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Actually the easiest thing is that I just create a bunch of MIDI Device Groups and add them to my templates. I was able to create a monster MIDI Device group with all of the note names for Superior2-Avatar. Most of the time you only need to see a small subset of those names on a track.

What I have figured out is this, the "Drum Kit" feature of DP has nothing to do with names, it only configures WHICH NOTES are showing on the grid and in what order, how they are grouped, etc; without regard to how they are named. They provided two GM sets. If you drag and drop a MIDI file into DP, it will update the drum grid to have all the notes contained in the MIDI file, in addition to whatever was there before, if they weren't all there already. Again, no note names. After doing that, you can change what notes are showing on the grid and in what order by selecting a different "drum kit".

The names that are shown are entirely associated with the MIDI Device Group that happens to be used at the time. If you update any of the names, they are updated for the current MIDI Device Group and saved in that project file only.

What I did was:

- Create instrument track hosting Superior2

- Create a MIDI Device Group called "Superior2-1" that sends its output to Superior Drummer VI

- Create a MIDI track that sends to the Superior2-1 MIDI Device Group.

- Went into drum grid and on the bottom row of the note names there is a triangle to enter "Add range of notes". So I entered C-1 through G8, which basically filled the drum grid with all the possible notes of the entire range.

- Saved the drum kit as "Superior-Avatar-full", meaning this will be the full keyboard range of ALL notes in the kit.

- Manually changed the names of all the notes according to the Superior2 documentation, reordered them a bit to group all the snares together, all the hats together, etc.

- Deleted the two tracks so that I had an empty project again(but the MIDI Device Group is still there, even though it no longer is configured to send to the Superior VI anymore due to the track has been removed).

- Saved as Template

Now when I use this template, all I have to do is create the VI track, go into MIDI Device Group and configure Superior1-2 to send to the VI, then create the MIDI track to send to the MIDI Device Group, and if I go into the drum grid, I will not see any notes. But as notes are added to the track, then I will see them appear and they will have the names. I do *NOT* load the drum kit I saved earlier because that would load all 127 note names into the drum grid, many not needed. Just drag a MIDI file onto it or record some drum parts and only the actual notes being used will show up as rows in the drum grid, but they'll all have the right names(which are saved in the Superior2-1 MIDI Device Group).

If I need more instances of Superior, I would have to copy the MIDI Device Group and configure it.

This is all workable. Its not that difficult, but just not completely obvious how to do it. Motu should really make this more intuitive, but this does at least work for now. You're right, using load could help too, But either I have to have a file somewhere that has a bunch of MIDI Device Groups for all my different Superior drum kits in it, and they would all be loaded into any project I'm working on. Or else I would just put them into the template to begin with. Its still going to be annoying to have to have a bunch of these unused MIDI Device Groups in my template I suppose, but once I get it setup and used to them being there, its not that big of a deal. But personally it seems like this could just be made easier somehow.

Another nice feature, if there is not a way to do this already, would be to have a way to tell the drum grid to remove any rows from the grid that aren't being used. So I could load the superior2 full drum kit, record some drums or copy and paste a MIDI drum...then have it remove the unused rows...and they would stay in the order I had saved them. Otherwise, I basically am better off never using that saved drum kit, just let the notes in the track create the rows on the grid and re-order them over and over again manually for every project, depending on what is being used. Don't know if that makes any sense.

dewdman42 wrote:
This is all workable. Its not that difficult, but just not completely obvious how to do it. Motu should really make this more intuitive, but this does at least work for now. You're right, using load could help too, But either I have to have a file somewhere that has a bunch of MIDI Device Groups for all my different Superior drum kits in it, and they would all be loaded into any project I'm working on. Or else I would just put them into the template to begin with. Its still going to be annoying to have to have a bunch of these unused MIDI Device Groups in my template I suppose, but once I get it setup and used to them being there, its not that big of a deal. But personally it seems like this could just be made easier somehow.

When you say "all my different Superior drum kits in it" what do you mean? Regardless of which snare drum you choose, they are all mapped to the same MIDI note number. Same for any cymbal sound assigned to Crash 1, Crash 2, etc. You can only change the sound in the Superior interface, not by the MIDI note assignment, except in the case of snare center vs snare rimshot or something like that. I would think that the chances are pretty good that whether you use two toms or four toms, three cymbals or four cymbals, you'll be using almost the same MIDI note assignments in most projects, with a few exceptions, and that shouldn't require a different drum kit in DP for each variation.

When you use the Load feature, you don't even see the MIDI Device Groups in your new project until you select one in the Tracks or Drum Editor windows. They are just "there" waiting to be used, so there's nothing cluttering up your template.

Not necessarily. The note name maps are not necessarily the same between Avatar, other new Superior2 kits, if you have the older Superior1 kits loaded in, Cocktail, Latin EZX, etc... Rumor has it they will release some new kits soon. Probably very similar, but not necessarily the same. They each have their own PDF of the keyboard layout. Different Superior kits, different potential keyboard layouts. Yes, within a kit, you can change out what the snare sound will be, but if you change kits in superior, its probably a different Device Group that needs to be defined.

As far as cluttering up the template, I beg to differ. When I go to assign the output of any MIDI track, its going to show all my MIDI device groups that are saved in the template. If there are say 5, who cares. If there are 50, its clutter.

I can't get away from thinking that Opcode Vision's solution of allowing nominated drum devices to have their note names changed in the Graphic editor window was much simpler, more elegant, and much more user friendly when editing. All you had to do was type in the names of the notes you wanted to change e.g. Snare 1 for D1. Then in the Graphic editor the notes would show up as names - you could drag notes to the appropriate named sound . No need for complicated Device Groups or horror of horrors a Drum editor.