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Lesson Info

Mapping MIDI Nodes

We just spent the first part of the morning talking about Midi notes and how those corresponded the different sounds and tones you're gonna get out of Superior Drummer now we're gonna take the next step. We're gonna talk about something that's very similar yet completely different, and it's called Midi Nodes and ODS. So again, if we come up to the instrument will see that it's highlighted. Here. We're in our mapping page can all things being equal or in the Avatar kit, the default kit. If you're playing along at home right now, the instrument pages highlighted, and we see, as we've been looking at all of the different articulations for this instrument. Now, if I click on many nodes, you'll see there's nothing, and that's because we haven't created any many nodes yet. So what is a midi node? Very simply put, it's the ability to take two different articulations or sounds and assign them to one midi note that will trigger them both. I know I just told you you couldn't do that, and to some...

extent I was very right. You can't do it the way that you'd like to do it, but what you can do is sort of blend some sounds together and have them trigger at different times based on the velocity, I'm going to show you how very, very simple. So for this example, what we want to do is we're gonna use this mini groove on. We're gonna do something kind of extreme just so that you can hear how this is gonna work. Let's take, for instance, this floor, Tom Right here. Now I right clicked on it and what it's showing me since I'm in the Midi Nodes page here is all of the different articulations, right? So if I click away from an agitated, I see that it's triggering right here the center hit. If I was to go to the instrument and highlighted again, you'd get the same articulations that just showed me by right clicking here. Did everyone follow me? I did that kind of quick, but it's different on each page. So to get rid of that, you can just right click here on this nice hardwood floor that we have designed for you to look at while using Superior drummer. You're welcome. So let's say, for instance, I want in this groove there to be a really cool, pronounced snare drum floor. Tom hit when things were really, really happening. Hard, heavy, hard. You want the floor, Tom? The snares want a layer of these things. What I could very simply do is I could create a mini note. So what I could do? Alright, Right there. What does it say? Many node one. I've created a midi note. Okay, so what I'm going to do now is I've got a note. I haven't assigned it to anything. I haven't learned anything with it, but I have a blank note. You can always rename it when you're done. What it needs to know is what's gonna be a part of this node? Simple, right? So I'm going to take this center hit and this is really, really crucial. Here's the snare drum. We know that it's right there. It's happening on the one. Everyone follow me. I'm gonna take the center hit. I'm the dragon two d one. Boom. Now it's going to be this dialogue. This key is already assigned to snare center. You can replace that are joined both targets into a new midi node. I don't want to replace it replacing it does exactly what you think it does. It will make it that new sound. I want to join them. And voila! I've created a mini note. Now. I didn't use the node that I created here. I could have done it a different way, which I'll show you, but ultimate rate. Ultimately. Right now what I have is this is the mini node. Now the snare drum, when hit, is triggering the floor. Tom. Sound as well. Follow me. So what's cool about that? Well, let's hear the group totally different, right? You just created a very, very, very different performance, and it can go even deeper than that. So, as you understand, we still have all of our really cool editing functions and features here. But you'll notice this bypass targets control. We're gonna talk about that in a second right now. Let's just go back to our Midi notes. So we're here. We're here. We know that this is the MIDI note because it's highlighted so I could rename that I could rename it snare Tom. This the most daring and later Okay, great. And then Okay, so that's thes Snare Tom Layer. And now watch again when I click on it. If you watch really quickly, I'm pointing at the screen. Like somehow you could just see what I'm pointing at. Right here in this area. You'll see both the little speaker icons come up. They're both being triggered, and it's going to give you Ah, very, very cool sort of option. And this is one of my favorite components of the mini note. As you can change at what velocity layer the actual hits come in. So, for instance, we've just added this floor Tom Center. But we don't want that to always be playing. Let's say that he's playing suddenly in this many groupies. Not, but we could change. Just only trigger between. No, it's 1 26 and 1 27 So the way to test that is to come down here, right? We don't do that. We definitely don't want do that. Got it highlighted. Let's listen still, just snare drum. We're right there. That's very, very cool, because again it could be assigned as dynamically as you'd like it to. So what does that mean? In theory, that means you could take if you wanted to. Every single snare articulation and you could assign it to a midi node and program it to be in a different velocity. I know that's what everyone's thinking right now, and you're absolutely right. You can do that. I want to encourage you not to, because you're not going to get the level of dynamic response that you think you are mitigating the physical aspect of hitting a drum at a velocity number on what I'm saying is you hit the drum, and in your mind you're like, Oh, that's totally 36. That's never gonna happen. So as you assign those different articulations through different sort of note ranges or velocity ranges, you're going to be fooling yourself if you think you're gonna be able to master that in your mind. So it's easier to maybe switch between two or even work in sort of a different capacity and have a number of different things set up. So, for instance, again, we're still working enmity from a song writing standpoint. From a production