General midi drum format?

I am trying to sequence a drum machine with the MPC one, which seemse like exactly what it would be good for, but the notes are all over the place instead of a reasonable order. When I go through the trouble of finding out what notes are assigned to what pads, then what the midi note is for each, I then go to reassign the notes to the correct pads- right? But as I do so, when I do them one at a time, when I reassign them all in one group, either way they come out a crazy mess, or notes drop out of nowhere, and then reassigning them means more snafus. This is on the latest firmware, and I am completely perplexed as to what to do.

Thank you for your attention.

What does it have to do with general midi? The drum machine is not necessarily following that format. What is the model of the drum machine? If it's digital it would be quicker to just sample the sounds you need and ditch the drum machine. Anyway why do need to remap any note or pad on the mpc? You don't need to. You're making things more complicated than they need to be.

Drums are from notes 36-51.

Here is the midi notes for drum pad, you'll want to map your slave devices to this layout in order to be triggered correctly. Since we cannot remap anything on the mpc midi note-wise (yet) we have to force our devices to meet the mpc's desires.


48 49 50 51
44 45 46 47
40 41 42 43
36 37 38 39

Thanks for the help. I want to trigger the drum machine for tastier, more humanized edits and rolls, also so I can edit perameters on the fly and not have to just have static samples.

Seems to me like this would be a default. Ah well.

Ultros wrote: Since we cannot remap anything on the mpc midi note-wise (yet) we have to force our devices to meet the mpc's desires.

Yes we can:

MAIN > program row pencil icon > Edit Note Map

Just be aware that when remapping the MPC might juggle stuff around to avoid assigning the same note to multiple pads, so after setting up go back and check as you might need to re-do a few of the pads.

WOW! thanks tutor! I've completely overlooked that. I knew about the chromatic c1 & c2 classic mpc layouts but didnt realise i can assign them above i guess i just gapped it. i remapped all my devices for classic mpc layout.

When remapping I lose notes every time. Is there not some better way to do this? Some of my machines won't let you reassign their midi notes. This is exhausting, is there no better way to do this?

The trick is to press the data-wheel and then select the note from the menu instead of just turning the data-wheel to select the note. When you scroll through the notes, a previously selected note can be changed because the software tries to avoid assigning the same notes to different pads as Tutor mentioned earlier.

Hoekschop wrote:The trick is to press the data-wheel and then select the note from the menu instead of just turning the data-wheel to select the note. When you scroll through the notes, a previously selected note can be changed because the software tries to avoid assigning the same notes to different pads as Tutor mentioned earlier.

Good tip!

Ultros wrote:Drums are from notes 36-51.

Here is the midi notes for drum pad, you'll want to map your slave devices to this layout in order to be triggered correctly. Since we cannot remap anything on the mpc midi note-wise (yet) we have to force our devices to meet the mpc's desires.


48 49 50 51
44 45 46 47
40 41 42 43
36 37 38 39

this worked great with an rd8, but with my xlr-02 I needed to remap the note assignments from the sound module itself. For this, for whatever reason when set on MPC classic mode, was set two octaves too high. I adjusted it for just this, and everything worked like a charm. onward now, to underground superstardom.

I’m stumbling over this. It seems to be one of those things…
To a long-term MPC user, I guess your pads are the center of the universe, and your midi tracks are internal to your machine, and making external devices work with your internal tracks is… Why?
To me as a noob the answer is because I want my tracks to be portable across machines and I want to just take that portability for granted. With few exceptions modern drum machines have some predictable midi note maps. If you have some ancient piece of gear from before the mid 1980s maybe not.
But if the MPC is the center of your universe and every sequence has a kit of samples that is a special snowflake with its own inner truth, who cares about note mapping? You want an outside sound you sample it, you don’t play it live.
My first love was tape recorders. I learned to love overdubbing and splicing long before I dared be interested in music. The MPC is just the biggest, mightiest, Death Star of a tape recorder. So why does midi matter to me? Same reason automation matters to me; it saves hella time. But only if it is thoughtfully organized.
Being able to easily move musical and sonic ideas around from one kind of a machine to another is an absolute deal-breaker of a necessity. I assume that kind of capability is built into any midi device made in the last twenty years. I assume a cheesy cha-cha pattern on my Yamaha QY22 might need tweaks but will basically play on my Roland MC-909. Even my truly-messed-up Boss DR-202 can play that cha-cha if I re-arrange the percussion just a bit.
I assume I can walk from one machine into another and not get totally lost. The ability to build drum kits means the choice to make kits that work with many different drum machines and midi files. Why ever choose not to?
Ben

blakeAlbion wrote:The ability to build drum kits means the choice to make kits that work with many different drum machines and midi files. Why ever choose not to?
Ben

Music to my ears..

My favorite (professionally created) drum kit is the 1977 Session Kit from Pad Pimps / MPC-Samples - it's beautiful, but the designer is unapologetically anti GM so the MIDI mapping is useless to me.
Wonderful to play (finger drum) though.
However, imagine if all those 50 million SMF songs you can find for free everywhere on the internet (the majority of which are incredibly well programmed) could drive top shelf drum kits like this right out of the box... Seems like a small amount of effort to build that decades old compatibility in, even if just as an optional kit variation..

