Aerodrums and Aered forums

Hi,

First of all, Aerodrums is an amazing product. I haven't bought anything music related in the last 2 years that gave me that much fun!

I use a Mac with Sierra, Aerodrums 1.1.1, EZdrummer2

I've tried for days now and have to give up, because I don't seem to be able to configure the midi mapping propperly. If I use the 'EZdrummer2' mapping in Aerodrums and the 'Roland' mapping in EZdrummer, as suggested, the very basic kit setup works ok, but not completely. I'd like to create an individual drumset for all the different EZX sound expansion, e. g. add a 'Ride Edge' (using another Bell) or a 3rd crash. Also the toms are not mapped propperly by default (some trigger the same tom or they play the rim shot instead of the straight note). All notes are triggered fine in EZdrummer testing in a DAW through a keyboard, so my conclusion is that there must be something wrong with Aerodrums.

There is also an 'Aerodrums' midi mapping in EZdrummer2 and the result is different than using the Roland setting, but the mapping is still not correct. I also can't find any documentation on this 'Aerodrum' mapping, either at Toontrack or Aerodrums. When I look in the midi-maps.ini file (I assume that's where the MIDI maps are stored on a Mac), all mappings look correct with the appropriate notes, but it will still trigger the wrong instruments. I also tried starting an empty 'Default' mapping and chose every instrument separately and saved after each change, since I read in another thread that Aerodrums has a bug saving midi mappings.

Another thing I'd like to know is, what does 'Use the MIDI note scheduler' do? And is there a simple explanation somewhere on the difference between midi maps 'By element type' and 'Individual element'?

Any help would be really appreciated, since I have no clue what else to try to get the mapping to work..

Cheers,
-e

Future suggestion: When migrating from Mac to PC (or vice versa) or just updating Aerodrums requires a whole new manual setup for drum placement and mapping. It's not documented well, what files are needed for a smooth transition. Would be great to see a backup/save drum config/mapping option.

Hi, the two things that should work are:
1. In Aerodrums set the MIDI map to 'Default' and in EZdrummer2 set the preset to 'Aerodrums'
2. In Aerodrums set the MIDI map to 'EZ Drummer 2' and in EZdrummer2 set it to 'Roland'
It sounds like you have tried 2. and it didn't work. It's hard to say off hand what the problem is but it should be possible to fix it by defining a custom MIDI map in Aerodrums.

My suggestion is to set EZdrummer2 to 'Roland' and then clone the 'EZ Drummer 2' map in Aerodrums so you can make changes to it. Then for any drum type (e.g. kick, high tom, ride bell, etc.) that is not behaving as expected, you will first need to figure out what MIDI note EZdrummer2 expects to receive to trigger that note type. One way to do this is to use a keyboard as you have been doing. Keep in mind that the notes that EZdrummer2 expects are defined by the preset you pick inside EZdrummer2, e.g. 'Roland'.

Now in Aerodrums' MIDI map editor, select the drum type you want to fix and then change the 'Note' field to the value that EZdrummer2 uses for that drum. Please try this on a single drum type that isn't behaving as expected and let me know if you still can't get it to work.

To answer your other questions:

I believe the MIDI note scheduler option was added to fix an issue with certain DAWs where notes would trigger late, with seemingly random latency. Instead of sending each MIDI message one by one, enabling this option will result in MIDI messages being buffered up in Aerodrums before being sent out.

The 'by individual element' list just gives you more fine-grained control over choosing which drums trigger which MIDI notes. The elements are the drum pieces in your kit. So there might be 5 different kick elements to choose from when deciding what pieces make up your drum kit. Each of these elements would use different kick samples but they would all have the same element type - 'kick'. So if you use 'by element type' you can define which MIDI note is sent for all elements of a particular type such as 'kick'. However, if you want to override this and send a different MIDI note for a particular kick drum element then you can select it from the 'by individual element' list. For your purposes, I would select from the 'by element type' list only and ignore the 'by individual element' list.

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your detailed and quick reply.

I tried both of your suggested methods, but unfortunately I couldn't make it work. Eventually I was able to frankenstein the midi map .ini together and it now works to my satisfaction with all drums.

Here's what I did:

1. I created a 'NEW' midi map (not a clone of default)
2. Created new instruments for the non-working elements (in my case I wanted 4 crash cymbals, only two worked; extra toms, ride edge and snare 'rim only')
3. Made a new drumset with the non-working elements only
4. Assigned these elements in the Midi mapping editor 'by individual element' (couldn't get the extra cymbals in there at all, note 55 and 52 respectively. But I figured that standard 'splash' and 'china' use exactly these notes, and using them for the extra crashes worked)
5. Once these elements all functioned properly, I created another default mapping *.ini and manually added the instruments from above in a text editor to the brand new default mapping.

Took me quiet some time and frustration to get this to work, but I'm very happy now. It seems though that the save function in the mapping editor overwrites, re-orders or even deletes entries and I haven't been able to make out a pattern or what exactly causes this.

From my understanding, if I have a new *.ini file and assign all drums manually, the mapping should work, but this isn't the case. It's a lot of trial and error and I'm still not 100% sure why my mappings are ok now, since the *.ini file doesn't reflect all instruments. One other thing, in EZdrummer2 I've been using 'None' as the e-drums setting -- it's the only one that maps everything accordingly (Roland and Aerodrums wouldn't trigger all events correctly)

Cheers,
-e