Step Sequencer with 3rd Party Instruments

So one of the things that is not super great about the new Step Sequencer is that there does not appear to be an easy way to see custom row names for anything other then built in Apple instruments. For the rows you have the option for generic pitch names, or if you're using Drum Kit Designer, Drum Machine Designer, UltraBeat, then the kit piece names from those kits are actually displayed in Step Sequencer, which is very nice. But if you're using a third party plugin such as Steven Slate Drums, or many others...I have not been able to find an easy way to display kit piece names. I did figure out a difficult way..which is rather a PITA honestly, but I will outline the steps here and if anyone has other ideas or suggestions for this...perhaps we can zero in on a better way to see custom row names in the step sequencer.

 

I also learned a little about Drum machine designer in the process of doing this...

 

1. Starting with an empty project, create a DMD track. The easiest way I have found to do this is to use the Library, under Electronic Drum Kits, there is a kit called "Empty Kit". Select that Library patch and an empty DMD kit track stack will be created.
    
    
   
2. Open up the DMD plugin to see the DMD interface and there will be a single cell populated with an instrument channel.
    
   
    
    
   
3. Go to the track arranger and you will see that a special kind of track stack was created, with one sub-track that links to the one initial cell. Select that sub-track to reveal the mixer channel and put the instrument plugin of your choice on it.
    
   
    
    
   
4. You will notice that you can now click on the icon for that cell in the DMD and hear the sound from your 3rd party plugin, for whatever the midi pitch is assigned to that cell. Go ahead and change the pitch in the cell to whatever you want. You can also double click the cell name to rename it and with the little gear icon you can also select in icon to use.
    
   
    
    
   
5. Now the tricky part is adding more cells that point to the same instrument channel. Its actually pretty easy to load a completely different plugin instance into each cell, but this guide will explain how to configure multiple cells that all send midi to one consolidated plugin instance. There might be an easier way to do this and if anyone figures it out please let us know! But this is what I have as of today...
    
    
   
6. In the next cell click the '+' button. This will add another subtrack to the track stack and it will be using a new plugin instance.
    
   
    
    
   
7. Now open the Environment and find the channel strip object corresponding to the new sub-track. Select it. Look at the object inspector on the left side of the environment window and change the channel attribute to point to the same instrument being used in the first DMD cell, in this case Inst1. Also rename the environment mixer strip if you want, which will automatically rename the DMD cell at the same time.
    
   
    
    
   
8. Go back to the DMD window and you'll see it has been renamed. Set the midi pitch for the cell, set the icon. Click on the icon and you'll hear the sound from your 3rd party plugin.
    
   
    
    
   
9. Notice that the Track Stack has two subtracks, they are like multi-instrument tracks, each pointing to the same underlying instrument channel (in this case Inst1), which happens to have SSD5 loaded on it. DMD shows the two cells and they work. Yay!
    
    
   
10. Now you'll have to repeat the above process for each cell in DMD to build up the whole drum kit.
     
     
    
11. Now you can create a Step Sequencer pattern on the DMD track and the SSD5 custom row names will be displayed as desired...and the mapping works..the step sequencer will be controlling the kit pieces of SSD5.
     
    
     
     
    
12. In order to save the kit, make sure the top level track stack is currently selected and then do a Library save, which will save the DMD track stack as a patch that can be reloaded.
    

 

 

That is all great and it works fine, but I found sometimes that when I later try to use that DMD patch in a new project, it doesn't seem to load the 3rd party plugin the first time. But when I later added the third party plugin to one of the subtrack's (that basically loads it to all of them since they are sharing the same instrument channel), then re-save the patch again, and after that the patch appears to work properly always. So this last step is an important step: save the patch. Create a new instrument channel and load the patch, then reassign the 3rd party plugin and save the patch again. After that the patch will remember the 3rd party plugin.

 

See this post below with a pre-made GM DMD template patch: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=148368&hilit=step+sequencer#p776602

Edited May 19, 2020 by Dewdman42

This is of great interest to me, being able to use the Logic step sequencer to control third party plugs ins is something I've been waiting for. I haven't even upgraded to 10.5 yet, so I can't contribute, but I'll be happy to read what other people learn. Thanks!

huh, i didn't notice this. that IS a pain in the ass.

This might save someone some time. This is a GM DMD patch. It can easily be repurposed for other non-GM plugins as well.

 

GM DMD v2.patch.zip

 

unzip and save the patch file into the following location:

 

~/Music/Audio Music Apps/Patches/Instrument/

 

create an empty instrument channel and then choose this patch from the library. Should be ready to go.

