Superior Drummer 3 Manual
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I previously made a guide on setting up version 2, but here’s a new one on how to set up the hi-hat in Superior Drummer 3. It looks like a lot of info, but that’s only because I try to go over every step in a way that any user will be able to understand. Let’s dig in!
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Starting point
Having everything already working in your current drum brain (aka drum module) is the foundation for everything that will be communicated to Superior Drummer.
First get your kit and hi hat sounding good with your drum brain itself. Refer to the manual of whatever device you are using. If it isn’t working with the built in sounds on your module on it’s own, you may have issues that Superior Drummer won’t be able to fix.
If you use a Roland drum brain, here is a good video on fine tuning the settings of the hi-hat in the module itself so that you can get optimum performance.
MIDI basics
In drum terms, MIDI notes can be thought of as simple “hits” that tell the computer that a note has been turned on (and then immediately off). This is what tells the drum samples to play in Superior Drummer. The other information these “hits” send the computer, is the velocity at which you hit the drum. A higher velocity number will produce a harder hitting drum sound in order to sound realistic. The velocity number goes up to a max of 127.
Now, the simplest and best way to set up your module is to have the outgoing midi be in line with the General Midi standards. This is a basic set of standard notes that percussion software knows how to interpret. For instance, if you set your bass drum as note 36 (in your drum module) the percussion software on your computer will know to produce the sound of a bass drum, because note 36 is “Bass Drum 1” in the General Midi standards. Your module likely already is set up to use these notes as it’s outgoing midi, but there may be some notes that don’t fall in line with these standards. You don’t have to use General Midi for everything, but it will make your life easier with Superior Drummer as well as any other percussion software because it is a default standard.
Here is a list of all the General MIDI percussion mappings if you need to reference them.
Superior Drummer 3 has made our lives much, much easier by displaying a live readout of all the MIDI incoming into the computer. For instance, if you hit the bass drum, Superior Drummer will show you which MIDI note your bass drum pad is sending out. This is another way you can confirm that your drum brain MIDI is using the General MIDI notes. Previously, we had to download separate software to troubleshoot our MIDI issues, but now its as easy as opening up the MIDI Monitor window in the right-hand column. (Note: A similar MIDI readout, called “Analyzer”, can be used when inside the Settings window).
Make sure that the MIDI Monitor option menu is set to “Show Notes”, and that “Show Keys” and “Show Internal Notes” are off. MIDI notes also can be read as musical keys, but when dealing with percussion I find that the numerical note numbers are more straight forward. But you can always turn on the Keys option if you wish.
Basics of SD3 Drum Mapping
This article is mainly about the hi hat, but here’s a brief overview of how to map any of the drums. Using the General Midi notes in your drum brain should make most things work off the bat, but in case any of your pads aren’t triggering the correct drum, the easiest way to fix this is by using the “Learn” feature.
Say for example the Hi Tom on your e-Drums is triggering a low tom sound in Superior Drummer. In SD3, click on the drum you actually want to trigger so that it has a blue outline in the graphical representation of the drum set. Open Settings > MIDI In / E-Drums and a new window of options will pop up. In the “Mapping” tab, hit the “Learn” button. Now hit the physical Hi-Tom on your e-drum set. Now hit your Hi Tom on your set more and you will see that it is now correctly mapped to the right drum.
What happened is that your drum module was sending a MIDI note that Superior didn’t recognize as being the correct note. Superior now re-routed that note and now interprets it as the correct note inside the software.
You can now see in the MIDI settings that that note has been edited. When note 43 is selected, you can see in the Mapping tap that the arrow is now pointing to the new note that it routes to, “1.” Furthermore, below in the Analyzer window, it shows the actual MIDI note you are hitting, and then it shows the number that it is being re-routed to in green. In my screenshot I have remapped note 43 to note 1 (just as an arbitrary demonstration). Now when I hit the pad associated with note 43 in my drum module, it shows that it detected note 43, but is now re-interpretting it as note 1. Any notes that you have not Edited will say “No” to signify you have not edited them in SD3. The cleanest way to set up your drums is to have all your real MIDI coming from your module set up to be read properly by SD3 in the first place, so that you don’t need to edit these in the software. For example, if this is how I wanted my drums set up, I could change note 43 to note 1 in my drum module preferences, and then I would not need to re-route that note in Superior Drummer. However, this ideal setup may not always work and there is nothing wrong with re-routing (also called re-mapping) some MIDI notes. It can be a little complicated at times, but the new features in SD3 make it much simpler than it used to be.
