Is your Daw able to do this?

[Saffran]

CbB imports (or open, or dragndrop) midifiles with instruments on multiple channels fine and each channel get its own track. But...
The channel with drums (ch10) have multiple instruments but are only given one track. It would be nice if channel 10 also could be split into tracks for used notes automatically.

Is there any daw that could do this?

PS. CbB have this, track subtracks called lanes, which would fit this function perfectly. I would love to see this implemented.

PPS. I know of the CAL script. I agree with those complaining. Workarounds is kind of bad.

[JoseC.]

I believe the way CbB does it is as automatic as it can get, I would not call Split Notes to Tracks a "workaround". You can even assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Drums in channel 10 is just a General Midi file format thing, not any kind of universal midi standard. You would need to tell your DAW to do it, there is nothing in the file itself to make channel 10 any different to the other channels.

[Saffran]

The daw itself is also a script. A huge humongous script. The midi information tells other software if it's type 1 or 0. The software then have script for midi that tells it what to do.

For a good programmer it wouldn't be that difficult to add to the script:
When midi is type 1 - check for channel 10 - check inside channel 10 for number of used notes and which notes it is - make a new track for each of these notes with use of that information - set these new tracks to channel 10 - move the notes over to their tracks - (Delete or leave channel 10 track empty, this is where i'm unsure about what's doable.)

An educated guess is that 97 % of midifiles use channel 10 for drums. General midi is a standard.

[jancivil]

So yeah, you want each piece of the kit, which always agrees with a particular note number to become its own track.
That's not rocket science.

I bet Cubase Logical Editor can work it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it will. There are already presets "High note to Channel 1" etc.

[jancivil]

Logic as well.

[dreamkeeper]

I have to ask... what's the point of having an individual track for each drum piece? Makes editing the drums more clunky than necessary, no?

If you want to route each note# to its own instrument, then drum maps is the answer.

[JoseC.]

An educated guess is that 97 % of midifiles use channel 10 for drums. General midi is a standard.

Yes, but not all standard midi files are General Midi. I do not want the Split Notes to Track to happen automatically every time I import a file with data on channel 10, when I can select ANY track, any channel, after the fact and just hit a key shortcut if and when I want.

[Saffran]

I have to ask... what's the point of having an individual track for each drum piece? Makes editing the drums more clunky than necessary, no? If you want to route each note# to its own instrument, then drum maps is the answer.

I thought it would be easier to mess with individual notes/instrument without affecting the other ones. And easier to change to any intrument, not just percussion.
There could be a setting in preferences if you like drumnotes to associate with channel 10 or a random channel number.

But i'm probably wrong. I'm playing guitar so what do i know about using daws. Nothing.
And like so many others i'm lazy. Don't like to do more than i'm forced to.

[jancivil]

If it's just a drum kit, there's not a big upside if any to doing it that way. If you want some of the notes to go to other whole instruments that's a perfectly cromulent notion.

I create a drum map, using Cubase's drum map and in the key editor aka piano roll the notes show what I named the slots.
I don't even use the drum editor, which is only a visual difference which some prefer. I don't dislike it but I prefer not to have the additional window showing just because I have a drums track. That's in Preferences. I don't think any DAW is going to know 'drumnotes' automatically at the level of preferences. Think about it. You want channel 10 to mean drumnotes through itself? This is determined by you, NB: 'drumnotes' has no meaning at all until you plug the track into a drum instrument. It it's Cubase (and I really don't know how anything else works tbh) it can deal in terms of determining the Instrument Track is going to the Halion SE sampler by default. Beyond that I don't know.

[JoseC.]

I have to ask... what's the point of having an individual track for each drum piece? Makes editing the drums more clunky than necessary, no? If you want to route each note# to its own instrument, then drum maps is the answer.

I thought it would be easier to mess with individual notes/instrument without affecting the other ones. And easier to change to any intrument, not just percussion.
There could be a setting in preferences if you like drumnotes to associate with channel 10 or a random channel number.

But i'm probably wrong. I'm playing guitar so what do i know about using daws. Nothing.
And like so many others i'm lazy. Don't like to do more than i'm forced to.