 

You can load this onto an instrument and you'll have a DMD gm drum kit setup using the dls music device (which can easily be swapped out for another GM instrument). But at least this is an initial DMD mapping with the names of the standard GM drum kit pieces on the correct pitches, etc..

 

 

To swap to a different instrument, just open the mixer, find the instrument channel with the DLS plugin and replace it with the drum instrument of your choice. Done.

 

 

 

You can easily change the names, icons and midi pitch assignments for each pad to fit whatever instrument map you are using...doesn't have to be GM.

 

Also note that this patch is currently setup to send all the pads on midi channel 10 (required for the DLS GM instrument). Most plugins will work with any channel, so it should be fine, but if you need to change the midi channel to something else, then you will need to go into each subtrack of the track stack and change the midi channel track property as desired.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Dewdman42

Thanks Dewd. Man, 42 times better, this!

Indeed thanks so much Dewdman for sharing all your hard work. Very useful.

Attaboy Dewdman42.

 

My guess is that they never intended the Step Sequencer to be used with third party libraries much and figured that clever guys like you who wanted to would figure it out.

To be honest I find it surprising that you can't just double-click the name to enter a custom name.

Does anyone know if you can sequence external gear with the step sequencer?

Does anyone know if you can sequence external gear with the step sequencer?

Yes, you can, the step sequencer is just another way to generate MIDI data into a "Pattern Region". The Pattern Region can be placed on an external MIDI track to route the MIDI to your external MIDI device (synth, sampler, etc...).

And if you want to use custom names, then take the template from above, swap out the dls instrument for external instrument plugin. Should work.

To be honest I find it surprising that you can't just double-click the name to enter a custom name.

 

Me too. But then again we can’t double click the names to change them in the piano roll either. We have to use a mapped-instrument in the environment in order to set the names. I would have thought they would provide the same capability in step sequencer, you can certainly assign that track to a mapped instrument but it ignores mapped instrument names, unlike piano roll.

 

Probably the real logicpro way would be to use a mapped instrument and also allow us to double click the rows the change the names ( which would actually be changing the mapped instrument without having to enter the environment ).

Another useful thing I found out while messing around with DMD, is that you can create hybrid instruments. There is no reason you couldn’t have few DMD cells routed to one plugin and a few other rows routed to a different plugin. You could of course do the same thing by assigning the track to an environment object and setup a fancy hybrid of several instruments that way; but no custom row names that way. Alternatively if you use a dmd track stack then each cell can be pointing to the same or different instrument plugin as you wish. I did the template above so they all point to one common plugin, but factory DMD patches are all configured to use a seperate instance of Sampler (or maybe Qsampler) for each cell.

 

So you can setup any combination you want and then it will play nice with the new step sequencer in terms of row names and icons by virtue of the fact it’s using a DMD track stack.

 

Actually the more I think about it, Apple should have implemented the DMD as a GUI layer on top of a mapped instrument underneath. But alas they didn’t, so unfortunately it’s like a hidden feature that works pretty well for this kind of thing but tricky to set up

Something else I just noticed, the regular piano roll also recognizes the names in the DMD, so this is actually an alternative way to setup the names in piano roll without using a mapped-instrument....

 

Updated the patch so that the last cell is also assigned (previously it was not being used).

 

Note - I am observing also some of the same squirliness with LogicPro that exists with Multi-instruments in terms of the automatic naming of mixer channel strings according to the underlying environment case. In this case, the unfortunate thing is that the mixer strip for the DLS instrument, is getting the name of the last used cell in the DMD. I have tried every way I can think of to work around this and I can't find a way. Whatever the name of the last cell in the DMD is, that will also be the name for the instrument channel in the mixer view. If you try to change the mixer name, the last cell will have its name changed to match it. They are linked.

 

 

LogicPro has the same errant behavior with multi-instruments in general actually, when you create multiple tracks into a single multi-instrument, the last midi channel name, which appears in the track view, ends up being used for the first mixer channel for that instrument. I have asked Apple to fix this multiple times, I don't think they ever will..its just an annoyance of LogicPro we have to live with..and same applies here with the DMD trick for naming the step sequencer rows.

Attaboy Dewdman42.

 

My guess is that they never intended the Step Sequencer to be used with third party libraries much and figured that clever guys like you who wanted to would figure it out.

not sure, they explicitly promote DMD (which step sequencer works with) as being able to load 3rd party plugins.

