum Sequencer MIDI Mappings for drum machine

Postby planet-h » Wed Jan 08, 2020 12:36 pm

mark_orion wrote:Problem solved! I did not get the bit that I have to go to "Global Channel, Ports" in order to enable channel 10 for the Drum Machine. Everything working fine now. Thanks for your assistance and this great program in general. I was already worried that I cannot use G-Stomper studio as "Sequencer Central" in my setup of mixed hardware and software synths.

Great, thanks for the success report.

mark_orion wrote:The "Global" thing got me confused. Coming from an IT background where local always overwrites global I was assuming that "Sampler Channels, Ports" takes priority over "Global Channel, Ports" and not realising that both are completely different things.

Global in this context means only that the channel and its mappings is not bound to one specific instrument (such a a synth or drum sampler instance).
Global parameters can be related to the FX rack, the Master section, or also (as in your case) to the entire drum machine with all its tracks as a global module.

mark_orion wrote:What adds to the confusion is that the VA beast synthesizer does not require any global setting to get a midi signal. You just map the synth track to a channel and it works.

The reason for that is simple. A VA-Beast synth instance is always supposed to be played in a tonal way. In other words, it'll always be mapped to its own channel (per instance), and each noteOn even starts playing a particular note of that synth while each noteOff event stops a particular playing note.
The drum samplers on the other hand can be played in both ways...
1. Mapped to its own channel (per instance), and each noteOn even starts playing a particular note of that drum sample (there is no noteOff because a drum sample is only triggered, not held as long as a key is pressed like the synth).
2. Mapped using the Global channel, and then played as entire drum machine (non-tonal) where each pad can be mapped to one particular note (this is how a hardware drum machine usually works).
G-Stomper provides both ways of mapping because of the different requirements by different users and use cases.

mark_orion wrote:I wonder if the naming could be changed and the settings rearranged so that this is more clear. Personally I would prefer to have all drum machine related stuff under the "Drum Sampler MIDI Mappings" - including dedicated key mappings for the drum sampler.

I see your point, and what you're looking for is a dedicated "Drum Machine MIDI Mappings" section, outside of the global mappings and outside of the per track drum sampler mappings.
Unfortunately this change would be quite complicated and would require far too much changes for the little benefit.
This could easily result in 2 weeks of work with all the testing and deployment, and we simply have no time frame to do this at the moment, sorry.
If we ever revamp the MIDI concept, then we'll consider this of course.

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