Creating a MIDI Drum Map in Bandlabs Cakewalk

General Discussion
1

Create A MIDI Drum Map for Cakewalk:

  1. Open Cakewalk and go to -EDIT- -PREFERENCES- -DRUM MAP MANAGER-
  2. Click -NEW- under “Drum Maps Used in Current Project” - you will see a “DM1-” created
  3. Under "Settings for “DM1”, next to “Notes”, click -NEW- - a line will populate
    –>> we’ll start with “59 B2 Ride 2”
  4. Under “In Note”, double click on the “0 (C 0) …” and it will change to an input box, enter the note number (in this case, 59, and hit enter)
  5. Repeat for “Out Note” using same value.
  6. Under “Name”, double click on the “0/C0” and it will change to an input box, enter the name (in this case Ride 2, and hit enter)
  7. Select the proper channel under "Chn. (I use 10)
  8. Select the correct “Out Port”, in this case, the Beat Buddy.
  9. Repeat for each drum sound.
  10. After complete, type in the box next to “Presets” what you want to name it (I used "BeatBuddy Standard Kit)
  11. Click on the little disk icon next to the “Presets” box, and your drum map is saved.

To check, create a MIDI track, in the MIDI track strip, Select the “In/Out”, use the DM you just created and the “In” can be left blank, or set it to whatever you need.
Then, open the “Piano Roll” view, and you should see your drum map that you just put in. Click on each item to be sure it works.

Worked pretty easily for me. Bad part is you’ll need to enter a drum map for every kit that you have!
Hope this helps!

Any comments or corrects, let me know, but I followed this and it worked without any problem.

3 Likes
2

Hi there, my Cakewalk by Bandlab drum map only works if I drop the ‘out’ notes by two octaves when using Kontakt
The TTS-1 must remap the notes on its own …
Did you find the same?

3

Don’t use my Cakewalk to create drum parts for Kontakt. What you need to do is get the mapping for the Kontakt instrument you are using. I would say that the TTS-1 is mapped the same (uses the same MIDI notes) as the BeatBuddy. Mostly the BeatBuddy patterns I’ve created I send directly to the BeatBuddy, so I haven’t had to map the notes (drums) to match the MIDI map for any other plugin or instrument. I have read on this forum that some of the other drum packages are mapped differently than the BeatBuddy, so I’m not surprised that your Kontakt instrument might be mapped differently.

1 Like
4

Yes.

A variety of midi drum mappings have been developed over the years, and often by different manufacturers. New mappings had to be developed for the increasing complexity of drum hardware and software.

If I found the mapping from a source (DAW or plug-in) from one manufacturer is the same as the target device or software of another manufacturer (e.g., Beat Buddy), I would consider myself lucky.