 

i think it's just an oversight.

 

Thanks Dewdman.

works perfectly (altho i renamed it DM DMD, in your honor). this should be built in to logic, but great we have ppl like you to make this happen. thanx!

yea, I only named it GM because it comes with the built in GM instrument and its mapped to the GM drum sounds, but anyway its actually usable for ANY situation (not just GM) where you want to use DMD as a front end to a single instrument plugin of any kind. The hard part to set that up in the environment is already done, so basically you only have to change the pad cell names, icons and midi pitch assignments, but they all point to the same instrument channel, whatever you have on it.

another thing to point out about this DMD template, its currently setup on midi channel 10. That makes sense for a Gm device in this case, but may or may not make sense for other instruments. Some instruments don't care what the channel is and that would work fine too, but if you need to use a different midi channel for any reason other then channel 10, then you will have to go into each subtrack of the DMD track stack, and change the track inspector midi channel setting. Right now, its going to channelize everything to channel 10 before sending to the DLS instrument. FYI.

Dewdman, thanks so much for making your hard work available.

I've used your patch to create a similar DMD patch for use with IKMultimedia's MODO Drum.

DMD doesn't have enough pads to cover all of MODO Drum's articulations, so I opted to not include the following articulations: Tom 1 R; Floor Tom 2 R (Copy); Kick 2 Buried; Kick 2.

MODO DRUM - DMD.patch.zip

Nice!

 

Yea we should all submit feature request to Apple asking for more DMD cells. 48 is not enough for SSD either and I'm sure some others.

I asked the same question the other day.

Thank you! I will try your patch with superior drummer 3 and report how it goes. I hate going in and out of tootracks midi editor.

I'm making a slightly improved version of the template right now, hang on until I finish that...I found something that could be better about it...stay tuned...

I updated the GM DMD patch, see the post: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=148368&p=776602#p776602

 

Its an internal change really, I think this new one is more "correct". Not totally sure since we're relying on built in and somewhat undocumented behavior, but I think and hope this version 2 has a better structure in the way the environment stuff got built up while building up the DMD. Before there was an extra subtrack called "DLS something er other", but that was actually not needed if I did things a better way..and now I think this will look more like the DMD's that are created by QSampler, for example. I did not include reverb and delay like the QSampler DMD's though.

 

Anyway, there you go... let me know if any problems.

Awesome work Dewdman! I'm working on a SDrummer Avatar map.

Thank you! Will try it.

This is possible... To keep it simple

The main two problems with this GM patch template are this:

 

1. The mixer channel naming bug I mentioned earlier, which is a bug in LogicPro
    
    
   
2. Since this is using a standard multi-timbral instrument approach, the track header faders are all linked to the same thing, along with mute/solo, just like all multi-timbral instruments.

 

Both of those problems do not exist with the Factory Electronic Kit patches, both in 10.5 as well as previous versions which were based on Ultabeat. The new factory kits are using a separate instrument channel for each kit piece (QSampler), which gets around those kinds of issues by simply not using multi-timbral approach. That is not necessarily ideal if you are trying to use an instrument like SSD5 or battery where you want to be able to configure the plugin as a kit.

 

In previous versions of LogicPro, UltraBeat was used as a multi-timbral plugin, where a single plugin instance was used, as we are trying to do on this discussion, but they used the old aux-track-trick to create each of the sub-tracks of the DMD track stack. This works considerably better, both of the above two problems go away with this approach.

 

Therefore I recommend that if you really want to setup the most awesome DMD templates for your instrument of choice, you should use that approach that was taken prior to 10.5 for the Factory Electronic DMD kits, except use the plugin of your choice instead of Ultrabeat. This approach will result in DMD kits that are the most flexible and problem free.

 

Unfortunately the downside is that there is no easy way to create them that way, and its not even possible to start with a simple starter template like this GM patch as a starting place either, you pretty much would have to build up each DMD kit totally from scratch each time, including the multi-out audio assignments and numerous things. Its pretty much a PITA. But that is how you would get the most optimal resulting DMD kits based around other non-apple plugins such as Battery, SSD5, etc.

 

Or you can just use the GM patch template provided here... you can still use separate multi-out audio as needed, the only two disadvantages are mentioned above...which are not show stoppers...just minor annoyances...

 

If I get time I will write up later, detailed step by step instructions for how to create an AUX-based DMD patch.. its more complicated though..I don't think I will have it in me to bother with it that way...