Steinberg Cubase SE 3 Operation Manual

CUBASE SE
The MIDI editors 21 – 431
• You can quickly audition the drum sounds by clicking in the leftmost 
column in the drum sound list.
This plays the corresponding note.
• Clicking with the Drumstick tool on an existing note will remove it.
This makes drum pattern editing very quick and intuitive.
Setting velocity values
The notes you enter will get the insert velocity value set in the insert 
velocity field on the toolbar – to speed up things you may want to as-
sign key commands to the insert...

CUBASE SE
21 – 432 The MIDI editors
When you are moving or copying several selected notes by dragging 
them and Snap is activated but Use Global Quantize turned off, the 
notes will snap to positions according to the quantize values for the 
drum sounds. If the moved/copied notes have different quantize val-
ues, the largest value will determine snapping. For example, if you are 
moving two notes, with the quantize values 1/16 and 1/4 respectively, 
the notes will snap to quarter notes (1/4).
• You can...

CUBASE SE
The MIDI editors 21 – 433
Other editing methods
As in the Key Editor, you can edit notes on the info line or via MIDI, 
and enter notes using step input. Please refer to page 412.
Working with drum maps
Background
As discussed earlier, a drum kit in a MIDI instrument is most often a 
set of different drum sounds with each sound placed on a separate 
key (i.e. the different sounds are assigned to different MIDI note num-
bers). One key plays a bass drum sound, another a snare and so on....

CUBASE SE
21 – 434 The MIDI editors
Drum map settings
A drum map consists of settings for 128 drum sounds (one for each 
MIDI note number). To get an overview of these settings, open the 
Drum Editor and use the Map pop-up menu below the drum sound list 
to select the “GM Map” drum map.
This drum map is set up according to the General MIDI standard. For information on 
how to load, create and select other drum maps, see page 438.
Now, take a look at the drum sound list (you may have to drag the di-
vider...

CUBASE SE
The MIDI editors 21 – 435
Here’s a brief description (details follow below):
• All settings in a drum map (except the Pitch setting) can be changed 
directly in the drum sound list, or in the Drum Map Setup dialog (see 
page 439).
Note that the changes you make will affect all tracks that use the drum map.
About Pitch, I-note and O-note
This can be a somewhat confusing area, but once you’ve grasped 
how it all works it’s not very complicated. Going through the following 
“theory” will help you...

CUBASE SE
21 – 436 The MIDI editors
In the following example, we have modified the drum map, so that the 
Bass Drum sound has different Pitch, I-note and O-note values.
I-notes
Let’s look at what happens on input: When you play a note on your 
MIDI instrument, the program will look for this note number among the 
I-notes in the drum map. In our case, if you play the note A1, the pro-
gram will find that this is the I-note of the Bass Drum sound.
This is where the first transformation happens: the note...

CUBASE SE
The MIDI editors 21 – 437
Usage
So, what’s the point of all this? Again, the purposes are different for 
I-notes and O-notes:
• Changing the I-note settings allows you to choose which keys will play 
which drum sounds, when playing or recording from a MIDI instrument.
For example, you may want to place some drum sounds near each other on the key-
board so that they can be easily played together, move sounds so that the most impor-
tant sounds can be played from a short keyboard, play a sound...

CUBASE SE
21 – 438 The MIDI editors
• To select the same MIDI channel for all sounds in a drum map, click the 
Channel column, press [Ctrl]/[Command] and select the desired channel.
All drum sounds will be set to this MIDI channel. The same procedure can be used for 
selecting the same MIDI output for all sounds as well.
It can also be useful to select different channels and/or outputs for dif-
ferent sounds. This allows you to construct drum kits with sounds 
from several different MIDI devices, etc....

CUBASE SE
The MIDI editors 21 – 439
The Drum Map Setup dialog
To set up and manage your drum maps, select Drum Map Setup from 
the Map pop-up menus or the MIDI menu. This opens the following 
dialog:
This is where you load, create, modify and save drum maps. The list to 
the left shows the currently loaded drum maps; selecting a drum map 
in the list displays its sounds and settings to the right.
• The settings for the drum sounds are exactly the same as in the Drum 
Editor (see page 434).
As in the Drum...

CUBASE SE
21 – 440 The MIDI editors
• Drum maps are saved with the project files. If you have created or mod-
ified a drum map, you should use the Save function to store it as a sep-
arate file, available for loading into other projects.
If you always want to have the same drum map(s) included in your projects, you may 
want to load these into the default project – see page 540.
O-Note Conversion
This function on the MIDI menu goes through the selected MIDI part(s) 
and sets the actual pitch of each note...