Hello everyone.
I have a small problem again (as I have often had).
I would like to import a midi file onto the BB. But the original free midi has 15 tracks and I would like to use a few more tracks than just drum and bass.
But now I’m not sure which tracks and which drumset I can use to get a reasonable song. Maybe someone can listen to the MIDI file and tell me: “Delete track X and track Y and then use drumset XYZ”.
Yes, I know that I have to merge all tracks after the edit.
Oh yes, the song is “Sunny” by “Bobby Hebb” and unfortunately I couldn’t find a better MIDI.
I’ll add the MIDI file here.
Thanks in advance for your help.
the_Thick
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Unfortunately this is something that just takes exploration within the tools available.
There’s literally hundreds of drum sets available on the forum that have a wide variety of sounds, from drum, drum+bass, drum+piano/keys/strings etc. It really comes down to what sounds from this midi you want to persist. For this file I notice that it has a wide assortment of tracks when I load it into Garage Band, A couple guitars, multiple pianos, assorted strings and brass. So here is what I would do:
Determine which instruments you want to keep, and pick a drum set that has it. For this it is often just trial and error. Brushes With Bass & Strings, There’s several jazz trio kits that have bass and piano, some also with strings. If you poke around you can find posts with “The missing kits” and there’s a dropbox repo with dozens of various kits.
Determine where the instruments lie in the kit you choose. Bass will often be in the 0-30 range, or in the 60+ range. 30-60 is almost always for drums. You can see this in the DRM editor in BBManager.
In your DAW (I use Garage band) remove the instrument tracks you don’t want in the final product.
In your DAW, move the midi notes for the instrument to the right midi tracks. For “notes” like bass and strings this usually means you can select all and move the whole thing around. If bass is 0-30, then move the bass down there. This can take some trial an error to get right.
Once everything is in the right place, merge it together, export in from the DAW and test it out in BBManager.
If you are unfamiliar with doing these types of things this WILL be overwhelming and is probably something you should work up to. It’s all learnable and once you get it down it’s not too hard. But between the DAW and BBManager and mapping the right kits and the right midi tracks, it’s a lot, especially if you’re new to DAW and BBM.
Hope this helps! This forum is very helpful and maybe someone can offer something more than what I’ve put here. This is just how I would approach this project.
Thank you for your quick reply.
Yes, I had already imagined something similar.
I work with “Reaper” and am not yet very experienced.
So I thought I’d try asking here in the forum and maybe someone can give me a few good tips.
That has already happened with your report.
I don’t know “Garage Band”, I work with “Windows” and unfortunately it’s not available for that.
So, I think I’ll go for “try and error” and try to make the best of it
Thanks again for the tips.
What a beautiful arrangement! Wow! To give you a good answer of how I would go about doing this, I need to know what you intend to play or sing. The process is largely one of deleting tracks to get to the essentials while retaining the character of the piece. Clearly, you are going to keep the drums. Do you want the melody, or will you be playing that? Or, are you going to playing the comping chords in the Classic Clean guitar part, and try to keep everything else? If the arrangement is of this latter type, you are probably best served by using a fairly robust piano kit.
When I began my fairly serious studies of music, my teacher, Peter Carpenter, told me how when he was in university music studies he was given a symphonic score and was required to play it on piano. Not each instrument part by itself, but altogether, all at once. This is what you are trying to achieve when converting an arrangement of this types to BB.
If you want to reply, I’ll take a stab at doing this and write a process tutorial as I do it. It’s a very nice arrangement, and I’d enjoy spending some time on it.
Hello Phil_Flood.
Thank you for the offer of help which I will gladly accept. I still have a lot to learn
Well, we are a 2-man (female) band. The wife does the vocals and I accompany her (depending on the song) on the electric guitar or acoustic guitar. So of course it would be nice if we could accommodate as many different instruments as possible for accompaniment. That’s not so easy with the BB, of course, as the storage space for the individual songs is limited. I’m also still a total beginner when it comes to MIDI programming and control. I would therefore be grateful for any help.
Kind regards
the_Thick
P.S. @josborn777
Thanks for your help and this great link for the drumsets
Hello @Phil_Flood Wooow, that was super fast. Thank you very much for this quick help.
I really like what you have done there.
I don’t think I could have done it like that.
I can only thank you 1000 times for your work and effort.
Best regards from Nettetal/Germany
I see you are getting some great advice and help. I use Reaper too. Funnily enough Audacity is also an effective and simple app for changing pitch and BPM, or editing a WAV to add to a drumset.
Hello @tERRY_mARTIN .
Yes, Reaper is a powerful program. I haven’t got to grips with it that well yet. I also use Audacitiy. However, I mostly edit WAV or MP3 files here. I have not yet worked with MIDI in Audayity. I know that it also works to a limited extent here.
Greetings
the_Thick