I've created/ported a few kits over from my Alesis drum machines to MPC recently and will be GM-ifying them for future compatibility.. as best I can..

Rocky wrote:My favorite (professionally created) drum kit is the 1977 Session Kit from Pad Pimps / MPC-Samples - it's beautiful, but the designer is unapologetically anti GM so the MIDI mapping is useless to me.
Wonderful to play (finger drum) though.

Thank you for the kind words about the 1977 Session Kit. I'm not specifically anti-GM, but when I first started making these kits JJOS was popular and this had a fixed chromatic mapping and I wanted to ensure the pad layout was 'finger drumming friendly', so I focussed on the pad layout and the underlying MIDI notes were what they were.

GM mapping is not something I've ever seen built into any other MPC kit, for example Akai's own kits are either just chromatic mapping (a C1 or C-2 with DrumSynth) or even just the random legacy mapping (which is also not GM, for example the snare is often note 36, kick 37 etc).

But I have definitely considered just moving everything over to a modified GM mapping, I do understand the convenience of being able to load GM midi files. I'm cautious of trying to offer GM in addition to the existing mappings as it adds clutter (ideally I would just have a folder with the GM XPM files and not have to also include copies of all the samples, but the MPC doesn't work like that).
It also means all the included MIDI patterns would need multiple versions for all the different mappings. I'm very aware of the ball ache of trying to cater to multiple mappings from my work on Hip Hop Drum Patterns (which contains separate MIDI versions for my kits, new and old Akai factory kits, drumSynth, GM etc). And as mentioned previously, catering for legacy MPCs is in itself a ball ache.

Hence it would probably have to be all or nothing IMO, but there will inevitably be 'pain' if I switch the core underlying mapping as people will have created stuff using the older mappings which will no longer work with the new stuff (including my own provided patterns and sequences - will I need to also offer multiple legacy mappings for all my own MIDI?).

When developing anything there are always lots of decisions to make, e.g. pad layout, use of FX, mixer settings etc. So for example, most people will have a preferred pad layout, so it's never going to be possible to please everyone, so I pick a layout and if you prefer something else you can change this using the 'copy pad' functions. Similarly if you don't like the mixer settings, tweak in the pad mixer and re-save. And for MIDI mapping, use the 'Edit Note Mapping' option.

But I appreciate the GM is a standard, albeit a standard that MPC (and Akai) have tended to ignore , but if people want me to provide GM mapped versions, or even switch to a GM map default for all my kits, I'm happy to listen.

I'd also be interested in hearing suggestions for the exact mapping to use, because beyond the absolute basics (kick, snare, closed hat, etc) there is definitely variance across many of the popular commercial kits out there when it comes to dealing with multiple articulations in multisampled kits. For example, note 40 is sometimes used for a rim shot (roland V drums, Superior Drummer) but Yamaha rimshot is 34, Abbey road 60s rimshot is 39, so importing MIDI recordings originally made with these different kits will require tweaking no matter which modified GM layout you use.

Another potential issue to consider is that 12 velocity layer kits utilize 3 pads per articulation (e.g. a kick could take up MIDI notes 36, 100, 101), so we have to ensure that the additional two pads are assigned MIDI notes well outside the range that might be used within any imported MIDI file, otherwise we can end up with lots of accidentally triggered hits.

this (mapping) is specified in the GM standard format default

if you use MIDI ch 10, the format is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_MIDI

(scroll to Percussion)

-are there no programs (or devices) that will translate a given note to another note so you can translate those MIDI patterns into GM ones ?

Standard GM format is very basic, for example there is just one closed hi hat note (42). Most multisampled kits support multiple closed hi hat articulations, e.g. closed hat centre, edge, extra tight, hit with shank of stock, hit with tip of stick etc. So most modern sampled acoustic kits use a heavily modified GM layout utilizing the notes outside the normal GM range for all the extra articulations, but there are no universally accepted note assignments in this respect, one manufacturer might use note 22 for an edge closed hat, the other might have used that same note 22 for his snare rimshot.

Hence if a MIDI drum pattern was recorded using a specific multisampled kit with its own unique modified GM mapping, many of the notes will not translate well to a different kit. The 'core' GM notes will be fine, but you will likely have to get in there and tweak unless your software specifically supports converting between known formats (e.g. Superior Drummer, Addictive drums etc), and assuming you know what the source MIDI was recorded with. But basic drum MIDI files that only use strict GM assignments will not be a problem.

In terms of converting, if you have many MIDI files to import, all of which use the same mapping, the most common solution IMO is to change the note assignments in your own kit to match the incoming MIDI.

wavejockey wrote:this (mapping) is specified in the GM standard format default

if you use MIDI ch 10, the format is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_MIDI

(scroll to Percussion)

-are there no programs (or devices) that will translate a given note to another note so you can translate those MIDI patterns into GM ones ?