BMU wrote
I'm just a bit worried how hard it is to find info on something so simple and presumably commonly used. Makes me wonder if Reaper is really worth investing a substantial learning curve into.
I can't speak for Reaper specifically, but learn how to use
any software properly and you can get pro results from it. Pro Tools, Sonar, Cubase, Reaper, Audacity. That means investing time learning the theory that applies to all of them and learning how it is implemented in the specific software you choose.
Have you ever looked at Sonar? Much better for MIDI programmers than any other package (IMO). Cubase feels very clunky in comparison.
Ewww! People use pre-made standard patterns? Sacrilege! ?
Absolutely! Remember I drum too, and it's still far quicker and easier for me to lay down a basic track with EZD than anything else. The patterns all come from top notch real players too and the "humanize" function makes for very realistic variances in playing (two identical velocity snare hits will sound subtly different, thanks to randomised sample selection as well as timing and level variation). If you are conversant with the MIDI side, you can still go in to to the MIDI source track and edit the stock patterns individually to taste (which is what sets a "pro" sequencing job apart from a stock one), but the big thing is you can be up and running with a basic drum track that is
very good very quickly.
Could one work around this by placing separate instances of EZdrummer on multiple tracks in the DAW, one track for the bass drum, one for cymbals etc? That's how I do it now in Cubase.
Well, that's an inefficient way of doing it and that's what Superior Drummer is for, but yes, you can add instances of EZD until your DAW runs out of memory (about 250MB per instance) or processing power. You can minimize the processing requirements by freezing instances if needed.
So how do I tell this thing in the picture below (the midi editor) to play a bass drum .wav sample when I press C1, a snare on D1 etc...
The sampler does that. Just load your samples into the slots provided in the sampler and it does the rest. Depending on the DAW, the notes can even show up in the DAWs event lists/piano rolls, etc. - the sampler tells the DAW what each note is named (much like a softsynth tells the DAW the patch name so that shows up in the DAW interface when choosing patches). All part of the VST standard.
I remember in Cubase VST 5.2 years ago it was just a matter of setting up a .txt or .ini file with the file paths to the .wav files...
Ah, the bad old days! That's incredibly tedious by today's standards. Anyway, most use GM as a basis for mapping, so even taking a drum track from a standard MIDI file and porting it directly to the drum sampler will work.
