Post by JohnG on Mar 24, 2009 11:26:18 GMT
Editing Percussion Velocities in CakeWalk
Okay then this one's especially for you Shyam! Sorry it took me so long to get round to it.
As always open the file in Cakewalk and immediately do a "Save As" with an altered name. Just in case!
Now click on the track number that is MIDI channel ten (the percussion channel), in this case track 12. You will see the data that is contained in the track change colour as below.
Now open the "Piano Roll" window and you should get something like the picture below. You may have to scroll up or down, left or right, to see the drum hits that you want to edit. Shyam was talking about MIDI note "F3" (as CakeWalk knows it) which equates to MIDI note number 53. Or in drum speak "ride cymbal".
In my example I am going to edit the "hi-hat open" sound. If you take a look at the piano roll (or drum roll if you like) you will see between the start of measure 6 and the end of measure 9 there is a whole series of hi-hat open hits (MIDI note no. 46) at alternate velocities 100 and 127. TOO LOUD MAN! And I want to scale those down a bit, but the 127 more than the 100.
We can double check the velocities we want to alter by taking a look in the "List View". There you can see the note number in the "Data" column and the velocity to the right. Yep, 100 and 127, confirmed. Close or minimise this window.
So with the drum track still selected (track 12 in my example file) we need to select "Edit" then "Interpolate" as shown.
Aargh! What the **** is all that! DON'T PANIC ... yet! Go to the "None" button in the bottom right hand corner and click on that.
Now you should see a window that looks like this. Not much better, I admit. Note the window name "Event Filter - Search". We are going to instruct Cakewalk to search the selected track for particular MIDI events and then, in another window, replace those events with different values.
What we want to edit are MIDI note events, drum notes!
So in the column marked "Include" click in the "Note" box. (See below) Then using the "tab" key on your keyboard tab across to "Key: Min". We are ignoring the "exc" (exclude box) because we want to include the following notes in our search. MIDI note no. 46 (hi-hat open) equates to note A# in octave 3 according to CakeWalk. (See the extra piccy below the current one.) So in the "Min" box we need to enter that as "a#3" (the note can be upper or lower case, CakeWalk will change it). As we want to edit just this MIDI note number, we enter the same value after tabbing across to "Key: Max" i.e "A#3" again.
Shyam, in your case enter "F3" in these two boxes to pick up the ride cymbal.
Now what we want to edit (in my file) is all those notes that fall in the velocity range "100 to 127". So, as you can see, I have entered those two values in the next two columns "Velocity Min" and "Velocity Max" tabbing over the "exc" (exclude) column on the way. I am going to leave the "Duration" fields set to include their minimum and maximum values. (They should be these valus by default.)
So, to summarise: Select (include) all note A#3 (no other notes) and include all with velocities between 100 and 127 and include notes of any duration. All set? Then click on "OK" in the top right corner of the window.
Oh no, not another! Not so bad this time. Note it's name "Event Filter - Replace". (See below)
In the "Key: Min" and "Key Max" boxes enter the values you want our previous note selection changed to.
Eh! But we don't want them changed to a different note, we still want our hi-hat as a hi-hat, or ride cymbal as a ride cymbal. Okay then enter A#3 in both columns (or F3, Shyam).
Now, what velocities do we want? Well, purely to see whether it sounds right, I am going to alter the 100 down 10 to 90 and the 127 down by 17 to 110. (I can always do a "Ctrl+Z" before saving to go back to the original values.) So let us enter "90" and "110" as our two values for "Velocity Min" and "Velocity Max".
We don't want to change the duration of the notes so we leave "Duration Min" and "Max" unchanged at their default minimum and maximums. Click on "OK", top right and the edit will be performed.
We can check whether the "Edit/Interpolate" has been successful by opening up the "Piano Roll" view and taking a look to see what has changed. Here it is, and bingo, 127s have come down to 110 and the 100s have gone down to 90. Ah, but does it sound right? Over to you.
And that concludes the lesson on scaling drum velocities.