To summarize, if a pad you are hitting isn’t making the correct sound, you can either edit the settings of your drum brain for that pad to use a note that Superior Drummer is looking for, OR you can keep your drum brain settings and re-route that note to the note that Superior Drummer is looking for. The simplest way is to play the drums, identify any pads that aren’t working correctly and use the Learn function to correct them.
Hi Hat Foot Pedal MIDI
Let’s go back to the drum brain module itself. You’ll want to use General Midi not only your drum triggers (Tom hit, snare hit, etc) but your hi hat pedal. The Hi hat pedal works a bit differently than the other midi “hits”. It uses a CC midi value and not a midi note. This not a simple “on” trigger, but more of “meter” that is constantly being read. The more open you have your foot the lower the number in this numerical “meter”. This is how the computer knows how “open” the high hat is.
Some e-drum pedals are pedals that literally transmit the “openness” your foot allows it and works with a separate pad for the hi hat.
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Modern a hi-hats often use an actual hi-hat pedal; you attach a mechanism that senses the pressure of the classic hi hat stand as opposed to a direct electronic foot pedal. Either way you go, the CC value is what is sent to the computer.
One final important note. Make sure your hi hat pedal is set to CC4 in your drum brain settings; this is the General Midi standard for conveying the “openness” to the computer. It may be referred to as pedal, or “Foot”. In the case of my Roland TD-12 module I had to set “Pedal CC” to “Foot(4)”. This is the one midi value that you can not re-map inside SD3 (as far as I know), so it must be set correctly in your module for the “openness” to change with the pedal pressure. For some reason my module was originally set to CC16 and would not work until I edited the module’s settings.
Superior Drummer 3 MIDI settings
The first thing to remember is you want to edit the Global options in the Settings menu and not just the settings for the current drum kit which are located on the right hand side. While its possible to save your custom drum kit and load it again later, the better method would be to adjust your settings for the software as a whole so that all the kits work off the bat.
You can access these global settings in the upper menu: Settings > MIDI In / E-Drums. It is the same area we used when remapping the pads using the Learn function.
Tweaking Hi hat “Openness” for Realism
Superior Drummer 3 makes it really easy to tweak the hi hat to get it feeling realistic. Again, go to Settings > MIDI In / E-Drums. There is a section dedicated to tweaking the “openness” in relation to your foot pedal.
First, remember that your foot pedal in your drum module must use CC4 for the pedal to affect anything.
I explained the CC4 value as a “meter” earlier; the Hi-Hat Pedal Control options allow you to change how SD3 reads that meter and presents a vertical meter of its own. (This is found in the same MIDI In / E-Drums section of the Settings. You then go to the “Hi-Hat & Snare CC” tab and click “Hi-Hat Pedal Control”)
When playing your kit, you might find that you have your foot down all the way, but the hi hat still sounds a bit open. This is where you can fix these kind of issues.
You will need to experiment by adjusting where the “closed” breakpoint occurs on that vertical bar. Once the “closed” section of the high hat feels right, open it a bit more and get the next level of “openness” to feel realistic, and so forth. You can also adjust the “Tight” setting, which is when you put extra pressure on the pedal that the timbre of the hi-hat changes a little bit (which replicates what happens when using a real hi-hat).
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Note: When setting these levels I originally kept my foot pressure in the same place, made adjustments on the bar in SD3 and then hit the hi hat but it wasn’t changing the amount of “openness” and didn’t appear to affect anything. It turns out that you have to take your foot off the pedal and then try it again in order to update the changes you just made. Once you know to do this it is very intuitive, but can be confusing if you aren’t aware of that little caveat.
Superior Drummer 3 Manual
And just like before, make sure you use the Settings > MIDI In / E-Drums pop up window when making these adjustments. Like most adjustments in SD3, you can make them in those modules on the right hand side of the drum kit. It looks identical in the way you adjust it, but any edits you make on those right-hand modules are only going to edit that specific kit you are using and will disappear as soon as you load a different kit.
That’s about it! And remember that Toontrack has an official manual for SD3 if there is anything specific you need to learn more about.