standpoint, this is a really cool thing we've just done and again, you couple that with all the other things where you can go in, we could come back to the construct page, change the envelope, work with the varying sounds. And again, that's just one articulation. We could do this with everything we could say. We want a ride Cymbal every single time, so we simply would click the ride Cymbal right click and we say, We want the bell. We want that. Want to join that Now? The ride bells there, too. And maybe the ride bell. We only want to go between, I don't know, called 25 1 20 Let's do 25 100 for whatever reason. Now we can check it out, and it stops. So again, depending on how your Mideast programmed Theo. Obviously, there are no hits happening in that mini groove that are between the velocity layers on this snare drum, where we've added the mini note. There are no hits happening between 25 100. It's obviously all at this particular point time in the upper range, because we're hearing the floor time every time the snare drum hits. So it's between 1 26 and 27. So again, there's a whole world of opportunity for you to design sounds and put things together. That may not normally go together, and this will translate obviously to anything we've got going on here, right? Notice that here. The right symbol. So that was a pad. It would be the same thing. But this is where you can get truly crazy about customizing the way that you're sounds. Lineup. So some practical applications. One I use all the time when programming midi um, in superior drummer. That I find very useful is there is a particular sort of I don't want to call to fill, but we'll call it a transition. Follow me. Because if you're a songwriter producer effort where the drummer is ultimately just building between his snare drum and his floor, Tom and he builds up a song goes into a new part. A lot of times, the drummer is using a floor tom and snare drum that aren't giving Meet all the power that I want. So, Superior Drummer I could do exactly this where I can layer in a different tom at every velocity layer. So as the stairs building, there's a different time. That's building along with it. How many of these can you add? Well, there's 127 velocity layers so you could have 127 different articulations in one note. As long as they were assigned one each, I wouldn't recommend it. You're probably gonna have some problems later in life with that. But get crazy. We've seen nodes that really solve problems. We've seen notes that make playing an e kit or a keyboard better and again. Look at the difference here as I'm playing, and it's becoming louder and louder and louder. You really start to feel how important whatever your desired method of performance, it's pure. Drummer is so many nodes are incredibly useful and incredibly important. So let's let's take a look at a couple of things. So one of the best ways to see how many notes are used effectively as to open what we were talking about earlier, which is like our producer presets. Remember, we discussed how we give producers superior drummer and have them build drum sets based on their likings in their preferences. And in many instances, they're applying midi notes to make things bigger, fuller stronger. So let's say we were just going to, um, what's going to the tune track that stuff that comes with it and we'll dio It's to Rocky. I don't even know what that sounds like. Open. We can look at things. If there's any many nodes we can check, weaken, go, we can see things that doesn't seem that there are. And the reason I would say it doesn't seem that there are is because I don't see any extra ums, which is what we're about to talk about. So again, let's go back to the default kit. And then we're gonna show you how to add extra ums into your many notes selection and build your custom kits, which I know is what a lot of people are really excited about. OK, Trudeau, leave any questions about many nodes? We did not about many know specifically, but Nicola has a question. I used the learned function and override a key function. What happened to the other instrument? It's gone, meaning now there is no note that will trigger it. Correct. You you remove that. So you could, for instance, not gone forever. Like the samples not going anywhere right? You just need to re assign it to a different key. Okay, So, for instance, and that's a great thing. So we're backing mapping. So what he's saying is, let's say that he likes this Tom but he wants where this symbol would normally go. So he does a selection. He hits, learned, and now the symbol is no longer there. The Tom is being triggered there. What he would need to do is ultimately find where he would want that symbol. And he could add it back in as a different Ekstrom in this particular case. Or he could find it because again, when you look at our mini mapping and think of, ah, keyboard player on an 88 keyboard, a lot of things air repeated. So ultimately at middle C sometimes Okay, the same symbol that's here is also appear just based on the way someone's gonna play. So you could grab the sample from further down. You know, here's a ride crash, right, kick drum, high hat. We got all kinds of stuff stairs, right, so you can grab things from different places. So if you blow something out, of course, you can always go back and re set the defaults to, so you can go back in to the preset menu going Committee and go to default, and all of your mapping will go back to the default. And if you haven't saved, it is a preset it will. Anything you've done will go away so nothing is lost forever. It's probably just inconvenient. You have to search for it. And that's where actually going in having the mini map, even if you can print it out and have a next to you. A lot of times, that'll save you some time. When trying toe replace things and then pulled other things back in, it's kind of cool. Okay, so many nodes, Everybody's Cool with Right and O. D. Mini Node is a collection of what would normally be different Midi notes on one mini note now, and their velocity sensitive could be programmed. All of the things we talked about earlier could be applied to them, and they actually make sort of creating very dynamic and realistic sounds incredibly attainable in spirit. Drummer