Greetings,

I am trying to make it possible to play drum sounds on separate channels (other than ch. 10)on my XP-50. I know I can use the "menu waveforms" on some of the JV expansion cards but I'd like to be able to achieve the same thing with the native drum sounds. I know I read an article some time ago on the Li'l Chips web site that explained how to do this. Unfortunately, Li'l Chips no longer has their Roland content available. Is there anyone on this list who would be so kind as to explain to me how to accompish this task, or point me to where I can find the information? Failing that, can anyone confirm/deny with certainty that this is actually possible?

Any information will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Cromberger

Hi there,

That's exactly what I wanted to do - it's a bore having all your drums on one track isn't it?

I'm afraid my solution has a cost implication: I bought a Bass and Drums expansion card.

Now when I set up to record drums, here's what I do:

1. Go to Performance Mode.
2. Find a nice bass drum sound from B&D card and allocate it to Part 1, Track 1
3. Find a snare and allocate it to Part 2, Track 2
4. etc etc with hi-hats, toms, cymbals etc

It works really well and I can get sounds I like and record them in a way that makes them easy to edit afterwards.

If you would like to hear an example, please try my site at www.mp3.com/redbanner and listen to the first song (Not For The First Time). The main drum track was all done on the XP60, with sounds from the B&D card.

All the best,

Martin

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www.mp3.com/redbanner

[This message has been edited by MJB (edited 02-06-2002).]

The basic procedure is to assign the rhythm *waveforms* to each of the tones of a new patch (initiate a generic patch). That is, instead of assigning normal instrument waveforms to each of the four tones of a patch, assign the rhythm waveforms and restrict the Keyboard Range of each tone to one key.

Of course, you only get four rhythm instruments/waveforms per patch.

I think you can also use Utility -> Copy to copy the settings for various rhythm tones within kits into the tones of your initiated patch so you preserve the settings for the various tones. There may be some restrictions on this, I don't remember, but it's worth trying.

OK. I have an answer, but I have an XP-80. You can assign any part to any track. So, if you record some drums on track 10, but you want to put your congas on track 11, you just select track 11, but select part 10. So, MIDI channel 10 is now playing on 2 separate tracks.
I think about things in terms of position rather than by name, because I'm blind and need to know how many times to push the arrows and such. Anyway, I think it is the very last thing on the sequencer screen. I get to it by pressing up arrow from the point where you can select what song you want the seq to play. Pressing up from the top will take you to the bottom right I think. Hope that helped more than it confused.

On the same point as Dnarknosis makes about having only up to 4 waveforms in one patch, on some of the boards - like drums & bass waveform 102 Kick and Cym Set gives you 2, that's per tone.

Greetings,

Thank you for your reply.

The problem with what you suggest is that the drums, regardless of which sequencer track they are split out to, would still be going to Channel 10 on the XP. Therefore, you can't individually control the volume, pan and efx of each drum/sequencer track. Any change you make to one drum/sequencer track will affect all of the drums going to Channel 10 on the XP. Well, I should say that this is how it works on my XP-50. Perhaps the XP-80 works as you describe, which would be a nice improvment to the XP line of synths.

My objective is to be able to put individual drums or drum kits on individual tracks, route them to *individual* midi channels, not just channel 10, and therefore, be able to control all of the individual drum parameters for each drum separately. This can be done on some of the JV expansion cards, as has been pointed out here, by using the "drum menus". Dnarkosis is right on the money, I think, as to how this might be accomplished and I'm going to delve further into this idea. If I figure out how to make this work I will post my findings to this forum.

Thanks again for your kind reply.

Cromberger

I should add that I'm aware that the volume, pan, etc., can be controlled individually, per drum, via the editing facilities on the XP-50. I'm looking for a way to make these adjustments with my Sequencer (Cakewalk Pro Audio 6.1) in real time.

Cromberger

Yes, Dnarkosis has the right idea for what your needs are. If you want all those editing capabilities, his plan works wonderfully.

yeah,
what Dnarkosis suggests is what I do usually. (Dnarkosis, mate...you give some pretty good advise my man, keep it up!!)
The only problem is you have less MIDI channels to work with. When writing a track I sometimes use 15 MIDI channels for the drums and then record then all in audio so that I can sequence MIDI over the top. another option is to pan the sound when editing a drumkit this is Ok if you want say, the highhat L28 or whatever...but then you can't change it in realtime without changing everything else on channel 10.