Cubase and EZ Drummer tracks

[Jackslap]

I hope I can explain this coherently. I am new to cubase by about 10 days, and I know enough to make problems for myself. I can open projects, create a track (using EZ drummer in this case) and I can use the drum editor option to lay out a "rock" drum track using the basic EZD kit.

I want to use the tambourine sound in the latin kit also though. So I set up the drums on one track using the rock kit, and set up the tambourine using the latin kit on another track.

The problem is when I play it back, the rock drums have now become latin drums, and if I play of the first track, the tambourine then becomes a cymbal. WTF?

Am I skipping a step here or what? Am I supposed to "record" one of the tracks first? I thought that by using the drum editor and EZD, I WAS recording it.

[sparqee]

In Cubase you assign a midi track to a midi instrument (or in your case ezDrummer which is a VSTi). You have two instances of ezDrummer. One is the "rock" kit and one is the "latin" kit. One way to handle this is to make a separate midi track for the tambourine and assign that track to the latin kit. If you really want to keep all your midi percussion on a single midi track then you can create a drum map that assigns the tambourine notes (C0-D#0) to the latin kit and all the rest to the rock kit. Look up "drum maps" in your Cubase Operation Manual.

- Sparqee

[Jackslap]

Thanks for your quick reply. So lets see if i get it, I can have two tracks, one for rock and one for latin, but I need to "assign" the latin kit to one track, and "assign" the rock kit to the other. I don't know how to assign them though independently of one another.

Now, you also say I can look up drum maps and keep all the percussion on one track which would really be desirable so I'll look into that.

[sparqee]

What version of Cubase are you using? SX3, LE4, etc. Windows or Mac?

- Sparqee

[Jackslap]

SX3, sorry should have included that in the very beginning.

[sparqee]

Here are some screen shots. In the first one you can see that midi track 1 (rock) is assigned to ezDrummer 1 (which is the instance of ezDrummer that is loaded with the full kit).



In this second screenshot you see that midi track 2 (Latin) is assigned to the second instance of ezDrummer (which is loaded with the latin percussion)



If you want to set up a custom drum map so that you can have all the midi notes in a single track then open up the Drum Map setup dialog:


And then scroll down to the notes that trigger the tambourine samples in ezDrummer and assign those notes to the second instance of ezDrummer:

[Jackslap]

Thanks man. I didn't know I could use EZ Drummer as two instruments. Well, I didn't know I had to anyway. Once I set it up as running two instances of itself, it worked great.

I can't do the drum map thing to keep all the drums on one midi track because I don't have any midi input device as yet. I'm just using the mouse to click the appropriate beats in the drum manager screen. But your solution worked. Thanks again.