Obvious drum panning question - I'm just NOT seeing it...

[PaulG]

Ok, I'm not THAT new, BUT I'm missing something obvous here.

I've got Sonar, Kompakt, a bunch of drum sounds I can load and convert into anything I want, but can't figure out if I split the drum sounds into groups for individual processing - like cymbals, snare, kick, toms, exactly HOW to set the individual panning within that group knowing that they will each have their own midi track.

For example - one track for cymbals, (or one instance of whatever), but how do I pan, say, hh left, ride right, crashes around wherever, all within the same "kit" and track?

Do I need a "drum controller" like dr008?

Like I said, I already have the sounds I want, but...garsh, hadn't had any hard liquor in quite a long time so I know my vision isn't THAT blurry...

Thanks to you all who contribute

- Paul

[greendoor]

Yes - I would recommend a dedicated drum sample player like DR008. I use Linplug RMIV myself, but you will want a directX one - doesn't DR008 come with Sonar? Anyway - midi and audio are two seperate issues. You can program each drum or cymbal to a seperate track if you prefer, or lump them all together in one midi track. Whatever suits your style. Personally, I lump kick and snare together, both high hats to another track (I actually use that as my metronome. I like to place crash cymbals at the start of Verse Chorus etc and label these as Verse Chorus etc. At least for arranging purposes - could be replaced with a real cymbal track later.

As for VSTi - each track could have their own VSTi, but I normally have one instance of my drum sample player, and maybe several stereo audio outputs. That way I can have different stereo effects on different groups of drums.

[greendoor]

As for panning - it's an artistic decision. The best advice is: will there be a video and will you see the 'drummer' playing the kit? If yes - it makes good sense to pan the drums so they appear as you see on screen. A tom fill going left to right would seem strange if the audio went right to left ...

Generally the kick and snare are centred, but dare to be different if you will.

[sangha]

I've got Sonar, Kompakt, a bunch of drum sounds I can load and convert into anything I want, but can't figure out if I split the drum sounds into groups for individual processing - like cymbals, snare, kick, toms, exactly HOW to set the individual panning within that group knowing that they will each have their own midi track.

What I'm doing is taking all of my audio tracks for a specific drum (ex kick) and sending them to a group. Each of the individual audio tracks has whatever effects (ex. EQ, compression) it needs, and in addition, the group channel they all feed may have additional insert fx, to help meld the sounds into one. The group channel is then panned (in the case of the kick, to the center).

Then, if I want to be able to mute/quiet/louden some elements, I start grouping my individual drums into groups such as "toms", "cymbals", etc.

Finally, I group all of the drums together into a drum kit. Then I can raise and lower it's level as a whole instrument.

Using a system like this, you can adjust the imaging in a number of ways. To get a wide image, you can pan all of the elements that make up the individual drum to both the far left and right (assuming your tracks are in stereo, otherwise you can send them to a group before sending them to the drums individual group), or you can pan one element to the right and one to the left, sometimes with a slight delay on one side (this is often done with guitars - "doubling"). To get a narrower image, just dont pan them so wide.

As far as the splitting of the MIDI tracks, in Cubase, there's a feature that lets you take a midi track and split it into several tracks, one track for each MIDI note # thats in the original track.