Is there a part of Sensory Percussion 2 software that you find particularly confusing? Maybe you’d just like to see a deep dive into a specific module. Or maybe an application of an existing feature like analog inputs, midi in/out, submixes, macros, etc.
There are a lot of people on this forum who are just starting their v2 journeys, so this is your chance to have your voice heard! We’ll definitely take your suggestions into consideration.
Can you explain how the MIDI options work under Note Controllers and Hit Controllers? When I create one of these modules, I can select MIDI as the “type” and it then gives me options to choose: CC, wheel, aftertouch, note, sysex, and velocity…it even allows me to choose or learn a note. However, I cannot figure out what any of these choices actually affect or allow me to do. What is the purpose or potential usage of these options?
Before we get into the MIDI stuff, note that you first have to create a midi hardware input for anything inside your Sensory Percussion to receive signal from your midi device.
Now, to answer your question: when a hit controller is set to “MIDI” type in “note” mode, it will pitch the sample up/down according to the midi note values it’s receiving. So if you have a midi keyboard, you can play the keys from low to high and the sample will be pitched accordingly. With tonal samples, it basically turns a single sample into a whole playable keyboard.
When a note controller is set to “MIDI” type in “velocity” mode, it will pitch the sample up/down the scale you specify based on how hard you hit/press your midi device (assuming it’s velocity-sensitive).
The rest of the options (learn, cc, wheel, etc.) really don’t do much in those controllers right now, but they are useful when they appear in midi assignments, where you can assign knobs on a MIDI controller to control parameters in SP with “learn” when the message type is set to “cc,” for example.
One other cool thing you can do with note controller + MIDI is put a “midi router” generator inside of a note controller. Now, whatever notes you select on the note controller’s keyboard are being sent out as midi notes out via midi hardware outputs. This allows you to play scales on instruments inside of a DAW using your drums via velocity, timbre, etc.
Sidenote: We know that some of these options in note/hit controllers are a little confusing/buggy, and we haven’t done a deep dive into them as they exist currently, because they’re are actually going to change significantly, especially note controller. We’re very excited to get these changes out to you guys and appreciate your patience in the meantime!
I’d love to see lessons that focus on a specific job to be done.
• Changing out a drum – For example, say I like Laozi but the kick isn’t doing it for me. How do I make this simple change?
• Making a kit from scratch – Where do you even start? It’s a bit overwhelming.
• Duplicate and alter the sound design of an existing kit – Show us how different the existing kits can be just by twiddling knobs. I’m new to production, so explaining what each parameter does would be super helpful.
• Walk me through every step needed to record into Ableton – how do I set up the 3rd party software? (Btw, Loopback hasn’t been stable, so I’d prefer to use BlackHole and unfortunately, it’s quite the process to set it up.)
Thanks for writing in! For your first question, I’ve attached a screen recording showing how to switch out the kick layer from Laozi using the library panel. Basically, you can double-click on any set in the library to see the layers it contains, and then you can drag and drop those layers into your current set. You can also continue double-clicking a layer to drill down deeper into modules it contains, until you reach the end of the layer, which is usually a single sample (or group of samples). All of those modules can also be drag-and-dropped into your current set.
As for the other topics, those are great suggestions! We will be posting more of these specific types of tutorials in early 2024, and we’ll definitely cover some of those areas. Thanks so much for your input!
Note to anyone following along, you have to double click the Patterns box at 0:02 to get the menu you see here to show up. Took me a minute to figure this out.
A deeper dive on the different modules individually, and maybe some deeper examples of the modularity and how that pertains to building sounds/events on an entire drum, a single region etc…