Take into account that there are several ways to do that in CbB. You can split notes to tracks, OR create a drummap as already said, OR even easier, you can convert the midi clips to step sequencer clips and assign each lane to a different instrument track and edit all from there.

Adding preference options for these kind of things is not such a good idea. It would lead to huge preference menus and confusing behaviours, IMO.

[zzz00m]

PreSonus Studio One Prime (free) or higher can do it.

Open your MIDI clip in S1 and right click, "Explode pitches to tracks". You will then get a new track for each note pitch in the clip.

Then with all new drum tracks selected use S1 menu "Event > Export Selection", & save as MIDI File.

Open the MIDI file in CbB and you will have all of the separate tracks. You may need to adjust the track outputs to channel 10, or whatever your drum instrument is using.

Reaper can also do this.

Open your MIDI clip in Reaper and right click, "Item Processing > Explode MIDI item by note row". You will get a new track for each note pitch.

Then menu "Actions > File: Export Project MIDI". Open the file in CbB.

Yep, it's a workaround, but it works well, and no scripting required!

[pottering]

In Ableton you can "extract Chains" from "Drum Racks":



Not only it takes the notes from the selected pad ("Chain") into a new track, but also the loaded sound.

Though you can already load MIDI and Audio FX separately in each pad, if adding an arp or an FX to a single sound is what you want to do.



Drum Racks even have their own Return chains (work just like a Bus/Return track).



https://patches.zone/opening-up-the-abl ... -drum-rack

[JoseC.]

PreSonus Studio One Prime (free) or higher can do it.

Open your MIDI clip in S1 and right click, "Explode pitches to tracks". You will then get a new track for each note pitch in the clip.

Then with all new drum tracks selected use S1 menu "Event > Export Selection", & save as MIDI File.

Open the MIDI file in CbB and you will have all of the separate tracks. You may need to adjust the track outputs to channel 10, or whatever your drum instrument is using.

Reaper can also do this.

Open your MIDI clip in Reaper and right click, "Item Processing > Explode MIDI item by note row". You will get a new track for each note pitch.

Then menu "Actions > File: Export Project MIDI". Open the file in CbB.

Yep, it's a workaround, but it works well, and no scripting required!

Nope.

You did not get it. He wants that to happen automatically on file load. Cakewalk splits notes to tracks just fine, but you have to run the process yourself, exactly the same as in Reaper and S1.

[JoseC.]

PreSonus Studio One Prime (free) or higher can do it.

Open your MIDI clip in S1 and right click, "Explode pitches to tracks". You will then get a new track for each note pitch in the clip.

Then with all new drum tracks selected use S1 menu "Event > Export Selection", & save as MIDI File.

Open the MIDI file in CbB and you will have all of the separate tracks. You may need to adjust the track outputs to channel 10, or whatever your drum instrument is using.

Reaper can also do this.

Open your MIDI clip in Reaper and right click, "Item Processing > Explode MIDI item by note row". You will get a new track for each note pitch.

Then menu "Actions > File: Export Project MIDI". Open the file in CbB.

Yep, it's a workaround, but it works well, and no scripting required!

Nope.

You did not get it. He wants that to happen automatically on file load. Cakewalk splits notes to tracks just fine, but you have to run the process yourself, exactly the same as in Reaper and S1. BTW, the "script" is a CAL routine that has been native to Cakewalk for years, and is in the menu, together with a bunch ot other utilities. There is no scripting involved at all.

[Saffran]

PreSonus Studio One Prime (free) or higher can do it.

Open your MIDI clip in S1 and right click, "Explode pitches to tracks". You will then get a new track for each note pitch in the clip.

Then with all new drum tracks selected use S1 menu "Event > Export Selection", & save as MIDI File.

Open the MIDI file in CbB and you will have all of the separate tracks. You may need to adjust the track outputs to channel 10, or whatever your drum instrument is using.

Thanks for the info!
I'll try that because i have a free S1 (prime?) that i got with an audiobox.
I am a bit curious how it is to work in S1 but have not even tried it because i read that you can't use vst plugins.

JoseC. The S1 way is fewer steps if i continue to work on the file in S1. We will see.
And it's a more natural way of doing things in a pc. You rightclick and get options instead of moving away from the workarea and go to the window menu and select something and get a new window and fill in something.