Session Drummer 3 recording seperate tracks..

[awaken1]

I recently upgraded to Producer 8.5..It's AWESOME and many thanks to the ones on here who recommended it!

the only thing that's keeping me from recording is an issue with Session Drummer 3 that I can't seem to figure out.

I can activate the sounds through SD3 w/ my dr-670 drum machine, and I have each drum set up in its own audio track, but for some reason, it wont record anything..also is there anyway to convert the midi tracks once recorded to an audio (wave) track, so they can be mixed and edited separately?

any help would be great..

Thanks!

T~

[michaelrb]

Not familiar with session drummer, but if it is a software synth, the midi tracks, once in sonar can be frozen or bounced to audio. Go through the tutorials regarding the use of soft synths.

If you are using a hardware synth, then you need to record it to an audio track. First create a new audio track, arm it to record. Mute all other tracks except the midi tracks you want to record, make sure your metronome setting won't be creating sound, and record your midi to the new audio track. Hope this helps. Good luck.

[Danny Danzi]

Originally Posted by awaken1

I recently upgraded to Producer 8.5..It's AWESOME and many thanks to the ones on here who recommended it!

the only thing that's keeping me from recording is an issue with Session Drummer 3 that I can't seem to figure out.

I can activate the sounds through SD3 w/ my dr-670 drum machine, and I have each drum set up in its own audio track, but for some reason, it wont record anything..also is there anyway to convert the midi tracks once recorded to an audio (wave) track, so they can be mixed and edited separately?

any help would be great..

Thanks!

T~

Awaken, yeah it's simple bro. You can either freeze each one (which is the same as a wave file you just can't work on anything that is frozen in real time without unfreezing it, making changes and refreezing) or hi-lite and click edit, then process and it will bounce to wave. I think it's edit...lol....I just know when I'm in there...wherever you see bounce to track...that's what you want. I usually do the freeze method until I'm really set with everyting, then I bounce each drum track to a separate wave for full control...which also frees up cpu power from the drum module. Hope this helps.

[awaken1]

Thanks brutha Dan! You da man! Gonna go hook that Sh*t up and give er a run through after get some grub. be back with results..later.

I like this statement (info).."then I bounce each drum track to a separate wave for full control"
I am a total control freak/perfectionist with music so that works for me..lol
Which is why it's gonna take me a while to get something on here to bash..

Thanks again bro! truly appriciate all the help you give everyone here!

[Danny Danzi]

Thanks awaken, you're very welcome. Make sure you let me know how this works for you. There is another method I can share with you since you're a control freak like me....but I warn you, it ain't gonna be pretty and you're gonna be left with about 40 more tracks than usual.....but man, it's sooo sweet to have that control!!! LOL!! If you're interested, let me know and I'll hook you up with it.

[awaken1]

Hey Danny, sorry it to so long to get back to you..I was able to get all the drums to there individual tracks, and cusomize the kit the way i wanted although all the snare samples kinda suck, I'm looking for kind of a dave wekl/steve gadd kind of "crack" sound..back in the early 90's I splerged and bought a 8"x14 Tama Artstar birds eye maple with the tube lugs..That thing was a work of art!! and the sound was incredible live and recorded.. sounded like a rifle being shot..crisp and deep!!!the lugs started slipping so i sent it in to be fixed and never got it back.. long story. I'll spare ya! ha!

Anyway, when i push play on the drum machine, the pattern (beat) that I programed comes out of session drummer sounding all wacked out.. like "thats not what I programmed in the drum machine"..then when I play back the recording it sounds normal..well, not normal but as normal as a drum machine can sound..the hi hats were pretty aweful..definately machanical sounding..so i realized this is seeming like to much work.. then I expierented with parallel compression and the drum machine sounds, and found that to be some what accetable.. amazing how that works..really cleans things up nice and adds a lot of punch..So I'm probably just gonna go with that for now..now I just gotta find a way to get a good guitar sound with amp simulators..lol

Thanks again for your help bro, always appriciated..

[Danny Danzi]

No problem man....just don't EVER take that long to get back to me again, cause you know I worry like a father! LMAO!!!

Hmm, I got no problems getting killer sounds out of EZD and get really good crack type stuff out of it. What kit are you using, the stock one? I use a hybrid of the pop/rock kit and drums from hell all at the same time. I've never donea track out of a drum machine, but I'll share a little of what I do which may help you a bit.

I record my tracks using V Drums. I play the kit to the best of my ability and quantize a few sections that may need some fixing. Once all that is done of course, you have one midi track with all the instrumentation on one track, right? This is where the Sonar CAL files come in. I use one I created for myself which is a variation of the "split notes to tracks" CAL, but mine is custon for my kits and midi notes and assignments. I use the CAL and it splits the midi track up into individual tracks. From there, I can load up a few instances of EZD, mix the kits up using a few modules etc and I set up the outputs. From there, if I need a little more of something, I can run Drumagog on one of the tracks to enhance it a bit more, or I'll clone some of the tracks and run BFD 2 behind the scenes and tune the kit to match. The cool thing about BFD is it adds realistic room sounding drums and just adds to the fullness.

This method has been working wonders for me. You even have the ability to turn the tracks into audio which is what I wind up doing after I'm done making all my changes. Again though, I've never tried to do this with a drum machine feed or anything, so I don't know what would happen if I did, but it's gotta be similar to what I do. I'm not sure why your stuff isn't turning out like you want it to. That part is a bit strange. If you want dude, just for the hell of it, I can try my hybrid method on your drum parts sometime and see how they work? Just send me your drum midi track via email. You can pm me and I'll give you my addy. At least I can see if things get all jacked up on my end when I try to apply EZD on your stuff...if you want that is. Talk soon bro.

[Nigel451964]

Hi,

I've been looking at session drummer in SONAR 8 but I don't know how it works. Do I need a MIDI controller or synth to use it?

[awaken1]

Originally Posted by Nigel451964

Hi,

I've been looking at session drummer in SONAR 8 but I don't know how it works. Do I need a MIDI controller or synth to use it?

You can build drum tracks with the step sequencer in sonar using session drummer..if you go to the cakewalk sonar page they have a couple videos that show you how to do it..no controller or synth needed..

[Nigel451964]

Thank you for your help.