Hope it has been of use, please let me know.
All the best,
JohnG.
Okay then this one's especially for you Shyam! Sorry it took me so long to get round to it.
As always open the file in Cakewalk and immediately do a "Save As" with an altered name. Just in case!
Now click on the track number that is MIDI channel ten (the percussion channel), in this case track 12. You will see the data that is contained in the track change colour as below.
Now open the "Piano Roll" window and you should get something like the picture below. You may have to scroll up or down, left or right, to see the drum hits that you want to edit. Shyam was talking about MIDI note "F3" (as CakeWalk knows it) which equates to MIDI note number 53. Or in drum speak "ride cymbal".
In my example I am going to edit the "hi-hat open" sound. If you take a look at the piano roll (or drum roll if you like) you will see between the start of measure 6 and the end of measure 9 there is a whole series of hi-hat open hits (MIDI note no. 46) at alternate velocities 100 and 127. TOO LOUD MAN! And I want to scale those down a bit, but the 127 more than the 100.
We can double check the velocities we want to alter by taking a look in the "List View". There you can see the note number in the "Data" column and the velocity to the right. Yep, 100 and 127, confirmed. Close or minimise this window.
So with the drum track still selected (track 12 in my example file) we need to select "Edit" then "Interpolate" as shown.
Aargh! What the **** is all that! DON'T PANIC ... yet! Go to the "None" button in the bottom right hand corner and click on that.
Now you should see a window that looks like this. Not much better, I admit. Note the window name "Event Filter - Search". We are going to instruct Cakewalk to search the selected track for particular MIDI events and then, in another window, replace those events with different values.
What we want to edit are MIDI note events, drum notes!
So in the column marked "Include" click in the "Note" box. (See below) Then using the "tab" key on your keyboard tab across to "Key: Min". We are ignoring the "exc" (exclude box) because we want to include the following notes in our search. MIDI note no. 46 (hi-hat open) equates to note A# in octave 3 according to CakeWalk. (See the extra piccy below the current one.) So in the "Min" box we need to enter that as "a#3" (the note can be upper or lower case, CakeWalk will change it). As we want to edit just this MIDI note number, we enter the same value after tabbing across to "Key: Max" i.e "A#3" again.
Shyam, in your case enter "F3" in these two boxes to pick up the ride cymbal.
Now what we want to edit (in my file) is all those notes that fall in the velocity range "100 to 127". So, as you can see, I have entered those two values in the next two columns "Velocity Min" and "Velocity Max" tabbing over the "exc" (exclude) column on the way. I am going to leave the "Duration" fields set to include their minimum and maximum values. (They should be these valus by default.)
So, to summarise: Select (include) all note A#3 (no other notes) and include all with velocities between 100 and 127 and include notes of any duration. All set? Then click on "OK" in the top right corner of the window.
Oh no, not another! Not so bad this time. Note it's name "Event Filter - Replace". (See below)
In the "Key: Min" and "Key Max" boxes enter the values you want our previous note selection changed to.
Eh! But we don't want them changed to a different note, we still want our hi-hat as a hi-hat, or ride cymbal as a ride cymbal. Okay then enter A#3 in both columns (or F3, Shyam).
Now, what velocities do we want? Well, purely to see whether it sounds right, I am going to alter the 100 down 10 to 90 and the 127 down by 17 to 110. (I can always do a "Ctrl+Z" before saving to go back to the original values.) So let us enter "90" and "110" as our two values for "Velocity Min" and "Velocity Max".
We don't want to change the duration of the notes so we leave "Duration Min" and "Max" unchanged at their default minimum and maximums. Click on "OK", top right and the edit will be performed.
We can check whether the "Edit/Interpolate" has been successful by opening up the "Piano Roll" view and taking a look to see what has changed. Here it is, and bingo, 127s have come down to 110 and the 100s have gone down to 90. Ah, but does it sound right? Over to you.
And that concludes the lesson on scaling drum velocities.
Hope it has been of use, please let me know.
All the best,
JohnG.