Importing drums (Hydrogen to Cubase??)

[Jamesemt]

I'm getting close to laying down a drum track, and wondered how am I going to get my drum track into Cubase LE? Can I use MIDI? If so, how?

Like the idea of being able to put the complete drum kit on seperate tracks - might as well make the most of the 48 tracks

Any advice, or can you point me to a site that describes how to do this?

[ped]

Hmm... Personally I switch the audio driver to my computer sound card (as opposed to the AISO pod xt) and arm a track in Ableton (like cubase) and then play the drum track in Hydrogen.

[cheddatom]

I think that if you like the sounds in hydrogen, then the easiest thing to do is simply export the audio, or record it into cubase - like what Ped suggested.

I think if you wanted to combine the two and be able to mix the drums and keep editing them etc then you'd be better off writing the drum parts in cubase, and then either importing the midi file from cubase into hydrogen to bounce down, or getting Reason which will run from midi data in cubase, and outputs audio channels which can be routed into the cubase mixer.

I don't know how expensive reason is, but if it's un-affordable you could always PM me.

Edited July 7, 2008 by cheddatom

[bennifer]

I haven't ever used hydrogen but i'd expect you can bounce a track out as midi. Just drop that in cubase and assigned a drum synth to it and it'll work fine.

I wouldn't bother with getting reason though, the sound in it are so cheap and nasty!

[cheddatom]

[quote name='bennifer' post='234448' date='Jul 7 2008, 08:00 PM']I wouldn't bother with getting reason though, the sound in it are so cheap and nasty![/quote]

There's a massive selection of drum sounds, and obviously you can download different ones if you like, and you can control the sounds as much as you like etc.
I like it anyway.

[ped]

I got the demo drummer pack refill for reason and it is superb, very realistic. I prefer 'drumming' using a matrix like view in Hydrogen though (think you can do that in reason too but the 20 min demo is a bit short for that but great for a few synth flurries etc)

[cheddatom]

the beaty of reason is that you can program in cubase and "rewire" it to reason, and both programs are synchronised.

[bnt]

I just did an export of a Hydrogen pattern, and it did what I expected: one big General MIDI file, channel 10, standard assignments e.g. BD on note 36.

Note that you probably don't need to consider putting each drum on its own track - it would just make for more work. You can make things easier by grouping e.g. putting all the toms on one track, cymbals on another, etc. I think the Cubase command you're after is MIDI > Dissolve Part.

[cheddatom]

The problem for him with this approach is that he may have no decent drum sounds in his soundcard. The midi data is there, and is useful, but you need some decent drum sounds to drive using the midi file, and AFAIK most soundcards come with sh*t drum sounds and/or you just get your standard crappy windows ones.

[Jamesemt]

Thanks for all the replies. I've got it sorted - if you right click on each part of the kit in Hydrogen you can solo that one part (ie snare, kick etc), then just export the song.

Sounds like a faffing around, but only took me about five minutes to export the full kit onto seperate wavs...

[cheddatom]

[quote name='Jamesemt' post='235006' date='Jul 8 2008, 02:52 PM']Thanks for all the replies. I've got it sorted - if you right click on each part of the kit in Hydrogen you can solo that one part (ie snare, kick etc), then just export the song.

Sounds like a faffing around, but only took me about five minutes to export the full kit onto seperate wavs...[/quote]

That's fair enough, but it means that you can't change anything in the drum part now (unless you fancy cutting and swapping bits about). Maybe you should seek a better solution in the future that enables you to constantly change the drum part, as well as your other audio tracks.