Drum Volume in midifiles

[don]

Hi All,
I have an issue with the volume of drum sound on some midifiles. I use Cakewalk 3.0 to edit my files and use a Charlie Lab Hard Disk player that allows me to adjust the drum kit volume and snare ,hihat etc. But I still have a problem with some files in taht even after trying this the drum are still not loud enough or are "soft". I have tried adding chorus and adjusting the velocity to 127 to beef up the sound, however on some files this is not enough. Is there another way to increase the volume apart from the methods I have tried.
Thanks for your help.
Don.

[thingyy]

control 11....127
Or turn other tracks down.

[gibbo]

Thingyy's point is correct, make sure that cc#11 is set to 127 in the track itself. Don't crank all the individual velocities to 127, a common fault in midifiles. The problem with using velocities of 127 on everything (done in an effort to make drums louder) is that you lose all the nuances and feel and the playing sounds very mechanical. No real drummer hits everything at full velocity all the time.
If you can't solve the balance by turning other tracks down, check that the global volume is set high enough. On many sound modules (not sure about Charlie Lab) the global volume defaults to 64 which is half of the available volume. Turn the global volume up and then reduce the volume (use controller 7 rather than 11) of the other tracks.
Cheers, Dave.

[weeo]

Interesting subject.I'm sure i'm not alone in saying that drum levels are always hard to balance in the mix.
Some of the comments so far are a little too technical for me to grasp,
eg. where do you find control 11?
what does each control do etc.
where do you find the global volume?
Maybe johng11 could talk us guys through this minefield.
Thanks ---weeo

[thingyy]

Dont velocity increase each note to 127.In cakewalk 3 in the edit function you can percentage increase the velocities of the whole track allowing for the feel to remain.
Control 11 is expression {how hard the note is struck}
I balance my drums and bass at 118 and work around that.
If playing in stereo panning has a major effect on volume.
I always double track my bass and transpose one track up 12 and assign it as a mute guitar.
This gives the file a bit of a romp.
Anyways when Midi tips and tricks appears on the board I can add a few more.

[don]

Hi All,
Thanks for the tips I shall give them all a go.
Cheers,
Don.

[steveb]

Thanks Thingyy,

that's a great tip, I would really like to hear more tips like that.

[JohnG]

weeo said:

Interesting subject.I'm sure i'm not alone in saying that drum levels are always hard to balance in the mix.
Some of the comments so far are a little too technical for me to grasp,
eg. where do you find control 11?
what does each control do etc.
where do you find the global volume?
Maybe johng11 could talk us guys through this minefield.
Thanks ---weeo

Hi weeo,
Sorry for the delay in replying, I've been away recharging my batteries for a few days! We techies need to do this from time to time otherwise the spark has insufficient energy.
Yep, it's a good idea, thanks very much I'll put together an explanation of the three main ways of controlling the volume of a MIDI note/channel over on the other part of the forum.
Best regards,
JohnG.

[weeo]

We'll Look forward to that John,i'm sure
Thanks
weeo

[pdiroma]

Guys and Gals'
With my EDITTRACK software, I am able to seperate the drum notes, each to it's own track...
IE...snare to track 11, kick to track 12, hi hat to track 13..you get the idea. I am then able to
adjust the velocity of each drum note. This is an old program that I have had for many years
and it it used on an ATARI 140ST computer, I still use it because I have not found anything
better. It is slow compared to today's PC's, but it works very well. I asked a while back about a sequencer that would do the same thing, but the answers I received don't do the trick and I didn't like the program.

[gibbo]

Hey pd,
Amazing that you're still using the Atari, that's how I started too... I used to spend days working on midis on an expanded 4mb beast (and the 4mb of memory was considered huge! lol)!!!
You're quite right too, despite all the huge "advances" in pc technology somethings just get more complicated rather than better.
Here's my point, I still have a bunch of Atari based progs on floppies somewhere, including sequencers etc. If you want them PM me, I can zip 'em up and send them to you... these are just basic progs from when I was first sequencing, the days when a whole program fitted on a single floppy!
Cheers, Dave.

[JohnG]

Hey PD too,
The sequencer I use, XGworks, also allows that. Open the drum editor, right click on the percussion name e.g. hi-hat closed, 'select all', ctrl c, open another track, sets it's channel to 10, ctrl v, enter start measure. Bob's your uncle. Edit away to heart's or ear's content. Okay, XGworks is almost as old as an Atari. Yep, Atari's where I started too! Small world.

Hey weeo,
Can you tell me which file(s) you want to work on? Are they from MM? If not maybe you can let me have it and I'll use it as an example. I'll post some example files to the member's files area.
Best regards to all,
JohnG.

[weeo]

Hi John and thanks for your reply.There are a couple of files i sequenced in the midi file list under "marmalade". "Loving things" and "wait for me maryanne".These were done with no "controls",if you know what i mean,and i'd like to know a bit more about these.
I hope i've explained myself OK,if not let me know.
Thanks in the meantime
Eddie

[JohnG]

weeo said:

Hi John and thanks for your reply.There are a couple of files i sequenced in the midi file list under "marmalade". "Loving things" and "wait for me maryanne".These were done with no "controls",if you know what i mean,and i'd like to know a bit more about these.
I hope i've explained myself OK,if not let me know.
Thanks in the meantime
Eddie

Hi Eddie,
Thanks for the links I'll go get 'em. Meanwhile I've just posted another article which is a precursor (earlier swear words) to doing yours. Hopefully later this week.
Best regards,
JohnG.

[don]

Hey Dave,
would it be possible to email me zipped program of your drum editing tool (with some basic instructions if you have the time) to [e-mail]
Thanks in anticipation.
Don.
PS Thanks to everyone that has contributed to my initial query your comments have been very helpful.

[frankie]

Hi guys whats this Charlie lab stuff like?

[levi2]

you can get a small util called gnmidi demo but you can use with no restrictions and it will seperate the drums to ithere own track ie bass drum snare etc etc you then save as format1 load it up in yer seq then you can change the velocity of each one. I found out you cannot just change the volume because it will effect them all with them being on chan 10